Richards death sent me off the rails. For a few years I didn't care what became of me and drank amd took anything on offer. He was the last of a long line of close freinds who died before I was 35. Woody had barely left school when he crashed his motorbike. Wid, a really close freind committed suicide, bleeding himself out of existence. Win died in Richards living room and though he told me they had taken nothing more than speed, it was the time when heroin was starting to flood the cities. Rufus who I had been in Boy Scouts with finally died from organ failure. Animal was like a brother and after leaving the outcasts bike gang rode his bike straight in to a car on the wrong side of the road having just got off the ferry in France. Martin had a hit in Richards living room, walked out as if for the toilet and was found ten minutes later wedged, slumped between the kitchen counters. After two days they turned off his life support system. Turps had recently been deported from Amsterdam and for the last four weeks of his life was a face on the begging scene in leeds city centre. He took a hit and died in st George's crypt, a homeless hostel. John bell house smashed his 550cc bike the day he bought it. All these deaths of my immediate close circle of childhood freinds. It was as if there was a curse on us.
After ten months of living with richard whilst working on the museum fitting and nursing my dad of an evening his brain had begun to recover. He was talking sense again. So I returned to the caravan I was living in prior to his fall in rode and went back to furniture making.
The events leading up to Richards death deserve a few more words. He became entranced by a beautiful prostitute. Sohailor was undeniably gorgeous to look at but she didn't really care for richard. Richard was disabled. His body like ian dury and this caused him to have a complex about women. He was as successful as any of us when he wasn't ruining himself with drugs but he couldn't shake off this perception. Sohailor saw him as a source of drugs. He sold heroin and would give it to her. He became obsessed in a way I have never seen a man become obsessed with a woman. She would be out entertaining punters whilst he bought rings to propose marriage. And whenever she was short she would come and take it from him. He would withhold if she was seeing other men but ultimately he would take any abuse from her. It was as if he wanted her to kill him. One time she rang and he invited her round. On opening the door Mathew, her real boyfriend forced his way in with another. They set about him, trying to break his legs with dumbbell s from weight lifting equipment. But he didn't give up his gear. It was pretty mysterious his spell in hospital immediately before his death. All his freinds were telling him what she was doing to him but he wouldn't leave her alone. One time he raced down her street when he knew she was with another man smashing his car in to five parked up vehicles in an attempted spectacular suicide. What put him in hospital was a broken hip. He was found by the cashpoint where he had just drawn out his disability benefits unconscious. The next few weeks were where his father tried to get me to talk some sense in to him but he was beyond that. He'd sneak out of the hospital in a wheelchair to find off licences.
As I said, when he hadn't been seen for a few days his brother kicked his door in and found him amongst a load of foil, needles and special brew cans. I still cry when I think of his death.
He hung around with some right types. The black widow who had just returned from a seven stretch. They'd seen a lad who had visited their flat going over but rather than call an ambulance they injected him again. Put his dead body in the lift and emptied his bank account.
One time I came up to visit with spiders, a bit of a knob, and Ron tree an old freind of mine. He is currently the frontman for the band Hawklords and was singer for Hawkwind for many years. He lives in frome and they were playing a gig with one of his old bands the Sewersuckers so I drove them up. We went to Richards who had local hard an mick mcnugget staying. I've seen him belt people with iron bars. You don't mess with him. Basically him and his girlfriend were cuckoopint Richards flat and he wanted them out so thought of a plan that we knew nothing about. He had a tendency to try get you to fight his enemies. For those who don't know what cuckooing is, well, a dealer or small gang will move in to some weaker persons flat and use it as a base to deal from etc. before we left for the gig richard said "I'm leaving my gear in the top of the lamp". We assumed mcnugget was a mate and why would richard say this if he thought he might take it. We watched the Sewersuckers then I drove us all back to Richards. Of course mick mcnugget had stolen the eight of heroin and we were supposed to beat him up. Now Ron is a singer not a fighter, and spiders is a glomby so it meant I would have to do battle with this man regarded as amongst the most violent in leeds. To this day I don't know if I could have had him. He was ageing a little and I was fit, but these types use weapons, knives, hammers, anything to hand. Besides I was pretty let down and disgusted at having been put in to such a position. So we all split. Leave them to it.
Wednesday, 2 July 2014
Tuesday, 1 July 2014
Near Death Experience part 3
During his last weeks Richards father had tried to get me to talk some sense in to him but each time I broached subjects he didn't like he'd cut me off. After his death I fell apart. I hadn't realised how much I had relied on him for someone to talk to. Whilst staying with him I had picked up a taste for crack. Most crack smokers use heroin to come down but I was determined never to take heroin again. I defy anyone to not enjoy crack. It is a release of dopamine, a pure pleasure chemical in your brain. If you like pleasure, you like crack. But it leads to obsession and suicidal thoughts. Besides, there was no way I could have been accepted in that comunity of leeds.junkies if I didn't take something. They would have thought I was an undercover pig and killed me.
I recall letting rip at Betty Norbury that day I heard of Richards death. She phoned me with some trivia and as death often makes happen the veils of bullshit were ripped down. It was months later that I realised how off the rails his death had sent me. And the ripples lasted years during which I cared little for what became of me.
I ought to explain that, although almost as soon as I realised I had become addicted to heroin I sought medical help and tried to get well. I won't bore you with all the usual junky tails but I saw it all. No one wants to be a heroin addict. It cost me not having children, my wife, my house. I ended up living in my workshop and it was here I did my biggest rattle. I would say final rattle but there were several lapses and relapses, many minor rattles. But I locked myself away in that stone barn and went through the hell of withdrawal.
A common misconception regarding heroin withdrawal is that it is like flu and it takes a week. I didn't sleep at all for three weeks. All your worst memories return. You have the emotional resilience of a new born baby. After a month it is possible to interact with other people but you are still tripped out and weak. After six months my endorphins still weren't right and I'd find myself crying and in utter misery. Eight months in and I could take no more and this final relapse ended with me prescribed subutex and I have been on this ever since.
I am happy to stay that way. The latest angle on addiction is to see it more through the lens of diabetes. A chemical imbalance the addict tries to self correct in order to be normal. This is the most accurate way of looking at it I have come across. The old and outdated view that the addict is some self indulgent greedy lay about just doesn't sit with the truth.
For further reading on the recent neuroscience of addiction read 'The Chemical Carousel by Dirk Hansen".
I recall letting rip at Betty Norbury that day I heard of Richards death. She phoned me with some trivia and as death often makes happen the veils of bullshit were ripped down. It was months later that I realised how off the rails his death had sent me. And the ripples lasted years during which I cared little for what became of me.
I ought to explain that, although almost as soon as I realised I had become addicted to heroin I sought medical help and tried to get well. I won't bore you with all the usual junky tails but I saw it all. No one wants to be a heroin addict. It cost me not having children, my wife, my house. I ended up living in my workshop and it was here I did my biggest rattle. I would say final rattle but there were several lapses and relapses, many minor rattles. But I locked myself away in that stone barn and went through the hell of withdrawal.
A common misconception regarding heroin withdrawal is that it is like flu and it takes a week. I didn't sleep at all for three weeks. All your worst memories return. You have the emotional resilience of a new born baby. After a month it is possible to interact with other people but you are still tripped out and weak. After six months my endorphins still weren't right and I'd find myself crying and in utter misery. Eight months in and I could take no more and this final relapse ended with me prescribed subutex and I have been on this ever since.
I am happy to stay that way. The latest angle on addiction is to see it more through the lens of diabetes. A chemical imbalance the addict tries to self correct in order to be normal. This is the most accurate way of looking at it I have come across. The old and outdated view that the addict is some self indulgent greedy lay about just doesn't sit with the truth.
For further reading on the recent neuroscience of addiction read 'The Chemical Carousel by Dirk Hansen".
Near Death Experience. Part 2
Once you have become addicted to heroin and then got clean your body has changed. Where as someone who has never been an addict can dabble, smoking heroin, chasing the dragon through a tin foil flute for up to three weeks, even a month and all the price they pay is a deep depression and a couple of days sleeping the ex addicts cells have been altered. They can maybe have a day, sometimes two but their bodies recognise it instantly and within three days they are fully addicted again. I am not sure if this is the case with alcohol, Valium or other drugs but I know it is also true for ex cigarette addicts. They can have one but if they smoke for three days they are hooked again and must undergo a full withdrawal to get back to being clean. This is why relapse is so common. Seldom will heroin addicts recover and those who do are prone to relapse. Self control is gone. AA talk of addicts who stay clean for years and for no reason anyone can fathom they go out and get trashed. Usually this will be followed by a few months or years trying to regain sobriety. I pity the alcoholic. I am only a semi alci but I can't walk down supermarket isles, I can't go to parties easily.
I give you one example. I'd been working for several months fitting out the Centre for a life in Newcastle. On the final night all the crew who had spent the last few months living and working together on this grand project decided to go for a meal. We ate, then hit the bars. I had a few drinks and took a couple of e's as all of us did. A monster of a night with fifteen odd of us sampling the night life of Newcastle fuelled by MDMA and alcohol. The next day we all drove off. The others to there beds to sleep it off. Not me. I was straight down to leeds and at Richards on a two week heroin binge before I managed to get re medicated on subutex. Subutex has saved my life. The fact it renders heroin and all other opiates useless means even if I take heroin I don't feel it. There is a similar drug for alcoholics called antibuse. This doesn't prevent the effect of alcohol in the same way subutex does with heroin but it makes the drinker so ill they won't try drinking.
So these last fifteen years since I stopped using heroin and take the blocker subutex I have led a conventional life. At least heroin wise.
But the addict is expert in self deception. They believe their own lies.
In 2004, the year leeds rugby league became champions again for the first time in 32 years my father had a fall. He had an unusual condition that I still don't fully understand but they put him on some pills to lower his blood pressure. They dosed him far too high. This caused him to fall in the street where a passerby found him lied there unconscious. At the brain hospital it was found the fall had caused bleeding inside his skull. I drove up to leeds and after a tantrum with the doctors, he had been unconscious for five days, I got them to scan him. They had though he had had a stroke but if they had left it another day he would have died from the build up of pressure. They drilled two holes in his skull and drained off the blood. This had to be done again. They operated on the original problem too. He was talking rubbish. Horses were landing on the ceiling, I was a rock star.. It would be months before the bruising would subside and at the time we didn't know if he would recover.
I drove up to leeds during these first two weeks but my money ran out. There was no one else around to kick the doctors arses, (these days with the NHS you have to kick up a fuss as they are overburdened and underfunded). I asked around for work and an exhibition joinery company I knew vaguely offered me work to enable me to stay in leeds for the months it would take for my father to recover. These were a great bunch of lads. I helped fit out The Deep in Hull, Birmingham museum, we worked on the exhibition around hms victory and the Mary rose in Portsmouth. We did the tank museum in bovington and Plymouth museum among others, too many to recall. But most of the time I was in there workshop near wetherby, visiting my dad most evenings, talking to him, trying to get his brain going properly again. Testing him with mental road maps and leeds rl sporting history.
Being my best freind it would have been rude to stay anywhere but with richard. Looking back the stupidity of this amazes me. He was dealing again after his spell in prison. The jailhouse had turned him in to a different person. In the whole 10 months I stayed with him I can't say I saw him eat more than two microwave meals and drink two cups of coffee. His was a diet of special brew and heroin. He just didn't care about himself anymore. I am forgetting an important point. I had tex my dog so needed someone to look after him. He was a husky cross German shepherd and they need to be with someone all the time. Only richard could provide this love. I could have abandoned the dog. Many would have, but it gave richard purpose and some pride. Tex was quite a beast. A real wolf of a dog. So my day began with taking tex out, in to the van for 7, pick up a snack and a coffee for breakfasts, drive to work, build stuff all day, come back to Richards which would be full of junkies smoking gear and pipes of crack, take the dog out, feed him, then try sleep in his bedroom as the crack and smack smoke flowed under the door. But never gave in. Stayed strong. Helped richard pull himself together. It was not long after I returned to frome that he was found dead in his room, his body full of heroin, methadone, alcohol, the coffee table lined up with forty odd special brew cans each full of piss as his disability made going to the toilet a hassle. Whether it was suicide in the purest sense I can not say but it was a drift in to no motivation to live and self medication to death. I miss him. He was my best freind. I carved a headstone for his grave and spoke at his funeral but at the time I was in pieces and couldn't deliver the words I wanted to. I hope he would understand.
I give you one example. I'd been working for several months fitting out the Centre for a life in Newcastle. On the final night all the crew who had spent the last few months living and working together on this grand project decided to go for a meal. We ate, then hit the bars. I had a few drinks and took a couple of e's as all of us did. A monster of a night with fifteen odd of us sampling the night life of Newcastle fuelled by MDMA and alcohol. The next day we all drove off. The others to there beds to sleep it off. Not me. I was straight down to leeds and at Richards on a two week heroin binge before I managed to get re medicated on subutex. Subutex has saved my life. The fact it renders heroin and all other opiates useless means even if I take heroin I don't feel it. There is a similar drug for alcoholics called antibuse. This doesn't prevent the effect of alcohol in the same way subutex does with heroin but it makes the drinker so ill they won't try drinking.
So these last fifteen years since I stopped using heroin and take the blocker subutex I have led a conventional life. At least heroin wise.
But the addict is expert in self deception. They believe their own lies.
In 2004, the year leeds rugby league became champions again for the first time in 32 years my father had a fall. He had an unusual condition that I still don't fully understand but they put him on some pills to lower his blood pressure. They dosed him far too high. This caused him to fall in the street where a passerby found him lied there unconscious. At the brain hospital it was found the fall had caused bleeding inside his skull. I drove up to leeds and after a tantrum with the doctors, he had been unconscious for five days, I got them to scan him. They had though he had had a stroke but if they had left it another day he would have died from the build up of pressure. They drilled two holes in his skull and drained off the blood. This had to be done again. They operated on the original problem too. He was talking rubbish. Horses were landing on the ceiling, I was a rock star.. It would be months before the bruising would subside and at the time we didn't know if he would recover.
I drove up to leeds during these first two weeks but my money ran out. There was no one else around to kick the doctors arses, (these days with the NHS you have to kick up a fuss as they are overburdened and underfunded). I asked around for work and an exhibition joinery company I knew vaguely offered me work to enable me to stay in leeds for the months it would take for my father to recover. These were a great bunch of lads. I helped fit out The Deep in Hull, Birmingham museum, we worked on the exhibition around hms victory and the Mary rose in Portsmouth. We did the tank museum in bovington and Plymouth museum among others, too many to recall. But most of the time I was in there workshop near wetherby, visiting my dad most evenings, talking to him, trying to get his brain going properly again. Testing him with mental road maps and leeds rl sporting history.
Being my best freind it would have been rude to stay anywhere but with richard. Looking back the stupidity of this amazes me. He was dealing again after his spell in prison. The jailhouse had turned him in to a different person. In the whole 10 months I stayed with him I can't say I saw him eat more than two microwave meals and drink two cups of coffee. His was a diet of special brew and heroin. He just didn't care about himself anymore. I am forgetting an important point. I had tex my dog so needed someone to look after him. He was a husky cross German shepherd and they need to be with someone all the time. Only richard could provide this love. I could have abandoned the dog. Many would have, but it gave richard purpose and some pride. Tex was quite a beast. A real wolf of a dog. So my day began with taking tex out, in to the van for 7, pick up a snack and a coffee for breakfasts, drive to work, build stuff all day, come back to Richards which would be full of junkies smoking gear and pipes of crack, take the dog out, feed him, then try sleep in his bedroom as the crack and smack smoke flowed under the door. But never gave in. Stayed strong. Helped richard pull himself together. It was not long after I returned to frome that he was found dead in his room, his body full of heroin, methadone, alcohol, the coffee table lined up with forty odd special brew cans each full of piss as his disability made going to the toilet a hassle. Whether it was suicide in the purest sense I can not say but it was a drift in to no motivation to live and self medication to death. I miss him. He was my best freind. I carved a headstone for his grave and spoke at his funeral but at the time I was in pieces and couldn't deliver the words I wanted to. I hope he would understand.
What really happened. the near death experience and the build up part 1 and context.
I spoke of my near death experience and to get to the heart of it I will have to write a fair bit to contextualise. Suicide attempt is too grand a description but I was certainly trying to burst some sort of psychic boil I had developed.
Regular readers of skreeworld will know of Francis cricks astonishing hypothesis. It wasn't an idea new to him. Hypocrites had said the same thing and Charles Darwin repositioning us as just another animal ought to have brought the idea to the fore. All our loves, all our dreams, all our expectations, all our emotions, all our thoughts, all our feelings, all our transcendent moments triggered by music and art, all of this is down to no more than the electrical, chemical and other processes that take place beneath our skulls. Neuroscience fMRI scanners are showing visual images of the proteins burned when we have a thought. Alzheimer's reveals the personality, the very soul of a person can be subject to organic disintegration. There is no soul as far as any science has managed to show. Though the astonishing hypothesis is not a new idea, it is as significant as Galileo or Darwin in its magnitude of the way it ought to make us see ourselves. Everything we know about consciousness comes from looking at the physical matter of brain and body.
Once this is accepted two things become obvious. Firstly that emotions are not magical at all. Even the sensations of falling in love or the love one feels at the birth of their children, all emotions are organic. Something physical is taking place. We are along way off knowing how any of this works but it must be true. Just as memory can be wiped from physical brain damage so too the capacity for emotions can be destroyed by brain injuries.
We still live most of our lives as if none of this were true. We are like children believing in Father Christmas. It seems somehow wrong, counter intuitive, we live as if we have souls. Even atheists do it. But we must crack this one. We need to accept. It is true we no longer blame schizophrenics for their madness nor lock young pregnant girls away in lunatic asylums. Most people now accept that depression is not the victims responsibility. You can't just tell them to get a grip, pull their socks up, because their condition is physical. Somewhere on a microscopic level there is an imbalance of neurotransmitters. There maybe techniques to help but blaming the patient is generally now regarded as stupid.
It was candace pert working in sol snyders laboratory who discovered much of how we understand ourselves. She discovered opiate receptor sites. And much more. The concepts that led to a revolution in psychiatry. Prozac nation we became. If serotonin could be forced to be accepted by the receptor site then a pill could make you happy. Exercise triggers our own opiates. Endorphins we call them. Our actions, from running to smiling trigger chemicals that affect our mood.
So if we accept all this it must be true that, just as some are born brighter than others, prettier than others, more athletic than others, then some will be born opiate deficient. Studies have shown that alcoholics invariably have insufficencies in certain blood sugars. We must accept that drug addicts are self medicating against a condition they did not ask for. Addicts come from all walks of life, all strata of society. In fifty years time just how stupid it is going to seem that we thought heroin addicts were just lazy bums who couldn't be bothered.
Another point worth making is the one of free will. Libet famously revealed through his experiments that activity could be detected in the brain micro seconds before an individual 'decided' to do something. It can be no other way. There is no little man inside our heads controlling our bodies. The electro chemical activity that takes place prior to us taking a decision is not something we control. Free will does not exist in any real sense. If you know a person well you can often guess what they are going to do way before they decide to do it.
This is where Alcoholics Anonymous are so right. The acceptance that you have no control over your relationship with drink is the first step. It is also the most important. I don't know why I have no self control with certain substances but to live a sober life I have to accept that I have no control. Here skreeworld and AA go our seperate ways. They say you must submit to a higher power and to be fair they have a very good successs rate. Far greater than any NHS or conventional medicine. But there is a slip in to cultish ness seen in the religious fervour of Russell brand. Basically AA don't want atheists or agnostics. They are a religious cult. Not a bad one but you must submit your self to the group. There ought to be rival groups to break their monopoly, ones open to all. Still, as I say, they have it right in that the addict has no control over their actions with their substance of choice. I suspect it is the group talking, the opening up and talking to each other that is the secret of their success, not the higher power. But I am not here to criticise AA.
You can smoke heroin for up to a month if you have never been addicted and suffer little more than a hangover. Alcohol seems to never addict many people who remain able to use it as a social lubricant with no ill affects. Sadly, others end up drinking all day every day. It has never caught me as bad as this but I have spent years in the past as an evening alcoholic. For many years I drank at least a bottle of wine a night. To cope with a lecturing job I had 20 odd years ago I would drink a bottle of winky each night. To get through the day I would split the codeine off nurofen plus. This was my first opiate addiction. I would take whole boxes, driving to new towns so as not to get the pharmacists suspicious. Back in those days the tablets were helpfully half pink and half white so you could see where to split them. A crappy opiate habit.
Meanwhile, back up in leeds my home town, due to the wars in Afghanistan our inner cities were flooded with high quality brown heroin. (Where is it all now? Some say the Americans get it all thanks to there servicemen but the quality of heroin in England now is so poor I haven't seen a beggar gouching out, nor heard of an overdose in years. Heald up by methadone prescriptions they continue to inject and smoke brown powders with percentages of heroin as low as 5%). But back in 97, 98, 99 there was tons of very strong heroin on the streets. Of my own circle of freinds, and I mean my real close buddies I grew up with a good dozen died from overdose. Fortunate not to live there I could go up to visit on brief holidays of up to a week, staying with my best freind from childhood richard RIP. .His was the one house I could always turn up at no matter what state I was in, drunk, hanging, psychotic and he would welcome me in and let me stay. I would dabble with the gear but never got a habit. Not then anyway.
I moved to frome and after working for Fred BAIER for a couple of years I set up my own workshop. Down on a farm by a river with a vast field for tex my dog to run around in. I have written about the Fred years so I'll jump straight in to frome. I gathered a group of freinds, many were glass blowers from Neil Wilkins studio, Clive, my best mate at that time was chief designer for Kevin McCloud lighting. Since then Kev has gone on to TV work. His programme Grand Designs is popular amongst the creative middle classes. He still has connections here and recently did a series with a tricket, a oat builder freind of mine. He's a bit of a knob but he's ok.
Now, in my early thirties I finally discovered MDMA and dancing. Each weekend would start on a Friday and we'd do pills sometimes coke and dance all night at clubs in bath and Bristol. Sometimes trips to London or parties in marquees. One weekend I remember going to two parties in London and walking across the city, high on ecstasy marvelling at the new millennium eye. Someone had the idea to fly to Spain so we flew out, still drugged up to the costa edl sol. We stayed with this war photographer, doing more pills. Some argument saw the car windscreen getting smashed then a vicious fight ended the fun and we flew home battered and bruised. My ecstasy period lasted just two years before the chemicals spoiled my head. After the weekend the week would sag into a depression only picking up around Thursday when the pills began again. This cycle became too much, my brain battered and sore, I gave up raving.
Around this time the heroin epidemic was continueing in leeds and regularly I'd be going up for some old freinds funeral. Turps died in st George's crypt, overdosing. Martin died round at Richards overdosing. Dirt box, Gerry, and several others, many I'd known since childhood I went to there funerals around this time.
Richard, my best freind had begun dealing to support his habit. Nothing much, just to a few freinds. The police came knocking and took him in to his bedroom. He had an eighth, little more than personal use amount. But one of the drug squad answered the door to two seperate people who had come to score. God only knows how they fell for it but he said, "Richards gone out for a bit, he asked me to sort anyone out who came round". If you can't smell a pig there is something seriously wrong with you. "So, how long have you been scoring off richard for then.""oh, about two years".
With these statements and the eighth, despite this beig his firsts fence for dealing heroin they gave him three years.
He served eighteen months but came out a changed man. The following six or so years were basically a spiral down in to his suicide/ overdose. He'd lost his marbles a bit and fallen in love with this restitution who just bled him to death.
Back in frome I'd met old freinds and developed my own heroin habit but immediately sought medical help. I had perhaps six months honeymoon period before getting myself a subutex prescription. This is a partial agonist and blocks the effects of heroin. So bar the odd relapse my life has been medicated so as heroin doesn't work on me.
Regular readers of skreeworld will know of Francis cricks astonishing hypothesis. It wasn't an idea new to him. Hypocrites had said the same thing and Charles Darwin repositioning us as just another animal ought to have brought the idea to the fore. All our loves, all our dreams, all our expectations, all our emotions, all our thoughts, all our feelings, all our transcendent moments triggered by music and art, all of this is down to no more than the electrical, chemical and other processes that take place beneath our skulls. Neuroscience fMRI scanners are showing visual images of the proteins burned when we have a thought. Alzheimer's reveals the personality, the very soul of a person can be subject to organic disintegration. There is no soul as far as any science has managed to show. Though the astonishing hypothesis is not a new idea, it is as significant as Galileo or Darwin in its magnitude of the way it ought to make us see ourselves. Everything we know about consciousness comes from looking at the physical matter of brain and body.
Once this is accepted two things become obvious. Firstly that emotions are not magical at all. Even the sensations of falling in love or the love one feels at the birth of their children, all emotions are organic. Something physical is taking place. We are along way off knowing how any of this works but it must be true. Just as memory can be wiped from physical brain damage so too the capacity for emotions can be destroyed by brain injuries.
We still live most of our lives as if none of this were true. We are like children believing in Father Christmas. It seems somehow wrong, counter intuitive, we live as if we have souls. Even atheists do it. But we must crack this one. We need to accept. It is true we no longer blame schizophrenics for their madness nor lock young pregnant girls away in lunatic asylums. Most people now accept that depression is not the victims responsibility. You can't just tell them to get a grip, pull their socks up, because their condition is physical. Somewhere on a microscopic level there is an imbalance of neurotransmitters. There maybe techniques to help but blaming the patient is generally now regarded as stupid.
It was candace pert working in sol snyders laboratory who discovered much of how we understand ourselves. She discovered opiate receptor sites. And much more. The concepts that led to a revolution in psychiatry. Prozac nation we became. If serotonin could be forced to be accepted by the receptor site then a pill could make you happy. Exercise triggers our own opiates. Endorphins we call them. Our actions, from running to smiling trigger chemicals that affect our mood.
So if we accept all this it must be true that, just as some are born brighter than others, prettier than others, more athletic than others, then some will be born opiate deficient. Studies have shown that alcoholics invariably have insufficencies in certain blood sugars. We must accept that drug addicts are self medicating against a condition they did not ask for. Addicts come from all walks of life, all strata of society. In fifty years time just how stupid it is going to seem that we thought heroin addicts were just lazy bums who couldn't be bothered.
Another point worth making is the one of free will. Libet famously revealed through his experiments that activity could be detected in the brain micro seconds before an individual 'decided' to do something. It can be no other way. There is no little man inside our heads controlling our bodies. The electro chemical activity that takes place prior to us taking a decision is not something we control. Free will does not exist in any real sense. If you know a person well you can often guess what they are going to do way before they decide to do it.
This is where Alcoholics Anonymous are so right. The acceptance that you have no control over your relationship with drink is the first step. It is also the most important. I don't know why I have no self control with certain substances but to live a sober life I have to accept that I have no control. Here skreeworld and AA go our seperate ways. They say you must submit to a higher power and to be fair they have a very good successs rate. Far greater than any NHS or conventional medicine. But there is a slip in to cultish ness seen in the religious fervour of Russell brand. Basically AA don't want atheists or agnostics. They are a religious cult. Not a bad one but you must submit your self to the group. There ought to be rival groups to break their monopoly, ones open to all. Still, as I say, they have it right in that the addict has no control over their actions with their substance of choice. I suspect it is the group talking, the opening up and talking to each other that is the secret of their success, not the higher power. But I am not here to criticise AA.
You can smoke heroin for up to a month if you have never been addicted and suffer little more than a hangover. Alcohol seems to never addict many people who remain able to use it as a social lubricant with no ill affects. Sadly, others end up drinking all day every day. It has never caught me as bad as this but I have spent years in the past as an evening alcoholic. For many years I drank at least a bottle of wine a night. To cope with a lecturing job I had 20 odd years ago I would drink a bottle of winky each night. To get through the day I would split the codeine off nurofen plus. This was my first opiate addiction. I would take whole boxes, driving to new towns so as not to get the pharmacists suspicious. Back in those days the tablets were helpfully half pink and half white so you could see where to split them. A crappy opiate habit.
Meanwhile, back up in leeds my home town, due to the wars in Afghanistan our inner cities were flooded with high quality brown heroin. (Where is it all now? Some say the Americans get it all thanks to there servicemen but the quality of heroin in England now is so poor I haven't seen a beggar gouching out, nor heard of an overdose in years. Heald up by methadone prescriptions they continue to inject and smoke brown powders with percentages of heroin as low as 5%). But back in 97, 98, 99 there was tons of very strong heroin on the streets. Of my own circle of freinds, and I mean my real close buddies I grew up with a good dozen died from overdose. Fortunate not to live there I could go up to visit on brief holidays of up to a week, staying with my best freind from childhood richard RIP. .His was the one house I could always turn up at no matter what state I was in, drunk, hanging, psychotic and he would welcome me in and let me stay. I would dabble with the gear but never got a habit. Not then anyway.
I moved to frome and after working for Fred BAIER for a couple of years I set up my own workshop. Down on a farm by a river with a vast field for tex my dog to run around in. I have written about the Fred years so I'll jump straight in to frome. I gathered a group of freinds, many were glass blowers from Neil Wilkins studio, Clive, my best mate at that time was chief designer for Kevin McCloud lighting. Since then Kev has gone on to TV work. His programme Grand Designs is popular amongst the creative middle classes. He still has connections here and recently did a series with a tricket, a oat builder freind of mine. He's a bit of a knob but he's ok.
Now, in my early thirties I finally discovered MDMA and dancing. Each weekend would start on a Friday and we'd do pills sometimes coke and dance all night at clubs in bath and Bristol. Sometimes trips to London or parties in marquees. One weekend I remember going to two parties in London and walking across the city, high on ecstasy marvelling at the new millennium eye. Someone had the idea to fly to Spain so we flew out, still drugged up to the costa edl sol. We stayed with this war photographer, doing more pills. Some argument saw the car windscreen getting smashed then a vicious fight ended the fun and we flew home battered and bruised. My ecstasy period lasted just two years before the chemicals spoiled my head. After the weekend the week would sag into a depression only picking up around Thursday when the pills began again. This cycle became too much, my brain battered and sore, I gave up raving.
Around this time the heroin epidemic was continueing in leeds and regularly I'd be going up for some old freinds funeral. Turps died in st George's crypt, overdosing. Martin died round at Richards overdosing. Dirt box, Gerry, and several others, many I'd known since childhood I went to there funerals around this time.
Richard, my best freind had begun dealing to support his habit. Nothing much, just to a few freinds. The police came knocking and took him in to his bedroom. He had an eighth, little more than personal use amount. But one of the drug squad answered the door to two seperate people who had come to score. God only knows how they fell for it but he said, "Richards gone out for a bit, he asked me to sort anyone out who came round". If you can't smell a pig there is something seriously wrong with you. "So, how long have you been scoring off richard for then.""oh, about two years".
With these statements and the eighth, despite this beig his firsts fence for dealing heroin they gave him three years.
He served eighteen months but came out a changed man. The following six or so years were basically a spiral down in to his suicide/ overdose. He'd lost his marbles a bit and fallen in love with this restitution who just bled him to death.
Back in frome I'd met old freinds and developed my own heroin habit but immediately sought medical help. I had perhaps six months honeymoon period before getting myself a subutex prescription. This is a partial agonist and blocks the effects of heroin. So bar the odd relapse my life has been medicated so as heroin doesn't work on me.
Monday, 30 June 2014
Recovery Regime
Since my near death experience I have been advised by doctors to take a couple of months off work. The office job in London and moving house had forced me to over burden myself with pressure . This led to the near death episode however I am not ready to write that up yet.
My self imposed recovery regime has saved my dog too. You may recall I mentioned he had jumped up at a few strangers, bitten the arm of a gypsy who cornered my girlfriend and a few other misdemeanours. We thought he may be too wild to live in our society. I couldn't stand the thought of him being euthanised. So taking two months off to bond and school him was a lucky part of my minor breakdown.
Dook is a Siberian husky cross German shepherd, the same as tex was and they are not far from wolves. They haven't had the wildness bred out of them. And they need a fuck of a lot of exercise.
We wake at 4.30 as its getting light then get out for the sunrise. We walk through the empty streets, through the two parks and out to Vallis. Vallis is an area with a river flowing through a mass of woodland. Paths run through it, so many it will take years to learn. The cliffs where I photographed a female peregrine has graffiti from Stonehenge festival 82 and a local tradition sees teenagers camping out over night in various spots. Our first walk we saw a young lad with a blanket and his arms around two girls, talking them down from a bad trip. But apart from these odd trippers it is empty of people before 7 and we are there not long after 5am. Near the entrance where the peregrines nest I have camped myself a few times, once arranging a freinds stag party round a fire there.
As you get deeper in the river has dippers peppering the rocks and the river is excellent for crayfish. I have seen the odd local who still knows how to trap this tasty treat.
Further down you come to various bridges where it meets the river frome and old ruins of lime kilns are here and there with remnants of rail tracks that the observant eye can see. Rock faces steer the walker left up to great elm or left in to thick tangled undergrowth. Here we cross the river and follow smaller paths.
One we followed yesterday took us to a little shrine to a lad called Jack who must have suicided there. Various notes and dried flowers reveal he was well loved.
Turning back we follow a track that brings you out on to higher ground. Here a footpath that can't have been used leads out on to the Mells road, then you can turn left and hit the nunnery road. But we tend to carry on down, back to the entrance to Vallis and follow the road to Vallis Farm then take the path that leads directly up the hill past a vast horse chestnut. A vast rabbit warren has Dook pulling me about until we reach the top fields. By this time the odd dog walker is out and these last two fields take us to broadway and the old post office. I lived there for a while but found myself short on the rent. I asked for two weeks grace and in the five years since then I would never have had missed deadline again. But the landlord, mark I believe they called him was heavily dictated to by Caro, his wife and I agreed to leave so long as I could have my deposit. Caro and mark reneged on our gentlemens agreement and stole the deposit. Over the years since then I have seen it unoccupied and advertised to rent on several occasions. They must have lost at least a years rent through pure greed and their inability to wait a fortnight for their rent.
We walk down broadway then turn left and cut across the two parks. After two and a half hours walking Dook still chases the other dogs in play around the park. Seven miles or more he's done and he can still outrun the local dogs.
Then the last few streets and we are home. Breakfast and a sleep.
The routine will soon be changing as I will be returning to light work. I am making windows for the small cottage I live in. All the wood I have is mahogany so, under the paint will be hand made windows that will last a hundred years.
I am feeling much better.
My self imposed recovery regime has saved my dog too. You may recall I mentioned he had jumped up at a few strangers, bitten the arm of a gypsy who cornered my girlfriend and a few other misdemeanours. We thought he may be too wild to live in our society. I couldn't stand the thought of him being euthanised. So taking two months off to bond and school him was a lucky part of my minor breakdown.
Dook is a Siberian husky cross German shepherd, the same as tex was and they are not far from wolves. They haven't had the wildness bred out of them. And they need a fuck of a lot of exercise.
We wake at 4.30 as its getting light then get out for the sunrise. We walk through the empty streets, through the two parks and out to Vallis. Vallis is an area with a river flowing through a mass of woodland. Paths run through it, so many it will take years to learn. The cliffs where I photographed a female peregrine has graffiti from Stonehenge festival 82 and a local tradition sees teenagers camping out over night in various spots. Our first walk we saw a young lad with a blanket and his arms around two girls, talking them down from a bad trip. But apart from these odd trippers it is empty of people before 7 and we are there not long after 5am. Near the entrance where the peregrines nest I have camped myself a few times, once arranging a freinds stag party round a fire there.
As you get deeper in the river has dippers peppering the rocks and the river is excellent for crayfish. I have seen the odd local who still knows how to trap this tasty treat.
Further down you come to various bridges where it meets the river frome and old ruins of lime kilns are here and there with remnants of rail tracks that the observant eye can see. Rock faces steer the walker left up to great elm or left in to thick tangled undergrowth. Here we cross the river and follow smaller paths.
One we followed yesterday took us to a little shrine to a lad called Jack who must have suicided there. Various notes and dried flowers reveal he was well loved.
Turning back we follow a track that brings you out on to higher ground. Here a footpath that can't have been used leads out on to the Mells road, then you can turn left and hit the nunnery road. But we tend to carry on down, back to the entrance to Vallis and follow the road to Vallis Farm then take the path that leads directly up the hill past a vast horse chestnut. A vast rabbit warren has Dook pulling me about until we reach the top fields. By this time the odd dog walker is out and these last two fields take us to broadway and the old post office. I lived there for a while but found myself short on the rent. I asked for two weeks grace and in the five years since then I would never have had missed deadline again. But the landlord, mark I believe they called him was heavily dictated to by Caro, his wife and I agreed to leave so long as I could have my deposit. Caro and mark reneged on our gentlemens agreement and stole the deposit. Over the years since then I have seen it unoccupied and advertised to rent on several occasions. They must have lost at least a years rent through pure greed and their inability to wait a fortnight for their rent.
We walk down broadway then turn left and cut across the two parks. After two and a half hours walking Dook still chases the other dogs in play around the park. Seven miles or more he's done and he can still outrun the local dogs.
Then the last few streets and we are home. Breakfast and a sleep.
The routine will soon be changing as I will be returning to light work. I am making windows for the small cottage I live in. All the wood I have is mahogany so, under the paint will be hand made windows that will last a hundred years.
I am feeling much better.
Friday, 27 June 2014
The trials of an ex alcoholic
When I look back at my drinking years, some 12 years ago now I find it difficult to understand why a person would do that to themselves. A freind walked past me in frome yesterday who looks like he still drinks, or worse and he didn't even recognise me for some seconds. His misty eyes focused and his immediate next thought was to ask for money. I gave him a small amount of change. There is nothing I can do to help. Old freinds, eh?
Sunday, 22 June 2014
Please be patient
Skree is recovering from a near death experience. The medical services are monitoring his progress. He says he can't wait to tell the story of what happened.
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