drugs – Page 3 – Nick Grant

Nick Grant

Tag: drugs

  • Find What You Love, and let it Kill You

    This is a story about taking things too literally…

    Fast food

    Very poetic, but I think the original author meant an obsession with a  beautiful woman, rich food, riding a motorbike too quickly or numerous other things where people would say “he died doing what he loved doing”.

    When it comes to drink, drugs and cigarettes (although “love” is a bit of a strong word for disgusting fags) people are like “no no no no. I didn’t mean that literally”.

    Personally, I’d rather drink myself to death and let my addiction rampage out of control, than have a long life of mediocrity – endless hours spent watching light entertainment TV shows, riding the commuter train, bumbling along at work just because it’s a job.

    I’ve been ridiculously lucky, in that I have so many highly paid jobs I could apply for and probably get.

    My dad taught me from an early age that there’s no God and no afterlife so I have create to meaning.,

    Currently I live for supercrack, with my writing a close second.

    The infrequency of my blogging, most of the last 14 nights have been alcohol free and mostly without food, tells you everything you need to know about how much I love suercrack.

    Let’s get this straight: supercrack is killing me. It’s wrecking my kidneys and heart, let alone the brain damage and other damage that’s caused by stumbling around drunk from sleep deprivation, in the pitch black because you’re too paranoid about anybody seeing your druggie face.

    Let’s also get this straight: I do not love supercrack. I spent whole nights holding my bedroom door shut with my feet, convinced that somebody’s in my apartment and intent on seeing me at my lowest ebb; my most undignified, I spent until about 4am last night waiting up for the people to who wanted to harm me (stone thrown at window and back door kinda aggressively rattled. I decided to hide in the bathroom, which has a lockable door. Then, there were the sounds of drilling and work-boots and what I assumed were the landlord’s minions who had taken it upon themselves to sort out my pit of misery and shame.

    It is my understanding that, in the UK, you may not enter an owned or rented home without at least 24 hours prior notice, unless there’s an “emergency” the landlord has to fix (e.g. a leak), the police have reasonable cause to believe that your life may be in danger… or a warrant. I don’t know anything about warrants. I imagine they’re not the easiest things to get for ‘minor’ crime, such as making a noise in your bathroom at 6am.

    I was flabbergasted when I checked the time, having emerged from the bathroom – my doorbell had just rung – looking for a police offer to save me from the intruders who never once responded to my shouts of “who are you?” and “what are you doing in my apartment?” and “what authority do you have to be here?” and “you’d better be police officers with a warrant otherwise there’s going to be hell to pay”.

    For every 15 enjoyable minutes of supercrack, it will give you 36 hours of paranoia, sweating, obsessive thinking, tachycardia, brachycardia, bruxism, dread, fear, anhedonia, loss of self-esteem, insomnia, lack of energy.

    Today, I nearly died of dehydration, malignant hyperthermia, rhabdoyalosis and excess exertion placed on my heart. This is how the supercrack minset goes: “this is brilliant…. I should take more”…. enter stimulant psychosis.

    Tomorrow I have to deal with some of the consequences of going bat-shit insane from stimulant psychosis. Most of it revolves around barricading doors. I took the precaution of papering my windows shut, because drug addiction is not a spectator’s sport – you’re a sick fuck if you want to see people at their most vulnerable. However, the papered shut windows – in my mind at least – have attracted the attention of would be voyeurs, who would love nothing more than to see me taking drugs and masturbating to porn.

    Fine, let it kill you, but your dignity will die first. I genuinely believed I was going to be carted off today, having not showered for 3 days and been pretty much constantly sweating. Oh the smell. The smell.

    Then, what else are you prepared to lose? Your girlfriend? Your home? Your job? Your money (although admittedly supercrack is super cheap – it’s fixing me and the other stuff that’s expensive).

    My loss of earnings from being too unwell – comedowns after stimulant psychosis – to work is over £4,000. People with coke habits put thousands up their noses. If you think my money goes on drugs, you’re wrong. I’ve probably spent several thousands on beds in the last few years… I just decide they need ‘remodelling’ when I’ off my rocker. Don’t ask me why.

    I need to stop this, before it costs me my job, my clean criminal record, my apartment, more money than I can afford, and my sanity (already in bad shape). It really pisses me off how it can have me physically shaking and vomiting, with the strength of the craving, after a year of being a good boy.

    I thought to myself today: “it’d be a shame if I died, because I haven’t reached a million words yet or achieved anything much to be proud of”. I was giving a lecture on how to be a good Java programmer to nobody in particular, in the dark of my bathroom earlier.

    I’m still managing to work – albeit from home – but it won’t be long before my relapse becomes obvious to all involved. I’ve got a bloody yacht I can use now, but I haven’t left the house since May 14, when we broke up. I dumped her – of course. I probably already knew in my subconscious mind that I was going to relapse.

     

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  • My Government Made Me a Criminal

    This is a story about changing the law…

    Legal high packets

    In 1920 in the UK, heroin and cocaine were made illegal to possess – if you were alive when heroin and cocaine could legally be bought and sold, you’re 98 years old, or older. Assuming that becoming a drug addict isn’t generally possible until you’re old enough to obtain money, score drugs and get high without your parents noticing, let’s assume that you’d have to be a 12-year-old heroin addict back in 1920, in order to have been affected by this change in the law, which means that you’d be 110 years old today, assuming you’re still alive.

    Having tried various antidepressants and mood stabilisers which were prescribed by my doctor, I became frustrated with the fact that most of the medications available to those who are suffering with depression, are slow acting – taking some 6 to 8 weeks to become effective – and they cause weight gain, sexual dysfunction and somnolence. Given that I valued my appearance, my sex life and my job, the side effects of the medications on offer were intolerable.

    Through extensive research, I found many medications which are not commonly prescribed, but which had shown considerably better efficacy in clinical trials than the SSRIs and other antidepressants which were on offer through the NHS. These medications were not controlled substances, so I was able to legally purchase them from overseas pharmacies and have them delivered to me in the post.

    My self-experimentation led me to a medication called bupropion – marketed as Wellbutrin – which is actually France’s most popular antidepressant, but doesn’t have a license for use as an antidepressant in the UK. Bupropion was very effective and fast-acting – it alleviated my symptoms of depression, and appeared to have no intolerable side effects. However, at higher doses I suffered insomnia and panic attacks. I discontinued its use.

    Growing more desperate to find something as effective as bupropion – which had given me welcome and much needed relief from my depression – I turned to a group of medications for treating Parkinson’s disease. These had terrible side effects, including a period where I became narcoleptic. Clearly my self-experimentation had become risky and I even induced in myself pseudo-Parkinson’s symptoms briefly, which mercifully went away soon after discontinuing my experiment with L-DOPA, without lasting damage.

    You have to understand that it was my desperation to feel better after years of suffering with depression and low mood, which drove me to take these risks and use myself as a human guinea pig. Given how suicidal I had been, there was only upside for me – if I died, that was likely to happen anyway through suicide; if I felt better – even briefly – then I had succeeded.

    Through a tabloid newspaper, I became aware of legal highs. The tabloid newspaper’s sensationalistic coverage of the legal highs was a great advertisement for something I hadn’t known about or tried before. I was ready and willing to experiment with legal highs, given that I had already exhaustively experimented with all the medications I could lay my hands on.

    The very first legal high that I obtained was bk-MDMA, also known as methylone. This chemical cousin of MDMA – also known as ecstasy, Molly, Mandy, X etc. – had similar properties but lacked a lot of the telltale giveaway side effects of MDMA, such as jaw-clenching and other involuntary mouth movements known colloquially as “gurning”. Its mildly stimulating effects restored the energy and enthusiasm for life that had been stolen from me by depression – it was instantly curative, which is everything I’d ever hoped for.

    bk-MDMA was made illegal in the UK in April 2010, but thankfully I was not addicted to it. No plan had been made to help any of the people who had become addicted to the legal highs, which overnight became illegal highs. No detox and rehab places had been made available. No medical support was available. No addiction counselling had been made available. Nobody thought about what would happen to all the people who had become addicted to substances that were completely legal one day and illegal the next. I was one of the lucky ones – I was able to abruptly stop taking bk-MDMA, but of course my depression then returned with a vengeance.

    After 2010 followed a period of cat-and-mouse where those people who were addicted, or like me were self-medicating using legally available substances, were then driven out of dependency – not through choice – to then seek an alternative, which global free-market capitalism was only too happy to provide. Out of desperation, I obtained and experimented with every legally available substance I could obtain, in order to treat my medication-resistant depression.

    Sadly, during this time I experienced total burnout due to the demands of my business, the collapse of my marriage and subsequent divorce, and other factors which put me at risk of addiction. In this perfect storm, I was careless and ended up experimenting with a substance which all my research had told me was exceptionally risky and should be avoided. Out of desperation I tried a substance I said I never would. It turned out to be fiendishly addictive, even though it was legal.

    The cat-and-mouse game of making substances illegal – criminalising the unfortunate addicts caught the trade war – had absolutely nothing to do with health and public safety… I was one of the victims finally caught me in the net and criminalised, through no fault of my own. I had an addiction to a substance that had become illegal overnight, with nothing put in place to help me escape addiction’s vice-like grip. No detox, no rehab, no treatment, no legally prescribed substitute, no medical advice, no support, no guidance, no nothing – I just woke up one day, and I was a criminal. I was wilfully and knowingly criminalised by my own government.

    My attempts to stay on the right side of the law are documented above. Pictured are legal high packets of substances that could be legally bought until as recently as 2016. These could be bought in shops or via the internet. I attempted to find a legal substitute, so that my addiction did not make me a criminal, but even this route became barred to me. Addictions do not respect the law, just as much as you cannot make a law that says “all people called fred must by law become dogs” and POOF! suddenly all Freds magically turn into a dog – that’s wishful magical thinking. One cannot simply legislate to get rid of addiction – addiction is an illness and it needs to be treated.

    I’m not pro-legalisation. I don’t think that all drugs should be legal. I think that drugs are dangerous. However, it’s clearly immoral to criminalise an addict.

    If I was committing crime – such as theft – to fund my habit, then I agree that those crimes have been crimes for a very long time. However, what is my crime? What crime did I commit? How did it come to pass that I’d become a criminal, with no opportunity to avoid it given my dependence on the substances in question?

    The police, using their discretion, saw fit to caution me on multiple occasions for the same offence – namely possession of a controlled substance. Normally this wouldn’t happen and breaking the law for a second time would automatically lead to prosecution, but perhaps the Crown Prosecution Service saw that as a test case, it would have set a disastrous precedent for their new laws.

    The New Psychoactive Substances act of 2016 hinges on the central word: psychoactive. In order to obtain a conviction, it must be proven beyond reasonable doubt that the substance deemed illegal is in fact psychoactive. However, as anybody who has read the mighty tomes Phenethylamines I Have Known and Loved and Tryptamines I Have Known and Loved by Alexander Shulgin, will know that it’s impossible to predict which substances will be psychoactive and which will not, without experimenting on a human test subject. Ethically it is not conscionable to experiment on humans, purely for the purposes of obtaining criminal convictions, but it’s the only way that a conviction could viably stand under the government’s new law – otherwise the test of beyond reasonable doubt cannot possibly stand because the burden of proof has not been met to prove the psychoactivity of a new and novel substance.

    Today I’m clean and substance-free, but I have police cautions which will remain on record for life, and will not be ‘filtered’ until 6 years have elapsed, which prevents me from working in jobs which require an enhanced level of background checks. I cannot, for example, use my outdoor pursuits instructor qualifications to teach children to rock climb, abseil, sail dinghies or walk in the mountains. I leave it to the reader to decide whether my punishment is commensurate with my crimes, and what danger I pose to the general public.

    I take a huge risk writing about this so publicly, but I feel that it’s more important to publish this information than it is to maintain my privacy and anonymity. I feel sorry for those who, like me, have been criminalised by a government that doesn’t give a damn who’s victimised by their legislation, and whose lives are consequently ruined. I’m very lucky that I don’t have a criminal record. Others have not been so lucky, because they are not so well educated and informed as me – they’re vulnerable.

    Drug addicts will always be a convenient scapegoat, because they’re weak and vulnerable. I hope that in telling my story, you can see that addicts aren’t evil, immoral and lacking in willpower. Our circumstances dictate the outcome – we don’t make our choices freely.

     

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  • #420

    This is a story about April 20th…

    420 greenhouse

    Cannabis seems harmless enough, but you’re not in full possession of your faculties when you’re stoned. You’re not intoxicated, but it has an effect, otherwise why would you even bother to get stoned? Your internal experience does not correlate with others’ perceptions of reality – you might feel fine and unimpaired, but there’s definitely an effect otherwise you wouldn’t bother getting stoned.

    When you’re a little kid and your parents drink and take drugs, you never know what kind of state you’re going to find them in. Are they going to tell you to piss off because they’re irritable and aggressive, because they’re high on cocaine? Are they going to be excessively sleepy and monged out because they’ve been taking heroin or other opiates? Are they going to be dribbling messes spouting gibberish, because they’re stoned out of their trees? Then, there’s the comedowns and hangovers. Are you going to get your head bitten off, because the drugs have worn off and they’re feeling shitty? Are you going to get an unjust telling off, because they’re like a bear with a sore head, blaming you for everything?

    Then there’s the emotional unavailability.

    When your parents are druggies and alkies, they’re emotionally unavailable most of the time, because your parents are seeking drugs and trying to get high and intoxicated, instead of getting on with normal family life. Instead of having cuddles, they’re getting high. Instead of having hugs, they’re getting high. Instead of having all those myriad little moments of love and affection, they’re completely absent in the family home, because those druggie alkie parents have checked out – they’ve left reality.

    I’m sure my parents thought – in their heads – that they did a wonderful job. Through the druggie alkie haze, their version of reality has been corrupted. Their imagination is what they remember, not the day-to-day reality. I was the one who was clean and sober. I was the one who bore witness to everything that went on, without having my brain addled by mind-altering substances. My memory is perfect. My perceptions are as close to reality as it’s possible to get. I saw and I remember.

    I understand addiction, because I saw it from a young age. I not only witnessed my parents’ addictions but also had to breathe their second-hand smoke in confined spaces, which meant that I suffered repeated exposure to nicotine and drug smoke, at high concentrations. No effort was made to shield me from the effects of passive smoking. No consideration was paid to the health risks to me. If you smoke, your child smokes too.

    My parents boasted about not being addicts. I very distinctly remember my mum boasting about not being addicted to heroin. It was the usual “we can quit anytime we want” bullshit. It was the usual denial in the face of overwhelming evidence.

    It might be tempting to say that their drug abuse was relatively harmless – they had things under control; they were functional. I don’t think that’s really true though, when you’re spending vast sums of money on drink and drugs, while there’s no money for other things. I don’t think it’s true that it was harmless, when there is undeniably health damage from drink and drugs, and you’re passively inflicting that on your children, who have no choice in the matter. I don’t think that it’s fair to say it’s harmless, when you’re normalising drug-taking behaviour and teaching your children that it’s fun to take drugs; that drugs are cool.

    Taking drugs is not a counter-cultural statement. Taking drugs is not a ticket to alternative society. Taking drugs is not a political protest. Taking drugs is not cool. If you think you’re more of a cool person because of the kind of drugs you take, you’re an idiot. If you take drugs and you let that affect your children, you’re a disgusting person.

    Cannabis seems mostly harmless, but it’s been responsible for so many people having mental health problems, who otherwise would have been OK. Cannabis seems mostly harmless, but so many years of people’s lives have been lost, sitting on the sofa dribbling and talking complete gibberish. Cannabis seems mostly harmless, but so much youthful energy has been sapped; so many revolutions averted; so much time wasted, sitting around doing absolutely nothing that’s useful or productive, because of being stoned.

    Smoke cannabis if you want, but I’ll think of you as a bit stupid for doing it. It’s up to you – make yourself deliberately lazy, unimaginative and dumb on purpose… see if I care.

     

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  • All Work and no Play Makes Nick a Dull Boy

    This is a story about relentless monotony…

    Sleepy Nick

    I fell asleep at my desk today. I haven’t had any time off since November. I spent November writing a novel, so I guess I haven’t had any time off since October. I was in hospital in October and I moved house, so I guess I haven’t had any time off since September. I was in hospital in September and I tried to commit suicide and I lost my job and I was evicted, so I guess I haven’t had any time off since July. I moved house and started a new job in July, so I guess I haven’t had any time off since June. I was selling loads of my stuff, trying not to go bankrupt, while also trying to get a job in June, so I guess I haven’t had any time off since May. I was quitting supercrack, having an episode of medication-induced mania from California rocket fuel and breaking up with my girlfriend in May, so I guess I haven’t had any time off since April. I was a drug addict in April. This is what I was doing back in April.

    Dark Web

    Here I am looking at the dark web a little over a year ago. I’m probably not buying anything that would be illegal because I already had enough supercrack to last me 2 years. The fact I’m wearing clothes and sitting in my lounge, taking recognisably normal-ish photographs suggests that a little over a year ago, things were going OK.

    Night vision

    Oh no I spoke to soon. This night-vision photograph indicates that I was going bat-shit insane while high on supercrack. I took this photograph only a couple of days after the one before, where I was sat in the lounge browsing the dark web. This photograph was taken about a year ago.

    Barricaded door

    What the hell is THAT? Well, it’s pretty obvious that I’ve barricaded myself in my bedroom. This photograph was taken one year and one day ago. This photograph perfectly illustrates my subconscious fears of privacy invasion – that people are going to burst in on me, shame me and violently attack me. I don’t come across as very paranoid in day-to-day life, but I’m very traumatised, and this is my reaction that that trauma: I barricade myself in to protect myself from my parents and ex-wife. It’s bat-shit insane, of course, but this is my underlying psychology.

    Tray of food

    Looks like I was eating some food. I’d probably barricaded myself in my bedroom for days. I’d probably not slept for days. My life was a horrific mess a year ago. I had a virtually unlimited supply of supercrack and my addiction was raging out of control. Clearly I was paranoid because of drugs and sleep deprivation, but what was the seed of that paranoia? I wonder if it could have anything to do with having the rug pulled out from under my feet – being muscled out of my own home; being horrifically injured in my own home; being punched in the face or suffering a horrific injury to my leg, at the hands of my ex-wife and parents. I wonder if it could have anything to do with them. I was trapped in a corner for so very long, with no means of escaping my tormentors, who were demonstrably vile, violent and abusive. Fuck them. That kind of trauma has a lasting effect.

    Bathroom barricade

    My paranoia reached such ridiculous levels that I barricaded the door to my ensuite bathroom using my laundry bins and some clothes storage boxes. Clearly I just wanted to be left alone. Clearly I didn’t feel safe. Yes, it’s paranoia that’s come about because of drug abuse and sleep deprivation, but there’s got to be a seed too. Nobody gets this paranoid unless they have their ex-wife kicking doors in and screaming abuse at the top of her lungs. Nobody gets this paranoid unless they have their parents humiliating them and bursting in on them, and dragging them out of their own home. There’s a seed for paranoia. There’s always a seed.

    Uppers and downers

    Something to help me sleep (zopiclone) and something to help me cope and function (dexamfetamine). You can’t end a horrific addiction instantly. There’s no cold turkey when you’re in as deep as I was. I was too dependent. To attempt to suddenly quit overnight would have caused me unbearable withdrawal symptoms and would have required me to be hospitalised. This is what I prescribed myself – two medications for harm reduction. Two medications that I used to wean myself off the dangerous and highly addictive supercrack.

    I flushed that big bag of supercrack a year ago. There was enough to last me a couple of years, easily. I can’t remember when exactly I flushed it, because my life was chaotic, but the evidence suggests that it was at this point I decided to get clean, using substitute prescribing.

    Things didn’t go smoothly, but it’s very difficult to deal with a major addiction as well as mental health problems and all the practical problems that came about because my life had disintegrated. I needed to get money, get a job, get an apartment I could afford. I needed to move house, move city. I needed to get a new girlfriend and a new group of friends. I had a false start in Manchester, but I tried again in Wales… I’m trying again in Wales.

    Maybe you think my life is easy and everything is sorted out, because I earned bit of money, which I spent renting an apartment and buying a car so that I can get to my new job. Maybe you think my life is easy because I get up and go to work every day, and I’m doing a good job and my bosses are impressed with me. Maybe you think my life is easy because I’ve ‘bounced back’ from losing two apartments, running out of money three times and being hospitalised twice. Maybe you think my life is easy, because I’ve made it look so easy, quitting supercrack, Valium, Xanax, tramadol, codeine, dihydrocodiene, pregabalin, zopiclone and zolpidem, which are all highly addictive. Maybe you think my life is easy, because I’ve gone 7 months unmedicated and I haven’t had a single mental health episode that’s caused me to commit suicide or do something else drastic to fuck up my life. Maybe you think my life is easy because my finances are improving and I’ve got a girlfriend. Maybe you think none of what I went through in the last year was very hard. Maybe you think none of what I’ve been through in the last year has caused any lasting damage.

    I’m in my 5th consecutive month of full-time work without a holiday. I’m working my bollocks off. All I do is work work work, because I’m running as fast as I can to get myself into a position where my housing is secure – nobody can evict me – and I’m financially secure. I constantly have to ignore my physical and mental health, because I so desperately need to get myself into a position where I can collapse in a heap and have a minor nervous breakdown.

    Yes, I can do stuff like this – I can save myself; I can come back to life; I can return from the brink of destitution and make it look very easy.

    It’s not easy.

     

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  • Rock Bottom

    This is a story about quality of life…

    Warchalking

    You would have thought that rock bottom would come when you’re sleeping rough, arrested by the police, thrown into a cell, you’ve spent all your money on drugs, you’ve got a physical dependency, you end up hospitalised or locked on a psych ward. You would have thought that losing your job, your apartment and tarnishing your otherwise squeaky clean CV, credit score and other things that are important to give you access to well-paid respectable work, would be the most crushing blow. In fact it’s the lead-up to the point where you lose everything that’s far worse. Once you’re cut adrift and tossed by the wind and the waves, then you might as well just relax and go with the flow.

    I woke up this morning, having been awake since 3am, worrying about the tricky transition between two contracts that are worth six figures, annually. It’s a nice problem to have, right, to have two companies offering to pay you big fat wads of cash for your time and expertise, but the reality is somewhat more complicated.

    I’ve drained my business bank account, because I’ve needed to buy plane tickets, book hotel rooms, train tickets and AirBnB rooms. I’ve been working for three months, but I’m still waiting to be paid – these are the commercial challenges I face. You’ve got to speculate to accumulate.

    I have borrowing facilities available to me, but a substantial portion of my income is wasted on interest, paying for the money which I’ve needed for cashflow. Cashflow is tight when you’re only managing to work 12 weeks a year, because you’ve been so unwell. I was hospitalised with DVT and both my kidneys had failed. I was hospitalised after a massive overdose – a suicide attempt. I was hospitalised and sectioned for mental health reasons, for my own protection. These are considerable obstacles to earning money, despite the fact that I discharged myself from hospital against medical advice, so that I could struggle into the office and not lose my job… but I lost it anyway. After my suicide attempt I struggled into the office, but I lost my job anyway.

    I’m struggling into the office every day. I’m working Tuesday to Friday, for 4 hours each afternoon. My colleagues look at me like I’m taking the piss, as I saunter in at lunchtime and leave soon after 5pm. I travel across the country on a Tuesday morning, and I travel back the other way on a Friday evening – over 3 hours each way, which some people might scoff at. I know that there are many people who do long commutes, but I doubt many of them do them in the same year they were hospitalised as many times as I’ve been, due to medical emergencies.

    This is my rock bottom – I’m only able to work about 16 hours a week, but it’s killing me. I woke up this morning and I’m properly physically sick. If it hadn’t been for the fact that I had to check out of my AirBnB, I would have stayed in bed. You’d have stayed in bed too, if you felt like I do. This is rock bottom – struggling along and barely managing to survive, even if you think that my situation is not very desperate.

    I’m quite qualified to tell you what’s desperate and what’s not, because I’ve slept rough on the streets; I’ve lived in 14-bed hostel dorms and psych ward dorms. It’s not a competition. Either you accept that I know what rock bottom looks like, or you don’t.

    What you can’t see – because you only look at the good bits – is how quickly my life could unravel. I’ve got no safety net; I’ve got no cushion. My life hangs by a few slender threads. Of course I accept that I’ve had a run of good luck, such that I haven’t ended up bankrupt and sleeping rough again. Of course I accept that I’ve had a run of good luck that there are still opportunities available to me; there’s still a slim chance that I might rescue myself from my desperate situation.

    There’s an infantile attitude that I have to constantly suffer, like life is simple and all I need to do is get a job stacking shelves in a supermarket. You don’t understand how real life works. You’re not acknowledging reality. In reality we can’t just abandon all responsibility and pretend like it’s not psychologically destructive to lose hope; to have our dreams shattered. Loss of status and having a black mark against your name is a big deal. Being chased by debt collectors and bailiffs is a big deal. Having court summonses and court judgements and being sued into oblivion is a big deal. Getting fines and charges and all the other things that get slapped onto a poor person whose life is imploding, is a big deal. Real life… REAL LIFE involves earning as much money as you can, so that you don’t have to take a calculator with you to the supermarket and ration out the value-price beans. Your infantile fantasies that we can just abandon everything that society holds dear – bank accounts and credit checks – and instantly switch our lives to be free and easy… this is complete and utter horse shit.

    The reality of life is that there’s a great deal of precarity. It might not look like it, but I’ve worked very hard to get myself back on my feet and I’m still a long way off. It might not look like it, but I couldn’t have put in any more effort; I couldn’t have handled any more stress – it’s enough to give the most stable and secure person that you know a massive nervous breakdown. Eventually, we all reach our breaking point. We can’t tolerate mental torture forever.

    I’ve got my 3+ hour train journey, then a night in one place, a night in another, a night somewhere else, then it’s back on the train, back to my job, time to check into yet another AirBnB I’ve never set foot in before. I need to buy two birthday presents, get a haircut. I need to do some washing. None of this is beyond the wit of man, but I’m so mentally and physically sick that I need to spend at least a week in bed, but I can’t. I’ve got to keep the plates spinning.

    Yes there are parents out there who are stressed out of their minds. Yes there are starving Africans. Fuck the fuck off. You think I’ve only got nice problems to have? You think my life is rainbows and puppy dogs and candy floss? Fuck the fuck off.

    This is my rock bottom, because I want to throw everything away. It’s too much effort. It’s too much stress. It’s causing too much anxiety. It’s too exhausting. You think what I do is easy? If it’s so fucking easy why isn’t everyone doing it? If it’s so easy, why aren’t more people bouncing back from divorce, losing their home, drug addiction, alcoholism, bankruptcy, trouble with the police, mental health problems, suicide attempts, physical health problems and all the other things that bury people? Why aren’t more people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and getting themselves back on their feet?

    It feels like I’m really close to a breakthrough, and that’s what makes it so hard. All the time I’m thinking “it’s only another 6 weeks, 3 months, 6 months… until I’m all fixed up and back to health, wealth and prosperity”. It seems like it’s no time at all, but that’s because you’re an idiot. You just don’t understand how the shortest possible time can feel like an eternity, when you’re in agony; when you’re in such distress.

    So close but yet so far.

     

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  • Cold Turkey 2

    This is a story about sequels…

    Leftovers

    Two years ago, I was experimenting with my blog. I thought it would be profound to write a public suicide note, record a video and go jump off the Golden Gate Bridge. I thought I would get sacked from my job and illustrate how the stress would push me into acts of extremism. I decided to sleep rough close to the skyscraper I had been working in. I thought I was going to starve myself for 25 days and spend Christmas Day in a tent. I thought I was going to kill myself by going on hunger strike.

    For 25 days I wrote an advent calendar type series of blog posts. The whole thing was leading up to the punchline: boxing day. Really, what I was doing was building up to the revelation of the truth: that I’d had problems with addiction. It was a big admission. It took a lot of courage to be honest.

    Why did it take me so long to acknowledge my problems with addiction?

    Generally, addicts don’t get a very favourable hearing. Addicts are amongst the most stigmatised people on the planet. If you’re looking for a sympathetic non-judgemental ear, it’s probably best if you don’t mention any addiction problems you’ve had until somebody’s got to know you.

    So, people had to get to know me.

    My friends, family and work colleagues knew me. Those people who’ve gotten to know me have seen that I’m an OK person. I’m not a monster.

    But am I a monster?

    It’s surprising how little it takes for us to question everything we ever knew about a person. Sometimes, there’s a revelation about a person that can completely shake our perceptions of them. Suddenly, it’s as if a person we knew well is a stranger to us, and not just any stranger: a horrible nasty stranger who’s going to rob us and kill our children and eat them. Everybody knows that addicts leave a trail of HIV-infected needles lying around everywhere they go, especially in areas where children play. Everybody knows that addicts enjoy nothing more than random acts of killing. Also, if you discover that somebody’s had problems with addiction, you can pretty much forget everything you ever knew about them.

    Hang on a second though.

    How quickly can you completely re-evaluate an entire person and decide that they’re a completely worthless hopeless junkie, who’d rob you without a moment’s hesitation in order to score their next fix? How long does it take to write somebody off completely and dismiss everything you ever knew about them? Why are junkies just so damn easy to hate and what happened to the person you used to know?

    While there are some very unfortunate people whose morals will be corrupted by their addiction, that’s not the case for most addicts. Not every addict is a liar, a cheat, a thief and somebody who would recklessly endanger the lives of your precious children. Not every addict is flakey, unreliable, untrustworthy, unscrupulous and immoral. Not every addict is worthless, hopeless and doomed to forever seek and take drugs. Not every addict is a menace to society, and should be treated like a leper: shunned from work, friends, family and all the other things that give us a functional life. Not every addict should be marginalised and demonised.

    Of course, I write with a vested interest. I don’t want to be mistreated. I don’t want the stigma attached to me.

    So, why don’t I share my stories of addiction anonymously? Why don’t I join Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous and Cocaine Anonymous and Crystal Meth Anonymous, and while I’m at it Gambling Addicts Anonymous and Sex Addicts Anonymous? Why don’t I keep quiet and just pretend like I’m normal? I don’t even take drugs.

    Nobody thinks that gambling addicts inject packs of cards, so why is it that when you think of me – an addict – you immediately imagine dirty needles? Where did the OK Nick that you used to know go? Why did you eject the pleasant memories you had of me, and replace them with an imagined version of me, where I was mugging grannies for their life savings?

    It’s necessary for me to concentrate on the prequel to my story, in order to receive a fair hearing. I need to explain that adverse childhood experiences, an abusive relationship, stress, burnout and mental health problems, all created a fertile environment in which to grow a substance abuse problem. I need to explain that my mood instability – bipolar – predisposed me to reckless sensation seeking, such as substance abuse. I need to explain that my motivation was self-medication, not getting high. I sought relief from symptoms, not enjoyment. I was trapped and I needed a way out. I chose the wrong one. I made a mistake.

    We might take a quick glance at a situation and utter the words “why don’t they just…?”. Why don’t they just what? Leave their abusive partner? Stop moping around and get out of bed? Stop taking drugs? Move somewhere else? Sort themselves out?

    When you’re secure and happy, everything looks pretty easy. All people have gotta do is get a house, a job, a sexual partner, friends, hobbies and interests, a loving family, a supportive environment, a healthy lifestyle, coping mechanisms, substantial financial resources and favourable socioeconomic conditions. That’s it. That’s all. Just get on and do it!

    For some, remaining addicted is not about the ongoing want for drugs, it’s actually slow suicide.

    That last point is worth re-iterating. One of the reasons why some people won’t stop taking drugs, is because they don’t want to live anymore. They literally don’t care if they die. I would say that most addicts are very well aware that their addictions are going to kill them, but they carry on anyway – they’re committing suicide, slowly.

    Looking at teens and twentysomethings who smoke, we might see that there’s a general belief that “it’ll never happen to me”. In our youth, we tend to believe we’re pretty indestructible. By that same token, we might assume that a drug addict believes that they’ll be one of the lucky ones, who addiction will spare. I don’t think that’s the case.

    As an addict, it quickly becomes apparent that control has been lost and you’re on collision course with health problems and early death. Repeatedly, the addict will have extremely aversive experiences which scream loud and clear that the path of addiction is going to lead to death and destruction. Do you think every lecture about what an addict is doing to themselves falls on deaf ears?

    Equally, do you think that addicts just don’t care? Do they want to die?

    Committing suicide – including addiction – is not about wanting to die. Suicide is driven by hopelessness and inescapable awful feelings. If life only has pain and misery to offer, why wouldn’t a person choose early death? If building any kind of liveable tolerable life is an insurmountable task, what hope is there? Who’d want to spend the rest of their life miserable, depressed, anxious and in pain?

    It’s easy to say “keep putting one foot in front of the other” or “take things one day at a time” because you don’t have to live through that misery. It’s easy to ask somebody else to tolerate the intolerable, because it’s not you who has to suffer: it’s them. Eventually, a person can conclude that there aren’t going to be any good days, or that the few pleasant times don’t outweigh the multitudinous bad times. On balance, one might conclude, life’s not worth living.

    When you’ve made that decision that life’s not worth living, it’s pretty hard to find any reason to not have that next hit of drugs, even when the drugs are killing you.

    I write to you today clean, sober and with no intention of obtaining and taking drugs.

    However, I think it’s highly likely that I will take drugs again, both recreationally and abusively. The number of protective factors – friends, family, work, money – have increased, but my life is still very badly broken. There are innumerable things that predispose me to relapsing onto drugs, and on the flip side there is a huge list of things I’ve got to fix or get in my life in order to have enough on the other side of the scales to balance things out. I look to the year ahead: what do I have look forward to other than hard work, living out of a suitcase, paying off debts and otherwise scrimping and saving? I’m sorry, but I’m not exactly thrilled by the prospect of living off sandwiches that I’ve made in a hotel room, spreading the mustard with a shoehorn.

    But, perhaps also there’s a desperate desire to self-sabotage because life was simpler as an addict. Even the synthetic cannabinoids have enough of an attractive intoxication for addicts to jettison the stress and strain of paying rent and bills, and having to hold down a job, in favour of homelessness. The bureaucratic burden of civilised society is wearisome and ridiculous. The form-filling and pointless makework of bullshit jobs is absurd. It’s not just about the drugs – it’s also about dropping out.

    You’d think that dropping out would be a terrible thing. You’d think that the shame of the loss of status would be unbearable, but it’s liberating. You know that you have to work hard to keep up your mortgage or rent payments. You live in constant fear of losing your job, which would quickly lead to eviction. When you become homeless, it’s a relief – a thing you feared the most has happened, and it’s not as bad as you thought it would be; somehow you manage to cope.

    I’m averse to the idea of a miserable dead-end McJob. I’m averse to the idea of spending any more time stressed out of my mind, helping my boss get richer; helping my landlord get richer. I’m averse to the idea that the peanuts that most people get paid, in any way compensates them for giving up the prime years of their lives. I don’t see that society is working well for most people. I see that stress, anxiety, depression and other mental health problems are rife. I see that suicide is the biggest killer of the group of people who are our most productive members of society. That’s not fair.

    So, I need to find a middle way. I need to find a way that’s not suicide, not drug addiction, but it’s not a miserable dead-end job either. I refuse to get a bullshit job that pays peanuts. I’d rather die.

    At the moment, I’m clean from drugs and I’m working a very well paid job. I’m learning stuff. It’s stressful, but it’s not boring. I’m increasing my value – my employability – as well as doing a good job. It feels fair.

    I’m starting 2018 at a considerable disadvantage. I’m deeply in debt. I don’t have a girlfriend. I don’t rent or own a home. Why bother?

    It’s been 6 months since I had an addiction. I’m clean. Why would I even write about addiction? I’ve won, haven’t I?

    In fact, addiction is always there: a dependable companion. Very little effort is involved in resuming an addiction. Addiction will always be everything you expected it to be. Addiction never disappoints. Conversely, a happy functional life with all the components necessary to make it work, is very very far out of reach; almost unattainable. You might think that because I’m only 6 months away from putting a lot of the pieces in place, that it’d be easy. 6 months is no time at all, right? In fact, 6 months without all the things you take for granted, might as well be a billion years. It’s never going to happen. Try getting in a bath filled with ice cubes. Try holding your hand over a naked flame. What you perceive as quick and easy is not quick and easy when you’re in pain.

    My present situation might look infinitely preferable to my life as an addict, but it’s not. Addiction could last me forever – until the day I die – but what I have today is only temporary; it’s fake. I can’t stay where I am forever. My contract will come to an end and I’ll have to find another job. I’ll need to rent or buy a place to live. I need to keep moving around: 3 and a half hours on the train, one-way, and moving from hotel to hotel, AirBnB to AirBnB… always moving on. I’m tired, even though it looks like I should be well rested. I’m stressed, even if it looks like things are going in the right direction.

    Addiction’s there as a one-stop-shop. Addiction means that I can stop pedalling so damn fast. Addiction means relief. Addiction means there’s an end in sight. I’d be a liar if I didn’t admit that when I’m alone with my thoughts, I don’t immediately think that addiction is infinitely preferable to the mountainous task ahead, to merely build a mediocre life of disappointment and depression; boredom and bullshit.

    Going cold turkey doesn’t prove anything.

     

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  • Drug of Choice

    This is a story about cyclical patterns…

    Me with pills

    In 2014 I was homeless and addicted to drugs. I got myself a job at a bank, got myself a place to live and paid off all my debts. Then, I lost my contract. I went to a shop in Soho and bought two packets of a legal high powder and proceeded to undo all my hard work. Within a matter of weeks, I was back on the supercrack.

    In 2015 I was homeless and addicted to drugs. I got myself a job at a bank, got myself a place to live and paid off all my debts. Then, I lost my contract. I went online and bought two packets of legal high powder and two packets of legal benzodiazepine tablets. Within a month, I was back on the supercrack.

    In 2016 I had a lovely apartment. I was clean all summer. I went on holiday. I met an amazing girl who I was totally in love with. I wrote my first novel. I had a brilliant Christmas with my girlfriend and her family. Then, I got myself a job at a bank. My left leg swelled up to twice the size of the right leg, both my kidneys failed, I was put on emergency dialysis and I had to be admitted to hospital for a couple of weeks, on a high dependency ward. Then, I lost my contract. Within a fortnight I was back on the supercrack.

    In 2017 I had a lovely apartment. I took supercrack. I tried to quit the supercrack. I got depressed. I tricked my doctor into giving me California rocket fuel – a combination of venlafaxine and mirtazepine antidepressants. I went hypomanic and split up with my amazing girlfriend. I bought enough supercrack to last me two years. I went insane with stimulant psychosis and was thoroughly beastly towards my amazing girlfriend. I ran out of money. I moved to Manchester. I got another girlfriend. We broke up. I tried to kill myself. I spent a couple of days with a machine breathing for me in intensive care. I got sectioned and got locked up on a secure psych ward. I moved to Wales. I wrote 42,000 words of my second novel. I got myself a job at a bank. There isn’t enough time left in 2017 to get back on the supercrack. I’m worried I’m going to relapse in January. I haven’t lost my contract yet.

    Fluid in my leg

    If we dip into each year a little bit more closely, 2014 was a really dreadful one. I was an inpatient for about 14 weeks. I lived in a bush in Kensington Palace Gardens and slept rough on Hampstead Heath. I was in two rehabs. I lived in a 14-bed hostel dorm, but that was actually one of the highlights. I abused a lot of benzodiazepines and amphetamines, as well as the supercrack. I got in trouble with the police. Twice.

    2015 looks tame by comparison. Although I abused stimulants and ‘downers’, I had a couple of visits to a lovely family in Ireland, who looked after me. Strangely, it was working 12 hour days and working 7 days a week that exhausted me and tipped me into hypomania. I spent a week suicidal on a psych ward then suddenly decided to fly to San Francisco. I went straight to the Golden Gate Bridge, which I had contemplated jumping off. I was sober for 120 consecutive days. I deliberately got my contract terminated, because I had ethical objections to what the bank I was working for was doing. I started blogging.

    2016 is unusual – perhaps there is no easy pattern we can spot – because I got myself clean and into work much earlier than I’d managed in previous years. I worked a whole contract – notably not for a bank – without going mad and getting sacked. I got a good reference and my team were really pleased with the way I ran the project. My life was quite stable. However, I was a sneaky bastard. I was using supercrack and benzos in secret, and lying to my amazing girlfriend to cover up my drug abuse.

    2017 was off the charts. I’ve never been so sick. I’ve never been so close to death. For the first half of the year I had binge after binge after binge. I abused opiates, sleeping pills, tranquillisers, club drugs and stimulants. My drug abuse was definitely going to kill me. I had a physical dependency on benzodiazepines that looked impossible to cure – how was I going to escape from the death trap? I decided I couldn’t escape, so I took a massive overdose. The hospital gave me a 50:50 chance of pulling through.

    I’m worried that I’m repeating old patterns of behaviour. I always go back to the banks when I need money, because they pay so well and it’s the quickest way of digging myself out of debt. I’m living out of a suitcase, moving from AirBnB to AirBnB. It’s exhausting and stressful: factors that tipped me into hypomanic insanity back in 2015.

    What is unusual is that I’m going into the New Year with a contract in place: I have my job and it’s going well. I’m starting 2018 with money on the way, as opposed to the fear of bankruptcy and eviction. I’m going into next year with far fewer stresses than I’ve had for a very long time. Perhaps it’s good that there aren’t even any girls in the picture at the moment. Love and sex always have a bit of a destabilising effect on me.

    Writing this summary of my hit-and-miss boom-and-bust crazy life, I wonder if I’m doomed to forever repeat the pattern.

    One thing that’s notably different this year is living with a family. I care about them. I imagine what it’d be like if the kids asked “where’s Nick?” and the answer was that I was dead, or as good as dead because I’d relapsed onto supercrack.

    This year, I quit supercrack, tramadol, codeine, dihydrocodeine, diazepam (Valium), alprazolam (Xanax), zolpidem (Ambien), zopiclone and pregabalin. I was prescribed venlafaxine, mirtazepine and lamotrogine, but I don’t take any of them now. I had 30 consecutive sober days during October. In fact, I was sober from more or less the start of September to early November. My brain has been completely drug-addled at times, but I’m clean as a whistle at the moment – I’m unmedicated and I’m not taking any mind-altering substances. I don’t drink caffeinated beverages.

    I’d like to tell you that I feel wonderful, but I don’t. I have a cold. It’s winter. Winter is shit.

    You might look at all the times I’ve tripped up and conclude that I’m bound to trip up again. However, you might look at all the things I’ve fixed and conclude that I’m pretty good at fixing up my life when it’s fucked. All I’ve got to do is bring together all the different elements: friends and family, work and home, money and rest and relaxation, stability and exercise and hopes and dreams, love and romance and sex. Easy, right?

    If you’re wondering what my drug of choice is, and thinking that it’s supercrack, you’re wrong. Look more closely at the picture at the top of this blog post. What’s that thing in-between my legs? It’s not my male member, it’s a wine glass.

    Hello wine my old friend

    With closer examination of my entire adult life, we can see that alcohol features heavily. In fact my latest job came about as a result of being friends with a lovely guy who’s an alcoholic. We spent a week getting pissed, when I was supposed to be finding my feet with the new job. Somehow, I’ve managed to drink my way through a very successful career. Without booze I’m somewhat out of kilter. Without booze, how would I self-medicate for my mood fluctuations?

    Yes, without booze, my bipolar disposition rages out of control. I work too hard. I take everything too seriously. I fly off the handle.

    I’m not genuinely suggesting that booze is harmless or the cure of all ills, but it’s been such a big component of my adult life that I don’t really know how to cope without it. How would I have survived the recent stresses and strains of a 2,500 mile round-trip, to go and gather money from the latest bank I’m working for, without alcohol? How would I square away my deep unhappiness with the work I do, with the need to earn money, if it wasn’t for drowning my sorrows? Alcohol might be a terrible solution, but it’s the one I’ve got and I know it works.

    Is it lunchtime yet? I’m not an alcoholic, because I don’t drink in the morning. I just make sure I lie in bed until it’s after midday.

     

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  • Penultimate Day

    This is a story about relapse…

    Booze

    I’ve downed a whole pint of cold crisp refreshing lager before I’ve even realised I’ve done it. How I came to be in the bar in the first place is unclear, but I’ve greedily drained the contents of the pint glass and replaced it on the tabletop. A sense of “what have I done?” sweeps over me. Although I feel guilty – I have let people down; I have failed – I immediately decide to have another pint, and another, and another… until I wake up.

    This morning was the first morning all year – more or less – that I didn’t wake up and immediately think about reaching for a packet of pills.

    “Addict!”

    Hold your horses – things are a little bit more complicated. What would you do if you suffered from chronic pain? Would you just grin and bear it?

    Perhaps the medication I have been taking for pain has inadvertently helped me to stay off the booze. Now that I only have one more day before I stop taking pain medication, a subconscious desire to get drunk has returned with a vengeance.

    Every time I see beer & wine, I imagine that it would taste amazing and I get a mild craving to consume some. However, thankfully I can remember that alcohol didn’t taste very nice after I stopped drinking for a period of over 4 months.

    There’s no reason why I’d stop taking my prescribed pain medication and become a teetotaller, except that I want to clear my head – I’m desperate to see what my brain is like, without the intoxicating chemicals I’ve been putting into my body.

    My dream last night was very vivid, and the feeling that I had accidentally failed in my mission to temporarily abstain from mind-altering substances, was the strongest feeling: I was devastated. Then, in my dream I decided that if I was going to fail, I was going to fail spectacularly.

    The fact of the matter is that I haven’t failed at all. I’m spectacularly successful. Very few people are able to beat the demon drink, and especially not at the same time as quitting physically addictive medications and overcoming a heap of other shit too. I’m a motherfucking world-leading expert on sobriety and getting clean.

    Skin-crawling anxiety, suicidal depression and a warped perception of time, means that the hands of the clock barely move as I wait for my brain to recover sufficiently, so that I can feel slightly better.

    I wait. I wait and I wait and I wait.

    To say that I’m white-knuckling the journey to being totally clean from all substances, is cruel and unkind. To accuse me of being some kind of “dry drunk” or to suggest that I’ll always be an alcoholic and an addict is ridiculous. If labels and stigmas are going to follow me around forever, I’ll be more than happy to return to substance abuse. I aim to confound prejudices – there’s no point in suffering pointlessly.

    Trust me – I’m suffering a million times worse than I ever did before, even when I was in the depths of stimulant psychosis. Even when I was in deep shit and completely messed up, that lasted for the blink-of-an-eye versus the round-the-clock awfulness I’m having to endure at the moment. I might’ve thought I was going to die at times, but now I really wish I had died.

    Tomorrow I have 24 little hours to endure and then my recovery starts properly – every day after tomorrow takes me a little bit closer to normal brain chemistry. Every day that I manage to stay clean & sober after tomorrow will allow my body to restore itself to its natural state of homeostasis.

    It’s going to be like the world’s shittest Christmas Eve.

     

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  • Habit Forming

    This is a story about breaking the cycle…

    Handful of capsules

    Two of these medications are addictive. Half of these tablets are dietary supplements that can be bought from a health food store. As I stop taking three prescribed medications, withdrawal side effects that I’m suffering from include: insomnia, anxiety and panic attacks. Why stop?

    If you’re doing something that seemingly provides no benefit to your life, but is hard to stop, then why are you doing it?

    The list of things that I could be said to have enjoyed habitually has grown to an extensive list that includes sex, spending money, alcohol, stimulant drugs, benzodiazepines, sleeping pills, painkillers, pornography, computer games, reading, arguing with people, work, masturbation, driving fast, junk food, music and just about anything else that makes life liveable. Strangely, my current day-to-day life includes almost none of these things.

    Given my natural tendency to binge on anything I enjoy, perhaps it is abstinence that I am now taking perverse pleasure in the over-indulgence of. I barely have the words to describe how truly dreadful it is to be withdrawing from the most addictive chemicals on the planet – abstaining from alcohol & benzodiazepines can be so hard on your body and mind, that you will die from seizures. Why on earth would I choose to go without the things that would salve the aching that my body has for anxiety & stress alleviating substances?

    It was suggested to me that my choice to go without all the things that would help me feel better, is akin to a kind of self-harm. Writing this now, I’m inclined to agree. All the stress and anxiety that I have avoided for years is all hitting me like a sledgehammer. Everything I’ve ever enjoyed and seen as a reason for living, is barred from me for reasons of self-denial.

    Perhaps this is a kind of meditation. Like a monk who takes a vow of celibacy, through this difficult period maybe I will learn something that I would not be able to whilst indulging in the terrestrial temptations.

    There is a deliberate alteration of my behaviour, of course. I have decided to deny myself alcohol and my prescribed medications (yes, this is in agreement with my doctor, yawn). I could very easily continue to drink alcohol and take pregabalin, not to mention illegal narcotics and prescription drugs which I could obtain through the black market, but I choose not to. I do not stop because I have an incentive to do so; I stop because it is hard and it is interesting – I’d gotten a little bored of my wanton excesses.

    I could write and write and write – perhaps the armchair psychologists amongst you will speculate that I have simply transferred all of my multiple addictions into an addiction to writing.

     

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  • Blue Tablet

    This is a story about customer service…

    Bedside table

    Amongst a small group of my friends, we have all found that a medication called pregabalin – marketed as Lyrica in the UK – has been useful to us, but also has adverse side effects and is difficult to stop taking. Pregabalin is quite good at combatting anxiety and improving sleep, which are obviously the desirable effects: most of us have stress in our lives, and struggle to get enough high-quality sleep. Personally, pregabalin is an effective treatment for the phantom limb pain I feel, due to damaged nerves – I can’t feel my left foot. Pregabalin is far better than the opiate painkillers, which left me sweating and nauseous at times. However, stopping taking pregabalin leaves me feeling anxious and gives me insomnia – what goes up must come down.

    Soon pregabalin – “the new Valium” – will be scheduled as a class C controlled substance, which makes it much harder to obtain a prescription, and possession without a prescription could be punished with a criminal conviction.

    Here on the psych ward, a man screams for a “blue tablet”. Perhaps more blatantly obvious as an addiction, another man attempts to wheedle more Subutex (buprenorphine) out of the staff – he’s been droning on about having his dose restored from 8mg to 16mg, because he is being weaned off the synthetic opiate he is addicted to. I can hear this guy, who is obviously no stranger to our prison system, chopping and snorting drugs his room. The man who screams for a “blue tablet” is actually asking for a 10mg diazepam pill – blue in colour – which is Valium. Our screaming friend decides he wants to leave hospital, and the staff tell him he can’t leave because he’s going to take heroin. “It’s my body! I do what I want!” he screams. Then, he starts getting abusive.

    Early on in my hospital detention under section 2 of the Mental Health Act, I ask a nurse if she can nip to the shop to get me a 4-pack of beer. We lock eyes for what seems like an eternity. I maintain a completely straight face. Then, we both snigger and she regains her composure. She jokes that we should have a big piss-up on the ward. With a different nurse, I tell her with a straight face that they have forgotten my methadone and she immediately unlocks the cabinet containing the opiates that are so coveted by some patients here… I hastily tell her that I was joking, but she still continues to search my medication chart. Do I look like a junkie? I certainly don’t have track marks on my arms or other identifying features of an injecting drugs user, such as abscess scars.

    A doctor comes to take my blood. She doesn’t shut my bedroom door. Three men, who I know were heroin users, peer into my room and I feel bad that I didn’t ask the doctor to close the door or get up and close it myself – surely the sight of a needle going into a vein is going to be a terrible trigger. There’s good evidence that addicts’ brain reward pathways are activated when they see drugs and drug paraphernalia for just 33 milliseconds, which is less than the 40 milliseconds that a single frame of cinema film is shown for.

    Having been detoxed from my physical dependency on benzodiazepines and alcohol, I find that I crave nothing more than a few drinks in the evening – some wine or some beer – to take the edge off the stress and anxiety of my situation and help me relax during what is a fairly dreadful clusterfuck of issues with employment, housing, accommodation and my health. However, I don’t want to sabotage my treatment and recovery.

    I’m incredibly grateful to the NHS, for accidentally detoxing me while they were treating my deadly deliberate overdose – my suicide attempt. Being physically dependent on a medication is to be shackled to it – to stop taking it would cause seizures and potentially death. There wasn’t a ‘buzz’ that I was chasing with booze & benzos. I was using mind-altering substances to soothe my jangled nerves: self medication.

    Am I glorifying drug taking, or making light of serious matters? Don’t be so ridiculous.

    An epidemic of illicit opiate use sweeps across the United States, with the number of overdose deaths and addicted babies born, skyrocketing in the past few years. An epidemic of mental health issues has pushed the services that are there to support those who become unwell, to breaking point. Only a wilfully ignorant person would turn a blind eye to what’s happening all around us.

    Carfentanil – a synthetic opioid – is so powerful that an aerosol of it could be sprayed in a packed metropolitan area and cause hundreds of people to die from respiratory arrest. This drug is being sold as an adulterant in bags of heroin, in the United States today. In the UK, carfentanil’s less potent – but still deadly – chemical cousin, fentanyl, is quite common now in batches of street heroin. If you’re worried about terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, these things have already arrived on the shores of the US and UK, in the form of incredibly deadly chemicals that are available for sale to anybody with the money.

    My fellow patients are unrelenting. There’s been a 2-day nonstop assault on the staff, as the patients attempt to get a tiny amount more synthetic opiate out of the doctor. There’s not much else to do on the ward, and whatever medications the doctor has decided to write on their chart will remain fixed for a whole week. I guess they’ve got nothing to lose apart from their 30 minutes of escorted leave from the ward. One patient has done a runner, sensing that the doctor’s decision has not gone the way he would prefer.

    “You’ve not done anything wrong. You can come back and you won’t be in any trouble” a stressed looking nurse is saying down the telephone, to the patient who has gone AWOL. Meanwhile, a patient takes breaks between harassing the staff for 8mg more Subutex, in order to chop and snort lines of white powder in his room – presumably he has a plentiful supply of his own drugs, which he wishes to supplement with a legal prescription.

    I try to calmly await my section tribunal, despite the chaos outside my bedroom door.

    It should be noted, that the quality of care does not vary with one’s behaviour – the staff are supremely professional – but good manners are declared as the number one thing that every staff member wants, on a notice board that tells the patients a little more about the team of people who look after us.

    Good manners cost nothing.

     

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