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Attack of the Furry Entertainers!

Attack of the Furry Entertainers!

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Drugs Course

YESTERDAY I WOKE UP feeling like a block of ice. I had two hours until I was due at my antidrugs appointment. This is an intuitive recovery course that'ssuposed to teach you a way of changing your thinking to dump drugs for good.

I drank my methadone, saved from the previous day so I had it when I needed it, namely first thing in the morning when craving is at its strongest. It took me over an hour to thaw out.

Since the "hot weather" ~ since it's been sunny ~ whoever lives in the room with the boiler has decided to turn off our heating. Well thanks very much. Our house is now icy.

All the normal thoughts went through my head re this course. Not today, please. Not right now. Some other day. I do want to do it, just not right this minute.

My landlord was messing around in another room. The mere sight of his van outside was doing my head in, so I left a half hour early and went down to the Shoplifting Therapy office where the course is held, grabbing a Cherry Fizz cyder on the way.

When I got there a crowd of druggielooking people was clustered by the gate. I skulked in through the other entrance, gave my name and left. I was 25 minutes early. So I went down the park and smoked three Sterling Superkings (I love long ciggies: you break the ends off and roll them separately when the main smokes have gone.)

Then we did the course. The lady in charge was letting a trainee commandeer most of the instruction and he was reading the guidebook aloud. I could have read it myself in a fifth of the time.

The other people were OK but full of swagger and shit and there was me at the back with barely any life in me, fighting to stay awake because I'd had barely any sleep.

Rather than making me more resolved to stay clean, all the drug talk just made me want to use. Trust me I came in there with all the best intentions. I was more excited about this course than I've been about anything and I was so disappointed. I couldn't snap out of my own sour mood, I just wanted to get out of there.

And I couldn't help noticing I almost certainly had the longest drug history of anyone in that room. See: feeling like an old junkie again. Doesn't do much for the self esteem.

I got home exhausted. Gave someone money to score. Someone I knew and should have known better and he ripped me off. So now I have to torture him. I popped a Valium and slept from late afternoon through to four thirty am. And I woke up feeling dire. The drugs I had paid for would have been all gone by now anyhow so I'm not bitter about that. When I see this guy I'm going to be real nicey nicey. I'll say "Was that shit as good as you said it was? I got stop and searched, threw it on the ground and couldn't find it again." And I'll reel him in that way. And I will get my refund.

My problem now is the same problem I had yesterday, the day before and every day since my mood levels crashed. I'm down and nothing will raise me up. Heroin makes an OK antidepressant while it works. Crack is out of the question. It makes me jagged, wiry, paranoid and in bipolar terms manic and depressed at the same time. I don't need a substance that does that to me. But heroin is a different matter. Heroin was my medicine for years, and it did what I paid for. Took the edge, and often a lot more than the edge off my despair. It's for that reason that I found methadone days unbearable. On methadone I had nothing insultating me from brain-numbing despair.

Now I have to find something that's going to help me but what? Mood stabilizers will prevent me being manic ever again. Despite the chaos I miss that high. The manic high I was on at the beginning of the year took me higher than any drug has ever done. That's how I want to live. I don't care whether I'm crazy. This world is crazier than I've ever been. Anyone who wants to live in this world straight is in my opinion crazier even than the world.

Don't misread me, I'm not saying I want a high off drugs. I'm saying I want my own natural high back. The name of that high is mania. So I'm bipolar, so what? Schizoaffective if you prefer. Bipolar and schizoaffective are different flavours of the same thing. Schizoaffective just means you're whackier than bipolar. I'm off my antipsychotics because I thought they were bringing me down, and I'm not psychotic again am I? I'm just depressed. Depressed like I have been, to a greater or lesser extent, for nearly all of my adult life. When I wasn't depressed I was high: on a drug high or (during my drug holidays) the natural high when your mind cycles between high and low.

All my mood swings say to me is that I'm more of a person than somebody without such extremes. The narrower your emotional range, the narrower you are as a person. So I'm a very wide person. Heaven and hell are inside me. Why should I medicate myself away on toxic metal (lithium) that will only make me less of a person?

I don't care any more for other people's standards. All I need to do is come off methadone because that is the State's control over me. Without that I can turn into who I truly am. I don't know where this story is going. But before you judge me, ask yourself, where are you going? We think we know. We would like to know. But we don't know really. We don't know nothing.


Anonymous said...

hi gledwood,i don't want to insult your intelligence with platitudes,so i won't..you sound like your self,real,and i agree,who wouldn't want to feel incredibly high naturally?if only you could channel it so there wasn't a crashing downer afterwards..maybe this downer is the other side of the wave that took you up..?
with love,annie.

Gledwood said...

the other side thats it the darkside

Bimbimbie said...

Hi Gleds, I've missed a few of your posts - trying to work out if you've recently bought some more furry hamsters?

Akelamalu said...

So you don't want to get clean anymore then?

Gledwood said...

Bimbibie: no hamsters

Akelamalu: no I mean I want a natural high back. I was so antidrugs when I was high like that it was unreal!

Liz said...

Trouble is, without the downs you don't appreciate the highs. My life is without extremes. Because of my happy pill I feel very little emotion where others are moved or touched or affected by something i'm just, 'oh yeah, it's bad.'

All I can say is that you sound more positive and generally better. And keep hanging on in there, babe!

I'm listening to an old Robbie Williams cd. Now there's a man with highs and lows and who seems to be continually searching.

Gledwood said...

You on Prozac Elizabeth?

Funny I sound better I feel in real emotional pain but my head is in one piece, unlike during that mania when I was all over the place.

I think I'm actually bipolar type 1 (mania with psychotic features) rather than schizoaffective but it's a hairsplitting distinction as the meds and treatment are exactly the same for both conditions.

I'm looking forward to Day 2 of the Intuitive Recovery course tomorrow; it should be really good. I know I don't feel that brilliant but I hope at least to learn something from it all.

I hope your depression gets better t comeoff those happy pills soon!

Anna Grace said...

I just left a long comment, asking if you ever fantize about killing yourself. I do and it comforts me, my depression is so bad right now that all that comforts me is the thought of killing myself.

Love you,
Hope you go manic again soon

Gledwood said...

I don't know why this is, but when I crash from manic straight down into depressed, like I did when I was cycling between December and March I did feel suicidal a lot when I was in the depression. Now I'm just in depression I feel very negative and wish I was dead sometimes more than I actually want to commit suicide. I used to fantasize about killing myself a lot but don't post it online so much now because it annoyed people and worried people when really it was just a thought to console myself, as I know you understand. A lot of people think they understand depression but what they don't understand is the way it comes back and back and back as mood swings whether life is going good or shit you still feel down and nothing shifts it. I know exercise can make youfeel a bit better but it's not a cure and neither are the other things like going for walks in the park etc etc that people advise. I know what they're saying, it helps a bit but it's no cure. I don't want fucking mood stabilizers. If I was in Victorian times I'd be allowed toenjoy my manic phases in their full entirety so I'm just really hoping for a lovely full on manic episode soon so I can go manic swimming. That's really what I want to do, manic swimming.I know this probably sounds mad to anyone else reading apart from you but they have never been manic probably and don't know how amazing it feels. I am lucky I get more high when I go manic than low when I'm depressed. True the depression lasts longer but it's less intense than the mania. I mean when I went fully up I was so high my head was just full of random words that didn't add up, then the words broke up into clangs and rhymes, then I just had noise. It was so intense, like when you lose your temper and go into absolute fury. That's intense, but this was about five to ten times more intense than THAT. Unless you've been there you can't understand how intense the mania actually gets, I mean at the peak I was higher than I ever got on crack even, so high I was on top of thevery universe. Man that was amazing. I want that feeling back. That's why I stopped my meds. At the moment I'm just down and suffering formy decision, but Im hoping my mood will switch up very soon.

Gledwood said...


I so much want to go high again. I was so antidrugs in this state it was unreal (I mean, why take drugs when you're already HIGHER than any drug will ever take you?) I want my natural high back; it's my high my own natural legal high and I want it back. I know I go all over the place and I know I go crazy (I hear voices a lot when I'm like that) but the voices usually talk about random things and don't bother me, they just add entertainment to my mental state. The doctors thought I had a really healthy attitude, considering my psychotic symptoms as "free entertainment" ~ what else are they. I hope you can go flying with me one day. I can't ever suggest you came off medication and I'd be really upset if I thought you'd given it up due to me. You seem to get pretty intense mood swings ON your meds so you just carry on as you are and you should get a high naturally. Wouldn't it be cool if we could switch moods together, then we can send midnight emails and messages, not sleeping and comparing what messages we get if/when the voices start talking. Do you get cool voices too or are they just scary? Mine don't scare me they only bother me when I'm paranoid which is when I'm on the way up into mania. At the top I feel so grandiose I'm amazing, like a human angel, that's how it feels, like my body's turning into pure power and my mind encompasses the entire universe. It's fucking fantastic and I want it back. I love that cosmic feeling. I'm keeping my meds as an emergency supply in my bathroom cabinet in case I urgently need any so don't worry about me. I just want free of this depression. I'm sleeping 12 hours on a good day; 16, 17 hours or longer on a shit day. I'm fed up, it's going downwards I feel worse and worse as the days go on now I'm in constant pain like a mental migraine. If only I could snap out of this and have a manic phase... if only! Hopefully it won't be too long until I do switch. I really need a good high mood. I really need one ASAP :-)



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