Telemanagement-gledwood4

BINKY IS IN the psychiatric unit. Yet again. So is her friend Janet. Janet is almost unrecognizable. Really down and withdrawn and not even the "mentally ill" self she was last time I met her in the hospital. Binky however is her normal self. Talking at the top of her voice and screeching demands and remarks at all and sundry when she's in a bad mood. Then being in a good mood and being quite reasonable. You know all this is doing my head in. The LAST place I wanted to go this afternoon was a nuthouse. The staff, well one member of staff, was being really off with me. People are being off with me all around. 

Eg yesterday I was trying to buy ice lollies from Morrisons. I needed lollies because I was so roasting HOT inside it was unreal ~ like heat inside my body. Then I HAVE to go in the shops; the shops have their heating on full. So I feel absolutely horrible, with a river of sweat pouring down my back. So I try and buy these lollies, but just when it's time for 76p change to come cascading through the selfservice machine it decides to break down. The guy on patrol of these ridiculous "unexpected item in bagging area" devices tells me to go to customer services to get my refund but it was nearly 6pm and I had to get my methadone out of the chemists + I desperately NEEDED to eat an ice lolly just to cool down, so I stormed out. On the way out the security guard started being all solicitous. I have to admit that, despite my bad mood, I thought he was trying to be helpful and help me get my 76p refund. But no. He kept banging on asking for my receipt. I yelled at him that I did not need a receipt and pointed out 76p man. Who said yeah yeah so they let me out. Far unhappier than before. So I get my methadone then come back, having eaten 2 of this lolly 4-pack, a bit calmer. But the woman at customer services treated me like some sort of nutter. Maybe it's because I was eating an ice lolly in front of her in January, who knows but I was boiling hot and sweating STILL. Anyway 76p guy had vanished. Eventually I found him at the other end of the store but he studiedly ignored me. Ie saw me and pretended not to so I gave up there and then thinking it was well worth 76p just to get the hell out of their furnace of a shop. Then I went home. 

But I'm not very happy with anything or any one. Eg the council putting letters through my door about window maintenance. I DON'T WANT MY WINDOWS CHECKED. But they insist so I'm making an appointment for February. I might tell them I'm in the Scottish Highlands and cannot come down before then. You know. And Binky. Everybody = driving me crazy. This is what no drugs does to you. People always think I'm together when I'm on heroin. When I'm off it, they think I'm a drug addict (which is of course true, because I'm a methadone addict when I'm off heroin). And yes the strapline at the top of my blog IS accurate because this blog IS about my life after heroin. What kind of a life it will be, I cannot imagine. Even my own family seemed to assume (over the phone) that I was out of it on drugs during the period I used no gear whatsoever for weeks/months (no idea how long: not into day-counting). (They never actually said they thought I was using, I just got the impression that was their suspicion.) When I went mad about 3 years ago, I wasn't on any drugs, except, eventually antipsychotics. And a tiny bit of methadone. You know I'm pretty sure I know what caused all that madness in me: it's because heroin is a psychic insulator. It closes you down and wraps you up. It always made me feel centred and much more stable than off heroin. Just as a fur coat makes you feel warm in the arctic. Take off the coat and it's no surprise you've suddenly got frostbite. Doesn't mean fur coats "cause" frostbite though.... Do you follow? The drugs that actually make you go whacky all of a sudden are all ones I hate. (Ie everything except heroin and benzos.) Benzos are stuff like diazepam and I get that prescribed in tiny amounts for emergency use. It's diazepam withdrawal that makes people lose the plot, but I've never been addicted, so I can't ever have been in benzo withdrawal... What am I banging on about...?

Ukh it's Binky she makes me feel all UNcentred and agitated. Despite being my dearest of dear friends. I find going into nuthouses rather disturbing. Especially when the staff seem to be treating ME like a nutter. Which she encourages by speaking to them about me in psychiatric terms. Yes it's Binky that I caught labelitis from, at one point. She knows all the labels and very often speaks in labels. Most mental patients these days do. Ie it's not at all unusual to hear a person on her ward tell a nurse "I've got suicidal ideation again"... It's spread into our culture... Psychiatry is the Great Religion of our Age.  It validates and makes sense of the central unhappiness most of us feel living in such a surface shallow hypocritical unstable economy...

If ONLY she could never go in hospital again and never have another meltdown then I might... just might... be able to forget all this nightmare of psychiatricality. I'm so sick of the whole subject. + the groups they pushed me into going to via the methadone clinic, which encourage excessive self-absorbtion (I think). I'd rather think of things outside... Which by the way I have been doing a LOT, by means of my art and literature, but I can't post art up because I don't know how to. And I can't post up my literature, because it's copyright and I intend to sell it as a proper publication. Once it's all finished and ready &c &c &c...

Anyway my biggest problem at the moment is Binky I don't know what we're going to do with her. She's so unstable it's unreal and I can't handle the stress.

Anyway I've got to go.

Sorry for all this burbling. I have really mixed feelings about all the subjects discussed above. Especially "mentality" I just want to FORGET all about that madness stuff, but am never allowed to. Because of Binky going crazy and ending up in the madhouse over and over again...

I CAN'T STAY ON FOR A LONG TIME; it's the end of a long day, I didn't go to bed last night I feel maxxed out and overloaded and stressed and I've just gone shopping with Binky pre-new-year rush and all. I'm getting on with Binky far far better. My fellow blogger-friend Beverly asked (in recent comments (and I didn't reply Bev because I only just got them, they automatically go through moderation once the post is a certain number of days old...) am I loving? Well I think, no. (In a way, at least). What I mean by this is that one thing I picked up from the failed (cancelled) MBT group I was going to was how divorced from my feelings I actually am. In many ways Binky and I are emotional opposites. She inhabits her emotions, I can, at times, tend to want to sit opposite mine feeling ironic and slightly superior. I mean, for years one of my most favourite words has been "entertaining" which one ex-friend once admitted to me, during a blazing argument, that she really found irritating because it seemed to epitomize me as a sneery supercilious person. I'm not sure that I was, but she thought I was. I'm more an emotionally deadened person who plays it tonge-in-cheek a lot of the time for want of any other way to play it. It may sound weird to talk of emotional detatchment when I've been so prone to mood problems over the years, but moods and emotions are very different things. Binky'snot to feel emotional. A lot of depressed people tend to claim they don't actually feel... that they can't feel; that their feelings are more frozen than painful as such... Do you see what I mean?
mental problems seem to focus around emotional dysregulation; whereas mine have often seemed to involve some dysregulation of mood. Mood is to do with your predominate feelings, so it's possible to use mood as a way

Why am I banging on about distancing self from feelings? Because I feel that, in a sense, I have treated Binky too callously in the past, shutting myself off from her. I can't put my finger on what it is I did wrong, but I know I do really find it difficult to engage with people in any kind of really "emotional" way... I don't know why, it's just something I've noticed over the years...

... And of course heroin, my addict drug of choice is inherently about not feeling things. (People don't really take heroin to get "high" as such, more not to feel low, not to feel real, not to feel the immediacy of life... or perhaps more literalistically you could say it seems to blunt off life's sharp edges and that's what I relied on it for far far FAR TOO MUCH.

Both Binky and I are making new year's resolutions NOT TO USE AGAIN. And it's 3:42pm ~ about eight hours till the new year and I think this year I actually am going to watch those review of the year shows and counting in hogmanay on BBC. In previous eras I haven't had the slightest interest in a change of date from one number to another, but I DID make and very largely keep a new year's res to give up crack cocaine some years ago (you know it could well be five years ago now) and was so impressed by my success there that I'm into making another resolution this year to knock heroin-taking on the head for once and for all. For so many reasons it is not a good thing. Why would I even state such an obviousness? Because there's a part in me who asserts that heroin has made me feel good, helped me cope (emotionally), killed my pain, that I have every right to the pursuit of my own happiness and if that has to involve a reliance on heroin then so be it... yes I have indulged in that line of thought in the past. I've been feeling really really horrible at some points over recent weeks (probably with depression though I'm so wearied of all that I've now largely dropped labels, except where absolutely necessary)... I'vat all...) More recently life has become confused and I so want to move on and be CLEAN in so many ways. Physically clean, drugsually clean, emotionally clean, psychically clean, spiritually clean... know what I mean?
e felt shit and taken heroin I've felt shit and not taken it. I was doing REALLY REALLY WELL late 2010, early 2011 (even though mentally deranged I was not touching heroin or any illicit drugs

Am I blithering on in my usual self-centred way yet again? Well this IS a blog. By a drug addict desperate to stop... so what else do I write about?

I just think the heroin I've still been using has confounded an already confused and confusing situation, that it has to be taken out of the mix, that I would do better to focus on cutting down and giving up methadone ... etc etc. I have a LOT of ambitions for a new life and yes I HAVE put in the legwork to change my life, it's not just talk. I predict my life will alter in the next couple of years beyond all recognition....

And I sit here and hear myself "the heroin I've been using"... like I'm talking about drinking cups of tea. Yes I know we live in a drug-addled society but still HEROIN ~ the dirtiest and hardest and most disreputable of drugs. I'm so ashamed to say it has still been playing a part in my life and that part has been far too big. (If you don't need heroin, my advice to self and to others is DON'T TAKE IT. So that's where I'm going. Back to not taking it at all.

And like I say, I've started to feel genuinely and deeply ashamed about my drug use. I'm unhappy enough about being on methadone, but heroin is beyond the pale.

By the way I think I should add that here in London there is no scene around synthetic prescription opiates like OxyContin or Dilaudid as in America. In London, opiate abuse means heroin abuse. (Of course prescription drugs must go around, but in my approaching 15 years of addiction I've never seen pills or vials of illicitly obtained opiates. Ever. They're that rare here and that's a side-effect, I'm sure of having an NHS. Where patients are not paying customers, doctors feel far less pressured to cough out spurious pain medication prescriptions ~ that's the fact of the matter, I'm afraid.

Well I've gabbled on enough and I have to go. I just want to wish you all a very happy and successful new year 2014 and to pass on my love and best wishes to you all XxXxXxX

BINKY AND I are getting on far far better than I would have imagined after our friendship-fracturing-to-the-point-of-near-termination blazing xmas day row. Which was kind of all my fault, as it was I who verbally stuck the boot in (I see in retrospect). Though at the time I believed I was merely making highly valid points that needed to be made if our dysfunctional relationship was to continue to function at all... I upset her so very much I'm deeply surprised that she wants to talk to me at all. (+ deeply touched.) 

Tomorrow we're going to the art shop for my intellectual Japanese brushpen ink and her sketching equipment. For some reason, we're both into learning to draw black-n-white illustrations. Me to illustrate my children's book. Her purely for self-improvement, I think. She knows I've completed this story that I'm calling my "intellectual book" (there's nothing intellectual about it and it's barely long enough to be considered a book by anybody's standards, but I'm kind of proud of myself over my achievement at actually finishing something, even just this one tiny thing, that I started... know what I mean? So I'm learning illustration, to be able to put this story out on my own, without reliance on an outside illustrator. I'm learning Japanese brush pen because it'll give my work a distinctive aura all of its own that will be more difficult for outsiders to copy. Did you know the cartridges for this Pentel refillable brush cost literally £4 each??!? That's $6.59!!! So I took a syringe and pumped in 6 parts Windsor and Newton's India black and another 7 parts Lamy black bottled fountain pen ink and got a product almost as good. It's just not quite as sensitive to the very finest details, where the old product sank more into the paper this floats atop it, causing different effects. Also I find it quite different attemptedly painting in shadow, whereas naturally we see by light. So in effect I'm painting a photographic negative... know what I mean?

I'm also TRYING to write another story but am nowhere near as inspired as I'd like to be. + another, far better plot has come along, for another book, but I'm trying to finish the first book first... which is wearying and very trying for me, as I know I need to be most professional about all this. Even though I'm not a professional but merely a down-&-out schizo on benefits who is lucky to be able to write at all. And when I feel really ill I can't even do that. Can't get my head around the details of even the simplest passage of children's prose, in order to compare and improve short less than 1-page passages of parallel drafts. How truly pathetic is that? 

Anyway, back to Binky's and my friendship. I think it's better than ever before, for this spring cleaning of truth-telling agony... how really weird is THAT??!?

My family say give her more benefit of the doubt, she is mentally ill and all that. Weirdly, Binky says I am mentally ill. It's true, at one point I did learn all the labels but labels are all they are ~ in the modern-day prevailing religion known as Psychiatry where the priests are the doctors and the Blessed Ones are diagnosed with Schizophrenia... Know what I mean? (Ie, I mean it's all bullshit.)

I do think I give Binky a lot of Benefit of the Doubt but was angry on xmas day because I thought she was insulting my intelligence and taking me for a ride. Now I think I was unnecessarily cruel to a person who is immensely brave and strong to have survived the cartload of shit that she has been through in life and the last thing she needs is a person like me, who should be supportive, undermining her in any way. So I've decided that I need to be much more of a friend and I'm doing the things I think friends do. So I hope I'm doing the right things...

Righty-ho I've got to go. Have a great New Years Eve everybody and NO TWERKING!!

WHERE IS IT WRITTEN?

BARBRA STREISAND singing in the film YENTL

I LOVE THIS SONG

You could say the words are totemic to my life...

I want this played at my funeral

o and here's a new year's song especially for you Akelamalu, because I know you like it

MADONNA: HANKY PANKY (BLOND AMBITION: LIVE IN YOKOHAMA)

XMAS DAY WAS TERRIBLE for me and Binky. We had a vicious argument on the phone about me never making it round to her house. I never made it because I felt terrible and we had an argument which started with that but then went on to other things (on my part) kept pent up for too Long. So xmas day was a horrible day and Binky got reallly upset, sobbing pitifully down the phone and I felt dead guilty for having set her off so bad. So I sent her a big message saying sorry and we only exchanged pressies today.

I took my meds early and slept the entire xmas day through, missing everything on TV, proof that I really wasn't well (you know, because I secong-guess myself all the time, telling myself I ought to be fine, in fact I go through life telling everybody I'm fine even when I feel anything but...) (I cannot just sleep like that all day on demand). (What had happened was, I slept about an hour and a half over the night then it was time to go, walking six miles there and back and I just wasn't up to it. My foot was still hurting after my treading broken glass into it.... all this ridiculousness.)

She bought me a really cool watch a SKELETON WATCH which is what I've always wanted. I don't know how she knew that. And I got her gold dangly earrings and giant silver diamond hoops. Stuff that would have cost in the £100,000s were it real. I was really glad she liked hers as I semi thought she might consider it worthless tacky tat. But it's not tat at all, it's beautiful.

I have to go I'm thinking about my future life and am really stressed about the legalistics of the amusement of my "intellectual books"...

So that was my xmas. OK in the end, and we forgave and forgot. LITERALLY forgot. Neither of us WANTS and we certainly don't need to recall the ins and outs of a crazy episode... so it's fading from both our minds, exactly as we require it to. 

I hope your day was more joyous...

Pictures: not the exact stuff, but the jewellery is from the same lines... isn't it wonderful?