Librium

I HAD TO GO VISITING today. My friends live in flats. Downstairs. But no light on. Seemingly she saw me as the intercom crackled with her distinctive Liverpool voice: "wait a sec!" So I did. Then I thought I'd phone anyway and she sounded off-beam, like she hadn't just spoken to me a few moments before and I thought, That was odd.

Then he comes out and I said "Did she just talk to me through the intercom" and he said "No, what are you talking about! That hasn't worked for years! What are you on?!"

And I said "Nothing," he said: "No you're on something." So I said, "No, I'm not drinking so it must be DTs." He looked at me carefully and said, "I'll go and get you a couple of Librium," so he did, he got me nine and said "Don't tell her."

I'm to take three every four hours, then they should hold me till next day. I don't know the milligrams but they're blue and white, like Prozacs. I took three as directed and barely felt anything.

So they probably make a good substitute for alcohol. Pills that don't do anything are easier to cut down on than drink, which I can feel something off.

Later on someone quite different asked me whether I'm on LITHIUM. Thanks so much, Friends.

I'm not on anything. I'm not taking gear, that's why I'm falling apart. I feel the fractures. It doesn't feel bad, it just feels bizarre. Quite fun though. I've been sleeping like a harvest mouse. Hibernating for hours on end.

O will I ever get off these drugs? Yes, because I have to.

Tomorrow I'm planning an expedition to Mr Temazepam (Mr Librium cannot go on sparing his partner's pills.) Mr Temazepam wants good dollars for his supply but as I say, if it's more "medical" than cutting down on just drink then I'm willing to go for it.

I got hooked on the feeling of drink. Now I'm without that feeling. So it's a step ahead already!

There is a significant risk of pharmacological dependence on diazepam and patients experiencing symptoms of benzodiazepine withdrawal syndrome if it is taken for 6 weeks or longer.

(Wikipedia: Diazepam) Being as I shouldn't be taking it for any longer than 10 days maximum, I ought to be fine ...

Mariana-Deep

THAT'S HOW DEEPLY I SLEPT last night. 36,201 feet, 11,034 metres deep*.
And I slept from about 3am till 8pm, that's about 17 hours. I was tired. All that cleaning has exhausted me. And that was natural sleep without pills or potions other than the prescribed methadone (back to the full dose, half-dosing made me sick about a day or a day-and-a-half later). I don't obsessively check times and doses with methadone. For someone who's been labelled neurotic more than once I'm remarkably unneurotic when it comes to detoxification. I have in the past cut myself down very steeply from methadone (and felt dreadful) and heroin (and felt fine). Not that methadone is FAR WORSE and a TOTALLY INAPPROPRIATE TREATMENT FOR HEROIN ADDICTION but there you go!

I cut my drinking by about two thirds yesterday down to 2.75 cans, each can holds 500mls so I had somewhere around 100mls alcohol, 10 units. My maths fails me. Today I've had 2.25 cans, which would be around 80mls alcohol, 8 units.

I could swap over to benzodiazepines (e.g. Valium) and taper down on pills. Clinics do this (they don't give drink!) and lots of people do it informally. Or I could cut down by just drinking less. I don't know. A Smirnoff cloudy lemonade 700ml bottle is 4% ABV, only 28mls/2.8 units for £3 and that's really nice. Unfortunately in the past I tended to knock it down very quickly in compensation. I'm already drinking my drink mixed with fruit juice. This makes it less dehydrating but has the disadvantage of being a bit too tasty. Nicer than any premixed drink sold in the shops and I've tried a few.

So I'm not sure what to do, whether to cut down on drink or to switch to pills. The advantage of the pills is you lose the buzz of alcohol and once you cut down tiny you cannot feel anything at all. So it's actually cleaner. Alcohol is just too nice. Akh I don't know what to do.

The other thing is, clinics usually use Valium or more frequently Librium or Ativan (lorazepam). I don't trust the supply of Valium because a lot is if not fake then unreliable. The temazepam I got was OK. Normally if I got something like that I'd go for Valium, but I got temazepam on instinct because it's not internationally as well known and I've never heard of it being faked. (Bootleg meds are made in far-away countries; the manufacturers tend to go for the best-known and hence internationally most saleable product.) The main difference between the two is that Valium is a better muscle relaxant, temazepam is more sedating. (Temazepam is traded as Restoril in the USA.) Being as I'm not in it for either effect I suppose I have my answer. If I want a benzo, any one will do.

I still don't know what road to take. I'm very tempted to ring Mr Temazepam and make the switchover. I'm only posting this so you can follow my reasoning. Would I be doing something wrong to essentially replicate what hospitals and clinics do?

My fear is of simply derailing one habit into another. Alcohol is more dangerous than benzos. Both are addictive. Akh. I don't know.

Welcome to 2011 everyone :-)

It's 2am. BBC News Channel has started already on BBC1. Sometimes it comes on early. Whenever it does come on, I feel like I should sleep...

*Vityaz-1 Deep in the Mariana Trench is said to contain the deepest water on the face of the earth

Wikipedia: Alcohol Withdrawal
Wikipedia: Alcohol Detoxification

Confession

I'M NOW ONLY ONE DAY CLEAN. Last night I wanted to score. I turned the idea over and over in my mind. I wiped my old text messages then a new one appeared, timed fifteen minutes earlier. This was from Dealer #1, the one who used to sell giant £20 bags. So I thought: You want it that much. You get it. So I did.

In a way there's nothing to post because the gear was so crap* that drugs-wise I might as well have chucked £15 down the drain and saved a perfectly good needle. It cooked up far too dark. It smelled of heroin being smoked, rather than cooked (a different smell). I thought that's odd. When I tasted a droplet: nothing. So I banged up the entire lot at once and felt the faintest opiate tinge for all of 45 seconds.

All I've done is ruin my number of Days Clear, not get high, throw £15 away.

On the plus side I got the craving to use out of my system. The same way I gave up crack two years ago, yet wondered back six or seven times afterwards, I never wanted it again the next day. I just remembered why I hated it that much. I no more want to use again than a person who went to Disney Land on Monday would wish they were on a rollercoaster again Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

Heroin is a spectre from a past life. More a ghoul than a spectre. A monster who tries to deceive: You give me everything, then I'll give you More! Somehow, in the end, it didn't work.

So don't worry about me, I won't be hurrying back any time soon. I have Caramel Baileys, mince pies and temazepam, so I'm well sorted for Xmas.

Hope y'all have a Merry One one too. If it can't be Merry then may it be Tolerable. If you're 100% substance-free then may it be Serene (and of course Clean).


Plus I hope 2011 is better for you than this Bag-o-Shite year ever was!!

The doggie is an American Akita, the sort of dog I really want.

I'll be online on Gabbly tomorrow so if anyone wants to talk I'll be there.

*To anyone who hasn't followed, there has been a severe drought in the British heroin supply for over 2 months; that's why my formerly reliable dealer was selling crap. It's hard to find a constant, reliable source of heroin anywhere now.

Dank

I CANNOT SLEEP PROPERLY. Last night I thought I'd take a sleeping pill (temazepam 20mg), to set my sleep cycle earlier. So much for good intentions: it only made me high. As good a high as heroin. (And very much an acquired taste. Nobody but a junkie could ever feel the blurry, rubbery feeling of benzodiazepines as a "high".)

Still I didn't sleep. I found myself online in a blur. Eventually I got pill number two. I felt rubbery and dizzy and hazy ("high") as I stumbled up to get it. So I decided to be all responsible and bit it in half. The extra 10mg only took over as the previous 20 peaked and faded. An hour or two later I took the other half. Still wide awake, but in bed. If I'd have slept I'd have slept with the computer in my arms, like an electronic baby. At some point I took a third pill, a whole 20mg. My thought process had gone haywire by this time as I left a garbled comment on my own blog (yesterday). At least in my jumbled-up state I had sanity enough to clarify this is what part of me thinks...

Last thing I remember was realizing it was 6am and being distinctly displeased about that. Then I slept through past 4:30. Got up at 5. Ran down the chemist with an hour to spare.

People kept calling me this morning on withheld numbers. I suspect 2 different callers as the pattern of rings before hangup was different. The dealer usually rings a long long time, leaves it then rings an hour later. This person rang and rang a few rings over and over. I wish people wouldn't withhold. When I find out who it was (if it was my friend) I have to explain NOT to do that. The dealer will ask me to jump through a hoop, expecting me to wag my tail and enthusiastically woof "how high, master?!" He wants me to test a piteously small amount of free gear, knowing this would (ordinarily) prompt a phone call within 30 mins asking for a £20 bag if not a gram. This one charges £40 on the gram (too much). A weighed gram always used to be £30. Or £35 tops as 2x0.5g £20s. (2x20=no more than 35 in addict maths!)

In the last few years I noticed the price sneaking higher. I had only one dealer who did giant bags, weighing 0.6 or 0.7g for £20. These were full of B (brown heroin) and packed with lovely benzos as well. It was a £10 hit on one of these that made me miss my friend's funeral. I woke 2 hours later realizing I'd missed it. Then I slept for 12 hours straight. This gear was beige but went midnight black in the works. I tested benzo-positive on a test-card I obtained, hadn't been at the Valium or any other pills. So I knew it was dodgy B setting this off.

Checking my text messages set off the craving that inspired all this junkie information you just read. I got 2 offering 4 bags for £25. Another one saying great new stuff. All this from "Mr 0.6". He's just round the corner. He's also the one who sold me the very last lot of gear I ever took, 3 weeks ago yesterday. £15 bought what looked like 0.4g of crushed paracetamol, cooked up without any vit C and contained a yellowy heroin solution full of mindblowingly potent downers. These downers wiped more than a week, maybe 2 weeks from my memory.

So I could have run round the corner and scored. Instead I glugged my methadone, which was due anyhow (strange how a due methadone dose and heroin-craving coincide, even though methadone's not on my mind). I also popped a temazepam. Well it is Xmas!

What is this? Yet another day without the Killer B? I can't believe it.

I don't exactly feel marvellous, but I am surviving. Just. In a blank, disengaged, not happy way. I'm still here. I only wonder how I will ever move from here somewhere better.

Now the drugs are climbing on I don't want gear so much. Drink, temazepam, methadone. I'm still an addict to my core. An addict who doesn't use Heroin is like a bird that can't fly. I think I'll turn into a furry animal instead. A tubby great hamster, curled in a ball down its burrow, sleeping, slumbering, drowsing all day long.