HAMSTERS & HEROIN: Not all junkies are purse-snatching grandmother-killing psychos. I'm keeping this blog to bear witness to that fact.

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DIARY OF A SLOWLY RECOVERING HEROIN ADDICT

I used to take heroin at every opportunity, for over 10 years, now I just take methadone which supposedly "stabilizes" me though I feel more destabilized than ever before despite having been relatively well behaved since late November/early December 2010... and VERY ANGRY about this when I let it get to me so I try not to.

I was told by a mental health nurse that my heroin addiction was "self medication" for a mood disorder that has recently become severe enough to cause psychotic episodes. As well as methadone I take antipsychotics daily. Despite my problems I consider myself a very sane person. My priority is to attain stability. I go to Narcotics Anonymous because I "want what they have" ~ Serenity.

My old blog used to say "candid confessions of a heroin and crack cocaine addict" how come that one comes up when I google "heroin blog" and not this one. THIS IS MY BLOG. I don't flatter myself that every reader knows everything about me and follows closely every single word every day which is why I repeat myself. Most of that is for your benefit not mine.

This is my own private diary, my journal. It is aimed at impressing no-one. It is kept for my own benefit to show where I have been and hopefully to put off somebody somewhere from ever getting into the awful mess I did and still cannot crawl out of. Despite no drugs. I still drink, I'm currently working on reducing my alcohol intake to zero.

If you have something to say you are welcome to comment. Frankness I can handle. Timewasters should try their own suggestions on themselves before wasting time thinking of ME.

PS After years of waxing and waning "mental" symptoms that made me think I had depression and possibly mild bipolar I now have found out I'm schizoaffective. My mood has been constantly "cycling" since December 2010. Mostly towards mania (an excited non-druggy "high"). For me, schizoaffective means bipolar with (sometimes severe)
mania and flashes of depression (occasionally severe) with bits of schizophrenia chucked on top. You could see it as bipolar manic-depression with sparkly knobs on ... I'm on antipsychotic pills but currently no mood stabilizer. I quite enjoy being a bit manic it gives the feelings of confidence and excitement people say they use cocaine for. But this is natural and it's free, so I don't see my "illness" as a downer. It does, however, make life exceedingly hard to engage with...

PPS The "elevated mood" is long gone. Now I'm depressed. Forget any ideas of "happiness" I have given up heroin and want OFF methadone as quick as humanly possible. I'm fed up of being a drug addict. Sick to death of it. I wanna be CLEAN!!!

Attack of the Furry Entertainers!

Attack of the Furry Entertainers!

Monday, February 28, 2011

Dont' Take Heroin, Gledwood

AKH WHAT am I doing? Using heroin then going to NA. Well it's good to go to NA; bad to use heroin. I don't WANT to be using heroin. Now I have it I feel I never need it again. It's all inside me but I feel no diferent to how I've felt a million times before WITHOUT gear. So I don't need gear, don't want gear. I refuse to lie about when I take gear. Can't be doing with making myself sound all clean when I'm not. So I have to be direct.

And I told NA I was bipolar which is of course only half the truth as I'm bipolar+; but I told as much as I was willing to share with a group of people I don't really know. I felt nervous enough to feel my voice go quavery. Which is better than ROARING as I have before. So hard to strike a balance. I told them I reckoned they deserved an explanation. I know more people at this group than any other it is just one bus ride away, rather than 2, or a train as so very many others are, so I call them my home group.

It's really pathetic to use heroin. Why do I do it? I have no excuses. I don't need excuses. I only got diagnosed because I had gone beyond the point of desperation. Then I went beyond that going ga-ga-ga at the top of my voice in the kitchen. (No wonder the neighbours give me a wide berth.)

I don't care what anyone thinks. Well not THAT much. (Wouldn't put it online for any person in the entire world with internet to access if I did.) But this is why I can't face interviews. Someone asked me if I would do an interview but the timing came just after I'd gone potty and couldn't keep my head together so I gave no answer. In fact my email is so randomizedly badly answered I'm sure I've offended loads of people.

Please don't be offended if you sent me email and I didn't get back to you. I find it hard enough to keep a blog going, attention wise. So email on top is difficult.

If you email and don't get an answer back, please comment. Or comment saying you emailed and direct me to the date you sent it and I'll find it and get back to you.

Does American grass really cost $300 an oz? I'm watching American beauty.

Hey American beauty is quite good. I like the 42 year old Kevin Spacey plays.


I have to go now. DON'T TAKE HEROIN GLEDWOOD. EVER AGAIN.

*******


AMERICAN BEAUTY (KEVIN SPACEY): AMERICAN WOMAN
i love this: it's what stoned on spliff looks like



AMERICAN BEAUTY (ANNETTE BENNING): DON'T RAIN ON MY PARADE
i love this: this is what good-mood manic looks like


Risperidone nonpsychotic


midday: I WOKE UP VERY VERY VERY LATE AT 1030 i took 4mg risperidone, it knocked me out of the ballpark. I had incoherent thought and speech last night, did you know that? I didn't dare phone anyone I wasn't far off saying GAAGAGAGAAGAA AA A AAA AAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA down the phone which i did only once when i was crazy. That is what made x cry. I was going off on one before he phoned then I couldn't just stop. It took hours to come down from that. Come down to a "normal level of mania" from "a high level of mania". See my mood cycles between different levels of elevation and down into mild Siberian depression. It used to go from New York Winter to Icelandic Winter (not usually Greenland or North pole" I only got depressed as the South Pole a very small amount of time.

What was I talking about? Wobbly lines. My wobbly line on a 2 week cycle ie the shape of the wobble is up one week down the next. But always under the water. That's what it used to do that is why I 1st got threatened with lithium.

Now he says "mood stabilizer" hopefully valproate not lithium.

Now my mood fluctuates every single day but mostly it stays OVER the water line of "normality". I was crying just now but not sad. I feel things too intense.

See they were wrong they talk of bipolar as being 3-month, 6-month mood swings. This mood swing happens every day. And you do get diurnal variation of mood in mania. Much more markedly so than in depression. I find. I know all this shit remember I got onto a BSc Psychology course. I wanted to know what makes people different from one another. Which is "individual differences" in psychology. But every single thing you say you must justify. E.g. "it is generally light in the morning and dark in the evening" you'd have to quote Smith & Jones 1995. Ukh. Can't just say it. Drove me potty!

HARDHOUSE MINIMIX
i like the hardcore "acid track" 2nd one
they have deliberately taken the consonants off the vowels of that girl speaking
hardcore motherfucker: likely a South African, they love their hardhouse, as do Aussies and Kiwis and the English




1646 I am now on B. Heroin. It doesn't do anything really. I only took it ... for the sake of it. It doesn't make me less psychotic any more (like it used to) doesn't even out my moods (like it definitely used to, more manic than depressed, it toned down; I had depression for months, like a constant wiggly line under water for months on heroin I refused to lie about my heroin intake at clinic so I said I used "nearly every day" to be first in line when diamorphine got brought in.

I am watching a film called The Prophet about a French prison. It is certificate 18 but with bloody gore. I don't like blood any more. Used not to have any fear when I was banging up every day. Not the slightest flight from blood.

If I were in a french prison I woud do leçons de français. I "speak" French but I speak it so terribly it's unreal. When I started working on my German my German was actually worse. In a bilingual French/German document (or a tin of foreign food) I'd turn to French before German that is because French is easier for lazy people. German I understand FAR better now. I learned a lot. And some idiot called me Nazi for it. The reason for German is simple: MONEY MONEY MONEY! Thee most asked after language among foreign language recruitment specialists. I know because I asked, pushing for an Asian answer. Got a European one back. GERMAN: LANGUAGE OF MONEY. What language appears below foreign technological products in UK advertising apart from English? Only German. French for cosmetics. Italian Spanish, Chinese Thai for food. German for cars, washing machines and electronics. Easy. Money easy money. See?

O shit I'm talking like how I did last night. Still manic you see. A bit. Bit manic.

1726 o man this film bullshits around. Do the Corsican mafia really bother with hashish? When they were already involved in heroin in the mid 60s. This is why I label PARIS centre of heroin in Europe before London was. London was diverted prescription heroin. Paris was Turkish opium refined into H4 in Corsica and Marseilles, sold as heroin in Paris and New York (the French connection). There was a small amount of dealing going on between Laos and Europe too. Which is how so many GIs ended up on heroin. The Lao General (not my Valerie) invented that Double UO Globe brand heroin "best in the world". There's supposed to be an Afghan brand "SW 999" which is high grade white; the stuff I came across I say (purely intuitively I admit) I think was "Chinese"; it came when the ordinary gear supply was heavily droughted in 2008. NOthing to the 2010 drought that was an all time EVER worst no question. Only people who had gear were people who were somehow off-circuit. Eitehr they had multi-month or years' supply or they were scoring off people who had brought it in themselves from outside Europe possibly SE Asia.

Heroin prices even rose in the USA, so I hear. Which goes to show heroin is one market but if Afghanistan goes down as major producer everybody else's price rises. Even Mexican yucky TAR. Thank GOD I Never had to go near that shit. I think I would have committed suicide. I cannot stand low quality gear. My nose is so far out of joint from brown let alone BLACK heroin you cannot know. Proper heroin looks like crack in a rock, like talc as powder. That is heroin. H4. Pure white. No citric required. Fucking citric. Waste of space brown powder lumps how did i EVER get into injecting SHIT LIKE THAT?

I have never had my heroin tested by police. I have never been arrested for possession. So I cannot know the purity. But it chimed starngely with official figures that said 20-60% purity with 40% as (obvious) average. Because the best gear was about x3 stronger than the worst. Simple. And anyone selling shit that weak was off my to do list for weeks at a time mate. No fucking way would I ring them back unless for a samps as they call a free taster. One guy wanted me to test for him but it was my responsibility to weigh how many tens of people's happiness by my own standards when in the thick of the drought really it was a 1/10 or even a 0.5/10 and I'd say 4 to be nice "well it's better than the worst" and put it like that. Then another one wanted me testing. And I don't want anything even free that intertwines me more with scumbags selling HEROIN. So in the end I said NO to it all. Had anough even free shit. Id rather pay my own way when i want. I want it barely ever. You still think i'm a junkie think what you like i live my own life you only get a glimpse. Remember you glimpse from the inside not the outside else you wouldn't want to read me. You would pass a person like me by in the street because I have nothing to offer.

Pinxx keeps ringing me up which is nice. She knows I'm psycho now. She described what happens once you get chemical cosh and it doesn't work as her brain has grown around the haloperidol etc she's been on clozaril/ clozapine is now on quetiapine Seroquel. That's what I'm asking for if this stops working. Only thing is it doesn't work at all for sleep yet makes me coshed sometimes by day. And makes it even harder to do anything than it is anyway. REALLY hard. That's why I can't get round to doing anything like this paints shit if I make a big deal it will be even less likely. It's not just buy something like a tin of beans I have canvas paints brushes all yelling and screaming at me I'm supposed to judge how much how many what which etc etc etc I just need a fucking set of stand up proper System 3 (thick, nonwatery) acrylics. I wish the fucking shop sold them simply I don't even know where to go I can't be doing with pisstake shops that fuck you about on price I need SIMPLE that's all I ask for. Simplicity. Where the hell do I go?

1757 hey do you know one time the police STARED AT ME because and JUST because of this. Fucking self-flatterers: in a garage shop their radio crackled and made me jump out of my skin because it reminded me of hearing voices this was years ago when i used to hear voices when i ran the tap. Off of crack. On nothing I heard voices on heroin to be precise which... well you google if you don't believe me. Google heroin and voices. Google heroin and antipsychotic and you'll get a SHEAF of answers saying YES IT IS ANTIPSYCHOTIC albeit mildly in some people. Stronger in me (as was). Doesn't work any more. So I spin round they think I must be guilty of something. Had no reason to stop me and I wasn't going to say "in the mental hospital I used to think people were on the phones as I could hear the dalek voice coming through the other side of the conversation" they just piss me off ASSUMING everybody is like them. A criminal. Or a would be one. One copper once thought I wanted to stare at a stabbing victim al I wanted was my fucking methadone appointment. Not to be cruel but who fucking cares about a stabbing when you wanna get somewhere. So the air ambulance turned up. So what? And this paid-busybody (another motivation to join police: the rarest one is people who genuinely want to make a difference and that's barely anyone) she assumed I wanted to look. I think she picked up I wasn't in the slightest bit interested and let me through. Silly cow.

I was wondering why I got bugged so much years later: it's being judged the same as THEY THINK when totally diffferrent. That's why I don't care about being judged mad, because I knew I was different just didn't know in what way. You cannot possibly "know" you are schiz. Especially paranoid schiz (which I'm not). I get paranoia now and then but it' "ideation" ie ideas not delusions. I don't believe I have a microchip in my brain broadcasting thoughts out. And nothinng changes the mind. That's paranoid schiz type stuff. I get generalized schiz. Need to remember to move my body out of position. For years when I slept I stayed in one spot, one body posture have to consciously move. Of course we all move in our sleep I move less. When I was mentaly ill I had to remember to move my hands off my face when I made a gesture of despair. I have to remember to do tiny things because they all add up to big complexities. Thats why i can't check email sometimes there's too much hoop jumping the STUPID THING MAKES IT TOO DIFFICULT FOR ME I just cannot handle it. Anyay I'm going to say goodbye for now if you can't find me here look in my comments for the new blog address. Look to my profile if it's still there. I don't trust this thing ever to sign me in again nothing works. I don't work but I'm not Paid they're a professional company the council are paid they let me down all the time I have to go much love to all.


1907 finally spellchecker has sorted most of this out, sorry to anyone who got the dreadful first version with all-over-the-place lettering + I added ç to my français!

Illustrated: tiny blue tits with great tits; they apparently "form mixed winter flocks" and go feeding together

Sunday, February 27, 2011

21:21 Calm

2121 I feel very manic and very calm. Don't panic not manic not knot tied up in nots not tied up in knots a lot lot of knots parking lot mot MOT MOT is a car test here in the UK. Don't panic I AM MANIC I KNEW THAT I WAS MANIC WHAT THE HELL ELSE COULD IT BE WHEN YOU GO VERY FAST AND HIGH AND FEEL HYPER AND YOU WERE DEPRESSED BEFORE? Tomblike depression entombed. Do you know I thought if I committed suicide I might stay alive for ever cold in the rain as trains rushed past? That's what I thought. When I was suicidal. Ha! Do you know that is called a "symptom"? Being suicidal. I don't feel suicidal now. I feel upwards now. I wish I could cling on to the UP forever and ever and a day no way nothing lasts for ever. In my head I feel darkness and a light shining out like the first light of the first ever dawn. AND GOD SAID LET THERE BE LIGHT AND THERE WAS LIGHT AND GOD SAW THAT THE LIGHT WAS GOOD. It's very good. That's why I believe in God. Because God is all powerful and the source of all power. I only have power because God has Energy. God is Energy and God Is Love. I wish I could sleep in God's love forever. That's all I wanted to be held in the arms of God who made me.

2131 I am dreading taking the antipsychotics hypnotics erotics support polar molar bipolar manic depressive oppressive undressive go to bed undress with the rest in a mouse's nest be the best beat the rest no less press make a money press blue diamonds

light light shiny bright light blue diamond light

did you know blue light wakes you up is that why i love the colour blue?

love you love you love you blue true blue

i can hear amazing music from the deer hunter theme and a jangly gangly gamelan sound going off in my head disco frisco disco biscuit digestives

2141 everything that i think of is transcendently beautiful how come everything comes at exact5 10 minute intervals i'm not faking the time the time is exact. i'm clearing up my mess with this manic energy. because i'm less manic than the very transcendent PEAK OF ALL HUMAN BEING everything doesn't explode around me like it does then did then now then one eternal loop of time because that time went out for ever

wow it is 2142 only one minute gone (feels like a long time) 2143 for me free to be me

2155 i feel so happy i am crying all the time thinking of New Jerusalem thats where i want to be. With God. In heaven on earth. New Jerusalem is the heavenly city descended out of the sky from God where we will all live one day. If you're reading this and don't live there then you're Eternally Dead so don't worry about it.

2159 59 time on line nine white lines straight ahead don't go red red or dead

blue i love you blue you you you u U U U U U U U U U

which is the most perfect letter? S or O...? Probably 0 because that's a zero hero zero hour rush hour RUSH HOUR POWER HOUR! HOUR HOUR HOUR FOR HOURS

2201 it's ten o'clock i should take my sleeping pill i don't want to antipsychotic

risperidone zone i have to take it i'm washing down zopiclona with black coffee

then wait an hour till 2300 and 2 risperidone ok i'm baiting my breath and doing it wish me luck


2303 MICHAEL JACKSON: LEAVE ME ALONE
this is the style of things i see when i close my eyes manic
no sleep comes!


Going Right Into One

GOING RIGHT INTO ONE. i forgot to take my medication last night now i'm hyper hi hi high high up high going into spiral (tribe describe imbibe) drink ink link pink link think pink blue for a boy powder blue i love you blue.... i love that colour blue.... i love you.... love from above.... power powder power power flower power how are your powers? powers that be... to me ... free. set you free. free to be me.

I wrote this earlier:

I'll tell ya what makes the world go round. Money, let's be frank. That makes today's world go round. Money and a lot of bad things. Doesn't the Bible say that the love of money is the root of all evil? And Energy. That makes the world go round, the literal force of energy, the energy of you and me; the energy of God the all-powerful. Love would make the world go round if only people weren't too scared to love. Because to love you must open up and to be open is to be vulnerable to attack. If only people weren't too scared to love, the world would be a very different place than it is today.

Flight of the Blue Tits


DOES ANY OF MY WRITING ACTUALLY MAKE SENSE? Or is it just me reading it back wonky? It seems to be all biddybangingbong: all over the place. I don't judge other people's writing as good or bad; I just read it. Also, my attention span is all over the place. I'm having a bash at reading a fictionalized biog later on; it's in short sections with rotating perspective (ie one person speaks, then another does, so it's easier to stick with). I need to get my attention span back.

And what was I on about earlier? Akh, I was a bit hyper. I was playing the music you see in youtube screens below today's earlier post which brought back memories of love doves and mitsubishi ecstasy. My mood was up so the music took me higher into full-blown "euphoric recall". It was more than the tingly neck you get from dance music once you get into it, it was a reliving of the E-state. I think that's why I'm now called "bipolar".

Akh, how did me and words like bipolar and schizophrenia ever get together? I always knew there was something wrong and that it wasn't plain depression. Those nauseatingly repeated dsm diagnostic criteria that pop up whenever you google "depression" somehow never described me even when I felt hopeless and suicidal. Partly this was depression deluding me, partly it was having got so used to being in a negative mind-state I couldn't see the positive one required to make sense of diagnostic criteria.

I fit the manic ones far more easily than the depressed ones. Ukh. Me? Manic?? A maniac is a crazy person and crazy people are Somebody Else.

I have been trying to read up on my medical condition because apart from knowing what it is I didn't know anything about it. Now I know a little bit about it. The European and American versions of schizoaffective differ. I have the European version that is, in the language of psychiatrists, mood episodes with mood-incongruent psychotic features. I also do have symptoms of schizophrenia but didn't even know it. I never delved into schizophrenia before: you can't know if you've got it. Stuff like obsessive-compulsive or bipolar you could know about because the patterns are really clear. Schizophrenia just feels like extreme dissociation with everything taking huge effort, even simple things. That's schizophrenia. That's why schizophrenics seem lazy, they're actually stressed. It's a big thing to do a little thing. That's why things don't get done. That's why I'm in chaos. Now I get all these people helping me.

Ukh. People helping me. I just want to crawl away and hide.

I want a bird feeder for all these blue tits. I haven't actually seen a blue tit around here. They're so tiny, they're like blue sparrows only slightly smaller (more wren-like) and highly agile. They hang out more at bird-tables and are frequently seen feeding upside down. They form mixed flocks with great tits, according to Wikipedia.

I can't wait for tomorrow because tomorrow I can get some paints. Whether I actually will get them is anyone's guess. Usually I don't do anything I actually plan to. I know I should do it but get lost in the detail. There is too much gory detail in life. There is too much gore. That is why I hate life. That is why I have to win the euromillions lottery. It's £50 million next week. I need enough to get a house with high prison walls to keep the world OUT.

Well I don't feel depressed any more. I felt depressed last night so I took a load of methadone and slept deeply. Then I woke up feeling fine. There are FAR worse things you can get diagnosed with than "elevated mood" (and my mood is elevated far more than it is low) so I'm not complaining. As Serious Illnesses go I think I got just about the best one. I keep hearing about, thinking about, seeing all sorts of physical injury and disease that scares the living shit out of me. Then I'm really glad I don't have to deal with that. I might be thinking that because I'm ill, but at least I am just thinking it not being it. (And I could get lost from here on in, as I get lost in what I think... ukkkk is that why my Dr thinks I'm crazy?)

O I have to go I don't know where I'm going now. Blue tits! There ya go. Left it on a positive note didn't I!!


Illustrated: tiny tits in various positions in British gardens

7:07 Entertainment

WOW IT'S ONLY 7 in the morning. It feels later. I slept for hours and hours because I took a whole load of methadone that was full of sugar (someone else's). It doesn't make me feel stoned at high doses, but it does make me sleep at night (not even during the day though, as heroin would).

Which is the crux of the methadone issue (because it's not like heroin) but Governments love it. (Because it gives outward signs of improvement.) Most addicts aren't willing or ready to improve that much and so methadone therapy is a waste of time. E.g. on the man who was willing to sell me £40 worth! His house is like a crackhouse. That's the place where everyone was rude. Everyone but him. He's OK. Gruff. But OK. Someone once said he was trying to intimidate me, but I don't feel intimidated by people like that. Who express how they are feeling. All they are doing is laying cards you already knew they had on the table. So dealing with them is easier.

Anyway I know a story about this one certain person that makes him out to be a Paper Tiger. I had another friend who was genuinely Hard and they came into conflict...

I don't particularly like the word Hard, when Strong and Tough describes somebody better. There's someone else I know like that and I respect him for it. Then people get to know me and call me "Hard" which annoys me. I also used to get called Cynical when I'm just normal in that respect. So people can be self-centred and nasty and I can see that. Ain't cynical: that's being realistic. It was when a heroin addict was banging on about how you "have to do stuff for your grandkids" and I was like "yeah once you've had a hit first" ~ and we all know that is the reality of heroin addiction. Once you've had your gear you're ready to Engage. Before that, no engagement can or will take place. And what little does comes with a whole slew of resentment. Forcing a heroin addict into meaningful activity before their heroin is like forcing a starving man to work before giving him any food. It won't make him like you.

Last night I put on Meet the Fockers again. My mood had fallen at about 7pm and I was pissed off. No longer manic but depressed. Manic depression. Doncha just hate it! I was particularly offended when my shrinko used those 2 words together in that phrase as if manic and depressed have to be 2 components of the same thing (but they are: I just hate it).

I was also very bothered and pissed off that I have schizophrenia. That is what schizoaffective MEANS. It means bipolar + schizophrenia and I know the schizzy bits in me. They are the bits that don't add up that I couldn't explain to another person. Like rooms in a house divided by bullet proof glass walls. Just because you can see into doesn't mean you're GETTING into or that anything gets out. What comes out is a report of that which is viewed not experienced. The experience takes place in that impregnable fortress of an experience-bubble. One day, to those of you who are interested, I will try and explain what is schizzy in me. Because I do think I grasp it. Just can't do it at 8 o'clock (as it is now) in the morning.

My roses are opening beautifully in their pint glass, especially one. The other has gone limp. I just cut the stem again. Now they look like Little and Large. Tomorrow I'm getting some Art Stuff to make my trotterdonkey Acrylic Paintings for my wall.

So this is now; that is then. I've got to go. Pizza and tea ready.


FRANTIC
i used to go to this club, it was nuts
and this is the sort of music i used to go eeeeeeing to: psychedelic hardhouse



these ones all have that unmixed compilation cd quality. a good dj would flash the next tune over the old one and dijjydit through so you're bouncing on the old one and then the E!-E!-E!-E!-E!-E!-E! energy of the new one takes you flying off....

HARDHOUSE MIX
stonkinstompin
but why the words? hardhouse = no words! CMON!!! i love the choon tho



CLASSIC HARDHOUSE 2 i love this one
what does this say to you, that squeaky word says all different words
squeakymunchtime diginmymind it's like a musical pill-dispenser
this one has words but the words are in the tune not outside of, that's what works better



this is what i've got. i have symptoms of bipolar schizoaffective disorder

Saturday, February 26, 2011

My Sleep Meds

1703 I JUST GOT IT TOGETHER to look through my sleep medication which has been right in front of me for days I didn't even notice Nytol was there. I have 1x zopiclone 7.5mg and 2x strips of Nytol only 2 50mg pills taken. On 100mg Diphenhydramine (Benadryl) I'm OK to sleep usually on days 1 and 2 but after that it just stops working. Zopiclone works far better and is much nicer and not something to abuse (ALL it does it makes me sleep; nothing benzoey, just drowsiness, nothing else so no motivation to stay up through it as in temazepam (Restoril) which takes 30mg to 40mg to actually get me to sleep. 10mg temazepams are a JOKE. Zopiclone is the only sleeping pill I've taken that works reliably on ONE full-dose tablet. Zopiclone 3.75 is a piss take they're for elderly people but some doctors will mess around with you giving them when you just have to do 2 to get the effect ie half as many doses.

I also have enough methadone to zonk myself if I really needed to but hate doing that on methadone it takes a LOT. I buy it on the street for when I need extra. My dose is going DOWN now which I'm SO GLAD ABOUT I can't tell you. I absolutely LOATHE being on methadone I hate the shit, it's the all time pits of drugs. Does nothing unless you take doses I won't mention in case some kid with no tolerance thinks a hardened junkie's sleep dose will make them feel good when it WILL KILL THEM. I want off all this crap I hate taking drugs to sleep.

Last night (or rather this morning) I slept late morning to early afternoon about 10am to 1:30pm 3.5 hours. And felt gluttonous and lush for having done even that. Very indulgent. Mania thrives on sleep deprivation so the less sleep = the more manic = the better I feel unless I really start going off the scale which is just DIDDLADDLEODDLEODDDZZZ-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-ZZ-Z-ZZZZZZZBZZZZZZZZZZZZBZZZZBZZZBZBZZZZ like a noise.

I'm well rested now thanks to black coffee perking me up. Shouldn't drink that either. but with nothing, no drugs at all I'd be ragged, frazzled and extremely irritable and sleeping 3.5 hours maximum. Least with sleepers I can get a little extra sleep. If I take them at 10pm I can usually sleep midnight till 2:30am at least. This is while hyped up. When I'm down my sleep still goes all over the place but tends to go longer so I could sleep 12 or more hours. In bad states right through the morning into the afternoon from going to bed at 9pm.

Well this is me and sleep, maybe I shouldn't post this but what the heck.


Illustrated: temazepam 30 ~ this dose should actually work, but no better than zopiclone 7.5! Zopiclone (not licensed in the USA) is like a far superior version of zolpidem (Ambien) zopiclone (Imovane) is called Zimovane in the UK. Nytol one-a-night is diphenhydramine 50mg but I'm not even sure I should be taking that on bipolar mania it might make it worse... (who knows?)

1813 I might try a red light. Blue light keeps you awake; red at the other end of the spectrum definitely makes you sleepy. Hammies can't see it and go pinging about like crazy under red light, they think it's pitch darknesss...

NonSabatical Saturday: the red-yellow roses

0242 AKH I'M A MANIC MANIAC! I JUST TOOK my anti-me pills that stop me being myself. Sometimes that self is a bad self to be; other times it is a wonderful self. Tonight I feel wondrous. I feel like when I've done crack and hold on to my normal me as well as feeling high so I feel like a bungee rope stretching all whacky stylee. Does anybody know about art? I'm looking for 2x 2ft square, perfect square Daler boards to do Acrylic Painting on. I want to paint Simpsonesque cartoons for my wall. I want the decorations. I'm buying Rowney System 3 student colour acrylics, which are like melted butter in consistency, you can palate knife it on or water down, unlike Cryls Flow, which are waterier. I thought I'd go for more firmness to give the option. Only colour I have is carbon black with a permanence of *****5 stars which means a a thousand years in the sun probably wouldn't fade it. All the earth colours have ultra-high permanence. I'm buying the main primary colours in student colour or from the Pound Shop, if I can find them there. You can occasionally find Acrylic Paints in Pound shops. I don't know when I'm going to sleep I feel way too hyped up. Stupidly I had a cup of Cocaine Tea. That is tea with caffeine in it that makes me feel like I'm on coke. It's that strong, so I don't need "real" drugs of any kind, caffeine knocks me that far out of it, on top of my mania Real Drugs would send me stratospheric and I quite appreciate One Foot On The Ground. (My psycho-balletic move.) I'm not posting this till far later as I want some time to mull before posting everything about myself online. I hope you appreciate this is deeply personal to me. You are inside my own personal headspace, so Feel Privileged. I won't let just anyone in here, ha ha ha ha har!

03:44 I LOVE THE TITLE "GURN TIME" THIS IS GURNING:



i like Raving Pensioner in the green scoutmaster top with black hat, shame you can't see his eyes to see whether he really is on E. Looks like it though!

and i love smiley swaying permy haired girl in black cardie on white top who looks like she's just knocked off a shift in an office job, to me she is HardCore Raver, she's what rave was all about, shiny, happy people (holding hands)



0442 I'm going to try sleeping but eyes closed the most fantastical manically changing imagery plays out it's really fast and really weird, leadless figures springing out of plants I can see spiral in this screen behind the letters here in the screen, spirals, vague but there. Eyes closed the imagery is bright and brilliant. My head is lit up from the inside!

0540 How come I seem to be posting on the hour. That's unconscious that is but Im not i'm fully conscious. I am fraid of going to sleep bc my head too full of pictures I don't want to watch them. i went for a walk and realized i was hyped up and was nearly dancing on the street. ukh! no. don't do that people will think you're on drugs. i just wish i could have some sleep; i'm going to try sleeping with the light on but the lights so burning bright

shit its only 0542 2 minutes feels like a lot of time

0554 someone on the street just called out my name loud i'm going outside

0616 i realized it was an "auditory hallucination" (probably) before I got out but i was in a nosey mood anyhhow. the birds are singing amazingly. i found 2 red-edged yellow roses which i took home, unwrapped, clipped short and put in a glass of sugary water (that's what you're supposed to do yeah?) 0626 no lemonade available. i heard you stand roses in lemonade and water them with cold tea and sprinkle coffee grounds on them? is any of this true? i love red red roses with strong perfume, that's what i really love but yellow ones opening out with little perfume will do me fine. who knows they may develop fragrance as they mature..? i heard flowers pick up new fragrance every day. perfumiers harvest in the morning and can only collect one day's fragrance by picking and killing the flower. which is a shame. you could make a fortune by inventing a machine to "milk" flowers daily of their essence. the perfume industry, which has fields of flowers around Grasse in France, would go crazy for that. you can do a degree in parfumerie there, imagine that a BSc degree in fragrance, i can already speak french well enough to live in france so i could do that course

0622 thank God: only 2 hours till i can go out get my gloopyjuice from the chemist that leona lewis song does my head in with a voice whispering at the beginning (check it on the sidebar) right at the start it does it. tell me if you disagree.

0632 i've just had a headfucker thought but i can't put it down as i dont trust you, dont trust anyone and i'd have to xxxx for xxx if you found it out.... so dont find it out!

i wish this fucking chemist was open now i have one sleeping pill i'm not using until i really need it. i need to contact my friends a certain couple who stopped arguing in front of me because it upset me so much i said "you shouldn't have said that" when he said one shitty thing to her and my saying that made her cry and i thought "you shouldn't have said that" (to self) but my words WORKED: now they don't argue in front of me

0639 stupid thing just went and PUBLISHED when i pressed return so here we are... one totally unfinished post out in the public domain... the deer hunter music is playing round and round in the background ... sublime

0650 if you watch that fantazia video, just after smiley happy office girl there's a wide eyed guy (27 seconds into it) in a grey top he looks like me on E: totally bugged out! my pupils go so enormous you cannot see my eyes are actually BLUE not BLACK..!

0847 I'm going to try and get some sleep; should be easier with broad daylight against which to backdrop. The nighttime makes me hallucinate too much

Furry Friday on Saturday

Hamsters remind me of....

Fur-balls!


WISHING Y'ALL A FANTASTICAL WEEKEND!



Friday, February 25, 2011

Mood Switch

I HAD A BEAUTIFUL MOOD SWITCH about 2 and a half hours ago (17:30 hrs). Suddenly from crying over the word schizoaffective and feeling shitty, without any warning, I felt like I'd had a fat line of best charlie* and was ping bling BLIING yeah! Up. Not really really up but a bit hypomanic.

Which I now know I really was when I thought I might be but wasn't sure and got totally lost in a pile of diagnostic tosh. I think this dr is right. He's a consultant psychiatrist who has seen me 4 or 5 times with no pretence or bullshit at all on my part especially the past 3 or 4 times (feels like 4; only recall 3) when I had have/was having a mental breakdown. And as he himself said differential diagnosis (ie what it is if it's not schizoaffective disorder rapid cycling bipolar type is type 1 bipolar, rapid cycle. No question at all about that.

Mania means far FAR more than just being in a good mood. It means being really quick and more to the point having loads of energy, especially mental energy. The symptoms of bipolar are like biorhythms; they go up and down but not all in sync which is how weird crossover states happen (like having loads of mental but no physical energy or being manic and in a shitty mood) manic also means irritable and volatile. Mania is NOT delirious happiness and bipolar doesn't mean switching between happy and sad. [Whoever it was said that wants shooting between the eyes!] It means switching between high and low energy. Fast and slow more than high and low. Extreme mania is frankly terrifying and nonsensical. That is what I was putting up with a few weeks ago when all the rave music appeared.

My main problem apart from living in utter chaos is that my memory has gone very poor, on antipsychotics as well as off, so I can't blame the pills (unfortunately). I don't know their side effects and don't want to. I'm not quite as obsessional and neurotic as I might appear to be. I don't cry out for help often until past the point of saving. Y'all need to bear in mind that in reading my blog you're reading my own journal, my sounding board to myself, so I say things here I wouldn't bang on about in real life, probably to anyone.

I told Valium Marilyn I was "bipolar" because I know she knows what that means. "Yeah but what do doctors know?" was her response and I agreed with her. I'm bipolar as in 2 poles, I accept that. All else I refuse to dwell on any more than you would. I have to go now, EastEnders is two thirds gone already ...


22:54 please someone comment something. tell me what the weather is like on the other side of the world, or indeed in London if you're here. is it freezing cold? i think no, Valium Marilyn thinks yes, I tell her "you're ill darling, it's fine" in fact I was wearing fewer clothes as spring is springing up up UP high HIGHER and HIGHER, lovely yummy high!

0222 i have just reluctantlz popped my antipsychotics; i took 1.5 instead of 2 because 2 gives me side effects, I'm going to crawl the dose up to 2. I know I shouldn't do this but the person prescribing them isn't having to take them so I'm doing all I can. I don't want to take any frankly as I know I'd be going pretty full-on without them as it is I'm only mildish manic but I feel fantastic when I go with it, like I'm conducting music, bashing a tennis ball back and forth in technicolor hyperspace... mmmmm
:


*(Charlie is cocaine.)

02:27 THIS SOUNDS pretty slow music compared to the HARDCORE RAVE i've had bangin away in my head but still it brings back the day mid-late 80s:~~~~~~~

Better today


I FEEL FAR BETTER THAN I DID YESTERDAY. That is because I am on my own, not in McDonalds surrounded by people with attitude problems, not riding a bus, not crushed in by people people people. People do my head in.

Michael Jackson is playing on my TV. His collected videos was the only thing I could stomach music wise and play round and round (as I do) with DVDs. There's a lot of other music I like but hardly any of it has videos because it's either bleepy and abstract or obscure or Sinead O'Connor (who is so much more than Nothing Compares 2U, she's an Irish baladeer).

I was thinking about Michael Jackson and how someone who knows me well once compared him to me [in personality]. Really, I am flattered. Somebody took Michael Jackson's world and smashed it and crushed him and all he could turn to was drugs, which he was probably involved in since burning his hair in that Pepsi accident in the early 80s.

No Michael Jackson music today. What I picked comes more under "obscure" but it did chart and does have a video:~

CAPTAIN SENSIBLE (lead singer of the Damned (hi Melody Lee)): GLAD IT'S ALL OVER
I always thought this song was about nuclear war. Blue moon happened after the Krakatoa eruption and could well happen after neuclear war. Too many little particles in the atmosphere:




Tsar Bomb:
largest nuclear device ever exploded ~ 50-57 megatonnes
57,000,000 megatons = 1000 tons of dynatmite for every man, woman and child in the UK.
this one's 250 times bigger than the bombs that will soon drop on US!




SCREAM
stop pressuring me
, like this one

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Hyper-Real

SCHIZOAFFECTIVE DISORDER. That's me. Differential diagnosis: bipolar disorder. He said: do you open your mail? And looked at me knowingly. Well I would if something was coming from you. So he dictated the mail in front of me. That's how I know the phrase "differential diagnosis" it means if I'm not schiz-bipolar I'm just bipolar.

See I told you I didn't all add up. It explains why I keep wanting to laugh when something is "DEADLY SERIOUS" and why I enjoy walking through graveyards in the dark. Actually it doesn't explain that one. Someone once said that one about Madonna: "she was the sort of person who would take a short-cut through a cemetary at midnight" and I once lived in a house backing on to a cemetary. So I took midnight short cuts all the time. Thinking of Madonna (True Blue baby I love you) some of the time.

Sorry I can't make this more serious it just explains.
Explains.
An awful awful awful lot.



... AND NOW FOR A MUSICAL BREAKDOWN
if this doesn't drive you crackers, nothing will



A Flight of Blue Tits

IT'S 10 to midnight. I slept a few hours and woke up, finally, with a bit of calm! The following was written five hours earlier:

LET ME TRY and give a less winky-dink expression of today's goings-on than that bunch of crap you see one post below.

I went to my appointment today. Tomorrow I have one at the Psychiatrist rather than the Nutter Club. Unfortunately they crash but I had scheduling problems due to a computer error and I must take the time offered.

Naomi [the dual diagnosis lady] phoned me just now and pointed out he is a Consultant and so timewise finds himself practically meeting appointments pretty much when he is and isn't allowed to use the loo. It gets that bad!

If I were a doctor I'd be a Consultant Neurologist (never a psychiatrist: too headfucking that one. People with schizophrenia and bipolar ranting at me half the day and then the other 50% pf patients not wanting to speak. No thanks. Neurology patients usually can speak pretty fluently unless they're comatose in which case the checks and charts do the talking for them.

Now my own head is babbling away. I have Racing Thoughts or a Flight of Ideas. Like little tubbie birdies thrumming from one bird table to another. Now they're in the birdbath. Splish splash splosh. And they're blue tits. My favourite British Garden Birdies. Ask another British person if you don't believe about Blue Tits, They're beautiful..

OK back to midnight: my flight of ideas is safely in its nest boxes, has refrained from chirping and is looking forward to perching upside down tomorrow morning on the feeder.

I think what was wrong earlier was a long day and me just wanting to be home, crossed with the necessity to do endless little things that just got in the way when I was tired and wanted to unwind and the upshot was manic paranoia from which it takes hours to calm down. Naomi was very helpful. She just happened to phone right in the middle. I wasn't "going off on one" in a big way. No ranting. No talking nonsense. She knows how thin the line is between appearing to cope and not coping at all. That's why I like her.

She told me to focus on myself at tomorrow's doctor appointment and not my surrounding issues because other professionals are dealing with those.

All I would need say re today, if that came up, would be "I felt paranoid on the bus, like people were talking about me, so I got off earlier than I would have".

If I were a regular smoker of cannabis or crack I wouldn't be surprised to feel the way I do, but I gave up both. Cannabis went years ago, crack went two years ago (with a handful of lapses). My drugs workers at the time assured me my problems with paranoia and depression (that were only ever eluded to, nobody ever asked about them in any detail, so I never told in any detail) they assured me these problems would vanish in a puff of cocaine smoke. And yet they haven't. Shortly after giving up I realized a common cold had brought a strange return of paranoia and ibbly-bibbly weirdness. And that was a common cold! About 2 years ago.

Well crack has well and truly gone. The last time I used heroin it did nothing for me. Cannabis is a non-issue (never touch it). Uppers I don't go near. Hallucinogens or psychedelics I gave up entirely a decade ago. These had never been a big huge deal though they made a big huge impression on me whenever they were taken. So all these drugs have gone and I am doing all the Right Things I ought to be doing.

Surely I shall see some Fruits of my Labours soon..?

TITS IN THE BATH!
Bluetit playtime in Amsterdam!







Illustrated: blue tits and a Ancient Egyptian space alien ...


THIS is an A1 description of "racing thoughts"...


Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Halfhourthinkyjinkingpost....

I JUST THOUGHT I was posting but I was thiniing an a half dream. Dreamoing for half an hour. I'm tired and pissed off. All day, since midday it has been this thing and that thing a.. grabbing at me, at my attention span whe I feel ragged and frayed as it is. I'm Pamela Martha Fockered-up. Meet the Fockers is galloping round my head like a many-legged express train. Now I have to dash to the methadone chemist before they close at 18:30 hrs. I'm walking: riding the bus was such a headvucker with people talking about, sounding like they were trying not to sound like they were talking about and etc etc etc... all about ME when ALL I WANTED WAS TO BE IGNORED. TO CURL UP AND GO TO SLEEP.

PLEASE!


PS I did have a dr's appointment tomorrow then I didn't. It was messed up but not by me; I miss Nutter Club but see a Consultant Psychiatrist so no harm on that score...hy

At 3am


SLEEP. My sleep has been abysmal. At best I can sleep a few hours. Or go all night and half the next day ie going to bed 24 hours from when I last woke up. So I got some zopiclone and took one in the early afternoon. I don't think I've ever taken a pill to sleep at this time. I thought I might sleep a couple of hours but I slept about hours and hours, probably 10 or 11 hours.

It's now past 3am. But I woke up feeling OK, like I could focus and concentrate and
maybe even read a book.

I gotta go methadone clinic tomorrow. No choice. Gotta go. I hate going because the last few times I was high and caused great amusement. Talking to everyone. Being friendly. High on
nothing.

I can't bear to walk in there as my normal boring self now. But I have to have to no choice have to. Hate being a methadone addict. It's not as bad in some ways as being a heroin addict. You don't wonder what the dose is going to be like strength-wise as you never feel it.

Heroin barely feels like anything, even when I took grams of it I never felt more than hot and chilled out. Which is strange as withdrawal literally makes you feel burning hot and freezing cold at the same time. Which is strange as apparently ancient (non-Biblical) descriptions of hell give a very similar account of simultaneously burning and freezing.

I want no drugs. I wish I'd never tried a single one.

Hey I feel alive alive ALIVE!



MICHAEL JACKSON: CHILDHOOD





Monday, February 21, 2011

A Serenity Hit

I FEEL ALL CALM AND SERENE since coming home from Narcotics Anonymous. I said nothing to them about the altered states I've found myself in. Ukh. I felt dead odd this afternoon. Don't know why. I blamed the pills I'd started taking again but they're supposed to make you well. Ho-hum. I shared about the stuff we at NA have in common. You are supposed to focus on the similarities rather than the differences. But it's the differences that are most intriguing. That's why I find pothead lady such a fascination: because she was NOT taking heroin or crack. But she never comes to the Monday meeting.

I really feel mellowed out on this Serenity stuff they have. If they'd had any spare I'd have hit up a little lump under the glaring striplight in the NA kitchen.

Speaking of which I have a whole load of new needles to get rid of. The ones I got last week when I couldn't be bothered any more. I look back and see such a lack of self-respect. I need to buy a few grams of self respect to hit up with this serenity. I think they'd make a nice mixture to bang up intravenously.

Now once this awful doctor's appointment is over I should be able to relax. Knowing I have to see this doctor on Thursday stresses me whenever it crosses my mind.

I heard something very interesting at NA tonight. Somebody said "I don't listen to my own head because it lies to me". I know exactly what he means. I can never tell which thoughts, ideas, impulses are the ones to go with. I need to learn how to Do the Right Thing.

That was what got me the most about Being on Drugs. I suppose deep down I knew that I was in a mess because I was doing Wrong. And it was in a real, awful mess I was in. Slowly, slowly slowly I am sorting myself out. I have clean clothes, a showered, clean body and the cleanest self I can manage. That means methadone, antihistamine (non-addictive) sleeping pills and antipsychotics. I'm not happy about the antipsychotics and I don't like taking sleeping draughts. Last night my head was lit up from the inside like a television set. I can see vivid imagery moving; abstract shapes. I was wuzzy on risperidone yet could not sleep.

So I zonked myself (reluctantly) on the diphenhydramine (Nytol). I slept through to the early afternoon, then realized I felt odd because I was hyped up. I had a difficult time in the post office where there was a very long line of people and people seemed to be looking at me, talking about me and laughing at me. I just try and be chilled out about all this. I do what I have to do, which is not react. I forced myself to stay in line, when my instinct was to get out of there. Then the lady gave me money, I got some bits from Sainsbury's quickly and got home. It will soon be midnight; I'm bracing myself for these pills. You get good meetings and bad meetings at NA and tonight was a good one. I'm keeping hold of this Serenity.

In the words of the Prayer (see below) I need Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and the Wisdom to know the difference. So the next thing I need is Wisdom, so I know what to do. And once I get all 3: Courage, Serenity and Wisdom I'm OK. NA is just a group of people and its failings are human failings. I hope if I can accept people for who they are, and take what is good from the Group, then I can get somewhere with them. (I don't know what else to do.)

So that's me tonight. Still blissed out on this Serenity. And avoiding thoughts of Stressful Things.

Back to NA

IT'S NARCOTICS ANONYMOUS TONIGHT. NA hold meetings every night and every daytime and as far as I know most mornings in London, but tonight is one of my favourite ones, so I'm going.

I'm thinking of just telling them how I feel about being (as I see it) misunderstood. Then, if I am misunderstood I'm sure somebody will feed something back to me. But if I was understood all along I'll find out that too, so it's win-win.

I have no word to "yell in their face" as I so delicately put it; and more than once, if I remember right... If I were that wound up then I would yell it too, but I'm striving to avoid over-confrontational behaviour, even if I'm merely confronting the Group rather than a person in it... If I had an issue with one specific person then I wouldn't share that to the group, I'd tell that person alone.

What I will tell them is that I'm going to a dual diagnosis group and that I feel better understood there because the dual group accept that I walk in every week hyped up to a greater or lesser extent and the specific culprit drugs that tend to make hyper (cocaine and amphetamines) are ABSENT from my wee-tests. (I love the word "wee"; it reminds me of being four and saying "a wee and a poo"!)

I will have to tone myself down if I do feel amped up and I have felt amped up for most of today. I don't want a repeat of the time when I was raging angry and sent a very tangable jolt round the circle. A jolt of bad-feeling. The woman next to me, who is an itsy-ditsy-smiley-happy former pot-addict nearly jumped out of her skin and I only wish I could find her again to say I'm sorry. (As an ice-breaker.) There's another NA member who gave a fantastic chair (which means a 20-minute potted history of your using and how you got out and stayed out of the chaos everyone comes to NA to crawl out of)... I went and made a mess of the meeting my very obviously hefting up my loud rustly carrier bag full of stuff just as he was cruising towards the finish line.

I wasn't trying to communicate anything to anyone, but that's how it must have looked and I feel guilty because he looked at me a few times as he made his points and I just want to say I'm sorry ~ again as an icebreaker. I don't feel ridden by guilt and I don't feel he's desperately pissed off with me, but if I could speak to either of these two again I think they're both fascinating people to be friends with. Both are brimming over with their own distinct spirits. I suppose I feel bad for having given out bad vibes that it's obvious both have felt and I don't want to go around emanating nuclear radiation. I want to radiate Serenity, and charm. If I am charming now it's very much by accident. I feel most people pick up the vibe of precisely how I am, even though they sometimes misinterpret it. If it's "drugs" it's a distinct lack of, rather than a presence they're picking up on!

It's obvious to me that I'm nearing the end of an over-long story drugs-wise. Because as I said earlier, if I'd done gear at any other time after a break I'd probably have gone on using it until I was penniless and then had to stop (because I wouldn't go out and graft up money these days). I'd use the days without drugs to reset my priorities, then by the time I got paid again I had willpower not to use. This only happened on one occasion, some time in January. I went through four phases with heroin.
Phase one: I only used what money I could "afford" ~ usually £10 a day, though I still got into trouble, running up debts. When the shit finally hit the fan I went hurtling into phase two, where I begged up as much as I possibly could every single day of the week most weeks. I never took a day off at weekends when I already had money. I made as much as I could when I could, and nearly all this money went on heroin, not crack. Crack was only ever a minor part of my using, apart from one binge I indulged in for several weeks. I considered myself addicted because the small amount I did use was very important to me. Eventually I reduced to one day a week and from that to "nothing" ~ I probably lapsed on crack about eight times since giving it up "for good" for new year 2009. And I'm well aware how pathetic "eight times" sounds in conjunction with "gave up for good". I had my last ever toke on the crack pipe in early December 2010. I couldn't go near crack now. Considering how high I get without it, I'd go so far out of the stratosphere on it, I doubt I'd ever come back!Stage three was me as a "giro junkie"; this is an addict who only uses money paid by the state for sickness or unemployment. The final phase is now: no heroin at all bar a couple of lapses, which were me being depressed enough not to care any more. I only crave gear when I'm very low and down in mood or a methadone dose is overdue. If I can manage not to get depressed like that again, I cannot see why I'd turn to heroin. It never did much except salve my pain.

In the fifth and final stage I'll finally have kicked methadone. And I will never have anything more to do with Drugs ever again.


God, grant me the Serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
the Courage to change the things I can ~
and the Wisdom to know the difference.



Illustrated: apron representing 15 years clean and serene (other items of clothing, including underwear, are available) I wish I could wear something representing some vast number of years clean and sober and for it to be true. But the truth of that matter is down to me ...

Racy Brain (not down the drain)

I FEEL I'VE BEEN LIFTED UP!
I SLEPT A LONG TIME lats night because I had the antipsychotics, antihistamines and alcohol.
The antihistamine was to make me sleep because despite the other stuff I just couldn't do it. And now I feel woozy and my head is racing and spinning. I feel in a much better mood. I'm not "high" but the same stuff is going on as when I'm going there. In the chemist and the post office I kept seeing visions in the floor. The chemist was a girl in a beautiful egg-shaped water drop with drops like rain behind her. In the post office I saw a slavering wolf in chalk-white on the brown floor. Then I looked away and there were just shadows where wolfie's features had been. I really am getting paranoid today I can't tell when people are and aren't talking about me and I hear weird noises. Whether or not this is the risperidone pills I don't know. If it carries on like this I know I'll go back on a manic whoooosh uppp-p-p-P-PPPP!! Least I'm not depressed right now all is fine with me. I'm stressed about seeing the doctor on Thursday and I don't like the way thes pills make me feel wibblywobbly. I can't deal with change and buying things in shops I just have to give money and get the girl to sort it out it caused a massive headfuck when all I wanted was an Oyster top up that's an e-bus ticket. Sorry if this doesn't hang together well my head has a distinct lack of focus and my memory is shot to pieces these days. I forget people's names, everything. Have a nice day everyone. Mine's going well. My racy brain has elevated me way above yesterday's dreary misery-schmizzery so I'm good. Good health to all!

PS ANNA GRACE: a lot of your comments got dumped in spam and I just found them. They're in their proper places now

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Clean Clothes

BY TOMORROW MORNING I shall have an entire set of clean dry clothes. The present ones I have on smell like they've been through a well seasoned sandwich toaster. I put a load of smalls through the sink with three doses of lemon washing up liquid. It's on the radiator as we speak. The other stuff was there anyhow; I just didn't know.

I get money tomorrow. I need to buy a charger and a chip to phone my Dad free of charge. I lost the old chip when I wasn't even on drugs (I remember that bit clearly; neither was I drunk but I spilled water on my phone and went so mental trying to dry it out that the SIM lept out and installed itself between a pane of glass and my seat on the bus. The pane of glass is there because the bus is British and they want to cause more serious injuries in the event of a crash. Well why else would glass be on a bus; not on a window?)

And I have to buy socks. Dark ones without heels and toes busted through.

I just spoke to my Dad and his side of the family. That worked better than antipsychotics. But I've taken the antipsychos again to be a good boy in time for Dr NutNut on Thursday. I need to look all responsible. I stopped taking them because I had side-effects that were drastically horrible. Something like a drowsy brain-fog where lights glared into my head making me want to lie in a darkened room (yet not sleepy-drowsy so you just suffer it out till the pill wears off). So I canned the pills and was so high (on "life", not any drug) by the time I had confirmation that I should take the entire dose at once, as in week one that I took no antipsychotics. Then I got tired but was still on a high. Then the high just wore off, just under a week ago, on Monday afternoon. And ever since then I've been pissed off. I'd rather say pissed off then depressed. I hate the word depression. I never know when I do or don't have it except afterwards (when I usually did have it) somehow some sort of denial confuses me. Henceforth I shall attempt not to be confused.

I'm not taking heroin because heroin stops me being high (might as well be frank). I'm dreading going to the doctor because the doctor will also want to stop me being high. Last time I really started going high on antipsychotics I felt really weird, so maybe I'd better get used to feeling weird (I got used to being weird long ago, I just didn't feel it).

I cured my depression with drink. It antidepressed me enough to pick the phone up for social reasons and to get clothes washed. I think my doctor should prescribe cherry flavour 4.7% ABV cyder for medicinal reasons (joke).

Meet the Fockers has been on at least four times today. They keep talking about something called a Jimmy Changa. What the hell is that? I thought it was a cocktail but it gives Bernie Focker (Dustin Hoffman) most terrible wind. Roz Focker (Barbra Streisand) said so by accident on their answerphone message.

And now I'm vanishing into the night like a tired moth that's just taken 2x2mgs of chemical cosh. Sleep well. Or GET OUT OF BED (if you're in Australia).


Illustrated: Indonesian owl moth

5pm Sour

I CAN'T KEEP UP. I can't keep any buzz any happiness anything good that I feel, it just falls flat, like an actress in a long dress walking up steep stairs in high heels I fall down flat. I've lovely alcohol in my system but I just feel slightly drunk plus depressed. And I have to go to this doctor on Thursday and try not to present as a picture of self-pitying misery. If I do he will just laugh inwardly and think "bipolar". I feel like such an idiot for ever getting swept away on a high that was somehow of my own making, except I can't make it now. Trust me if anybody could get high like that the world would be full of hypomanic and manic individuals spending, bonking, dancing and wandering round in psychotic confusion, clothes inside out going "dib-dib-dib".

Ask any psychiatrist which mental condition they'd chose to have and I guarantee they'll all tell you "hypomania". That is mild mania: euphoria without paranoia, delusions or voices. So I'm watching Meet The Fockers and I still can laugh at Robert DeNiro and Barbra Streisand. If they can outdo Ben Stiller they're A1 comedians. So I try I do try I keep on trying. Where did I go wrong? Considering this was going BEFORE the heroin. I remember a friend of mine saying she wanted nothing more to do with me "while I was on drugs all the time". But I wasn't! It was mood swings she was seeing. Not drugs. I never was a druggie (a drug-taker; yes. A druggie: no!) I wasn't a druggie until I got into heroin and then I took heroin every day. Heroin flattened out my mood. No more depression. No more highs. The "high" of heroin is very mild and weak as drugs go. I only really took heroin as a chemical coping mechanism, not the indulgence people seem to assume it is. That rubbish about recapturing some original high is pure bumkum for me and most people.

Most people, self included feel little more than an indistinct wuzziness, a hot and itchy body and nausea when they first take heroin. More likely than not you'll end up with your head down the toilet, puking. Only when you get used to it: ie get hooked, do you get the full-blown opiate high. And that rapidly fades into an enhanced version of OK. I OD'd on heroin before I'd ever had a major habit, was in hospital for 2 days. And the high I got (in terms of strength, not niceness) was little higher than a 4 out of 10. Heroin feels weak. It feels clean and fluffy as fresh towels. It doesn't feel dirty or depraved and it certainly doesn't feel "hard" like a "hard drug". Crack does. Crack is drug-induced madness. Heroin makes mellow, gives very little but takes much. It takes away pain. It might eventually take your life. So this feels like it's come to and end. See ya later.

Illustrated: what Americans call a pratfall. Looks better when a pretty girl does it

9pm to 9am

I SLEPT FROM ABOUT 9PM TO 9AM. I never made note of the precise times. Could have been 7pm, I don't recall. I must have had at least 10 hours' sleep. I took 2x 50mg Boots Sleep Aid (diphenhydramine: same as Nytol). That's double the recommended dose but I took 50mg last night and was awake all night long.

I wrote out a whole load of stuff just now but I'll save it until I can think of nothing to say, then it can be a space-filler.

I had to reset my sleep to nighttimes only, else I wouldn't make these 3 appointments I have in the coming week. I like sleeping all day because I can avoid the world then be awake on my own all night. I much prefer living this way.

I'm trying to avoid going into an anti-methadone rant. I don't know whether it really gave me a problem. The long post (coming later) names some people we knew who were heroin addicts who ended up in mental hospitals with bipolar or severe depression after getting clean. Point being, I always knew heroin was a psychic blocker. When you suddenly leave your psyche wide open you go crazy because you no longer have the medicine to make you feel better. I think that's the truth of what goes on rather than methadone literally poisoning me. I'm asking this doctor what he thinks. He's a consultant psychiatrist who spends a lot of time at the methadone clinic so if anybody understands the issues surrounding taking or not taking drugs and going cuckoo he does.

I now have FIVE professionals on my case. And am probably getting one more, making six. Normally you have a methadone key worker and that's it. If everybody saw five or six professionals the system would collapse. It doesn't make me special it makes me a drain on resources. I still think there's some way I could put myself back together on my own. Or to put it another way, this is how I feel, not what I think.

I don't really care about what's what any more. I only did care because it was a way of being responsible (I thought) and anchoring myself to reality (I thought). Whatever it was I cared about before I don't care about now. Every time I get depressed my head convinces me it's not real, certainly not a medical condition. This is why no help ever occurred. It's not my job as patient to name what treatment I need. If this were the case there would be radiotherapy machines in supermarkets and people who thought they had cancer could blast away.

Anyway I see this doctor on the 24th and I refuse to put on a depressed act for him. I realized over time that psychiatrists probably get a lot of that, but I'm not doing it. If I have got depression it's only mild anyway. I don't want antidepressants because I've never had one that worked without putting me on a high, which feels wonderful once it kicks off, but the last time was such a disaster I don't know I'd ever go near such poison again. The antidepressants made me so depressed I had trouble moving my body and didn't even want heroin any more. Anybody who doesn't want heroin, in my opinion is completely crazy or just the kind of strong person who doesn't need drugs to function. I only found heroin easy to give up because I got higher off it (WAY higher) than I ever was on it. I'm no longer willing to give some ignorant bastard, who only deals cheap Afghan crud, my money to feel OK. I took heroin twice last week. The first dose was so powerful it knocked me unconscious for several hours. Yet I still felt miserable. Ergo: heroin no longer works. So there is no answer that I currently know of. (Except God.)

God is one of the higher powers NA talk about. I'm not happy with Narcotics Anonymous. Until I see my doctor I'm probably not going. I'm fed up of the obsession with drugs you get in there. I want to think of other things. The Nutter Club is OK and it says a lot that you find more reality in a room full of mentally ill people than a room full of addicts who ascribe their every problem to addiction. The most ridiculous one I've heard was "I was an addict before I was using".

Well not me: I only lost control of drugs when the drug was heroin and anybody who takes heroin long enough becomes an addict. I'm an addict because I took heroin. Just because somebody has speed or some other rubbish I don't want or need doesn't mean I'll take it, yet NA seem to think I'll do that one too. Just take anything going no matter of time or place or company. That's not behaviour of a drug-addict. That's a drugs dustbin. If you take uppers when you're addicted to heroin, and don't take heroin with them and after them, you're going to feel worse than you ever believed possible.

When I told somebody I couldn't use any drug I got the pat response "of course you can't" but this person meant "because you're an addict". No. I can't use most drugs because they either disagree instantaneously or produce such drastic after-effects, it's not worth taking them again. That's the precise opposite of an addiction or compulsion to use. It's an aversion. But they will not listen. I get very little understanding from NA so I'm putting them on ice until I'm ready to come back. Otherwise I'll just get so pissed off with them, I'll never come back.

O I've got to go this thing has been glaring at me for 4 hours. If I don't press "publish" I'll never post it.


ANCIENT MADONNA: WHITE HEAT; WHO'S THAT GIRL TOUR, MITSUBISHI JAPANESE TV SPECIAL 1988

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Ecstasy and Heroin

IT'S 5PM AND I STILL HAVEN'T BEEN TO BED since last night. This was partially deliberate, to reset my sleep cycle. Though sleeping all day avoiding the world is attractive, I'm meant to see Dr Shrinko next week and I'm meant to go to the Nutter Club and I'm meant to go to the Methadone Clinic and I can't be dragging myself there in a state of depressed sleep deprivation. If I get depressed and especially if I sleep twice, when I wake up the second time I feel really lousy. I don't know why that is. Usually when I'm down I sleep for hours and hours, at least 12 hours a day, sometimes a lot longer. If I go a day without sleep I can do 19 hours or longer. The Patronizers at the clinic liked to blame opiates for this. How come it was happening when I worked, a good 6 years before I was addicted to heroin? They never listened. They're actually more obsessed with drugs than most junkies. In fact I have a theory that some of the staff who work in such places are mere junkies by proxy. They want to be around the stuff. The outrageousness and despair. But they're too scared to commit to the needle (or the foil, if you insist). I kind of understand this. But the only thing that kept me taking heroin was what heroin did for me. Nothing to do with being with any group of people. I noticed heroin addicts seemed a lot more open-minded than ordinary folk. Far more accepting of people for who they were with all their faults. The nightclub crowd coudln't tolerate negativity; it killed their buzz. Their negativity happened when the party was over and they were washed up alone in a meaningless world of comedown that magically restored itself by Thursday night. So by Friday or Saturday they were ready to blitz their brains yet again on MDMA. Though I've raved about MDMA, it was, in the end, just a very seductive lie. People who aren't nice except on E just aren't nice people. They might dearly desire to be nice and use that annoying word "fluffy" which to me always meant lacking in substance and many of them appeared to have a complete personality change on E. Suddenly becoming caring, outgoing, considerate and full of time for others. In real life they were sour, grouchy and very sad. The worst cases I met on the club scene were actually more messed up than the heroin addicts. Perhaps heroin was soothing those addicts' ills in a way that Ecstasy cannot. Ecstasy opens up; heroin closes down. Is there any meaning in chemical meaninglessnes? Or are they just two opposing lies?


EIGHTH WONDER: I'M NOT SCARED
Patsy Kensit apparently used to go to Shoom club in a gym in south London. Shoom was the first Acid House party in the UK. She wanted to be "the biggest star in the world". Then she married Liam Gallagher from Oasis and turned down a part in Friends. Now she's in Holby City...




Illustrated: modern-looking ecstasy pills. The "love dove" bird is totally different from the doves I remember in the early 90s, that sat more upright and were stamped deeper. And they were really beautiful ...

MADONNA TRACKS: The following are the best tracks from their respective albums. And neither one was ever released as a single!

MADONNA: THIEF OF HEARTS (Erotica album)



MADONNA: SKIN (Ray of Light album)

6:41 calm

I DO RECALL A TIME not too long ago when I posted "X o'clock calm" a few times, meaning a lot calmer than I was a couple of hours ago (when I had been in a manic frenzy). Well I'm not exactly feeling wonderful but I am trying to bring myself up or at least distract myself with nice music. I don't handle depression very well I'm afraid and yes I feel depressed and have done since almost precisely 3:30pm last Monday. That is the time that I crashed down from my high and I've been feeling increasingly bad since then. I recall the time because I was supposed to meet Valium Marilyn down the library at 4 and by the time I got there I felt so dire I couldn't even distract myself with the books. I gave her 14 minutes then disappeared into HMV the record/DVD shop where I bought stuff I didn't even want (Michael Jackson) in a forlorn attempt to cheer myself. Now the cheer has vanished and I don't know what to do, how to handle this crisis, what I'm supposed to be doing next, what I'm doing wrong. I'm doing something wrong else I wouldn't be suffering like this. And I want an explanation off that doctor I don't think he realizes how much he does my head in just listening then saying nothing when everyone around him is saying "bipolar" and I feel in sore need of a word to YELL IN THE FACES OF NARCOTICS ANONYMOUS for judging me, looking down on me, thinking me a fantasist and a liar because maybe THEY manage to shower, wear clean clothes and put themselevs together on methadone but I don't. I get more lost, more fucked up and frankly more ill the longer I take that stuff. I turn up to most meetings looking like I've been dragged through a hedge backwards and people wonder why I don't want to engage in the weirdo group hug! Would you want to hug anyone if you hadn't showered for the best part of a week?

Yes I could shower. But it takes me an hour and I've no clean clothes to change into. So I either shower and don't go. Or do go and go dirty. That's the limit of my coping skills and we've gone way past "cannot be bothered" into "it never happens".

I have a desperate desperate problem I have to sort out somehow and I don't even know where to begin. Y'all need to bear in mind I've had troubles with my moods going back arguably to childhood and most certainly since my late teens. I had symptoms of bipolar intermittently from my early 20s though these were originally triggered by antidepressants, so I thought they didn't count. You have to bear in mind the label "manic depressive" while sounding very much more interesting than plain depression also scares the living shit out of me so I decided to hide anything that could possibly be construed as manic from prying doctors until a couple of years ago. By which time I was taken as a deadbeat junkie looking for an excuse to justify my using. Now I get into the mess you all know about. Well, the bits I told you about, and suddenly the doctors are listening. I know doctors and I know human nature and I know when I'm being taken seriously and I'm taken seriously now. Now that I find out if I am actually bipolar I'm not just type one but "severe" with it. Which makes me very bitter, because I asked for help repeatedly and was nodded at and ignored. I told the doctors when I was in the shared care scheme which is a methadone programme for junkies who are doing "really well" (ie ones the ordinary clinic hasn't time for any more) that unless I addressed my long-running problems with moods I wasn't going to make much progress tackling the addiction side of things and got lots of nods and no action whatsoever. THEY are the professionals. It's up to THEM to help ME when I ASK FOR IT. AND I GOT NO HELP WHATSOEVER UNTIL I WAS SO CUCKOO THE WALLS WERE SPEAKING TO ME AND I HAD TO RESTRAIN MYSELF FROM SETTING MY HOUSE ON FIRE AND JUMPING THROUGH AN UPSTAIRS WINDOW. This is the shit I have been trying to deal with. Me going so badly off on one I just don't know what I'm doing any more. You can put whatever interpretation you please as I'm sure you will do. Self-indulgence, hypochondria, whatever. The fact is I was not drug-taking, I wasn't drunk and you get the most watered down version acceptable. I cannot post in full detail, I just can't.

I mean, I realized at one point I had probably been yelling and screaming to myself in my thin-walled room far more frequently than I'd realized. And it suddenly makes sense why my housemates who used to treat me like a junkie but mumble hello now scurry away and hide completely at the first sign of me.

Yes we're back to THIS yet again, because THIS is a whacking great huge unresolved issue that I'm frankly tired of dealing with on my own. I don't know what to do. I feel suicidal or I feel so high I just cannot be bothered with the most basic social niceties. At the extreme I stopped being a human being and had a tiger in my head who ROARED my thoughts for me. I was amping with energy like a nuclear power station (this was a couple of weeks or so ago). And I wondered why people backed away from me in the street!

All this is incredible fun in the high phase but I crashed down and now I'm suffering for it. I'm writing in a lovely clear window of peace, serenity and calm that pragmatism tells me probably won't last. I'm not being negative I'm merely being realistic and if you were like this you'd have to be realistic too. I'm not asking anyone for an answer. I know you can't give one. I see my doctor next Thursday and I only hope I am in a good enough mood to bother leaving my house because I've been so hacked off of late, if I didn't want to go, I just wouldn't. I have been sorely let down by the medical profession when I did all I could to ask for their help. Now that they're willing to give it I really need to do what I have to and just get to appointments in time. But the way things are going I can't get my head round sorting out one set of clean clothes and a clean me by next Thursday. Yeah, it's like that.

This doctor knows exactly what's going on, what drugs I took when, how much, how I felt and when, what happened, how intense it was when and for how long, when x started, when y started happening and when I turned into a living bunch of ZZZZZs. So don't worry on that score. I was so desperate when I saw him last December I could only give unvarnished, unedited truth. I had no idea what he wanted to know or see, so he just saw me. No pretence, no cover-ups, no acting, no "showing what he needs to see". I felt broken, confused, injured and very, very raw. I was in such a mess I had to remind myself to move my arms down when I put them up. My head was rushing but my body was frozen. What I recall most was how shocked he looked at the state of me. Psychiatrists have to be poker-faced for their job, but this one gave himself right away. Nothing I have seen or heard or read, and I did avoid excessive reading about "symptoms" ~ no attention span for one thing ~ but nothing that I did hear did anything to put me at ease. Words like "serious" "severe" and even "lifelong" crop up an awful lot. This pinning it on drugs I gave up months and years ago stuff ... I don't think that's going to wash. This guy seems to think I'm mentally diseased. So apart from trying to cheer myself up with films like Meet the Fockers and mugs of hot chocolate I don't know what else to do.

And I'm leaving it there. Sorry to rant yet again on the same old same old shit. It's just every time I think of what to post it's this issue eating away at me. Originally when y'all said I was thinking too much you probably were assuming I think about what I post all day long, which I don't. But now, because I'm down down down and out, I do think about my failings a lot. And I don't know what the hell to do about them.

Peace and best wishes to y'all. Have a cheery weekend. And if it ain't cheery, may it at least be tolerable.


SEAL: CRAZY
i love this tune



SONIQUE: PUT A SPELL ON YOU



SONIQUE: FEELS SO GOOD



12:33 THIS actually cheered me up: "how did you get diagnosed?" stories....



I WANT OFF METHADONE AS QUICK AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE!

METHADONE ~ A FATE WORSE THAN DEATH







Heroin Shortage: News

If you are looking for the British Heroin Drought post, click here; the latest word is in the comments.







Christiane F

"Wir, Kinder vom Bahnhoff Zoo" by "Christiane F", memoir of a teenage heroin addict and prostitute, was a massive bestseller in Europe and is now a set text in German schools. Bahnhoff Zoo was, until recently, Berlin's central railway station. A kind of equivalent (in more ways than one) to London's King's Cross... Of course my local library doesn't have it. So I'm going to have to order it through a bookshop and plough through the text in German. I asked my druggieworker Maple Syrup, who is Italiana how she learned English and she said reading books is the best way. CHRISTIANE F: TRAILER You can watch the entire 120-min movie in 12 parts at my Random blog. Every section EXCEPT part one is subtitled in English (sorry: but if you skip past you still get the gist) ~ to watch it all click HERE.

To See Gledwood's Entire Blog...

DID you find my blog via a Google or other search? Are you stuck on a post dated some time ago? Do you want to read Gledwood Volume 2 right from "the top" ~ ie from today?
If so click here and you'll get to the most recent post immediately!

Drugs Videos

Most of these come from my Random blog, which is an electronic scrapbook of stuff I thought I might like to view at some time or other. For those who want to view stuff on drugs I've collected the very best links here. Unless otherwise stated these are full-length features, usually an hour or more.

If you have a slow connexion and are unused to viewing multiscreen films on Youtube here's what to do: click the first one and play on mute, stopping and starting as it does. Then, when it's done, click on Repeat Play and you get the full entertainment without interruption. While you watch screen one, do the same to screens 2, 3 and so on. So as each bit finishes, the next part's ready and waiting.

Mexican Black Tar Heroin: "Dark End"

Khun Sa, whose name meant Prince Prosperous, had been, before his death in the mid 2000s, the world's biggest dealer in China White Heroin: "Lord of the Golden Triangle"

In-depth portrait of the Afghan heroin trade at its very height. Includes heroin-lab bust. "Afghanistan's Fateful Harvest"

Classic miniseries whose title became a catchphrase for the misery of life in East Asian prison. Nicole Kidman plays a privileged middle-class girl set up to mule heroin through Thai customs with the inevitable consequences. This is so long it had to be posted in two parts. "Bangkok Hilton 1" (first 2 hours or so); "Bangkok Hilton 2" (last couple of hours).

Short film: from tapwater-clear H4 in the USA to murky black Afghan brown in Norway: "Heroin Addicts Speak"

Before his untimely death this guy kept a video diary. Here's the hour-long highlights as broadcast on BBC TV: "Ben: Diary of a Heroin Addict". Thanks to Noah for the original link.

Some of the most entertaining scenes from Britain's top soap (as much for the poor research as anything else). Not even Phil Mitchell would go from nought to multi-hundred pound binges this fast: "Phil Mitchell on Crack" (just over 5 minutes).

Scientist lady shows us how to cook up gear: "How Much Citric?" Lucky cow: her brown is 70% purity! Oddly we never see her actually do her hit... maybe she got camera shy...

And lastly:

German documentary following a life from teenage addiction to untimely death before the age of 30. The decline in this girl's appearance is truly shocking. "Süchtig: Protokoll einer Hilflosigkeit". Sorry no subtitles; this is here for anyone learning German who's after practice material a little more gripping than Lindenstraße!































Nosey Quiz! Have you ever heard voices when you weren't high on drugs?

Manic Magic

Manic Magic

Gledwood Volume 2: A Heroin Addict's Blog

Copyright 2011 by Gledwood