Abba to E to Mental Mania

I AM LISTENING TO ABBA. Proof positive if any was required that I am in recovery from SEVERE MENTAL BREAKDOWN. I found Mamma Mia down Morrisons for a few quid. The lurid red heart on the cover made me buy it as a FUCK YOU to sneery supermarket staff, so I made sure I went through the slow isle where a surly person serves you, not self service as I usually do.

The sneery looks make such purchases so much more worthwhile (shame I didn't get one). Same as when I pick up cig ends from the bus stop. It's always better when somebody's watching disapprovingly. One time one Jamaican man had the cheek to inform me "that's disgusting" NOT AS DISGUSTING AS THE EXTORTIONATE NEW LABOUR GOVERNMENT TAX I shot back. He shut his mouth then. He looked like a Labour voter. Sad.

I'm voting Tory next time as long as they lower taxes for the rich. I want to be rich and I want to pay low taxes so I'm voting for whoever lowers them most for Proper People. High taxes for the poor don't bother me at all. We already have them. It's called the Council Tax. The one I'm being sued for not paying. The one my solicitor wants me "severely mentally impaired" for. Now that I'm a hallucinating paranoid mood swing nutter on antipsychotics I might go for it. Unless I'm depressed again, in which case I don't believe I exist, so I don't bother engaging with forms of any description. Mainly because my depressed self believes it's natural and right that I should live on the streets anyhow. And that the answer for just about everything is a flat-fronted commuter train whooshing into London. (Trains going into go faster than out of. Flat fronts are best for maximum fatal head injuries. I was researching this issue that day when the BASTARD DRIVER actually read my mind and knew I wanted to jump. He waved arms at me! I know I've said this before but honestly how did he know??? I wasn't exactly hanging off the end of the platform.

I was blaring out this Mamma Mia movie when Naomi the Nuttery Club lady rang up re my antipsychotic problems. She said "ooh what's that music" I said "do you like Abba?" she said yeah. I said well you can borrow it on Thursday but she's already got it.

I have to say it's a HELL of a lot better than I thought it would be. I LOATHE that Dancing Queen song. The only Abba tunes I really like are Money Money Money (of course) and Take a Chance on Me. And Chickadee Chickadoo whatever it's called. I never actually VIEWED most of the film. Just smoked fags and looked at blogs. I keep forgetting to comment so y'all probably think I'm dead rude, ignoring y'all. I'm not ignoring y'all. I'm just plain rude!

Now it's blasting out at 2 in the morning with German dialogue. I love German dialogue. Double value on all my DVDs. I now have a good 16, purchased in the course of a week. Tomorrow I get Burton/Taylor in Cleopatra. I know it's crap, but I like her look and I Like the scenery. Main reason I watch films: bright colours, nice scenery, nice actresses.

I know I should be gay because I like Madonna and like musicals but seriously do you know what you have to do to be gay? Wear TUCKED IN TEESHIRTS, cut your hair REALLY SHORT. Snogging boys I've done just for the shock value but they're not as nice as girls let's face it women ain't called the Fairer Sex for nothing. So I'm plain old metrosexual. I feel desperately disappointed in this [I meant being straight is boring, but it's not boring, I was just being provocative]. Also gay clubs are FAR too sexual for my taste. I've been to a couple of gay-mixed nights, but didn't really like them. When I was a clubber my Big Thing To Do was go to Trade Club... but it never happened.

Trade Club was THEE best club in London. It ran from about 4am to 4pm Sundays. Heavy heavy banging hypnotic E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E music. Ie absolutely fantastic. But I never went. I went Sunny Side Up instead, which ran from about midday Sunday till around 9pm, meaning you could spend Friday and Saturday night actually having a sleep cycle, then go clubbing Sunday afternoon and be daisy-fresh (well as fresh as anyone on an E comedown can be)... by Monday. E comedown doesn't really hit you till 3 days later hence Friday night high: Tuesday blues. About half the people at Sunnies as they called it were spacefaced nutters who'd been going all weekend and had probably had twelve pills each by this time.


Trancy hard house: what I went there for

The other half were like me: people who appreciated a sleep cycle. The press often compared Sunny Side up to Trade because it was thee most banging hardhouse club I ever went to. But Sunnies was a normal straight club. I never liked gay clubs as I say even though most are actually mixed I didn't like the sexualized vibe. Clubbing is about being free and expressing who you are. When I was persuaded into a gay club, I stood out like a sore thumb with my long hair and non-tucked-in teeshirts and no belt. Let alone one with a huge buckle.

Maybe I should play about with y'all and do a protesting too much thing so y'all think I AM gay. Well I'm hardly out of touch with my feminine side am I.

Everything I tried just led to the usual situation in my personal life. Me in bed. On my own. Crying my heart out because I felt broken, empty, abused, confused and very lonely.

That was the end effect of Ecstasy too. Though I ADORED that drug, because it's not just a high, it's transcendently high. Cloud 9, 10, 11... going up up UP!

Everybody's happy. Everybody's smiley. Everybody free. Everybody E.

Then the E wears off and they become the miserable gits they are in real life. And after the after after after party, no matter what adventures happened between then and then I always ended up in my own bed, eventually (never brought anyone back to mine: ALWAYS went to theirs. I had a thing about other people's beds, other people's showers... much more exciting)... after all this I ended up in bed, alone and crying. Wondering why I had said what I said (E makes me ULTRA frank, to the point of friendship-damage)... why I had done what I'd done. Usually it was just me being a tit, dancing on the stage but on a comedown this feels ridiculously over the top)... most of all I felt let down and lied to. Badly lied to. So I curled up in bed, crying again.

I had been to wonderland. A paradise so high I wasn't even dancing with people, I was dancing with fractals, dancing along a rainbow. I didn't just find the pot of gold at that rainbow's end, I picked it up and showered in stardust.

And then I came down down down and reality was just too much to take.

The last few times a kind of trip kicked in as the E-rush wore off. My books were dancing on the shelves. Everything was pink, blue, pastel coloured dots. Maggots in my contact lens case. I had to put the lenses in with the writhing maggots, telling myself they weren't really there. Telling myself this did nothing to diminish the hallucination. Then I took downers to sleep. I couldn't tolerate the cannabis most people toked to come down. I was on Valium (bought on the street, of course). Then I switched to heroin ~ far naughtier.

The fact that my friends disapproved only made it more attractive. I thought they were really uptight, snorting weak coke, thinking they were it. I scored heroin via dealers I met through the local homeless (my true home crowd: they never judged me, always accepted me. Only true acceptance I ever got was from the crustie junkies. My true crowd. Not the shoplifters or the prozzies. The crusties. And nearly ALL are dead now. The only people who "got" me. All dead. I'm one of very few left. So I took this heroin in secret. Because it was forbidden. Because it worked for me. Because unlike that coke, even the dealer's personal... it was crap. Washed crack cocaine: THAT worked. Heroin worked. In the end I switched drugs totally.

Raving and clubbing burns you out in a way not even crack does. Taking eight ecstasy in a night really does hammer brains and body. I was never into multi-pilling. I did 1.5 say at midnight, so by one I was flying. By two this dose was peaking and it was time for my second dose: one more pill. By three am I felt fantastic. by four everything was going full blast. Most clubs chuck out at six, so my 2.5 pills were coasting down luxuriously from six to eight.

Usually I went to someone or other's house, but was home by eleven when a couple of blue Valium pushed me down enough to get three or four hour's sleep. I never slept dirty. Always showered first. Showering on ecstasy is like that "dancing naked in the rain" song. Showering on ketamine is like showering in a spray of diamonds. Mushrooms added extra sparkle when I wanted it. Those were my holy trinity: ecstasy, mushrooms, ketamine. Ketamine was attractive because though I couldn't tolerate spliff, ketamine was OK to me. And lots of people were scared of it, which only increased its appeal (have you noticed I can be a contrary person?)

I genuinely loved the K trip. It's quiet and sparse. Very sparse compared to acid, which is sensory overload. On ketamine you float through outer space. One time I flew through the thorax of a gigantic metalic insect each rib clang-clang-clanging as I thrummed past it. The vibrations of ketamine (you literally feel a low-pitched vibration) were to me AUM, sacred syllable of the universe.

These drugs were my religion.

But you need to discard any ideas that I was somehow a fucked up acid casualty. I used E ONLY at parties. One per weekend. Any more was just overdoing it too much, you really do fry your brains on too much E. I knew about E, knew the bad brain damage neurotoxicity publicity so I took it with care. Yeah the last couple of times I took 5, then 8 pills but that was just 2 occasions. Through most of my E-phase I was known as somebody who DIDN'T TAKE IT WHEN I DIDN'T WANT IT. Even though I ALWAYS had it on me at a dance party (only the desperate score in the club where prices are more than double what they should be).

Like most drugs, like an empty glass once you fill what's full, what's as high as can be, you don't get any higher, the full glass overflows, the drug overflows sideways. Instead of Eeeing you're tripping. This is the law of diminishing returns. Didn't Jesus counsel "moderation in all things"? I'm sure he didn't have MDMA in mind, but it's good advice. If you WILL take drugs take this advice and TAKE THE VERY MINIMUM NEEDED TO GET THE EFFECT YOU WANT. Taking more is just wasting money, wasting serotonin, dopamine etc; wasting brain cells.

So that's me and E. Me and raving. I adored it while I did it, but eventually it all got too much and I wanted to do other things. I cleared myself out for several months but the mood swings I'd experienced since my early 20s were worse. I felt like the sea. High tide (me buzzing on nothing) meant a low tide was coming (depression). Heroin squashed my moods into a flat line and I thought I was cured of this cyclothymia. Then it came back ON heroin (ie heroin wasn't working any more). And y'all know what happened lately. Those mood swings were severe even by psychiatrists' standards. I know what mild-moderate-severe mean in the context of bipolar. Now I have bipolar symptoms.

The doctor didn't use that word but he did say when handing over the risperidone script "it should damp down these mood problems". What I experienced was definitely bipolar in that I swing between two opposite extremes. Bipolar disorder is another matter and it must be carefully diagnosed. So I don't know what's wrong. But it would be just like me to be a manic-depressive junkie, wouldn't it?

I've gone past wanting an excuse for inexplicable behaviour and self-neglect and neglect of pretty straightforward responsibilities like filling out council tax benefit forms and sending them off. I got to a point where I was engaging with nothing. It all seemed pointless. I felt like an utter waste of space and a fraud. And I was usually able to put on a convincing front which confused friends and drug workers. It was Mother Hubbs, who says she was on lithium before she dropped it in favour of heroin (both are mood stabilizers) who told me I was bipolar ~ years ago. I thought she was exaggerating. Then I asked her more recently, "do you really think I am?" and she said "you know you are".

I don't know what I "know" but I know I'm up against something pretty formidable. More formidable than any drug I've ever tried. I mean this high I had not very long ago, the one that had me posting rubbish for days on end... that literally did feel better than any drug I've ever experienced. Now I'm down towards normality I'm pissed off, to be frank. Well if you got amazing free highs, wouldn't you want to keep them? It was the agitation, volatility, physical exhaustion to the point of nausea (having forgot to eat), utter inability to focus on anything longer than a few seconds, a total lack of judgement ~ not so much regarding should I or should I not do this, but judging what was or was not right for another person... I honestly had no idea... the utter inability to care for myself, the inability to think of anything without the idea popping open like a flower, every petal exploding with streamers and little ducks dancing down these streamers saying "hello! hello! hello!". Utter distraction. It was this. This mess that I could see I was in, yet didn't really care about. That I was hearing walls, cars, ceilings talk to me. I knew I was going crazy but didn't care. Yet I was angry enough at having been ignored, written off, misdiagnosed that when my druggieworker suggested I see a psychiatrist I agreed wholeheartedly. I knew in my heart I wasn't right. The psychiatrists knew where I was coming from. I wasn't complaining of feeling bad. I was telling them I felt EXTREME. And I was going very very fast. so fast I lost touch with my own thought process repeatedly. If I put food in the oven I didn't know it was in there till the smoke alarm reminded me. Well it's past 3am and I've not slept. Sorry to go on about my mental probs yet again. You must understand this is a big deal to me I have to reach some solution, some serenity, some sanity. If sanity is good then I want it. If it's boring: no thanks. I wasn't bored when I was mad. See I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. I've messed myself up so bad I don't even know what "ordinary" or "healthy" or "balanced" really are any more.

I need a Speak and Spell machine. Perhaps then I can phone home. Maybe somebody will rescue me. I'm lonely here. Nobody seems to understand where I have been. I went to wonderful places more beautiful than you can imagine. And I was tripping on my own natural Higher Power. No drugs. If you honestly do still think I'm on drugs then do yourself a favour and stop reading this blog, because you're totally missing my point.

Well this has gone on long enough. From Abba to Ecstasy to me being a nutter. What's new. Take it easy people. Sorry if this is a mess. I'm not editing, else I'll get uptight and won't want it to go. All I'm doing to this is spellchecking, paragraphing it out then BAM! It's yours to skim or pore over or have a good laugh at.

Take care, lots of love

xx

PS I can just tell someone is going to read this and assume I only took heroin to be "naughty" I had many motivations. Its deadliness was a big one. The fact it made me FEEL BETTER was what kept me taking heroin. "Self-medication" as the nurse who never medicated me (did she think heroin was a good thing?) used to spout...

The flakes on the spoon are ketamine, cooked down from medical ketamine for injection into dried ketamine salts, which are snorted up the nose. Ketamine is NOT horse tranquillizer. It's a dissociative agent used for emergency anaesthesia and pain relief where more diamorphine is not appropriate. IF YOU HEAVILY ABUSE KETAMINE WITH HEROIN AND HAVE A BAD ACCIDENT, DOCTORS MAY HAVE GREAT DIFFICULTY ADMINISTERING ADEQUATE PAIN RELIEF... YET ANOTHER REASON TO GO EASY!


MAMMA MIA MOVIE: TAKE A CHANCE ON ME



ABBA: TAKE A CHANCE ON ME
fully original version
don't anna frid and agnetha look a bit like men in drag?...??



MAMA MIA MOVIE: RED NOSE DAY SPOOF



This tune is the kind of stuff I used to go E-E-Eing to. Without the tacky voiceover. And less cheesy eurotrance. More hardhouse with trance on top. Or hard Goa (late 90s Return to the Source type clubs were my favourite parties; tranced-up hardhouse was my favourite music)
shall i add a few more dance musical terms just to confuse you more if you're not into this shit? hardcore-jungle-tekno, drum & bass, speed garage, grime, deep house, trip-hop, amyl house, psy-trance, gabba, acid techno! There ya have it!!

Anna Grace

MY FRIEND ANNA in Wisconsin is depressed. She is back on the gear after quite a long break during which she transferred from methadone to Suboxone (buprenorphine/naloxone). She felt nowhere near as good on Suboxone as on methadone. Now as I say she's back on gear. What took her back was a daytrip to a large town where she picked up a $20 bag. Now she's spending $50 a day. Anna is on mood-swing meds but they don't seem (in my view) to be helping the way they should.

All this is detailed on her blog. The other day she posted up a song for me "I wanna sink to the bottom with you". We were supposed to do a China White binge in New York City. What's stopping me, apart from lack of money is 1 that I really want to go to NYC and don't want to mess up my chances of a proper visa and 2 I'm off heroin anyway. Even China White (though I hate to admit that little nugget.

China white is proper heroin. Afghan brown and tar are glorified scum drugs. China white is refined scum. I'd rather be refined when I'm being scummy ~ hence the white H4 fascination. Number four China White heroin is up to 97% purity at manufacture whereas brown H3 is rarely over 74% and China White doesn't need nasty fruit acids in the mix. It's already gone in an acid bath and has a fairly neutral PH. A hit of acidified brown has a PH of 2.55* or lower. Ie it's ridiculously acid. No wonder it erodes veins.

I was looking at my foot the other day when I suddenly had a feeling of peace and serenity as I told myself something I wish I could have thought ~ and meant ~ a long time ago: "You don't have to stick this with a needle ~ ever again". I don't want heroin in my life. Heroin did the best job of anything ~ bar depression ~ of destroying me. So I don't want heroin. I wish Anna didn't want it either.

ANNA GRACE this track is for you. I wasn't going to post up any old rubbish to return your musical favour. So here's a tune after my taste for you. I don't know any guitar music, I'm afraid...

REFLECT Feat. Delline Bass - Need To Feel Loved (Adam K & Soha Mix)(Arcdsa Videoremix)



FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE: SINK TO THE BOTTOM live 2003




Illustrated: Top: By appearance, Afghan brown H3 vs Burmese China White H4. Though being as this picture is American these may actually be Mexican Brown and Colombian White. Bottom: the type of heroin Anna is on is Colombian White, which is often grey, like this stuff ...


*ATTENTION any European heroin users. As a scientific experiment at the University of Bath, 130mg of 75% pure brown #3 heroin base was cooked up with 20mg citric acid; the resulting concoction had a pH of 2.55; when the entire sachet was added, the pH went down to 1.9 ~ from pretty acid to REALLY acid. Adding extra citric just damages veins. The 9 minutes long "How Much Citric?" Video is here.

ACEN: CLOSE YOUR EYES (Remix I) (Optikonfusion!)
this 1992 track has every ingredient of an anthem of the time; the eerie backdrop, talk of insanity and a euphoria you actually felt from the E more than the tune!

I don't know who I was yesterday... who will I be tomorrow?

"... I DON'T KNOW who I was ysterday... who will I be tomorrow...?" only time can tell that one Gleds!

Now it's 04:42 hours; I've been up since 3. Ursula le Guin, author of The Earsthea Trilogy, is on the The Interview, BBC World Service radio. She's talking about the last Yahi Indian, whom her father knew (he learned Ishi's language from Ishi to communicate and tape down all his stories and knowledge. Ishi Ishi was the very last of his tribe, the last speaker of the Yahi language and Ursula Le Guin's Dad learned this language. This is fascinating.

Do you like the top illustration? My mental state! The second one's just funky triangles I found. I've updated my sidebar with some tunes I do actually listen to now. Moby Go, Urban shakedown Some Justice, Joe Beltram Energy Flash and Praga Khan Injected with a Poison (my anthem, that one... "there's a rainbow inside your mind... injected with a poison... we don't need that any more" well said!!

Well I'm going to ping off now. I only wanted to post some more music. Here's Moby's Go. The proper original video mix as well ...

O BTW for me really but in case anybody wondered why I posted up Trisch Li manic a couple of weeks or so ago, it's because her behaviour is so strikingly similar to mine it's unreal. She's like my sister!

MOBY: GO
official video. l luuurved this tune



MOBY GO {JAM AND SPOON DUB MIX}




GOOD MORNING LIZZY!
MORNING EVERYONE!
hOW ARE Y'ALL?!

06:38 BBC Today Programme is doing a report on the Heroin Drought and low street heroin purity.
SOCA claim that as well as poor growing conditions in Afghanistan, the cause is more dealers and importers being busted. SOCA also say the wholesale price of heroin has doubled to £40,000 per kg (ie ridiculously high)

Cutting through the Alcohol Obsession

20:20 DOES MY BODY ACTUALLY REMEMBER how much I drink? Why does "it" want one more now? Does "it" know I usually take 2? Is it just me? I've been drinking for 10 years between 7.5 units (75mls) and 22.5 units (225mls neat alcohol) that's 2-6 half litre 7.5% vol white cyder cans.

20:52 I'm on Smirnoff Ice vodka-cloudy lemonade 4% vol 700mls which is 2.8 units 28mls alcohol and it is much nicer than the "gutrot" I was on before. Also I can water this at will with cans of cloudy lemonade. (Huge bottles I will probably just glug through, I know me.)

I came in from the shop met the nice guy downstairs who told me he hears voices (I don't care if he's a nutter; so am I!) also it's an alliance against the people who hate me here, so it's important. We also give each other money. Both ways. I like this guy. He was on "white" (crack) running between crack houses. Doesn't even smoke a spliff now. Is still hyper and I know someone on drugs he ain't on drugs. He struck me as "mental health" the second I first saw him.)... I was in a good mood, With a rush I used to get from drugs. Hey at least this means I've not burned out my brains on all these chemicals. Otherwise I'd not be ABLE to feel good...

Gotta run: Iceland's best cauliflower cheese in oven!




22:33 NA Basic Text p294 ("What Makes Me Happy Now") Japanese woman shares about NA in Japan:
Many women shared how drugs were a good thing for them, until their using became unmanageable. I didn't understand this until the new translation. These woman also had a hard time with the word "recover". In Japanese "recover" means "to go back to the way you used to be." Surviviors of abuse don't want to go back to the way they used to be. In recovery, they want to move on and grow. People who had nothing to start with were afraid that they really had nothing to recover...

And THAT, my friends, is what put me off stopping for ever such a long time. I had nothing to come back TO.


Read Shane's post about a heroin drought (2001) for the truth on the attitude of drug clinics to the Truly Desperate ...


187 LOCKDOWN: GUNMAN
Thanks Lizzy (spelled correctly this time)
I like this



SNEAKER PIMPS: SPIN SPIN SUGAR (ARMAND'S DEEP GARAGE MIX)
for Melody



"We are E" means the same as Urban Shakedown's Some Justice "we live as one family"... we're all together, all as one, on this brilliant stuff E for Ecstasy. Which lived up to its name with me, I thought it was fantastic, more fantastic than anything before or since ...

LENNY DE ICE: WE ARE IE (GARAGED UP)
one more for garage-lovin' Melody



LENNY DE ICE: WE ARE IE (ORIGINAL 1990)




WE ARE IE (HIJACK MIX)



WE ARE IE (CASPA & RUSKO MIX)





Illustrated: bolt cutters ~ I need these to cut through my drinking obsession ....

Drink Update Sunday

15:04 I'm kind of drinking but not liking it. I had no drink in the morning, longwalked to Iceland to get my £2 chunky Family Steak Pie and kept thinking "I don't need alcohol, I don't need heroin, I don't need anything, I'm OK" then I kept thinking about the drink and thought "OK well just get one then" which I did and it spent an uncannily long time unopened ~ over half an hour, which is not like me. Usually I crack it open on the street, then have to be real nice when police stop me. (They don't like people glugging alcohol in public, even from a Soft Drinks Bottle...) So if I can, I'm making this my one for the day. Knowing what I'm like I cannot be confident in this, as I'll tend to go to 2, as I said. But more than 2 I'm sure I will not do, not today. ("Just for today"). I got a phone call from my old heroin dealer yesterday. I didn't answer. Got a text from another saying will I taste some food for him (no). So I'm still off heroin. Still off drugs of an illegal nature. Still ON drugs of a legal nature: methadone; risperidone (both daily) and zopiclone 7.5mg as required. I had one last night after staying up well past 11pm. Dropped it. Sleeping like a baby by midnight. Yummmy stuff. I only ever daydreamed or loved or obsessed over sleeping pills TO SLEEP. Not to "light the tedium of the protracted evening" as Sylvia Plath said. She also said "their poppy-sleepy colors do him no good". Mine are white, so I'm OK on that score..!

Man I just checked that drink, nearly ALL there! Such a guzzler me, aren't I!!

THIS is why I wasn't too hot on going to AA instead of as well as NA. People hear that I drink, but my problem is OPIATE ADDICTION. That's the core problem. Drink only ever was a gear-intensifier and a bit of Dutch courage for begging.

As I told the dr., it makes me feel a bit better in depression. When ultra-hyper it barely does anything. Probably it takes the edge off. If say I slammed a glass into a wall in that state it would be my hyperosity NOT the drink doing that. I've drank enough over enough time to know how I behave on drink, and it's not like that! Also I was down to my bare minimum 2 on most days. Not drunk, by any means.

I know I'm walking a fine line that sounds like excuses here. I have to note down the facts for my own recollection. I WANT OFF DRINK ALL TOGETHER. I was told to cut down in stages, not just come off, which is why I can't just dump it. Though I'd sorely love to just do that, I also know I'm an addict. Which means I'm into associations. And the best association I can use to get OFF is to use a mixer and switch gradually to neat mixers with no booze. Does that make sense...? Somebody who knows please advise.

"An addict on their own is in bad company". (NA saying.)

"The heart is deceptive above all things". (Biblical quotation.)

I'll leave it there (another NA saying).



LEONA LEWIS: FIRST TIME EVER I SAW YOUR FACE
Nick inspired this choice with his Peter Paul and Mary video



LEONA LEWIS: see how pretty she sings? She's in the Streisand-Houston league though to listen to her singles you wouldn't believe it... Illustrated: not even I have this many empties (was this person a Diet Coke fan..?!?, Seconal 100mg (1960s sleeping pill); empty coctail glass (depressing)


Sylvia Plath: INSOMNIAC is here.
http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/sylviaplath/1402
Brings me up in goosebumps it's so fine.

About pills: ...
... A life baptized in no-life for a while,
And the sweet, drugged waking of a forgetful baby.

And re nighttime brooding...
His head is a little interior of grey mirrors.
Each gesture flees immediately down an alley
Of diminishing perspectives, and its significance
Drains like water out the hole at the far end.


19:34: Note to self: GABA supplements and XXXXXXX Disorder
http://psychcentral.com/lib/2007/nutritional-supplements-for-bipolar-disorder/
Not that I have XXXXXXX Disorder. I don't, I have no diagnosed mental disorders (apart from depression) and certainly not that one.

Sunday Noon Entertainment/ Alcohol Report

THIS POST IS REALLY FOR MORE MUSIC (see below). I slept about 10 hours from midnight to 10am. Took 2x2mg Risperidone 1x7.5mg zopiclone; had 2 or 3 drinks (500ml White Stars/White Aces 7.5% vol alcohol). The day before yesterday I drank about 5 of them. Today I'm sticking to 2, or even 1 if I can do it.

2 drinks I can get to quite easy. 1 in the morning; 1 in the afternoon. Going below that has been difficult. I could cut out the morning drink most easily.

The Dual Diagnosis Worker phoned me the other day, post Psych Dr Appointment; we talked about ways of reducing. Everybody says I want to switch drinks as White Cyder is "gutrotting" and "has never seen an apple". It is NOT a romanticized evening Cyder House near Stonehenge beautiful Keats Ode to Autumn type drink. It is liquid Brillo pads, for homeless street drinkers to get pissed-up as quick and as cheap as possible. Mixed with tropical fruit mixed cocktail it's a beautiful budget alcopop. And probably super-bad for my teeth. Which are acid-eroded enough (to quote the toothpaste commercial).

OK so that's me and drink. I don't know my mental state it's probably higher than normal still but high feels good. I only say "high" knowing now what that is and how it reacts and how it feels (not the same as drug high, by any means: feels more "normal" goes off like a Pinnnnng--gggggg-ing Pika at no notice. Is intensely cheered by social situations. Speaks quick. Is highly distractable. Is paranoid more on the lower levels than the high ones, when it is full of grandeur...) so that's me.

I'm OK. I hope I'm staying on topic and being relevant.

Anyway here's music!

FUTURE SOUND OF LONDON: PAPUA NEW GUINEA
Thanks Lizzie



OBIE TRICE: GOT SOME TEETH
Hilarious. I love this "song"; only rap thing I really like



SNEAKER PIMPS Spin Spin Sugar ( Armands Dark Garage Mix )
Thanks Lizzie




ARMIN VAN BUUREN FT. SHARON DEN ADEL - In and Out of Love (Official Music Video)



Illustrated pinging pikas: they live up mountains in North America and Central Asia, look like a bunny rabbit crossed with a hamster. They ping everywhere, and collect bunches of flowers to hoard and eat when the flowers rot down. Russian Dwarf hammies live in disused pika burrows....


13:25 severe hunger pangs; going up Iceland for a Family Steak Pie (proper chunks of steak, no mince) which I eat with mixed veg dumped on top (there's enough carbs in the crust in my view...)

Back to the old School

I'm sitting on my bed (on the floor, very Japanese) because it's so cold in the other room my hands freeze! Here's some music I've been thinking about posting for ages!




Back to the old School

STEVE "SILK" HURLEY: JACK YOUR BODY
I prefer this one best. A genuine club cut. Got to UK mainstream #1 early 1987
Love the dancing in this one; paaticulaly the black guy in a suit doing that v funky liquid shuffle early on



M/A/R/R/S: PUMP UP THE VOLUME
UK #1 later in 1987 "Pump up the volume" was sampled endlessly by the unimaginative in the year following.



Illustrated: Victorian school photograph, commemorating a school play, from the school at Great Crakehall, near Bedale in Yorkshire



Pirate FM Radio Stateions London: http://www.transmissionzero.co.uk/radio/london-pirate-radio

OK I'm on Rude FM 88.2 now. Digital tuning: v difficult... vs analogue= so narrow you miss it!

20:13 Now on House FM 88.6; fed up of D&B ~~ anybody know any good Old Skool Hardcore Rave FM? (Can't find anything) ...

OK these are notes to self: 92.9FM mellow; Eruption (hardcore) is 101.3
94.6 drum & bass better than Rude FM (more NRG); 95.1 D&B better again; 97.00 African(?) 102.8 Turkish "rave" haha!!

This is for Anna

ANNA GRACE POSTED ME A TUNE called Sink to the Bottom by Fountains of Wayne. It was highly appropriate. Here's my reply:~

Mine is not a highly original choice, but I love the tune, I love the sentiment and I love the video.

I've gone all night with no sleep. It wasn't deliberate. I was pottering about then I realized it was 7:15, then it was 8.59.

I hope you're all right Anna. I'm surviving. I can't say whether I'm good or bad, I'm in between :-)


REM: EVERYBODY HURTS



THANKS ANNA. JE T'ADORE

Hamsters and Heroin and Chinese Food: a Polydrug Addiction

IT IS 07:13 in the morning. I didn't score yesterday until the evening when the urge for Chinese food possessed me like that naughty goblin who killed my hammies, nibbled through my computer cable, lost me my broadband dingle-dongle once and pulled out and scarpered off with the SIM-chip one other time.

So possessed was I by this naughty goblin who used to say to my best hammy "Pandable, ramble!" and he'd prance on his enormous 12" diameter rat-wheel and scuttle away from dusk till dawn every single night, that zombie-like I wandered in a trance to the Mongolian-Chinese takeaway.

Poor Pandable, my very best hammy lived to three-and-a-half ~ that's past 100 in hamster years. Early one morn when I had insomnia but Pandable was wideawake and healthily pinging like billy-o on his enormous wheel, I hid him in my pocket, took him out for a ramble amongst the dandelions in the unmown lawn of our old back garden. The dandelion-and-clover exotica was as tall as Pandable himself and his poppy panda-eyes were wide with amazement as he rambled carefully through the dense jungle foliage of our lawn. When the time came for him to go back to his nest he was most displeased. Back in his tank, he angrily shuffled his nest back and forth for three hours as if to say "I don't want to live in this cracked old aquarium any longer. I want to live in the garden, like natural hammies do in Turkey." What Pandable didn't understand of course was that in Syria and Turkey, where golden hamsters originate from, the tubby rodents are predated by owls and foxes and wild cats and other birds of prey and are endangered species.
There are many more golden hammies of the species mesocricetus auratus in captivity than anywhere in the wild. As long as they have a nice BIG home (not a tiny one more suited to dwarf hamsters that many are lumbered with) and a proper big wheel that is NOT selfishly stopped up at night to stop the irritating rattling and squeaking, a hammy will be quite happy. Female hammies are apt to escape as they come on heat every four days. In golden hamsters, it's the female of the species who goes on the trek for a mate, hence the tendency of females, who are slightly bigger than the males to be exceedingly good escape artists, despite their tubby appearance and outwardly docile manner. Hamsters are extremely persistent at "worrying" the bars in their useless cages. Any structural weakness will be located and worked upon until escape is achieved. Another method that works wonderfully on the type of cage where bars are clipped over a plastic base is to angrily nibble at the bars all night ~ which they only do when bored for lack of toys of a selfishly stopped up wheel. Eventually their nibbling pays dividends when the accumulated vibrations cause the entire top of the cage suddenly to ping off, and the intelligent tubby wastes no time in pinging to freedom,often to construct a burrow at the top of the stairs in one of your favourite houseplants.

Squeaky or rattly hamster wheels can easily be remedied with a drop of cooking oil. Not only does this silence the irritating night-long commotion, it also makes the wheel run far more smoothly, giving you a happy pet who's less likely to escape, burrow in your bonsai pots or set up a nice nest at the back of your sofa, the swines! A hamster should never be deprived of a wheel, except under veterinary advice where, for instance, running on one might aggravate an acute injury preventing healing. Young mothers sometimes run on their wheels to the neglect of their pups. Hammies love wheels!

How I got onto hamsters I've no idea, except that they ARE my favourite small animals. I relate to hammies as we share many characteristics. We both like our sleep and are bleary at best, enraged at worst, to be prematurely woken. Hamsters appear to be docile but ask any vet which small animal they dislike treating most and "hamsters" crop up time and again. Hamsters are NOT docile. When they lose their rag they do bite, but not normally without warning. When I used to wake up Pandable during the day with tasty titbits of Safeways chicken pie with petits pois, Pandable would gnash his teeth ~ literally chattering them as we might do when very cold ~ had I been stupid enough to try and touch him in his nest he no doubt would have bitten me HARD. A golden hamster can bite through a stick of chalk with ease. Occasionally when I woke him up he struck out poisonous-snake style, leaping at the shadow of my hand. For all he knew I was a hawk come to gobble him up for breakfast. Pandable didn't have a hammy-house; he had an enormous nest of print-free newspaper strips cut from the sides. These he would chew to his own satisfaction constructing the most enormous bed I've ever seen for an animal so tiny. Another characteristic Pandable and I shared. I have at least five or six quilts and about seven pillows and another five or so cushions. Ideally, when I'm organized, I construct an Arabian-nights-style nest with all this bedding on the go at once. Just like a giant hamster. If anyone dares knock on the door during a daytime snooze of mine fair enough I don't bite them, but I am very offhand indeed and my landlord's henchmen are usually intimidated into coming back later.

Now what got me onto Pandable bar the excuse to post up lots of hammy photos with this post?... O yeah ~ that naughty goblin's back, causing havoc in my life once more.

I didn't score any heroin at all yesterday, would you believe it! Out I went in search of the best Chinese takeaway I knew. This one also does Mongolian food and I was really in the mood for a mysterious Mongolian chicken curry. Guess what? That evil goblin had seen to it that the Mongolians had shut up shop! I was so furious I rang my heroin dealer without a moment's thought. Some idiot answered, the dealer's "cousin" as they like to call their partners in grime. Who am I? Where did I last meet him? Just round the corner yesterday and the day before you idiot (of course I never call my dealers idiots. Idiotic people tell me I should. This is all well and good if you want no dealers left. The particular person who keeps telling me to do this has multiple tales of being ripped off, whereas I don't. So who's doing something right, who's doing something wrong? I don't think it's me in the wrong. When you talk to dealers you have to be direct, to the point and not take any crap off them. Give those bastards an inch and they'll take a mile next time. You don't have to be rude and you certainly never tell one to **** off (at least I never do) no matter how bad you think you've been treated. Heroin is an addictive drug. You never know when you might need that particular dealer again in an emergency. Compared to the way certain individuals I knew got treated ~ one was sold an empty wrapper as crack, yet came back a second time to score! ~ I was always treated fairly and reasonably. I always paid the full price when I had money. It's people who think they're being clever, routinely handing £7.50 for a £10 bag who complain the service they receive is terrible and the bags tiny. You get what you pay for. When the bags were generous I always paid the full asking price (though you get discount: e.g. perhaps 2x£10 for £15 or 3 for £25. Again you're tending to get what you pay for, the 3 bags for £25 will tend to be more generous. The stingiest dealers will do 2x£20 or 4x£10 for £35. They should also do 5x£10 or 2x£20B+£10 crack for £40. 3x£20s are £50 in drugs mathematics. 4x£20s are £70 or £65 if you're lucky. 5x£20s should always be £80. 6x£20s should always be £100. You don't negotiate these prices, they're bog standard. Anyone charging more should be "shotting" genuinely enormous bags weighing 0.6, 0.7g and you should still get three of these for £55. I only had problems with dealers in the end when I wasn't such a good customer and the number of kids, who didn't know their trade had multiplied. Many were transparently out to get as much as they could as quick as they could, not comprehending that heroin is a longterm business. That's why it's such a good business to be in as a dealer. To be a good dealer you need to treat your customers with respect. Making less profit on bigger bags of good gear will make you more in the longer term as your punters will keep on and on coming back. The "alphabet" of Bs, Cs, Ds, Hs, Js and Ts ~ horrible little kids (19 year olds probably with no qualifications, no college, no job. They don't even know the job of heroin dealing. Say "China White" and they think you're stupid. "Coke comes from South America" one informed me. I rolled my eyes in despair and skulked off. When someone's that stupid I don't bother putting them right. Let them go on being ignorant. If they don't know their trade they have no respect from me. More than half the dealers I know I do not deal with as they fall into that Fast Buck Ignoramus category. It wasn't like this a few years ago. The handful of dealers I kept on my shortlist were with a single exception people I'd known for 5 to 10 years. It always amazes me that someone will whizz past on a mountain bike offering "candy". He can't even specify what type of "candy" is on offer, he wants me to say first so he can say "o yeah I go that" ... as if I don't know a ripoff when I see one. I never ever deal with an unknown (somebody none of my friends can vouch for) without a free sample bag up front. But even when these aren't ripoff merchants they're too stingy to make an investment that costs them a mere £5, which is what a £10 bag costs the dealer. If you treat a good B-punter well you can make hundreds of pounds a month not just from them but from all their friends as well. It was this deteriorating business culture, not to mention the Great Heroin Drought of 2010/2011, not to mention that I was truly and utterly FED UP of the entire thing that finally made me stop. How on earth I was idiot to start again I cannot explain.

As I said, I didn't score yesterday. I did ring the dealer in fury when I realized the Mongolian Chinese was shut, but the "cousin" who answered either didn't know me or affected not to. He wanted me to come ten minutes out of my way, which I did. But he unwittingly did me a huge favour. The road he specified had a Chinese takeaway I had yet to sample. I pinged indoors, grabbing a menu then phoning back saying where I was. He said "Come to the far end of the road." This I did. But then he started asking who I was again. He also claimed not to have the same B which had been good as gear goes these days, but that the new one was "better". Such words would inspire confidence ~ from a dealer I could trust ~ but this snottynosed-sounding kid inspired no such confidence. I pulled the takeaway menu out of my pocket. I had £20 in one hand ~ heroin costs £20 a shot these days. I used to hit up between £6.66 worth (yes highly symbolic, that's a third of £20) and £10. Now it has to be the entire £20 bag in one, else I'm wasting veins on something I can barely feel anyhow. And this guy's gear was described by Mr Public School as "nine out of ten". If that's a nine, I dread to think what a six or a seven might be!

Anyway I glanced over this menu, slavering at the thought of Chicken Curry Mix Vegetable Fry Rice and made a snap decision I'd never in my life done before. I switched off my phone and pinged up the road back to the Chinese where £6.20 bought me something I realized I was craving far more than any heroin. Then I trotted off back home and had a lovely meal with home-made tropical alcopops to boot.

My drinking's slowly reducing itself too, but I'm NOT obsessively counting cans, bottles, units. OK I know I'm drinking generally 3xhalf-litre cans of white cyder at 7.5% ABV. This is more than I ought to be drinking but with drugs out of the picture what's left. As I said before, and I wasn't pulling a "poor me" I was merely being factual. Heroin always held me together into one coherent person. Before heroin I was being told by my counsellor and my GP that I "needed more help than they could give me" that is the help of a psychiatrist. My previous experiences with psychiatrists had been disastrous. When he prescribed Haloperidol I was told the pills "might cause some muscle stiffness". Next morning as I was ambling up the road to my counselling appointment I suddenly became unable to walk. I made it across the road to a pharmacy where I explained what I'd been prescribed. The pharmacist rang an ambulance at once. I was carted into Accident and Emergency writhing in agony with "a severe dystonic reaction" (in other words, parkinsonian symptoms) and given intavenous procyclidine, an anti-parkinson's drug and a stern note to the psychiatrist reprehending him never again to prescribe such noxious substances. The psychiatrist addressed me with a blank look (no apology) and wrote out a script for something with fewer "extrapyramidal side-effects". For a long while before the opiate habit got me, I realized I felt like a jigsaw puzzle with a piece missing. Sometimes the missing piece reappeared only for another to go astray. I could never put my finger on what was happening. This seemed to be a problem; because of it, I was never able to get my life together.

Without heroin I become incoherent once more. Regular readers will remember my posting on this topic some days ago. I got a comment from an Anonymous suggesting (as I saw it) that a little too much self-pitying navel-gazing was going on. But this is to miss my very point. There's little if any point in the kind of solipsistic self-analysis of which I felt accused if "you", whoever "you" are, will never add up as a complete person. I don't mind this. It doesn't hurt as such. But it does cause a lot of issues coping with life on life's terms. What an irony that heroin, widely labelled the most destructive of all drugs, actually kept me together so well that in my long and involved psych assessment with the nurse I barely mentioned this, believing it had been a youthful phase I'd simply grown out of. How wrong I was!

If you want to criticize me, you want to read my actual words. Where do I once claim unhappiness or suffering? What I'm saying is that without gear I'm fractured. I don't add up. I feel like a jigsaw with different pieces missing every day. I don't feel terrible, except when I'm depressed and I've been depressed for a few days but mildly enough to act my way out of the blank meaninglessness of it all. If that sounds self-dramatizing then you don't know depression. Figures vary but it's believed only one person in twenty ever becomes clinically depressed to a moderate or severe degree, so if you're one of the 95% who never experience this please don't judge me, you have no idea how it feels to be so incapacitated you can barely move your body, let alone think clearly, make rational decisions or lead any kind of meaningful life. I've been lucky, these severe spells have been mercifully brief. And I'm grateful to them for removing the desire to use, the desire to commit suicide (nearly all depressed people feel suicidal, and those who don't tend to obsess about death). Depression is a dreadful state to be in. I'm not claiming to be at the extremes. My principal problem as I see it now is one of ongoing heroin addiction.

Yes I did score. At 4:30am I telephoned my best three dealers in descending order of preference. Mr Idiot man ignored my call. Mr Orange Juice Gear With Black Bits On Top was fast asleep, Mr formerly the most generous dealer on the block, knocking out 0.6, 0.7, 0.8g for £20 pre-drought met me at 5am at the bottom of his road.
£15 changed hands for 0.4g of brown. I cooked the entire lot up and fixed it all at once, miraculously locating an active vein in my right arm. So I've used yet again, but I'm still wide awake. All the way there I was obsessing about whether or not to ask for "one and one" that is one gear, one crack because I used to love crack so very much and as I say if I can destabilize my mind I know from experience I won't want heroin any more. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Just thinking over what I put makes me feel very sad. That I'd be willing to jeapordize my sanity. Sanity, which is something to be prized. Just for the sake of escaping this terrible addiction that has eaten me alive all these years. So yeah, maybe I am self-pitying. But if I don't pity myself, who else will. If I don't pity myself, don't respect myself, don't love myself enough, I'll never break free of this destructive cycle that has become the only way of life I know. Only I can help myself. And that's the problem. I just don't know how to do that.

If anyone has any ideas, please let me know. Meanwhile it's 8:58. I've been tapping this for an hour and three quarters. I hope I'm making sense. Please no judgemental comments I'm not up to handling them today.
I need constructive advice. I want to know what I can do. Can anybody help me help myself. Yes I know it's all down to me that's what's so frightening. My life is like a truck ride with a three year old child at the wheels.

But I'm a 38 year old man. In not too long I'll be 39. That 3-year-old is only an aspect of me. An "avatar" as they might like to say these days. It's up to me to take back control, to do what I have to do. That's what I've longed for, for such a long time.

To be able to know that for once in my life I am Doing The Right Thing. So there you have it. That's what I want. I just wish I knew how to get it...

Illustrated: Mongolian lady outside her yurt; pet tubby Syrian hamster; highly social, pingponball-sized roborovski hamsters rambling together on wheel; Syrian hamster in "wild" (ie probably somebody's back garden!); getting caned in Malaysia doesn't mean taking loads of really good gear it means being beaten on the bum with a soggy broom handle ~ they should bring this to the UK for dealers who sell rubbishy heroin; yummy Chinese food; mobile phone; depression ~ in in the eye of the sufferer; toking on a crack bottle (exactly the same type I used to use); prison ~ way out required.

AUSTEN POWERS: HARD KNOCK LIFE
Anthem to my existence in all its absurdity...

If you go away

I'M STILL clearing up. I'm hoping to get the worst of it done by tonight, then I have one clear room. Not completely perfect, but within the bounds of "normality"... At last!

I've thrown away one black bag full of empty sin bins, and I'll have another black sack full of full ones for the exchange! I'm so looking forward to turning up as Junkie of the Year. Not.

DUSTY SPRINGFIELD: IF YOU GO AWAY
This tune just came on tv. I like:~

Clearer

CLEARNESS IS SLOWLY STARTING TO APPEAR! My cluttered home is steadily decluttering. It's taking a LOT longer than I would like. I think it will take another 10 days to get things totally clear but the rate I'm going it's going very well.

I can't sleep and I'm exhausted. As I said I'm not doing anywhere like as much clearing as I'd like... but it IS being done. I'm so glad.

Everyone have a look at my cat video below; it's fantastic. I like the way he keeps patting the cat and that seems to palcate the poor purrer as it's wrapped in paper with a bow put on its head ...

Illustration: a 1940s housewife would go nuts in my house

Xmas Eve: 2 Top Tunes :-)

FAIRYTALE OF NEW YORK: THE POGUES & KIRSTY MCCOLL
Embodying the True Spirit of Xmas, this easily takes the biscuit as as the best festive tune of all time.




Story of Fairytale of New York (10 mins)




MADONNA: SANTA BABY
Throw out any Madonna-preconceptions you might have, and you'll hear one of the best ever recordings of this song. You may well have heard this before, not even realizing who it was ...
This was recorded for a charity Xmas album so the song has never been released as a single. It is, however Madonna's most downloaded album track.
The video is a montage of True Blue, Material Girl and a live Oscars performance of Sondheim's Sooner or Later (from Dick Tracy) spliced together by a fan. Whoever did this has a professional's eye for video. It's brilliantly well done.

Sour Sunday

WHY are Sundays so bloody miserable? Do not tell me I'm bloody miserable. Sundays are miserable. The rest of the week I distract myself from the world, on Sunday I can't. I'm having no difficulty sleeping now. Slept all night, all morning.

I watched Ugly Betty. Well that one's going downhill. I think the comedy came off with Betty's braces. Wilhelmina was pretending to be an alcoholic this week. Then that ended. Then something worse came on. I can't recall what it was. Then my mind turned to my dealer round the corner, and a £20 note. I still have that note on me, so no worries there. Usually I'm penniless on Sunday. That dealer got fed up giving me tick, because I wanted it every week. Heroin was the only thing that made Sunday tolerable.I'm put off heroin not just because I lost a huge chunk of life to addiction. In this time I achieved nothing, except that I learned to speak better German. I achieved this by ploughing through books when stoned, looking up every single word I was not 100% sure of in a dictionary. I must have looked up some words 30, 40 or more times. I also started a blog in German, which is awfully phrased "today I go shop, I did buy tea bags. Since two year my hamster die. I not no more eat tea." That bad. And probably that boring. So that's my one achievement.

What puts me off gear most is how truly dire it got. Not just the blank gear (ie not gear at all) but the last stuff, which kept me near-comatose for days on end, but not due to heroin, due to an "unregistered compound". My suspicion, by the way, is that this compound was leaked from a drug-testing lab and produced in the ilk of establishment that churned out mephedrome (meow, 4-methcathinone), a legal high that really was like coke plus ecstasy (I tried it) and was banned in Britain earlier this year. I'm blaming whatever was in this for that mental episode. The further away I get, the more out of it I see that I was.

Back to methadone. Like an idiot I had forgotten to drink it, in fact the dose was 6 hours overdue (twice daily dosing). I drank it, fell askeep for another three or four hours and woke up without the slightest urge for heroin. I suppose I'm not allowed to say I'd rather die than take heroin as that's suicide talk. Suicide talk is like the rubbish strewn on the ground after a tornado. It's crap spewn out of my drug-infested psyche.

Well I can't think of anything else. There's only an hour and 45 minutes till Sunday is over. I wish I was in Germany, they're an hour ahead. Less Sunday can only be a good thing.
See ya Monday...

DWARF HAMSTER PUP 2 DAYS OLD



That early 80s song Words (under the Tunnel post) is apparently French. I never knew that. With the exception of Vanessa Paradis Joe le Taxi and Jane Birkin/Serge Gainsbourg Je t'aime... moi non plus this is the only French pop song I know.

DESIRELESS: VOYAGE

When are you coming round again?

MARIANNE FAITHFULL: SISTER MORPHINE
She wrote, or at least co-wrote this.

Please, Sister Morphine, when are you coming round again?



AS TEARS GO BY

It is the evening of the day
I sit and watch the children play
Doing things I used to do
But not with you
I sit and watch as tears go by...

This is a more recent recording, when she truly understood the meaning of those words.
Nothing to watch. Is that the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem?



WELL THIS IS DEPRESSING. I wrote a long post on Things You Can Do In A Crisis, banging on about ways of detoxing, treatments, options, clinics, psych clinics but it goes on and on and sounds preachy, and I don't know if anyone would want to read it. I know I should post it up. It's not meant to be preaching, just a collection of ideas and some phone numbers. I don't know. Don't know. Don't know and do care. The thought of people sick and desperate out there was doing my brainbox in last night. Big time.

{The post is a dog's dinner!}

How long is it now? I have not bothered phoning anyone. Even on Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday/when was it? They texted me. Then the idea gnawed away at me until I phoned. Even then I hesistated saying I'll think about it. Dealer knew exactly what I meant. Could tell by my tone of voice I wasn't too bothered. When I saw him, his phone was going mental. So some comment I left about them making less money, even that's untrue. O how sad. I was hoping sales would go down on crack, but even that's not necessarily true. When I still did it, I wouldn't do crack without "smack". Lots of people would. So these bastards are still making money, out of thin air!

(And things that go blue on foil and things containing all manner of bashed-up God knows what... In the 2002 drought there was stuff called "the oil slick gear". I thought I'd left the old filter in by accident (was v scrupulous like that, back then). Something floating in it. Fished it out. The strong smell of myrrh ~ yes, as in gold, frankincense and... ~ was coming up. This was myrrh resin. And someone had cut multiple kilos with it, because it was all over the country from Birmingham to East Anglia. Someone must have walked into the bourgeois herbalist's and said "gimme some resin man, I need it for me B" and they said "resin? What resin? We have this wonderful myrrh. Look how golden brown it is. Just pestle and mortar it and it'll go down a treat."Yeammon, gimme dat, me gotta lotta B to jump on." Resin in gear. What the..!! Resin makes gear stick in the works. It is not good. If you have to stamp all over it, sugar is safer. Gloopy, but safer.) This paragraph was added later so back to :

CRAVING! Why why why is it eating at me the way it is? I feel like I'm being eaten from the insides out. I took more syrup just now. That might stop me. Might not, but it might just. I thought I felt OK earlier. There is food here. I don't want to eat it. It's not curry. Not Chinese. Spice is what I want. I can't be sick then. Spicy food + dying sick do not go together. Even spicy food + methadone not working full-on = no. I used to have big troubles surrounding gear and food. Hitting up by fridge, tearing into cooked chicken legs like Attila the Hun. Not good. Wasn't thin. Wasn't fat. But could barely eat without gear. That made rehab really difficult. Never known anyone with a problem like that. When heroin and food become intermixed, the person is usually female: girls tend to use gear not to eat. With me it suddenly gave din-dins 10 times more savour. (Never worked with sweets.) It took a long time to get round that one.

Is it normal to feel so torn? When I decide to do it (something non-sobriety-related, it has to be) I still have the gumption to do anything I really want to. If someone crosses me I will let hell freeze over before I give in or let them get the better of me again. (I am thinking in particular of my former druggieworker, Maple Syrup. I called her this bc I could never remember her name. Loathed the bitch, and sacked her. But it took a whole year for open hostilities to develop.) She thought I was weak-willed and could get the better of me. Really didn't know me.

I have heard of people testing opiate-negative (comments on this blog). If this is so, you are clean and free and very fortunate. I know it doesn't always feel like that, but it's true.

I have also heard there is a huge premium on Subutex on the street. I have never heard of people buying Subutex. I would have quite liked some at one time... But that's another story. My own involvement with Subutex was not pretty. Took it. Thought I was doing really well. Everyone thought I was doing really well. (Makes you feel clean.) Decided to cheat, hitting up gear in a bush. It was in a remote corner of a park, where no-one would have found me for a long time if I'd died. I did this a few times, waking each time about 4 hours later, cross eyes, barely able to walk in a straight line. Then I hit up where I was staying. BANG! Down like a felled tree. Straight down. Straight Girl went nuts. Not pretty, not at all. I had been overdosing every day. Or at least a borderline overdose. Maybe in that bush, an angel was giving me artificial respiration. The gear and the doses were the same on each occasion. As was the 4-hour unconsciousness, followed by extreme bleariness. On me, Subutex kicked most of my habit off my brain, so I could take a third of a ten pound bag and be happy. On two thirds was out of my tree, even a fortnight later. I don't know if I'm unusually sensitive to it, but anyone on the buprenorphine, be careful! Anyone testing opiate-clean, be ultra careful! If you really are opiate clean, just remember this is hard-won. How far back do you really want to go? See preaching again.

Well I have garbled on enough now. I'm off! Take care everyone.

The HEROIN DROUGHT POST with all the news in the comments is here.

On and on again

I CAN'T BELIEVE LAST NIGHT I actuallly sacrificed £7.50 on the altar of my own craving. (I am trying to behave: methadone.) I knew it didn't sound right, from the start. But dealers really do not know what they are doing now (I certainly wouldn't tell one he had good gear. Ever. Not nowadays. I use toned down language about "wasn't that bad, OK I spose" or non-toned-down language "What the hell was that?!?" (nowadays specially). It was dark, went black in the works. Person who took other half of 2 for £15 deal said "nothing in it. Possibly mild sedatives." But he is banging away at Suboxone, so perhaps no wonder. I tried it myself, well obviously. Left a bit on the filter (this is crucial, as you will see...) Bear in mind this was NOT "heroin #4" yet it cooked down without any vit C, and didn't look or taste like it had vit c in it. Tasted bitter (as liquid) but not bitter enough and not right. I could smell gear on it when I opened the bag. Afterwards I decided I must just have a sharp nose. Because there WAS some tiny bit in there. I got that when I did the filter and DID put vit C on it. The filter was x10 stronger than the hit! A flush of gear, then nothing. Like a 50p-£1 filter on very good gear. And considering my tolerance has inevitably fallen, that ain't saying much.
I put a shout out (I hope I was using the right words, Googleable words) in German, to anyone in Germany, Switzerland, Austria or anywhere else who could vouch the situation.
Germans, it took me ages to grasp, do not call a shortage a drought. Germans do not say something is droughted when it's not there. The word is Heroinmangel, as in going through a torture-flattener clothes wringer. Quite a good description in my view.
Was craving and craving away this morning. I'm glad I've left it. I have NOT been ringing dealers. I don't want to sound desperate. I enjoy tellling them I don't need their product now. They know me well enough to know IF IT'S RIGHT (in the past) I HAVE paid for it, so I'm burning no bridges by saying this.
That is my deepest fear, as an addict. Burning bridges. Ukh. Hate to do it. Was once advised in rehab to tear up phone nubers. No! What, so I can relapse and have to beg for them back? Pay higher prices for the same thing from other people. No. And the main ones (this was before mobile phones were almost universal as now) I remembered off by heart. I still know a good 3 or 4. 3 are still active. Or were, before this shortage. Apart from that, I do not know a single number off-pat. That's why I copy them again and again so obsessively. I know someone who lost a mobile phone with every main number in Hackney. No way of getting them back. NO!!
If there's no drought in Europe, there should not be one here and it will correct itself within weeks at the longest.
If there is a price-hike in Europe, there will be one here.

Britain is the strongest heroin market in Europe. I have known a lot of people (from the relevant countries) who told me facts that chimed again and again. I checked online and this is bourne out. In Britain gear is more expensive (nowhere near Swedish prices though) but stronger than in France (massively) Austria (massively) and still better than Germany and Spain. Even Holland at street level had a lower average purity, according to the website. The person I know who went there was in Dutch rehab, relapsed and, I suspect, in that state would be more easily impressed. He did say Dutch crack was way better (not difficult, nowadays. It's nothing like what it used to be. On a £10 pipe (one breath) I felt like my head was in a microwave on full power. My ears haven't even rung. And I haven't touched it in ... 2-3 weeks. That was only becuse I was helping out an annoying friend. The annoyance, stress, bad memories, vile feelings, wind-up ~ to the point of wanting to puke ~ etc etc outdid the crack high, even though I waited till I felt calm before doing it. Of course if he wanted it and was paying for it, I'd do it. I have not gone out of my way to get crack since I cannot remember when.
Well it's all gone drugs drugs drugs even though I'm not taking any.
For those of you looking, here's some dirty and clean blogs. They should all be on the sidebar, at the top with pictures is up to date. My side bar contains lists of every obsession I've had no matter how irrelevant to anyone else. Imagine you're poking through my diary/address book. That's the mess.

Now I'm out of here. 1.30 nearly and I haven't even been outside.
I'm tired of the day already.
To die, to sleep
perchance not to dream
Isn't that the ideal? Not to think/feel/remember/be thought of/felt about/remembered...
Or aware of in any manner or style of existence ever in past or future. And certainly not present.
No birth no death. No pain. Yes.

To any of you reading this with no script, not knowing what's going on, when it's going to change, you have my sympathy. The news is about 5 posts down, where all the comments are.


THE BLOGS
Anna Grace: I hate my face, I hate this place and I'm strung out again. I love Anna. She loves me. She crazy?? Went junkie-methadone-Suboxone. Declares she still wants to use. I tell her if she wanted to that much she'd do it and she hasn't so ...
Melody Lee is Damned: hasn't updated for ages. Not ODd and dead, so I hear (contrary to rumour). Bitch-fight, crackhouse etc stories v entertaining
Journey to the Nods. Noah. Black tar and Colombian white (heroin) user, central USA. Last post about driving the Tar Man to motels and various shacks for a free eighth (I don't think most London dealers would be so generous for one evening's work)
Memoirs of a Heroinhead: Shane in France. Who comes from London. Most recent post about doing gear and crack with his Mum is very "vivid"
Australian Heroin Diaries: not so much personal as a news blog. From Australia. About drugs. Well-researched. Terry is lucky enough to get morphine pills on the Aussie NHS. Says they're way better than methadone
Normal Life on Methadone: Mina. In Austria. Who is normal now and actually does normal things
An Addict in Our Son's Bedroom: has to tie with "Broken-hearted Mom" as alltime best parent blog-title (of 20somthing, not underage teen). If you want to read about the other side of addiction, praying to God your kid doesn't overdose in an alleyway, sick and tired of being hit for money, etc... the links are here. The Family Contract (at least most recent one) as well as giving in all wages to Dad, no association with old friends, ie treating their son like a big baby (but then again what else works, I think they've tried everything and found nothing) also included turning in dealers' numbers which will then go to law inforcement. I commented advising caution. (Surely as head of house, first responsibility is safety and wellbeing of household, not performing public service of giving police numbers/"names" they probably know anyway thanks to blabbermouth crooks. Decision was made so I did not bang on about ins and outs of it.)

BODYSNATCH: JUST 4U LONDON

Anyone remember this crazy tune?

e e e e !

The little person doesn't start dancing till around 55secs.

The Susan Boyle of addicts

YOU'LL SEE is my favourite Madonna ballad. I admire Susan Boyle, because she's fragile and funny and feisty and talented.

I have wasted my talents so far. And the World laughs at me, just as they laughed at Susan Boyle before they knew her. But one day ~ YOU'LL SEE!

The lyrics tell my message to the world:

All by myself
I don't need anyone at all
I know I'll survive
I know I'll stay alive,
All on my own
I don't need anyone this time
It will be mine
No one can take it from me
You'll see

You think that you are strong, but you are weak
You'll see,
It takes more strength to cry, admit defeat.
I have truth on my side,
You only have deceit
You'll see, somehow, someday

Susan Boyle version. There is no official video. Here's a home-made clips montage layered over the studio recording of this beautiful tune:



Madonna sings. To make the film Evita, she had her voice professionally trained. This recording dates from this time, and is one of Madonna's strongest vocals. The video was shot in Argentina "on my day off from Evita" ~ Madonna complained. But it's quite good:

After the cyder ...

THIS MORNING... oh I am sorry; this AFTERNOON when I eventually woke up I was aching all over as if I'd fallen off a galloping horse the night before. What happened to me? I wondered. Then it came back to me: cyder happened!
I went to the chemist's and got my methadone.
Before that, I bought some more cyder: hair of the dog. (And it worked!)
After the chemist's, I went to the cheapest supermarket in England, Iceland, and purchased frozen Chinese takeaway ~ satay chicken (in spicy sauce, not mingy stringy bits of chicken on glorified toothpicks) plus chicken fried rice ~ £3 the pair. Back at home I slammed 'em in the oven. And with a couple of generous pinches of MSG on each they tasted wonderful. Worthy of my local Chinese but at half price!

Very moving: Trainspotting overdose scene ~ Soundtrack: Lou Reed ~ Perfect Day.
Yesterday, while my two friends were arguing, this tune came on television. They were talking about dead friends. And this tune and the subject matter and Tanisha's overwrought voice made me so emotional I nearly cried ...
The Susan Boyle version you can see beneath my yesterday's post. This is the Lou Reed 1972 original (from the year of my birth!) ~ as introduced to a whole new generation in the film Trainspotting.

LOU REED ~ PERFECT DAY ~ TRAINSPOTTING OVERDOSE SCENE...



The heroin in this clip is too cloudy, there's far too much water in the hit and he's blowing the vein and/or partially missing it ~ you can see that. He shouldn't be bruising up so quickly.

Trainspotting: full scene from the film "visiting Mother Superior":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgCprJPSlpA">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgCprJPSlpA">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgCprJPSlpA