Ideas and/or Advice, Please!

I'VE BEEN TRYING TO SORT OUT MY BENEFITS STUFF TODAY. They paid me the grand total of £21 this week; I've no idea why. So now I know the correct number I have to ring back tomorrow when they're open. I also am meant to tell them I have schizoaffective disorder. I got a letter a while back that seemed irrelevant but it said underneath that any change in your medical condition must be notified. I don't think the name makes any difference but it might mean I get treated a bit different (if anything, better). They don't seem to quibble so much with severe mental illness whereas depression they subject you to a test to see how depressed you actually are. With this I don't see what test they can do, I just feel too confused a lot of the time to do a lot of basic things. Sad but true. I don't know how I'm going to rise above this one. Depression I fought against but mania you can't fight against it's too intense and also feels nice most of the time, so I don't know what to do. And the schizo-bit in schizo-affective just feels too weird for words so I don't know how to dea with it. Not very good I know but true. They might push me down a pit with people sword fighting like people on television now but I don't know how I'll survive. See I feel confused these thoughts come in my head and I push them out but I push out everything else too so I dont know what to keep in there. This is why I get ill, because I don't understand. I try. I do try. But I feel confused.

Does anybody out there know about schizoaffective disorder and what things I can do self-help wise? PLEASE. Anybody? If you can direct me to a good website or just a forum I'd be ever so grateful. I'm floundering about knowing I have "symptoms" of this "tripolar disorder" (because there are 3 things I get: mania, depression and schizophrenia) and knowing broadly which symptom and experience is flavoured with what, but I don't know what to DO. I want to know what to DO. And why I should do it? And what I might achieve... Please anybody who knows please answer. You don't need to be a fellow sufferer or an expert I'm just after ideas. Remember I have had depression for years and am glad I followed my inkling not to indulge in books that didn't mention Seasonal Affective (SAD) or bipolar. Because I've always thought my depression was partly psychological and partly biological. Even though I hadn't a clue I was schizoaffective until the dr told me so, I've followed the right path, where you accept your illness has a biological component. Purely herbal tea and counselling based stuff just ain't gonna cut it with my illness. I accept I need to take meds. I can feel when I haven't taken them, usually. Apart from Saturday night when I honestly forgot my pill (I'm on one pill now; 1x4mg risperidone rather than 2x2mg, which are too easy to get confused over) I wasn't messing about I really did forget to take it. And for once didn't get "a free coke binge" I just felt nothing bar a sluggish depression I've been in for days. Depression which now has a slight excited tinge in the background. I'm hoping this means a mood switch is occurring.

Yes I used HEROIN today but it did nothing. It was so weak. I wish I wouldn't do it. It doesn't take away "psychotic" things (which I don't really have today) and it doesn't dampen down my bad moods any more so I wish I'd get it THROUGH MY THICK HEAD THAT I'M WASTING MY TIME.

Im pissed off with NA because I shared even though it fucking hurt to do so I still shared something that is personal that I don't have to share and not one fucking person gave any response except the kind of response you get when they know you're using drugs still. I mean I told them I had bipolar mood swings and not one person could think of one faintly constructive thing to say about that.

I don't know what I was expecting. Certainly not "there there" type crap but something. I expected something and I don't think my expectations were unreasonable. Considering nearly ALL bipolar people use drugs which means there must be a lot of manic depression "in the rooms" as they say I expected more. So I was right when I realized NA was NOT for me. They cannot help me, they do not help me. Only seductive thing about NA is the attitude that taking medication is wrong, so I can "not use" my antipsychotics and have "a free coke binge" on them. That is a free manic episode, even a short one for a couple of days. But I'm trying to be grown up and responsible, I don't know why, but I am. Am trying.

I felt misunderstood by them when I took up going again and I still feel misunderstood and unappreciated.

Bear in mind I have been coming to NA for over 10 years, since I very first saw a problem developing, so I know NA, know their philosophy and their ways and feel let down, now that I genuinely want to be clean and serene I feel nobody has made any effort towards me, not genuine effort. All I get is "do a detox" (ie have a psychotic episode) and likeminded stuff in other words they're telling me to go crazy. I'm willing to go crazy as long as I can do it IN THEIR HOUSE. That will teach them to throw out platitude-ridden advice, when they see what happens when I "detox" and "go clean" as they believe clean is.

TIESTO/RALPH FRIDGE: PARADISE
when i went mad that time my shower kept saying "paradise paradise" after this song!



I'm not getting too wound up by Narcotics Anonymous and I refuse to throw the baby out with the bathwater. But I'm only doing one meeting per week at the moment. You have to bear in mind I have bad memories of coming to NA having heard voices all the way there on the bus, then locking myself up in a dark room with them in a psychotic state only for them all to believe I was high on crack when I was "high" yes, but on nothing! Just like you I have only a certain tolerance for such bullshit and then I start feeling genuinely upset. You see I know the name of my disorder now and it's not a good one. Now I have to tell the Social Security this crap, which I don't want to, but they need to know. They do say any change in your condition should be notified to us so fuckit I'll notify them. What on earth they'll do with that information I hesitate to think. You see I had symptoms and knew I wasn't right. Then this doctor tells me in these same words "I think you have a mental illness". I have never thought of myself as "mentally ill" before. Depression is supposedly a mental illness but it didn't make me feel mentally ill. Only the crash from mania into depression has truly made me feel injured and ill. Very very sick and ill. The crash I had in December counts as one of five all time worsts. The fact that there are FIVE not one probably says a lot but I'm not dwelling on that one. Do you understand why I disengage rather than wallow? If I wallowed I would never get out of self pity and it would destroy me. I'd rather pretend nothing is wrong than wallow in the wrongness. I don't care if I'm doing the wrong thing; life is so very difficult I don't know what else to do.

TRANCE VISIONS: PARADISE (KOMAKINO REMIX)



Well I hope I've been grown-up enough today I don't feel grown up. I feel like the parent of a 3 year old child ~ as per usual ~ saying "DO THIS! DON'T DO THAT!" and the recalcitrant child barely listens..!

And how was YOUR DAY? rsvp!


RALPH FRIDGE: PARADISE (PUSH MIX)

Come down now

I THINK I HAVE COME DOWN NOW. Down to normality. I still felt excessively cheerful even yesterday, which I'm hardly complaining about; it was fantastic; but I knew it was the back end of a mood-swing, just as uncharacteristic breeziness can be the back end of a hurricane.

This is what gets me worst about being "ill". Judging normality in the context of sickness. If I don't I'm not going to know if/when it happens again. It's always come back before.

I don't want right now to go into a list of times I've gone up, but it's happened at least 5 times, probably 10 times. Some of those times can be blamed on a drug. Others can be blamed on "viral infection" (colds/flu). Depression I've had far more of. I first got depressed enough to be thinking of dying when I was only 10.

I'm not angry about not having been "treated" ~ how do you treat a depressed child? I wouldn't want my kid on meds. Talk therapy I don't think would have worked on me, not at that age. (It did work when I had it later. I'm only wary of it now from having got to a stage when almost nothing at all in my life feels personal to me. It's all just some story I've told endless times to endless professionals.) What does feel personal are the memories I share with my family. The times I shared with them when growing up feel more dear to me now than they felt at the time. In a sense my treatment was the good treatment I got off my family. And you need to bear in mind the worst of this depression occurred over 2 periods both about a week long, over about 2 months. Then, after that I was more OCD than depressed.

I saw a thing on TV where two men who had been in constant, severe depression for over a decade and one woman who had been in a parallel state on Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (couldn't stop counting backwards, etc) had psycho-laser-surgery into the bit of their brain handling emotions.

All three made a dramatic recovery. One had to have a touch-up job when depression returned, but he was OK. Point being OCD and depression, including bipolar depression, were situated at precisely the same point in the brain. Which explains to me how I switched one "diagnosis" to another. Of course I don't have an official diagnosis as no dr. heard about this till 10 years after the fact. When I was depressed again. This time at university.

That was the worst depression of my life. I got badly depressed on heroin. You could say this was worse because at university I wasn't suicidal, not most of the time. On the heroin I was. And I was seeing nasty twisted faces in the carpet, in piles of clothing, in discarded carrier bags. I also heard voices. But the faces happened most frequently. Every day at some points. I think back to that time in horror of what might have happened had I been persuaded to drop that heroin. Considering this was depression WITH self-medication. What would it have been like with no meds bar methadone (which does almost nothing bar keep my body from being sick). As the dr. said it probably was "depression with psychotic features" ie as bad as depression gets. THIS is why I'm scared. This is why I HATED having that psych evaluation the other week while so hyper people couldn't follow what I was saying. Or had to keep putting me back on-topic.

[I hated the psych evaluation because it threw up rubbish from years ago I just did not and do not want to think about.)

But this 45 minute (was it really that short? It took up 5 hours of mental time I'm telling you!) this psychiatric history the guy had to take, before a Very Attractive TV Girl Doctor with shiny tights, really shiny black leggings that looked absolutely amazing and I felt myself light up when she came in (gave myself well away on that one)... (she must have looked over his report) and asked more questions along the same lines: not sleeping, going too fast, irritable mood T-ing into euphoria, paranoia, voices. I don't think they covered visions, which I also had that day. Their magnolia wall turned into the most amazing movie. I was hearing voices enough that rushing along their corridor every single room had babble emanating out.

This was the day I played aeroplanes on a swivel chair, like a 3 year old. Nobody was watching. I was in a private room, away from the receptionist. The whole point of a mental hospital, apart from saving your life is to give you somewhere to be crazy, so this behaviour is OK there, and doesn't contribute to your notes, unless it's done on a ward, in which case you're being "observed" they want to know how much energy you have on different days to see whether it's going up or down or is same every day... all that stuff. I know about moods from my little library of "how not to be" Depressed Books. Which I sold years ago.

Last night I kept having flashes of what I hoped wasn't depression. I don't feel depressed now. Not hyper, not depressed. Not slightly hyped up (which is really really nice). So I'm just lazy and lacking the amazing energy I had.

Going UP was too quick, but coasting down I really felt good, the way you coast down at the end of a rollercoaster. The going up happened so fast and with such paranoia and irritability it wasn't really good. But I had a fine week last week, even though I knew really I was coming down. I kept hoping I was going up again.

The things that might sound scariest to you weren't necessarily worst for me. Euphoria of course feels wonderful, grandiose is great. Paranoia I tended to get more when I was on the way into or out of the Ultra State. Going so fast I couldn't think any more, that was the worst. That to me is true madness. No thoughts in the head just noise like racing cars, whizzing about. That was the time I made myself think French to bring myself out of it. Visual hallucination is amazing. (Twisted faces in carrier bags happened in depression and technically that's called illusion as the crumpled bag sets it off, true hallucination is like me staring at that wall and seeing Visions.) Voices are usually just echoing my own thought out loud, or making suggestions. Occasionally they are abusive in a name-calling way. I never hear voices ordering me what to do or conversing about me. Those voices are said to be more characteristic of schizophrenia.

I went to a schizophrenic forum yesterday and couldn't relate to the level of paranoia. If I was "psychotic" it was in a much more fragmented way, where nothing adds to a whole, it's just weirdness. Not as frightening, as you might expect, when it actually happens. A lot was just funny e.g. the stairs exclaiming "oink oink poink poink!" as I descended to the front door. (Another illusion: the sound acts as trigger to a reinterpreting brain).

So that's what it's like to go mad. The peak lasted about 2 weeks. The week before I was horribly depressed some days, irritable and telling an anonymous commenter to F off, because his rapidly skimmed words seemed to be having a go. I repeated myself twice and thought "hang on a sec you're getting a bit vehement here..." but I didn't understand my own behaviour. So I was probably up for about 3 weeks in total. As I say the going-into stage is very hard to discern. Y'all might remember I was starting a mood, sleep and drink diary. I obviously felt some need for a mood scale going up as well as down, and that just about puts the issue in a nutshell. I knew I wasn't right.

I'm seeing a shrink once monthly. I'm on risperidone 2x2mg daily. Today I take it with methadone one mornings, one nightly. 4mg is half the usual maximum for bipolar; 40% of the usual max for schizophrenia. There's a chance I could have a "substance-induced mood disorder" (as well as pre-existing depression) ~~ but what substance is setting it off. Considering I WASN'T in withdrawal in December, most definitely wasn't in January, was ON heroin when I was hyper before (but not crack) was on heroin and crack (Mondays only) when antidepressants set me off badly one time before... blah blah it doesn't seem to phase in with anything. True withdrawal or switching off heroin on to anything eles has set me off high or low every single time (Subutex was a high: music sounded amazing! So good on days 1 and 2 I wanted to dance outside.)... So I don't know I just don't know.

I've been told this "happens to everyone" well I haven't seen that. What I'm telling is precisely what happened and I know people with schizophrenia etc. I know what's mild what's severe mine was edging towards the latter. I don't know anyone who got it this bad from drugs. Anywhere. At Nutter Club earlier today, a bipolar woman said "when I was depressed at NA they told me it was because I wasn't doing the steps properly and they said come off my medication". I said "I decided I'm going to tell anyone who says that: yeah I'll come off psychiatric meds. Only if I can stay at your house." This caused uproarious laughter.

Have a nice day. I'm trying. It just feels weird being "normal". (And how long will it last!?)



*******

HAPPY DAYS!

GUY ON HEROIN: UNION SQUARE NEW YORK CITY
THIS GUY HAS HAD "FIRE DOPE" AS THEY CALL IT THERE ("PROPER GEAR" AS YOU'D CALL IT HERE).
IT'S WHAT HAPPENED TO ME QUITE A FEW TIMES. TIMES I REMEMBER IS WHEN I WAS STANDING IN THE MIDDLE OF A ROOM NOT KNOWING WHAT DAY IT WAS. SOMETIMES I DIDN'T KNOW WHERE I WAS...




EH! DALLAS is coming back! JR will be shot again! (Sorry I got taken in by the Independent newspaper's pun. They mean shot on film. Ukkkh.)

Dynasty was nicer to look at. Better homes. Heather Locklear. Joan Collins. (Dallas had April Stevens). Dynasty had near-incomprehensible story lines. Dallas had so-called cliffhangers but how those stories dragged! Please Lorimar: faster, better this time!

Psych Clinic

I GOT VERY HYPER THIS AFTERNOON. SO HYPER I WAS LAUGHING MY HEAD OFF. I could not follow what anybody was saying, unless it was a formulaic receptionist (or psychiatric interviewer) type person.
Anything with twisting, turning or unexpected content had me rapidly lost. I got taken to the clinic by my druggie worker for being so out of it I couldn't follow him. Within half an hour I was repea pea pea pea pea pea pea pea pea pea peating words urds urds that didn't belongongongongongongongongongongongongong together and causing havoc in the waiting room where I couldn't help noticing three other people at the opposite pole. I did try and be considerate. I went exploring through double doors and ended up in a private room making abstract musical noises because that's what I was thinking.

I've not gone to NA. NA will have to wait. Sitting in a room full of poeple who believe I'm on drugs when I PROVED IT THIS AFTERNOON WITH A URINE SCREEN. Nothing but methadone. And benzos I don't remember taking.

I did keep wondering whether E and LSD were in my system, because this card didn't test for them. And acid, with it's quarter of a milligram blow-your-head-off speciality always used to be hard to test for.

The best thing to happen, bar causing havoc and breaking into an empty office and pretending to fly on a swivel chair was staring into a blank wall and watching the most amazing movie unfold in silvery-blue and psychedelic rainbow colours. The view behind my eyes was amazing. The lights in the psychiatric car park are particularly good. I think somebody deliberately added purple, green and yellow tinges to various ones just for manic people. Yes I was talking extremelyfast and according to my interviewer constantly derailing topic. I thought I was speaking quite reasonably. I also thought I was totally rational and normal until I got so euphoric I just could not stop cackling my head off.

The doctor seemed to think viewing "hallucinatory" voices as free entertainment was healthy not pervy. As I demanded to know. I expressed a lot of things LOUDLY AND VEHEMENTLY!!!!

But I'm home now. I mentioned not wanting to be sectioned only about 228,375,496 million times.

Akh I've got to go beddybyes now. I noticed myself coming down during the interview as when I first indulged in some ingingingiinginginginging I could not stop stop op op op op op for quite a few seconds sponge. among ung ung ung ung ung ung!! Then I could do it but not stop it (with the dr.) now I can't even utter syllables that first. I didn't stop moving nearly the entrie time I was there and noticed they gave up on getting me to sit during the interview. I was too hyper.

It was thinking in musical noises and clangangangangangs that bothered me, even as I came out of that most intense phase. I know I visibly frightened one horribly self-indulgent shouting and crying girl in the waiting room and frankly consider her so selfish and self-centred (I heard her endless display of phone-calling) and frankly I don't care. Better be frightening than abused. Especially in a psych clinic. That's what I think.

If I had gone in I'd have made sure to get wrestled to the floor and needle-stabbed. Don't think that would have been too hard, the state I wsa in. I was more hyperkinetic (not necessarily more high) than any maniac I've seen admitted. But I only remember two. And one was clearly exhausted.

By the way the theme of METHADONE NOT DOING ANYTHING TO HELP MY MENTAL HEALTH BY SHOVING MOOD SWINGS OF BOTH POLES INTO THE OPEN repeatedly rose its head.

I don't think I was being questioned re schizophrenia. I can't remember what I'm to do as far too fractured attention span. They didn't think it at all unusual that I can write but not read online. Yeah I can read snatches, but ask me the gist of an entire post and I'm lost or speaking about something else entirely before I ever reach your end point.

Today it was my cling-clang over musicality that got me I felt like such a nutter while I was doing some of it. Felt nothing but the vibe at other times. Realized staff had just floated past me without my noticing (rather disconcertingly) at others... My head's still a bit all over the place.

Well I hope I get FAR MORE EUPHORIC and a little less hyper.

No sleep since I don't know when. Not since yesterday late morning if I remember right. If you're obsessive enough and wish to know: you check.

Interestingly despite my hyperactivity and hilarious mood i was markedly less paranoid then yesterday. And the voices were less intense. And far less intense than early December when as I said I couldn't tell the difference between thinking and hearing. I remember that. And being rather confused by it. I have been and still am confused by a lot of things.

I'm not raising the spectre of severe mental illness in an Narcotics Anonymous meeting. Really am not up for being misunderstood (by people who assume you can only get high on drugs) and/or judged by rooms full of people, no matter how well meaning.

Hope y'all are OK. :-)

I really should try and get some sleep. It's supposed to make you less manic. And probably more depressed. I expect. So I'm scared of sleeping, but need to do it.

Drink/etc Diary Day 1 (Saturday)

I SLEPT! 4(ish)PM TILL 4AM. 12 glorious hours. I dreamt about this boy I went to school with at my 1st 2ndary school. He left midway through the first year because his parents moved to Bedford. Then came back, still living in Bedford. His Dad still worked in London or Hertfordshire (where we were) and drove him in every day. The time before when I slept, with the exception of an hour or 90 mins early Saturday morn was Thursday afternoon into Thursday evening when I dreamt I was in Madonna's house. I found a crappy old radio in the corner, picked it up and said "whose is this?" and Madonna said "that belonged to my mother". Then I realized I had really upset her and Madonna started ignoring me. Madonna's mother died when she was about 6. She says it was the worst thing to happen in her life.

OK I said I would do an alcohol diary. I had 2 cans, 1 litre. 7.5% ie 75mls alcohol, 7.5 units. Being as I partly couldn't and partly didn't want to sleep and was drinking quite a bit of black coffee, I set my mood from -.15 to +1.5 peak then it dropped back to -1.5 because I was exhausted I felt sick, hungry but couldn't eat.

OK IF YOU'RE AS BORED AS ME OF MENTAL HEALTH SHIT SKIP THE ITALICS.

The mood scale works like this. Zero means absolutely normal and not at all depressed. If something funny came on telly I would laugh my head off. If something good happened I would feel really good. -1 is noticeably depressed but able to shrug it off, except it returns within half an hour. I distract myself a lot by using the internet. -2 is the higher end of "moderate" on a doctorly scale meaning feeling pretty rough but still able to act out, sometimes snap out of it except it crashes back, still able to use distraction. I could sleep 10 hours every night. -3 is the worst I usually get, lower end of "moderate" meaning absolutely abysmal mood. Whereas suicide crosses my head in any low, here the impulse or fantasy to do it can get relentless and I just want to curl up and die. Self-esteem goes low, concentration is terrible, I can write but not read much. I can sleep 14-17 hours or longer every day. -4 is very rare for me, I've only ever been down here for hours or days at a time, it means total incapacitation, staring into space, unable to put on any meaningful act. I feel broken and injured, totally worthless, guilty and filthy. I don't feel suicidal, this has always felt like the very end, life is over. You can start tripping out in this state but I've never tripped intensely (thank God). -4.5 would be so bad I wouldn't be blogging at all, not even single lines. I hope I never go that low. In this state they'd seriously think of ECTing you. ECT is the treatment I least want. I know someone who had it and had half a life wiped away. Google ECT, you'll find witness to this fact. Look at what doctors say, they'll never admit it happens apart from "partially impaired short term memory loss". Yeah I know a lot about this subject I used to have a stock of how to (or rather how not to) books with titles like Depression Workbook. Ukh. Lent them all away and sold the rest for heroin money.

O crap, now I have to explain pluses. OK here we go. When we get to the + and - 2s and higher bear in mind not everything happens at every moment, most things happen at some time while it's going on:

+1 hyperthymia means a good mood, a really nice buoyant good mood like swimming floats you cannot push it down in my late 20s I'd get like this, constantly, days at a time, but it always meant depression was on the way or I'd just come out of it (ain't life great); +2 hypomania racing thoughts or thoughts flooding the head, distractable, disinhibited, pacing, euphoric and/or irritable, like being on speed. Urge to say stupid stuff, eg repeating same words/phrases over and over, or doing it in head. I used to get flashes of this over the past few years, I just thought it was the heroin now I'm not too sure. +3 mania very disinhibited, saying inappropriate things though I'm not an impulsive person and try not to, periodically rushing high alternating with crystal clear shining mental state, irritability tipping into rage: especially at psychiatrists and drug services, endless composition of letters, posts, monologues in head or online, cannot sleep more than 4 hours max, bad paranoia, don't want to go outside. I was in this state when I saw the shrink last time (unfortunately, now I can't get out of what I rantingly told him), some hallucinations eg hearing words spoken by the tap when it runs +4 hearing voices, floridly at the peak, visual hallucinations e.g. seeing fur growing out of everything, flashes of light, Northern Lights style visuals, lights outside look amazing, police car lights make me ecstatic, extreme paranoia, people are talking about me, intruders in the house, irrational thinking though I'm a very sane person and can still distinguish or remember what's meant to be normal. Like the effects of an extreme crack/uppers binge when you've lost it and just cannot come down. No sleep at all at the very peak. Head feels like national electricity grid wired through brain. Eyes closed my mind is lit up like a TV set, brightly with constant moving pictures. This is what happened in early December it was only this bad for about 2.5 days. Into this got mixed depression of the worst type and suicidal urges which were extreme and terrifying. I wasn't even thinking English at some points just bing bing bang bong ong ong ong! Still able to write and post despite all this. Can't get head round stuff like texting on phone, signing into email, putting key in lock though. Bear in mind I can type by touch so typing is dead easy +4.5 you'd be totally incoherent, wouldn't know what you were doing, where you were going, why you were there, what was happening, could do anything and not know it. Never been this bad, but was able to see this was where it would end up if it got any worse. I've witnessed this from the outside (in nuthouse) it's not pretty. I'm glad I never got this far.

+3 and +4 have only happened once, in December. In summer 2001 I got into a horrible state coming off gear cold turkey, very hyper very depressed. Kept losing touch with what was thinking, what was going on at times. Everybody feels mentally terrible but it was more extreme. This isn't just my opinion the nutnut nurse at the druggie service thought it sounded "manic". Antidepressants (Prozac) used to put me +2 for a few days to a couple of weeks. Last time it was worse and I didn't sleep for 4 days, though i don't remember feeling that euphoric I wrote some ridiculous stuff in a letter to my Gran, I'm so glad I didn't post it. Then I crashed, still on mirtazapine (Remeron/Zispin), still at 30mg a day it bottomed out at -4. For 3 or 4 weeks until someone realized what was going on and I stopped it. I never even knew an antidepressant could make you worse.

OK so that's the scale and it's rated conservatively, you give the minimum applicable number. Feeling really nice for a few minutes doesn't mean a plus whatever that's just feeling really nice. These moods are constant and marked and the more extreme they get so the ability to act normal or snap out of it diminishes, eventually vanishes.

Ukh I'm fed up of all this. I wish I had never seen that dr. I had to. What am I meant to be doing? Cleaning my house. Going to AA. Yeah. House has turned into mess as life turned to chaos this past week. I'm not always the most focused person. Yet I can focus fairly well in certain ways. And nearly everything I am, think and/or feel I'm also the opposite. So I try not to be self indulgent but what is a blog? Self-indulgence of the most extreme kind! Life is like that it doesn't bother me unduly. I'm bothering me far more than anyone else ever has. My own behaviour. Drink drink drinking (still). I shouldn't be drinking 7.5 units a day that's double the maximum recommended allowance. I should be cleaning up. I should be nicely well organized. I should be physically clean. I should cook food from scratch because I know how to do it. I should get up at the same time every day so my sleep cycle is as regular as it can be. I should look through mail that comes and open stuff addressed to me. I should wash my clothes, not sleep in them and buy or at least obtain new ones (you can get free clothes by diving a clothing recycle bin). You can also collect them off the street, which I do. I should also do a million other things I cannot remember/be bothered going into.

That's it. See ya. Wouldn't wanna be ya. Wouldn't wanna be me either. Ha ha har!!!!

Illustrated: top Madonna; bottom Trisch Li or Trishli who appeared in video 1 on Friday manic +3 or more on my lovely scale. In video 2 she's sane and looks amazing. She died 2 years ago. I don't know why. I like her.
You can also find some good links re cocaine or crack psychosis or mood episodes and mixed mood disorders and other nauseating things

PS if you want to see more Trisch Li and Jen on the telephone here's 3 more:

Trisch and Jen on phone 3 Jen's weird night



Trisch Li and Jen on the phone 4



Trischli and Jen on the phone 4 later that night I love the background on this one

The Enemy Without

I NEED to keep a drink diary and a mood diary, I have decided. This should show how wonderful life gradually becomes once the evil substances are flushed down the metaphorical loo.

The best advice I got came today from Jess the Mistress of Mischief and chimes in exactly with my doctor: CUT OUT ALL DRINK AND DRUGS FOR THREE MONTHS. Only after three months clean can they possibly tell what is you and what was and was not drink or drug-induced. Focus on the practicalities of life and the fact you're a problem drinker with a drug problem. In other words go to NA, go to AA. Frequently.

Hey it's past 3pm and I'm wide awake. No sleep last night. My sleep pattern is in tatters and I used the wonders of caffeine to get me through the morning. It did make me very fidgety in the chemists and I'm convinced they thought I was on drugs. Well I was. Black coffee!!! I don't normally drink coffee and barely drink tea. I buy milk that goes off before it ever gets finished, unless I glug it down. I need to switch to tea anyway ~ as a substitute for alcohol. Soft drinks remind me of strong drink too much as I used the fruit flavoured ones as mixers (yes on white cyder ~ makes a budget alcopop, highly addictive!)

I spoke to my Mum today and she said something I thought very perceptive as it highlights the biggest problem I have. Forget any drug or medical terminology it's THIS more than anything that has turned my life into the ruin it is today. And the drugs made it far, far worse. It impossible to explain why I do this and I know junkies get this a lot. My Mum remembers it going back to when I was about four and calls it "autistic". I'm not sure that's the word but what do I care. To be frank I'm amazed she was perceptive enough to notice it's going on, considering she doesn't live with me and it's this:~

I live my life on a constant loop. I have things I do every day and these things I do without too much trouble. The loop is like a railway line with only a few stations. The train goes round and round and only stops at those stations, so I only do the stuff that's in this loop. Anything out of the ordinary involving planning or going anywhere unfamiliar or meeting someone new brings on the worst stress, in fact for a long time I basically avoided ANYTHING out of my limited routine. This includes good stuff as well as bad. When I got sent a parcel I only just made it to the post office in time to pick it up before it got returned to sender. I wouldn't blame my family for being offended at this seeming Don't Care attitude. But it wasn't not caring, it was... something I cannot explain. You can call it laziness if you like. Bear in mind though that nobody who knows me in real life has ever called me lazy. I've been called a lot of things, lazy ain't among them.

So this nameless thing, my dear readers, "autism" or whatever it is, is what I have to work on. The whys and wherefores are immaterial: I need to make it to go away. I didn't used to be that bad. But my Mum thinks it's a lifelong characteristic. This does not however mean that there's no hope.

I spent my entire adult life consciously working on changing myself ~ until drug addiction changed me beyond the point of self-help. I don't despair that this is insurmountable.

With the right degree of motivation and patience, anything is possible. Remember, I specialize in things that require unusual amounts of these qualities. You need them to write a book. And I have written books, even though they were crap. You need them to learn a foreign language. And I've learned a few (badly). All you need do is keep on and on and on in the correct direction no matter how discouraged you may feel, no matter how irrelevant to that particular day the activity may be, you still do it and you go on doing it every single day without fail. And then, in maybe not too long, you'll look back and realized you've done something you never dreamed possible.

*******OK really these links are for other people. Once you've read around this topic, as I say it gets stultifyingly boring. I skimmed through every one and got no real answers. Yeah I got symptoms that match bipolar ones. Bipolar isn't about "mood swings" between "happy and sad"; it's about extreme swings in energy that affect the mood. I'm tired of this subject now. I'm writing for myself as an aide-memoire. My private notes are open for anyone and everyone to see, which makes me slightly circumspect in what I say. I'm fed up of thinking about something that happened that was so immensely powerful it was worse than being hit by a truck. I literally did get hit on the head by a truck some years ago and was so concussed I didn't know what I was doing all week. And yet I was able to count fingers, so I got instant discharge from hospital. What I couldn't do was tell the time, the day or sometimes even where I was. I knew I was forgetting things but obviously couldn't remember what it was I'd forgotten! So at the doctor's office I was at something of a loss to explain myself. My point being whatever happened to me whacked me even worse than that. I felt more badly jolted and jarred than I've ever been in my life from anything. Considering the length of time it lasted, it was the most intense mental state I've ever been in, on or off drugs, including acid, ketamine and crack. Everyone who met me that week thought I'd been piping because that was how I was acting. All hyper and paranoid, unable to calm down. Now I've had enough of talking about this I really am bored with the entire issue. As I say I'm only posting these links in case they help some other person, I glanced through and once you know the basics of coke, and what can go wrong, you'll know this stuff. The video is posted because it's funny.




Now those links. I don't really want to post these I'm so sick of words like "cocaine". But maybe someone somewhere will get some enlightenment from 'em:~

This explains what a mixed state is and isn't. If it can be established that a drug (or drug withdrawal) caused my cuckoo episode then it's called a "substance-induced mood disorder with mixed features"
Substance disorders.
Substance-induced mood disorders.
How much cocaine required to cause psychosis?
Cocaine hallucinosis/psychosis.
Mixed bipolar state: http://www.gulfbend.org/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=11195&cn=4
Hypomania: a natural state to be in. Euphoric hypomania, which just means mild mania, is NOT an illness, it's merely a medical condition, like having three nipples. On its own it means nothing except that you're blessed with energy, charisma and creativity. But it does unfortunately tend to develop into full mania which is very different. Or to snap into depression, as this link explains: http://www.gulfbend.org/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=11194&cn=4
Mixed episode, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_episodes

Illustrated: beer; trainset, just like my life, running in circles; Chinese character for money; cocaine as I barely ever took it ~ in "rails" (I love that Americanism)

PS HERE for comparison is the same woman, Trisch, totally sane. See the marked difference in her composure and behaviour. I love her look and the film exposure, doesn't she look amazing:

Responsibility

SO WHAT AM I MEANT TO BE DOING NOW? That I'm taking responsibility for my own life, at last.

For years I never took responsibility for anything. All I took was heroin first, drink second, crack third, Valium when it came my way. My four drugs of choice.

All in all I got in a mighty mess. I haven't opened any mail in months, except when someone phones me to say mail is coming. Why bother? it only ever contains threats and I was not together enough to deal with the council tax or anything else. The solicitor wants to put me down as Severely Mentally Impaired. This just means mentally ill. I don't want to be mentally ill so that one never got anywhere.

You know I even got criticized just now for having looked up the symptoms of my own illness! How can I take responsibility for anything if I don't know what I'm dealing with?

As I said, I do regret having seen that NutNut dr a few weeks ago. What happened was, on Tuesday the week before I started hearing voices. I thought this was dodgy heroin and laughed it off. On Thursday I stopped taking heroin and switched to methadone. I was in no way withdrawing as I had enough methadone at home to take in divided doses, so I never felt the slightest cluck at all. Add to the fact that the heroin had gone pitifully weak due to a drought (though it was full of ultra-powerful downers) and methadone held me well. On Friday I woke up feeling absolutely vile. I couldn't summon energy to get out of bed for four hours. Then when I did I forced myself in the shower and to the methadone pharmacy. Someone sent me an email that afternoon and I was laughing my head off, I thought "that's good I'm not depressed any more". By midnight I really felt tired as if I hadn't slept in years but my head was beginning to race quickly and more to the point I was now hearing voices loudly. I didn't sleep at all. In fact I went two and a half days without any sleep it was absolutely impossible. My hearing went incredibly loud. I could hear every thing in every room of my house and on the street. People were babbling at me everywhere. Music. words. When I opened a door, the door said "hello!" and told me to buy some peaches. By this time I was getting very paranoid. I had to go out the next day to get methadone and everyone was spitting and swearing at me on the street. When I got home I tried to sleep but could see the most vivid pictures behind my eyes. I felt euphoric one minute, suicidal the next. At one point I couldn't tell whether I was thinking or hearing because all I heard was voices voices everywhere saying different things. I was negative of all drugs by this point, I wasn't even drinking. Eventually I did have 2 cyders, just to prove this wasn't DTs. On Sunday I did eventually sleep for what felt like years, but it was only four hours or so. I woke up with a fascinating radio programme on. Got up and the radio was still playing in the bathroom. Then I realized it was just another of those voices. I got an hour's sleep on Monday then angrily phoned my Mum, who had seen the state I was in 2 weeks before and been horrified (high on heroin and benzos). So she was in touch with my worker. I didn't even know my worker's name so my Mum did the phoning. A while later I was rushing off my face on crack which I was convinced the drug service had spiked me with. I hadn't taken any coke at all. By that afternoon I was catatonically depressed, curled up in a ball and more disoriented than I've ever been. A few hours later my mood went rushing back up and I was on top of the world. The problem with all this apart from the confusion and paranoia was that I just could not function. It took over an hour to decide to go out, get keys together and actually leave as I was distracted by everything. In shops I couldn't handle change. The action of moving my hand, counting money and handing it over within a few seconds was too much. I eventually used the laundrette but again had to be helped with change, filling the machine etc I was cabbaged. I wasn't on drugs, I wasn't in drug withdrawal. I was on methadone which kept me fine. This stuff was mental. On Thursday I saw the psychiatrist as I knew something had gone very wrong. Even though I felt good most of the time at the peak of the madness I've never been so terrified. It's one thing to be tripping because you've dropped acid, quite something else to be hallucinating on nothing. Acid lasts 12 hours or so. This went on for days on end. When I saw the doctor I thought I was OK. This is not what the dr thought. His questions revolved around antipsychotics, schizophrenia and whether I wanted to be in hospital. I almost regret saying no. So this weird state happened and took a good ten days to wear off. Afterwards I was just confused. I banned myself from looking up anything to do with mental health and stuck by this until the weirdness had receded. Then I did go Googling and matched time and again "bipolar disorder: mixed psychotic mania". Lovely. I'm not saying this is what was wrong with me, I'm saying I matched the descriptions. Every time.

The same symptoms started coming back a week or two ago but they were nowhere near as intense and I plummeted into depression which is where I am now. I spend a lot of time online as it's the only thing that distracts me from how I feel. No I am not looking up mental health shit. Psychiatry is the most boring of all subjects to read on unless you're looking for a specific answer.

So now I don't know what to do. I'm drinking only 2 cans 1 litre. No heroin today. I only crave it because I feel miserable and that's how I fixed misery for years on end. I don't feel motivated to do anything exciting. I've decided to do a bit of cleaning as it's 4am and I'm wide awake.

I can't do this voluntary work yet. As it was tactfully pointed out to me, it's a very nice idea but I do need to be a bit more together before I try something like that.

I haven't just been lazy, I've gone to such an extreme I was almost paralysed. I never engaged with anything or anyone. The ONE thing I kept going was my blog. But being able to tell you something doesn't mean I'm doing very much. I started shoving myself in the shower again, but before that I'd gone weeks without bothering to wash properly or wash my hair. I didn't care what anyone thought and was glad to have people stay away from me.

So there we have it. Yes I am self obsessed (and who isn't). At least when I do that I don't know who I'm obsessing about. I feel like a glassfish. Almost invisible.

So apart from this giving up drink and not taking heroin, what do I do? My head is distracted by random words coming in. They come in from outside, I can point to the direction they come from. The last phrases I heard were "give it a mole" and "Orla Geerin" (BBC Middle East correspondent). I also hear my name coming from the London buses.

No I'm not saying I'm mad, but I AM sane enough to realize this isn't strictly "normal" to most people. It never happened to me till I was in my 20s. Maybe I'm psychic.

The guy downstairs, the one I DO get on with is on exactly the same wavelength as me and he says I should stop dressing like a tramp (that is a hobo, not a prostitute). But I like my cigarette burned clothes. At least I don't have to worry about messing them up.

I suppose I ought to go to bed as I need a sleep pattern back. But what do I do when I'm awake?

Here are my own suggestions:

1. Keep drink to a max 2 cans (1 litre) a day. That's 7.5 alcoholic units.
2. Don't use heroin
3. Keep self and clothes clean
4. Clean house, it's still not finished
5. Eat properly
and one last one, I didn't think of till I got a comment just now at 1:30pm from the Mistress of Mischief GO TO NA/AA!

That's about all I can manage. When I was doing that cleaning blitz I got so exhausted I slept 17 hours at a stretch. If there is something physically wrong I'm not getting treatment anyway. I'm fed up of doctors. I still have very mixed feelings about having seen that psychiatrist. I thought I'd had a 2 day breakdown and was basically OK by the time I saw him. Looking back, I was not OK at all. I spent the waiting period pacing the entire length of the building; once inside the consulting room I was so hyper I was bouncing off the walls. I barely stopped talking the entire time I was in there. I dread to think what they're going to do to me next time. Have you seen Michael Caine's evil doctor character in Quills? I think the nice doctor will go and I'll be confined to a lunatic asylum under the auspices of somebody like that. I don't trust doctors.

Now I've got to go it's 4:30am I'm supposed to be cleaning up or sleeping or something. I can't remember what.

Illustrated: unanswered mail; an Afrian pygmy hedgehog which I'd quite like as a pet (they're more popular in America where you don't get wild hedgehogs); a glassfish; smoking; the Marquis de Sade, played by Jeffrey Rush in Quills

URBAN SHAKEDOWN: SOME JUSTICE
This was one of my favourite tunes of the early 90s.
The sample is actually a man speeded up. It comes from an old garage track:
War and drugs are everywhere and it's getting so hard to breathe the air....
Now-eeeeeee, we live as one family

Still on drugs. And ashamed.

I SCORED HEROIN YET AGAIN THIS EVENING. I wasn't intending to do it. But I did. I used. I bumped into a posh boy who grew up with every advantage in life. Privately educated. The whole shebang. He should be married by now with a trophy wife, lovely posh kids who call her Mammar and him Pappar. A job in the city (if he feels the need for a job). His wife would probably be in PR, events planning (setting up stuff like Cartier Polo) or jewellery design. I believe (or suspect) that his family have cut him off. Smart move on somebody who grew up totally dependent on the family's money and status. No wonder he's in and out of prison. Thievery is the only way he knows how to make ends meet with a raving heroin and crack habit.

He scored me a lovely £20 bag of gear. Nothing is as it was before the extreme heroin drought that thwarted supplies, reduced purity to a minuscule fraction of what it had previously been, and left multiple thousands of addicts in constant withdrawal sickness. Even now in the new year things are a mere shadow of their former selves. I used to fix up a £20 bag (0.4, 0.5g) in two or three hits. In my recent binge I've done it in one. I seriously doubt the situation will ever go back to how it was pre-drought, not for many, many months indeed.

I can't believe I've let this relapse go on and on for as long as it has done. I'm beginning to feel desperate. When I did give up heroin I was lucky. I had a psychotic episode that threw me so far off centre that gear was the last thing on my mind.

So I'm now musing on whether or not I ought to score cannabis and smoke it heavily. Cannabis makes me psychotic. My last highly "enjoyable" (not!) experience involved heavy paranoia and voices from the sky yelling down at me. I don't want paranoid psychosis, but if it stops me being a heroin addict, it's surely worthwhile. And the druggieclinic don't mind anyone smoking "dope" as it's naïvely labelled here. (Doesn't "dope" mean "heroin" in the USA? The Americans have the right idea, as in most things.)

David Chaytor, Member of Parliament is being severely punished for swizzling Us the People of fraudulent expenses claims to the tune of over £20,000, that's more than $30,000.
He will be punished in prison for a mere nine months of his poxy 18-month sentence before the idiotic justice system lets him out on licence. Unfortunately because he's not in Malaysia or Singapore he won't be whipped on the bare buttocks until they explode and blood pools round his feet. You can see the photographs here. I'm hoping the one featuring quasi-medical treatment involves rubbing sharp rock salt crystals into the rapist's broken bum. A more severe whipping ought to have been imposed on that MP. That would make those bastards think again before claiming OUR money for duck pond islands, moat cleaning and castillation repairs on their castles. Whipping should be brought back for housebreaking (definitely ~ domestic burglars are the lowest form of scumbags and I'd be well up for rubbing rocksalt into THEIR wounds), muggers, loan sharks, cannabis dealers and most especially corrupt policemen. The ones who spray CS gas into "suspects'" eyes at point blank range. The ones who perjure themselves in court. The ones who beat up "suspects" in the cells. These should be whipped without mercy.

If you want to watch a celebratory 20-cut spanking on a Malaysian rapist, click here. Be warned there is blood. But who cares what happens to a sex offender? The only disappointing thing is he doesn't scream enough.

When I was about nine years old some pleasant young man tried to pick me up from our local railway station. This bastard KNEW MY NAME. Despite the fact that I'd never knowingly set eyes on this character in my entire life, he KNEW MY NAME and insisted he was here to pick me up, and I was to come with him.

I wasn't at the main part of the station, I was on the footbridge, where I waved a 1977 Silver Jubilee Union Flag at the express trains as they trundled past. This made them honk-honk! To my juvenile mind this made it all worthwhile.

Of course when he said are you Gledwood? I'm here to collect you I said, "No that's not me," and this threw him. The fact that we were on the bridge made things, to my present recollection dodgier still. Less chance of genuine mistaken identity. More chance of a pervert willfully picking me up for God knows what. I wish he had got caught and spanked.

In my view paedophiles ought to be shot by firing squad. And none of this pussyminded crap about loading only one gun. Every single gun but one should be fully stocked with bullets. And I'm talking machine guns here. No crappo rifles. Death should be swift and merciful. Put the bastards out of their misery. I feel sorry for them. Remember I'm a drug addict. I know how it feels to have an addiction disapproved of by society. So kill the bastards. If the death penalty seems too harsh, institute a voluntary one. How many prisoners attempt suicide? Many, many thousands. All they need do is get them to fill out a little pink form, then within five minutes the firing squad is assembled and BANG! The bastard is dead!

I don't know what to do about this ongoing addiction of mine. Should I take up cannabis? Surely it's better to be crazy than addicted to heroin. Committing suicide is immoral so I can't do that. That's why I believe drug addicts should get the voluntary firing squad too. I'd have signed up for that years ago.

Happy new year everyone. The bastard from the council had the cheek to inform me my living conditions are of a reprehensibly low standard. Well he can go piss himself. It's my life. If I want to sleep in a nest of quilts like a tubby grizzly, that's what I shall do. He should FCK OFF and be soundly spanked. Or better still hanged.

How do I give up this terrible habit? I purchased some diazepam blues (Valium 10mg). They make me feel rubbery and nice. But nothing makes me feel nice enough. Is it really wrong to want to die? I never asked to live. Now people want to convince me that it's my duty to suffer. Why should this be so...?

I'm putting down my name for the Hospice Work I was talking about. It might take some time to get through the process of Reference Approval. I have no references, but the Druggie Agency ought to provide some. They are there, after all, to set druggie idiots back on the straight and narrow.

So wish me luck, please, and if you've any ideas, please pass them on. Click on "Answers" below ....

JOKE!

What do people call it when you talk to God?
Prayer.
What do people call it when God talks to you?
Psychosis.
What do you call somebody who thinks he IS God?
A psychiatrist.


HM Prison "Service" website. (A "service" most "service users" could well do without!)

Spanking in Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei

Illustrated: evil cannabis spliff; idiotic cannabis man; rapist's bum after 20 strokes of the cane; another criminal's bum after a good whipping ~ this is what they should have done to those corrupt MPs; Her Majesty's Prison Wormwood Scrubs where £20,000 fraudster MP will be punished but unfortunately not soundly caned.