Working with Addicts 2

A crow, black, flack hacking scratches outside teasing me from slumber. My cheek on pillow, cold air poking gaps in my clothes.
Helicopter air buffers, pop pop popping under blubber
Some country and western
Some c*** from Preston
There are more helicopters about these days. This calls to mind being out in the fields above High Wycombe with Steve and Peter. Steve said the helicopter, high and distant in the sky could be watching us. Stoned, they all chuckled at this daft thought. A pause of quiet, then Peter said, 'they probably are watching us'.
Another Peter quote, 'I might be paranoid schizophrenic but I'm not fucking stupid.'
Greasy treacle pillow fight
It's a long way down from walking the white fells, treading water in Valerie's seas and wine lake shores, pause for six months to stabilise, regain my bearings. Now a sequence of stepped altitude plummets. Sub buteo 3mg to go.
Up at 5, walking dark streets, eyes streaming tears, sweating, chills, yawns, volume cranked up, head full of steam and pistons, yearning, aching. There's a decade or mores emotions stashed away up there in the loft, 12 years baggage, all spilling out, bursting down the stairs.
I'm a modest man, but then again, I've a lot to be modest about.
Craft must have clothes but truth loves to go naked.
John Lennon
Wilkie Collins
Will Self
Peter Doherty
Dee dee Ramone
Sid Vicious
Thomas De Quincy
Debbie Harry
Damon Albarn
Justine Frichman
John Keats
Irvine Welsh
Steve Jones
William Burroughs
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Shaun Ryder
Keith Richards
Eric Clapton
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Depression and schizophrenia both suggest that the mind, at times finds it more advantageous to build a strong story than a true story. One maggot in a bowl of fruit is more off putting than one cherry in a bowl of cockroaches. Survival can be dependent on seeing danger.
As recovery happens the layers of emotion, buried by drugs become visible again. Like archeology, as the mind returns to being unclouded, strata of forgotten, undressed issues. Though a key worker is important at all times, from my experience with working with recovering addicts, it is after the drugs have worn off that psychotherapy is most important. Diamorphine is used for pain relief, it alters ones relationship with pain. It successfully enables addicts to become objective about their own emotions. If the habit has lasted ten years there will be ten years of undigested emotions. In recovery it is common to see ex addicts mourning people who died years ago. When people get angry, jealous or any powerful emotion they feel the chemicals of emotion coursing through their veins. They feel emotion all over their bodies. These chemical messengers are nullified by opiates. Once stripped of artificial opiates, emotional reactions to old, past events start coming through. A decade will have incurred countless emotional hurdles that straight people have worked through.
In my capacity as a volunteer councelor I have found that this is seldom acknowledged by many healthcare professionals.