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I have been ready to leave NYC for almost a month now but became absolutely lethargic on methadone. When I am in Asia I maintain on prescribed morphine (in Mindanao) or Dihydrocodeinone, Promethazine and Diazepam, all OTC in Cambodia. Of course a liberal amount of #4 is consumed. It is far cheaper than the aforementioned medicine. In Asia I complain about not having methadone. Morphine is almost always a locally produced IR syringe/oral tablet. IR of course produce valleys and peaks that are difficult to accomodate after consuming methadone for so long. With a 36 hour halflife and the internal resevoir created by regularly dosing above 70mg (I take 220 daily) methadone affords a calmer and thereby more productive lifestyle for me.

The flipside is that when I am on methadone for any considerable length of time I begin yearning for morphine...or #4. The grass is always greener as they say.

Since my last extended stay in Phnom Penh almost 6 years ago I have visited the city 3 times. With each successive visit I have been shocked at the nation's rapid progress. Sadly, that progress resulted in Beong Keouk Lake and the so called "backpacker ghetto" that sprung up around parts of the lakeshore having been destroyed. As I noted in my old blog it was an eventuality that had been bandied about since 2004. I for one thought it would never happen as the lakeshore and its hedonism was a top draw of the tourist trade and so I thought the nation's dictator- Hun Sen- would be wise enough to leave it as is. $88 million US from a Chinese conglomerate changed his mind.

The backpacking scene has partially relocated to the riverside, the "river" being the Mekong which flows out of Vietnam's delta into Cambodia, then separates Laos, Thailand and Myanmar (Burma) before ending up in a spectacular canyon on the Chinese and Tibetan border. Street 172 around Street 19 is now where it is most lively.

In an hour I have to take my tired old ar*e onto the subway. Being in the South Bronx it will probably take me almost 2 hours on two trains to get to a busstop where I will then wait for a city bus. That bus will then take me to my terminal at JFK. I bought a one way ticket which is what I almost always do now that it is simple to forge proof of onward passage.

Honestly speaking I have only ever been caught out there a single time. In 2009 Rizza and I were flying from Bangkok to Manila on one of the world's worst airlines, Cebu Pacific. I had become so jaded that I no longer forged proof of onward passage. We get to the ticket counter to check in 40 minutes before our flight left. A gay Filipino clerk asked for the aforementioned proof. "Uhhh, my wife is a Filipina and since we are married I have balikbayan status (meaning I do not need onward passage to enter)." The clerk told me I needed it for me or I couldnt board.

We quickly walked through the terminal and in a stroke of luck we found a cybercafe. It took me about 10 minutes to forge what I needed and we were let through. So I have since made sure to make a simple forgery before flying.

I am amazed at how cheap tickets are now! $613.00 can get you from NYC to Phnom Penh! The problem though is that is a bundeled deal, take Delta to Detroit of all places, then switch to Korean Air for a long haul to Seoul, then wait 7 hours for a 5 hour flight to Cambodia. No thanks. When you have two airlines with a 40 minute layover between both (in this case in Detroit) you are almost guaranteed a missed flight. Miss that flight and you usually will be shi*e out of luck since it was a bargain basement bundling. You get what you pay for.

Anyway, my flight is supposed to have WiFi. If so I will bore you some more while barreling through the night sky above North America.

With a new ID I have had to leave my almost 400 blog entries as "Rachamim" and start anew. As luck would have it I have achieved "Bluelighter Status" on my day of departure and so I will be able to keep myself occupied blogging both on my long haul and in my new kind of/sort of home, both of which I will discuss in my second entry.

I returned to America at the end of 2013 in hopes of getting a slot in a trial for what was then an experimental medication for Hep-C. For those who used to read my "Rachamim" blog entries, in 2008 I had come to America from my home in Mindanao in the Southern Philippines in order to obtain Interferon which at that time was the treatment with the most sucess with combatting Hep-C. I suceeded in getting that treatment and received injections of pegylated Interferon and Ribavarin, a Protease Inhibitor in the form of a capsule.

Going into treatment I had a viral load of 110,000. My first blood work at 4 weeks was a viral load of only 10,000, a huge decrease obviously and I foolishly allowed myself to get excited. Then my personal life crumbled. My wife (at that time), Rizza, was back home in Mindanao taking care of our businesses. In short, I discovered that she had run away with some kid she had met in university. I never loved her but the fact that I was in business (rice mills, cattle, sugar cane, tree farming and land speculation) and relied upon her serving as my eyes and ears while I was abroad made her actions very stressful. Moreover, her actions made her family lose a huge amount of "face," making my relations with her family troubled as well.

The stress apparently manifested itself in my overall health. My next bloodwork at 8 weeks showed that I had rebounded to a viral load of 70,000. Such a massive increase meant that my treatment had failed. I had contracted Hep-C in 1984 (diagnosed 1991) so that my virus had progressed to Stage 4. It was literally a life and death issue for me.

I consigned myself to an early death in the not too distant future. In fact, I would have been on the verge of liver failure right now had I not been extremely lucky with the aforementioned experimental treatment. In 2013 a friend of mine with Albert Einstein Hospital here in New York City emailed me and told me that there was a promising trial taking shape and she asked me to participate knowing how my first attempt had failed so miserably. Now FDA Approved, "Solvadi" costs $1,400 per day, imagine??? I not only received it for free but was paid a stipend for participating.

My first bloodwoork at 4 weeks came back undetectable!!! I was declared Cured five weeks ago, after a 6 month regimen and so my time in the US was coming to an end...

well I just got a brand new connection the dealers got sooooooooo much weed and a medium amount of mushrooms In stock and I just bought 2 hits of shrooms and a ball of kush which I will light up later

-Streetcow

[While the current title and subtitle of this whimsical composition is, I suppose, sufficiently sufficient (an intentional tautology, appended if for no better reason but for the sheer orgiastic oratorical onanism, therewithal) and satisfies me more than if this farcical blog entry was to be left totally bereft of any functioning title whatsoever, I still am somewhat dissatisfied with the whole business of entitling blogs on Bluelight.

What can I say? There's no justifying my eccentricity: captious caviling and capricious caterwauling, all over linguistic punctilio and all out if an inborn monomanical obsession with communicative proficiency and perfection percolating down to the finest of details. And not to mention -- OK, I'll stop with the tangents and mouthy meandering for now.

Anyway, back to the topic of the title. As I've never been one to count that which is pithy and pointed as having precedence and priority over that which is piquant and poignant, one would see clearly why I would take such umbrage with the inclusion of a mandatory and unavoidable character limitation for blog titles.

One of the paramount reasons for why I frequent online message boards and avoid Twitter, YouTube, and other awful Internet offal is because message boards typically allow for unfettered, unlimited, and relatively unrestricted communicative expressivity—which I happen to greatly enjoy.

But, once again, my attempts at verbal freshness, impressive expression and expressive impression, authorial creativity, and vocable virtuosity, and generally dexterous word slinging have proved arrantly abortive, as the entelechy of my elocution is thwarted by a unnecessarily stupid, incredibly inane, stupefyingly stultifying, rebarbative and superfluous character limit.

As I had previously styled this title—with all tantalizing, titular turgidity (in a good way) and phrasal fecundity—having had initially decided upon a more apropos and demonstrative title with which to denominate and style this apocryphal anecdote. But, not to sound repetitive, as per usually, my attempts at creative composition were unavailing.

At any rate, this text was not cooked up with the intention to carom dulcet syllables and mellifluous lexemes against a bovine audience's eardrums. Like it, dislike it; love it, loathe it; take it or leave it—you have your druthers and as well as the freedom to avert your eyes at what they find unsightly.

As with all my written material, the person to whom I should strive to please is myself. It is my opinion that a writer ceases to be any longer a writer when they write not for their own amusement or satisfaction, but to obsequiously oblige another. At that lowly, pitiable point the writer goes from being a creator of text to being indistinguishable from that of the work-for-hire amanuensis; the scribe has transmogrified into the secretary, as a kind of reversed metamorphosis—the graceful and beauteous butterfly has regressed to the slithering, hard-featured, uglily undulating, corpulent and distended wormlike caterpillar. A critter no more appreciable than its legless lookalikes: the vile worm and the repugnant slug.]

Well, there was that one time—not too far back—when I had fallen asleep on the couch at a friend of a friend's house. Took a few handfuls too many downers, drank a few too many shots of Bourbon, and to make a long and discomfitting story short and easier to confess, I blacked out on the davenport whilst watching reruns of Frasier.

Woke up some hours later, and, well--erh--I just knew that, whatever had happened, it wasn't right. But I've been having weekly, one-to-one therapy sessions ever since. A tête-à-tête with a phlegmatic, affectedly sympathetic therapist; dispassionately ensconced in a leather executive armchair positioned behind a megalithic mahogany wooden desk (which probably costed more than my car).


Yep, a professional sinecure of a psychiatrist, to whom I'm paying a higher rate for a one hour session than I would for a licentious liaison with a high-class harlot. At least the harlot sucks my cock and lets me fuck her before she takes my whole week's wages for a hour's tryst. At any rate, the shrink has a lot in common with the strumpet: they both get paid exorbitant rates for an uncomfortably awkward and fleeting moment of their time; they both are overpaid and underworked while I am over paying to be overworked; they both have an uncanny ability to make my money feel squandered, my time seem frittered, and my worth seem nothing but negligible and my existence entirely expendable. But I'm getting too discursive, here.


Anyway, I feel I'm making real strides now, honestly; the doc thinks I'm fast approaching a full recovery and all this will soon be behind me (if only the trauma didn't cause me to have such a terrible fear of things being behind me, surely I'd find progress coming more quickly and more often, but I digress).


Ah, right -- I almost forgot! There's one last thing to add: I presume the obvious fact I'm being droll and waggish needs to be explicitly stated, out of consideration for those of amid the audience of whom suffer from profound intellectual deficiencies and tone-deafness (with regarding to overtones and undertones—that's called a pun), and also any cretins positioned to the far left side of a Guassian distribution for intelligence quotient (or being at least 3 standard deviations below the mean, median, or mode IQ of the sample). And so there you uncouth oafs have it. Your very own supererogatory-and-unnessarily-protracted-for-anybody-not-affected-by-a-pathological-case-of-feather-brained-feeble-minded-fuck-headedness caveat, you clodhoppers.

But one thing is still puzzling me: why do the figurative and literal senses of 'butthurt' differ so markedly their meanings? When one is figuratively butthurt, the connotation is that they're miffed, indignant, offended, or chagrined. Whereaif one is said to be literally butthurt—as in having a painful sensation emanating from their and they're emotionally nothing of the sort.


What sensible person would actually find anger, offense, indignation, annoyance, or petulance to be appropriate and suitable emotive reactions to being afflicted with a severe case of hemorrhoids, being sodomized by an uuncomfortably well-endowed rapist, having a chronic anal fissure which repeatedly rips and bleeds profusely each time you take a shit or wipe your ass, etc.?


To me, it would seem more natural to become despondent, forlorn, emotionally labile, lachrymose—lying curled up into a fetal position overwrought with dreary self-abasement, in a mire of dejection, lugubrious and ashamed while you unavailing try to drown your sorrows facedown in a puddle of your own tears.

I just this weekend came into receipt of a parcel containing four pristine bottles of premium Ceylon Arrack—a total 700 cL of a satisfyingly salubrious Sri Lankan aqua vitae.

This has remained my primary eventide elixir since I found it as a gift-wrapped oblong box before the steps of my roommate's portico. From just a cursory coup d'œil of the thing, diaphanously bedecked with déshabillé and shamelessly exposing all that glorious grace that was the dilapidated condition and awkwardly crude placement of the conspicuously defiled delivery. This left no small blot on the postal service's escutcheon, and the perpetrator of this postal peril should be viciously beaten with a blunt metal instrument until barely conscious and left soggy and drenched, severely disfigured, and slowly drowning facedown in an ankle-deep, sanguine, viscous puddle of congealed blood.

an apparent victim of an incautious and crass merry-andrew of a mailman with no obvious capacity to distinguish between the gentle placement of something and caroming it onto concrete with a shockingly unnecessary degree of violence. What did the postmaster envisage happening by having entrusted the parcel's transport to a incautious, careless, and crass mentally unhinged merry-andrew of a mailman? Luckily, the contents were unscathed. But I'm not sure which I'd rejoice more over: the consumption of this delectable imported libation or actually having this stupid, clodhopping cocksucker of a courier break the bottles to bits just so I can revel in a rhubarb with this repugnant rubecatching cathartic pelting




It was meant just as an amicable gratuity, and vouchsafed by a close confrère (a fellow debaucherous dipsomaniac and brazon bon vivant, currently half a world away for a homeland habitation spent partaking of the joys of family and hearth, whilst jauntily living out the epilogue of a year-long sabbatical),

I just this weekend came into receipt of a parcel containing four pristine bottles of premium Ceylon Arrack—a total 700 cL of a satisfyingly salubrious Sri Lankan aqua vitae.

This has remained my primary eventide elixir since I found it as a gift-wrapped oblong box before the steps of my roommate's portico. From just a cursory coup d'œil of the thing, diaphanously bedecked with déshabillé and shamelessly exposing all that glorious grace that was the dilapidated condition and awkwardly crude placement of the conspicuously defiled delivery. This left no small blot on the postal service's escutcheon, and the perpetrator of this postal peril should be viciously beaten with a blunt metal instrument until barely conscious and left soggy and drenched, severely disfigured, and slowly drowning facedown in an ankle-deep, sanguine, viscous puddle of congealed blood.

an apparent victim of an incautious and crass merry-andrew of a mailman with no obvious capacity to distinguish between the gentle placement of something and caroming it onto concrete with a shockingly unnecessary degree of violence. What did the postmaster envisage happening by having entrusted the parcel's transport to a incautious, careless, and crass mentally unhinged merry-andrew of a mailman? Luckily, the contents were unscathed. But I'm not sure which I'd rejoice more over: the consumption of this delectable imported libation or actually having this stupid, clodhopping cocksucker of a courier break the bottles to bits just so I can revel in a rhubarb with this repugnant rubecatching cathartic pelting




It was meant just as an amicable gratuity, and vouchsafed by a close confrère (a fellow debaucherous dipsomaniac and brazon bon vivant, currently half a world away for a homeland habitation spent partaking of the joys of family and hearth, whilst jauntily living out the epilogue of a year-long sabbatical),

Hey guys ,

My name is Truly Blessed and I have been on this forum for 2 years now due to mdma abuse. I used to be addicted to opiates 5 years ago abut quit and fully recovered. I did mdma with a couple of friends not truly understanding how this drug worked . I abused it for 1 month in a row and ended up with a Ltc as they call it. My life has been a daily struggle for 2 years and 6 months now. I know there is mdma recovery thread but the reason I am posting is I want to hear from people who this happened to more than 2 years ago and see how they are coping . I know most people drop off after they have recovered a bit. I have head tightness as well as eye tightness everyday as well weird dizziness . Palpitations got better and I also have a uniquely mdma type hppd where everything is just too fucking bright. My question is did any of you guys become more recovered after the 2 to 3 year mark and has anyone had the luck of having visual disturbances retract. By the way I have done every single test under the sun all normal. Thanks and sorry for the grammar.

You know what my mom told me before I left to start this job here in Seattle? My mom, older handicapped brother and I were sitting together in my brothers room(at a home with people like him stay)my mother told my brother in front of me 'Alex,your brother drew will be leaving to go to Seattle,He is going to go see and experience things for you,and will work hard like you would have if you were with him'. My brother is blind and has the mind of a 3yo. You know how upset it makes me when I see mean things happen around me?i try and help others because its what my brother would have done if he wasnt sick.

I hope people will read this and will do something good for someone they do know, or don't. Doesn't matter. Good things happen to Good people that does good things.
One Love.

so, over the past month and a half I've been the BEST I've been since being on the outside (jails, institutions, and.. well, not death) in a long ass time. I actually went 3 weeks w/o using; yes, I am scripted bupe but to me that is sobriety, so fuck off if you think otherwise.

well, even when on bupe I'd still screw up and always used every 3-4 days but managed to go 3 weeks before eventually going back and buying a GOOD AMOUNT of dope from the usual; anyway, I was always shooting fent laced dope, so it was pure white, but he gave me 2 brown bags and I was just thinking to myself, "wow, this will suck; no fent in here". well, I open up 1G and I decide to shoot 1/3 - I get the shot off after being OFF suboxone the last 24hrs and I feel great; I seriously felt great but in my head, as a usual junkie, I am still thinking I could feel better, or should have shot more. so I go back to the stack and there is 2/3 of a G remaining. I split it into 4 shots and I take 1 shot.

now, mind you, I am on the phone w/ my GF who knows what I am doing; we are doing SKYPE and she sees me shoot. well, I shoot and I say something stupid; then all of a sudden a look comes over my face, and I just slowly start to close the eyes and just pause in the same spot for literally 2-3 minutes. finally I start to slowly, very, very slowly tip over onto the ground. I knocked over a glass bottle on the table, the chair, the needles, etc. 20 mins go by and I wake up on the fucking FLOOR of my kitchen w/o a clue as to what happened. I suddenly get up and just clean and clean, pick things up, broken glass, etc. so the minute I am done w/ that what do you think I did next!? thats right, I shot another 1/4 what I had left.

from there I called the girl back and she was in panic mode said she was going to call the cops, etc. she is a addict/past addict herself so she has an idea how the game is played, unfortunately. its sad that I did that and I ended up finishing those 2G's that night. I was miserable the whole next day and just did not feel myself; I felt much better taking my 12MG bupe daily than I did after shooting that dope, or even while on the dope.

since that day, which was over a week ago, I have not touched or used again. I have had no urges, only bad thoughts and memories about what happened last weekend and how that COULD have been my last day living; it was just a wake up call I feel, right? I almost OD'd AGAIN.. and if anyone was there w/ me I prob. would have woken up in a ambulance or a hospital. I am thankful I was alone and thankful no one did anything and just let me awake; yes, I could have died but I didnt and it, once again, had woken me the fuck up!

I know, I know.. this has happened to others and they went back. well, I've OD'd multiple times but for whatever reason this past few months things have just felt different; that last OD truly woke me the fuck up. I have been living a fun, happy life the past 4 months I've been "clean". and I almost took it all away last week because I wanted to "try" something because I "missed" it I told myself.

its shit like this that sometimes truly "wakes" us up.

http://www.thblack.com/links/RSD/ClinPharmacokin2002_41_1153_VariabilityClinicalPKofMethadone.pdf

Hey guys. I'm a recovering opiate addict looking to get involved with helping out others who are dealing with addiction - alcohol, benzos, cocaine, opiates, etc. I've been addicted to it all.

Point me in the right direction (or some suggestions, such as making videos/responding to blogs) so I can make maximum impact.

So, here I am, contemplating starting my very own blog. How exciting, yet daunting at the same time.

Where do I start, with the basics I guess. I am a 30 year old female from the United Kingdom. I have 3 wonderful children.

I guess I'm starting this blog as a kind of therapy to myself. A chance to finally express my thoughts and feelings whereas I never have before, to anyone, EVER.

This is the place where I am going to be the most truthful and upfront that I have ever been. I'm looking forward to the ride.

A brief background on me. I am a slightly neurotic, at times psychotic and on occasion a down right pain in the arse! I have been through a lot in my life from my father physically abusing me, many failed relationships, the birth of my 3 babies after suffering domestic violence with 2 of my pregnancies and a horrific 3rd pregnancy, to having psychotic episodes, drug use and abuse and battling with my mothers recent diagnosis with breast cancer.

If anyone would like any further insight into any of my experiences, please do not hesitate to give me a shout and I'll tell you anything you'd like to know.

I'll start from today and would love to tell you about my day so far.

So, my partner is being a complete arse to me at the moment, whinging and whining, it's all 'me, me, me' with him. I cannot be arsed with his shit today so he can do one!

I've had my baby awake since 3am, she's teething. We walked up to the shop at 5:30am because I'd ran out of cigarettes last night during a little stimulant session. I always chain smoke like hell on a stimulant, it just feels so pleasurable.

Anyway, my other 2 children arrived home from their fathers and then ensued world war bloody 3. My god, constant arguments, fighting, shouting and screaming and every 2 minutes "mum, mum, mummy, mum, mum" with the occasional prod in some area of my body. Bang, bang, bang. Shout, scream, shout. Just give me a break already.

In an ideal world I would be a totally organised and proactive mother but really I'm just counting down those precious hours until they get into frigging bed so I can at least have a shit in peace!

And breathe...hopefully that wasn't too boring for all you fab people to read. Just fancied a moan today.

Oh well, tomorrow's another day.

Take care guys and gals, be well x

man, I FUCKING HATE Monday mornings.. and afternoon, and well, evenings, too! I guess you can say I hate Monday all around! all day, with each passing minute of the day, I truly hate fucking Monday! and why is that!? well, its the START of a new work week and work is NOT something I enjoy doing; yes, its better than being junked out w/ no life, no nothing behind you.. but if you do not enjoy what you do then you will be constantly battling, and that is something that has taken place over the last 6-12 months!

what do I do for work!? well, I work in Software Sales. what is that you ask!? well, it speaks for itself. I SELL SOFTWARE! I work for a large Software Company and I am calling clients and POTENTIAL clients ALL DAY.. EVERY DAY! UGH! yes, just picture making 50-100 phone calls a day introducing yourself, your company and explaining why that person should be using your software over all the other software out there on the market! "Hello, my name is BostonBrownTown calling with Bluelight.org, and I am calling to introduce myself, and Bluelight, and wondering how we could potentially become a board in which you use daily". yes, those are what MOST of my calls sounds like. picture doing that all damn fucking day long!? one call after another.. just repeating yourself w/ that same fucking mundane game, esp. on mundane Mondays! ugh! this is the movie Office Space all over again; I am truly losing my mind much like he did; although, if I ever decided to rob the company for hundreds of thousands of dollars, I would not be so lucky and get away with it.. trust me, my luck fucking sucks, lol!

OK, so now what!? what does a person who truly HATES THEIR JOB do next!? well, what I have to do is continue to do the RIGHT THING; stay away form drugs, get my license back, save money, etc, and then maybe within time I can and will star to see changes being made. right now I should consider myself lucky that I even have a job considering I am late almost everyday because I must take Uber to work since I do not have a license or car to get here; same goes w/ the ride home - I spend $20/day just on a ride to and from work! yes, it fucking sucks, man! but what else can I do, ya know!? I am lucky to be making the money I make and having the job I have.. but yet I fucking hate it!? I am sure I am not the only one in this situation!

I used to think the world was all about money; money is the only thing that mattered. yes, those were once my thoughts. but being 32, and having gone through a lot of bullshit throughout the course of life thus far, I realize that money is NOT the key to happiness! the world does not revolve around money.. although it sure does help out! but happiness goes much further than you would think. sure, you may not have the money you once had but true happiness goes much further than the dollar goes! this is all something I am still TRYING to get my arms around but I am starting to realize that my life means more than the money I bring in!

OK, so let me wrap up by saying.. well, this is a drug type message board, and I am a drug addict, so I will briefly mention I did not use my "drug of choice" for over 3 weeks now; this is the LONGEST I have gone in many, many years and hoping I can keep things like that! its the first time being "out" and not using. sure, anytime I am in a jail, program, detox, I may not use for however long I am away for but FINALLY, for once, I am able to do it on my own and w/o the help of a program or others! its ME wanting to quit and change MY LIFE around!

OK, OK, OK.. enough about that!

I stopped doing heroin. It was actually pretty easy. I just pay the methadone clinic 16 dollars a day and I never even have to thnk about heroin again. It's a shame there isn't something similar for depression. I went to this doctor who diagnosed me with PTSD and Depression. Then he dropped me as a patient for being on methadone and smoking weed. Thanks doc.

I need a job. But I can't work up the courage to go apply. I only leave the house to go to the clinic. I don't remember the last time I showered or brushed my teeth. I am a burden on my family. No it's worse than that I am an emberassment. The junky son forever caught in the cycle of unemployment. I would kill myself but I can't even afford a gun. I dun o what to do. I love my parents. I wish I would win the lottery so I could give the money to them so that they would be happy. That would make me happy.

I can't decide if killing myself would make them happy in the long term or not? I know they would be devastated in the short term. Maybe making it seem like an accident would help? I've thought about driving into a tree at high speed. But there's no guarantee I wouldn't live and become an even greater burden. I've thought about prison but they would probably insist on buying me an expensive lawyer. Plus that would only increase there shame and emberassment.

I wish I could hold a job and pay my own way but it seems unattainable. I have all these mental health diagnoses but the state I live in is shit for mental health care. They didn't even expand Medicaid like Obama care told them too so I still have to pay for my own insurance. Or rather my parents pay for my insurance. It's fucked man. They spend almost 7grand a year on me just in healthcare costs. Like I said I'm a burden.

So my thoughts drift back to the choice between high speed collision or gunshot wound. Decisions decisions.

Sometimes I wonder why I have poor self esteem. Simple tasks and challenges which shouldn't be anxiety or doubt producing can seem insurmountable. "I can't do it," is the first voice which pops into my head.

Then again, sometimes I know exactly why my self esteem is so bad. First let me say that I feel guilty to a certain extent about what I'm about to do, but at the same time, believe the people who raise a child do deserve honest criticism and reflection on their work. How else do you learn and improve?

Secondly - the point of this blog post, honestly, is to garner sympathy and attention. If someone has had a similar parent, or similar experience I'd like nothing more right now than to see "I empathise with you, I know exactly what that's like."

Onto the whinge. My father has what's know colloquially as an "anal retentive" personality. Another common way of describing it is "kinda OCD," all though he certainly does not suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. No - anal retention refers to a style of being in the world that to any person with a free mind and soul at the best of times finds irritating, and at the worst, murderously infuriating.

The bad traits of this personality style are; Nit picking, criticising, controlling, narrow minded, rigid, stubborn. Avoids emotional exchanges as much as possible - hyper-rational, quick to anger, a "spare the rod spoil the child" type.

There were times growing up I genuinely despised my father. All kids have moments when they think "I hate you," but I believe mine were much more potent and extended. I don't flat out despise him. His father died when he was twelve. How can a man who never had a man to teach HIM how to be a man teach another man to be a man? No, I don't hold hatred in my heart for him.

Below is a list, in no particular order, of all the rules one MUST adhere to when simply taking a shower. Undoubtedly I've forgotten some of the rules, as no normal person conjures so many laws surrounding something as simple as bathing. Imagine having to be afraid, all the time, of getting one of these things wrong.

- Before showering, the fan must be put on 1.
- The towels must be spread correctly on the towel rack.
- The bath mat must be placed outside the shower in the right position.
- The shower screen must be placed at the correct angle.
- When turning on the shower, the water must be turned on at the correct pace.
- All shampoos, soaps etc. must be replaced, closed, in their correction position.
- To much water on the floor (decided arbitrarily) is wrong.
- The window sill and all windows must be dried with a cloth after showering, and the bath mat must be folded correctly and replaced correctly.
- The cloth used to dry the sill must be wrung out and folded correctly.
- No hair must be left in the bath or sink.
- Upon exiting the bathroom, the fan must be placed on 3.
- After a certain arbitrary time, the fan must be turned off.
- After using the toilet, to much (arbitrarily decided) toilet spray is unacceptable.

Neglecting ANY single one of these rules warrants a harsh verbal scolding. Any sign of resistance or back chat or anything short of complete adherence to orders (or even worse disagreement with the degree of importance placed on a transgression) might warrant a smack.

Remember this is just one aspect of every day life. Every single aspect of existence is governed like this. You better believe even with the most careful consideration, not a single day goes by without a verbal attack.

It is literally IMPOSSIBLE to be right around these types of people. The word I was used to hearing most growing up was "wrong." Our average interaction went like this. (My name,) then a criticism. Something I did wrong, not well enough, something I still had to do (an order,) something I could do better in the future, why didn't I do such and such, and on and on and on...all over stuff like taking a shower.

When I wonder why we don't have a good relationship, when I wonder my self esteem is so poor, I stop myself, and tell myself not to think about it to much. It's a shame, but such is life.

The crushing heat this week has been like a vampire sucking Neverland dry of vigour. I sleep with no A/C. My mind has been full of static. Nostalgic snapshots percolate through my subconsciousness. In dreams, I can relive all that was repressed from the comfort of hindsight. Sometimes a wire crosses and I forget the distinction between reality and dreams. It has me acting cautiously in my sleep and reckless while awake. Other people are the litmus test. If they stop calling me crazy, that's the sign it's happened for real.

On the weekend I went home. The meaning of the word has become a farce to me. There, in the distant exurbs of the sprawling metropolis I went to a real dive located in a shoebox of a commercial unit in a typical, unmemorable strip mall. Except I couldn't forget it. I can never forget it. For years, I worked there. I drank there, smoked there, toked there, got laid there. I remember still how the concrete felt underhand and asphalt felt under foot. I remember the curbside, awash with the butts of hundreds of smoked cigarettes. It's unholy land -- bad land.

And yet, I was there again of my own free will. The bar where I was meeting an old mate was just as I remembered it, with chicken wire and old license plates on the walls, smell of hot grease and beer saturating the air. It was just as I remembered it, a small oasis of convenience. It's the sort of place you could take two steps into, turn around and if you take two more steps in any direction you're either standing in the toilet, kitchen or right back out in the parking lot. Taking the first two steps were customary, as it was the only way to get a view of all the seats and see if any familiar faces popped. So I did, and two faces popped, one of which was expected, the other which was not.

A day earlier, or well, a few days but maybe up to a week earlier, I had been getting bad vibes. Rarely, very rarely, I'll feel this crushing sense of dread. I'll go nuts trying to suss out the source. The feeling hounded me as the week worked me over like some medeival sadist would work a rabblerouser on a torture rack. By the end of the week, it was bad enough that I wanted to call off the whole weekend and spend it lying on the bathroom floor mumbling to oblivion. But instead, I drank some coffee, drank some cocoa, drank some chamomille and toked some herb. It's my special blend of just enough mildly psychoactive shite to simultaneously perk me up and calm me down enough that I can put on the everything-is-super-fine mask and casually feed white lies to those closest to me. I guess there's a good reason they say silence is golden. Heck, it's not just golden. It's a big, bright, blinking eject button painted gold. Finding the button welded in place while the plane accelerates without a pilot is an awful sensation. There's no telling whether the ride will crash into the side of a mountain or somehow glide smoothly back to terra firma.

Despite my most elaborate of preparations it was still a shot to the heart seeing the old colleague I may have loved waiting for me with my friend. Or maybe they just randomly ran into each other there. Was she still working in the plaza? Fuck, no way. My thoughts stratified the instant I saw her, with an upper layer flying through all possible explanations so fast that the other part controlling the puppet I use to wave at people was unable to keep up the pace and so I glitched out for a moment and the next I was sitting down ordering a drink like an abject dunce. It felt like the smarter parts of my brain suddenly formed a union and decided to strike from utter dissatisfaction with the dumb parts that voted for me to have a seat and become the unwitting ringleader of an emotional tightrope act. No part of me was ready for this.

Despite my brain attempting to back up through my cranium, then through the back door of the dingy bar, then way back to my comfy bed uptown, I somehow eased up (the alcohol helped) and pulled through and steered the conversation expertly back to safe topics like the past. I love talking about the past. There's always some dumb shite to look fondly back on and maybe throw in a where-have-the-years-gone, as if we were doddering geriatric with nothing left to look forward to. As I would discover, though, memories of the past are not a safe topic for frazzled minds.

We later parted ways with a promise to keep in touch, just like the last time we said goodbye. The drive home I couldn't stop thinking about her in that silver slip she used to rock. She looked sexy, and not just the sort of sexy that comes from having a lush bod and knowing how to flaunt it but the kind of sexy that spontaneously exposes itself in fleeting moments that make you want to be with a person as much as possible to not miss any more of those moments than you fear you already have. Sometimes I felt that way with her. Sometimes I could sense frustration radiating in my direction, knowing she sometimes had the same type of thoughts about me but struggled with being faithful in a relationship that she saw as the only stable, good thing in her life at the time.

It was complicated. That's a good catchphrase for the human race, huh? When we first met we were colleagues, and she was in a long-term relationship, and I was a fuck-up just trying my hardest not to elevate my status from bush league fuck-up to professional, major-league fuck-up. To compound matters, her papa was the big boss and they didn't get along. Well, that's all in the past. She's no longer in a relationship and doing well, meanwhile I got busted down to cleanup batter for JV fuck-up. That means things are alright. No regrets, but it still feels like I somehow lost at a zero-sum game. Well, I should catch some sleep. With any luck this heat wave will end soon.

I am in legit SHOCK that I made it this far; usually I cannot go more than 2 days but yet its been 14+ days since I shot any dope and I feel absolutely fine. I am in total shock that I was able to get this far w/ no rhyme or reason other than just not wanting to spend the cash and being on bupe.

I SHOULD be happy I made it 2 weeks and SHOULD want to continue this battle but part of me just wants to buy a G tomorrow in award myself for making it 2 weeks. just a sick way to think, right? I want to REWARD myself by BUYING HEROIN for MYSELF! does that make any sense? ill reward myself w/ the drug/thing that ruined my life, took all my cash, and put me in a total SHIT spot in life. yes, let me go shoot heroin! ha. man, a junkies mind is truly a fucking dangerous thing.

anyway, ill fight that battle when I get there. but for today I am happy and able to get by. the suboxone helps me a ton; so much more than methadone ever helped. I've said it many times on this board but the bupe/methadone difference is a KEY part to recovery for so many. some people prefer bupe and some methadone; I've tried both numerous times and its always been the bupe that has gotten me through the "rough" times. again, this is just my opinion and everyone feels differently.

in 2 weeks ill be eligible to get my license back; pray for me here people! over the last year my life went to complete SHIT; just take a look at all my blog entries over the past 1.5yrs. kinda crazy to see how things have changed. got my DUI (2nd) last June 17th and here it is almost Aug 1st and ill be eligible come Aug 1st. the thing is, this shit cost $$ and I do not have much money but ill put whatever I can toward that license and getting a SHITBOX car that I can just drive around with a breathalyzer installed.

imagine? ill be OFF heroin, hopefully. have a license back. working full time! going to see this "girl" who I know from these boards in CA and we are going to chill; life aint too bad. but of course, it could always get much worse and happen really quickly if I decide to fuck up AGAIN, and AGAIN and AGAIN like I always did. I was just in front of the judge yesterday and no longer have to report in monthly; just fill out the form and send it in. thats nice! no more alcohol testing, not like I drank anyway but was a pain. no more reporting in and having to FIND a ride since I have no license.

I dont know; thats it for now! life doesnt seem TOO bad but the way I live it can get really bad, really quick.

Asking too much is a phrase coined by those who cannot travel the same path you are going .
what we seek is what we lack ,the other lost companion that has our back.
Not an employee doing their job ,someone who understands that our spirit has been robbed.
Someone who steps in when we step out, they already know where we are going they are on the same route.
We are simply puzzles with missing pieces, sometimes a puzzle with pieces that do not match .
Incomplete nonetheless.
My matching peace companion.

Television rules the nation. Around the world. Television rules the nation. Around the world. Around the world. Around the world. The world. The world. The world. The world. The world. The world. The world. The world. (Daft Punk)

I just started going to a writers' workshop at the American Library here in Paris. It's led by an expat writer who has a few fairly successful autobiographical fiction books. To join the workshop, we have to have 3 chapters of a novel completed. We meet once a month for a year until the novel is finished. The one restriction is that our novels must be based on our own lives and that they are like mémoires if I understand the assignment correctly.

I struggle with this restriction because I find life to be grim. In writing, I seek something beautiful and meaningful or even escapist. By the way, that's also why I take drugs every day. It's the reason I prefer drugs that make dreams more frequent and vivid and hate pschedelics that strip away ones fantasies and throw reality in your face. So how do I satisfy the restriction of the workshop (writing about ugly, hard reality) while seeking beauty or escape? Other people will read my chapters and will expect me to follow this restriction. Somebody suggested doing humor (I assume like John Irving or the guy who wrote 'even cowgirls get the blues' - Tom Robbins) but I don't do humor. Not because I don't want to but because I can't. Humor takes a special talent that you are born with. It probably cannot be learned.

The subject of the workshop the other day was character development. The workshop leader lifts most of her characters from her own family. She is very worried that they will recognize themselves and become angry. In fact, she has alienated a few family members when they saw themselves in the characters in her first novel. To avoid this, she suggests changing enough of the details so they will never be sure it is really them.

This won't be a problem fro me because I'm the only one in my family who can read. I taught myself to do it when I was four or so.

And finally, I've always had Spell Check for the last 10 years. Now I come here and use these French computers, and French Spell Check only works for French Words. I surprise myself by how many English words I have to look up. It's too much trouble to go into all of the settings - user profile, browser, word processor and constantly switch the spell check between french and english.

One time, about a few months ago, I was caught in a K-hole that seemed an anaesthetic abyss, falling ever deeper and circumscribed by walls of ghastly hallucinations and levitating ghoulish and disfigured humanoid-like sapient creatures, yet despite their horrendously malformed morphology were as congenial and consoling as every anybody I'd ever known. They seemed vaguely otherworldly, somehow preternatural and supermundane.

They sang, manifested material objects out of pure syntax, and playfully beckoning me to join them in their supernal, surreal, sublime magic act, as I fell deeper and yet deeper until an aphotic darkness enveloped me.

It was as if I'd fallen to the benthic zone of the Mariana Trench—slowly, as if floating, and growing colder and darker as I descended into this walled-in subterranean substratum of bromous blackness; a declination into a chimerical, Cimmerian wonderworld of adumbral nothingness; a steep Stygian crevasse of dissociation and profound detachment but without withdrawal from all that I was and all that I thought everything else was.

I felt like I had attained Moksha. That I was a figment of the incalculably incomprehensible mind of Brahma, itself.

After that, I kind of came to and realised the illusions and fictions we take as axioms and truisms. Embarrassment, or social consciousness I call it, was one of many things with which I became disillusioned, unencumbered, unfettered, and detached.

So, I no longer consider the feeling of embarrassment—I'll leave it up to those who do to vicariously suffer it in my absence from it. The entities sang songs and I remember some of its lyrical content, which went:

How remiss and negligent
must I possibly be?
Well, let's examine it—embarrassment
and surely we shall see.

Embarrass means to abash or render nonplus or thwart
one's endeavors, and grow confused
or even vicariously embarrass their consort
flustered, dismayed, a loss of with what to do
as one's social grace decays and loses its sinew

it may mean to cause shame
or consternation
like a pain, pang, or an acute social constipation

It may be brought out
as through a faux pas or
tort or public flout
But it always includes a stasis
and precludes one's true crasis,

dismayed and afraid
the embarrassed feel maimed
with insecurity and woe
And flashbacks to the moment
That made their embarrassment so

But embarrassment encumbers
one with an aversion to social blunders
And thus it stifles one's self-expression
as they worry over the spectators impression


and so they are ensnared
in their own fear of being scared
of doing that which the decorous wouldn't dare

But why and wherefore
does this fright matter more
than the thing they miss most
which is life lived how they wish it were so?

Over the past 2 years or so i've gradually reduced my alcohol/cannabis intake since i lost someone very dear to my heart, so i am pretty proud i have managed to resist temptation since before that happened i was dabbling in some things that were affecting me mentally i.e. crystal meth, meph etc, benzos which i believe contributed to some of my (minor)self harm... although thats not to say booze and wed hasnt affected me in a negative way cause ive abused the fuck out of both since ive stopped the former.

Before the night everything changed we were high on e and something come over me whilst watching an Ian Brown Dvd, it was the tune 'Be There'. I just got this overwhelming feeling of unusual dread/weirdness but I put this down to raised anxiety from the pills or something (im a chronic worrier. Anyway turns out I really should have 'Been there' as i stayed at a friends the evening he stopped breathing. He's clearly a fighter cause he's still here although it was close he can no longer communicate etc its really bad... just wish I'd been there.

Before all this stuff i had my own shit to deal with that i find hard to contemplate, especially without him, my best friend to support me. Our only weakness was drugs, which made things too messy cause we both loved it a bit too much. Making and spending too much money on meph and smack. When i should have been focused on our future and having his back. Some people say they don't have regrets but I deffo do. It also doesn't help that Im craving meph cause it reminds me of you. I don't know if that's happy or just sad.

p.s. the mushies are calling me , they remind me of u too, maybe il see u oneday. x

OK, so I said KINDA sober because I still use bupe, smoke weed, will have a few drinks when out w/ friends, and even sniff coke w/ a chick if she wants to rail and 80 and then smash all night, but you know what I havent done!? DOPE! I have not touched dope in 2 weeks and that is a fucking miracle to me. yes, it sounds like absolutely nothing to someone who was never a fiend and never had the habit I once had, but if you only knew the troubles in my life and what I was once doing (1-3G's/day) to go by you would know why I find this to be a miracle.

I've been on bupe now for 3-4 months and have calmed my usage down BIG TIME but was still using every few days but over the past 2 weeks I have lost all urge to use and truly feel my life is changing and I am starting to THINK BETTER and feel better about life.

I once sat in the house day after day and just shooting and shooting; aside form work I would NOT LEAVE MY HOUSE.. but now you could barely find me in the house and when I am there I am bored as fuck and dying to leave to get out and do something. Life is just different right now.. and yes, addiction is still there, cuz all drugs mentioned earlier, esp. the 12-16MG/bupe/daily, but that is costing me 50/mo vs 100+/day. ill take that ANY DAY OF THE WEEK, man.

legit, nothing else to write here but life is FINALLY NOT THAT BAD! and who knows, I am up for getting my license in 3 weeks and MAYBE, just MAYBE, ill have a fucking car, license and LIFE BACK!

FUCK DOPE.. and fuck everything else I've done in the past. past is the past, right? FUCK THAT!

Last night I read from the fragments of a forgotten book about the lost civilization of Theronia of Kalfura under the Black Sun. Then, for a few moments after waking, I lay still on the pallet in my garret. The night breeze carried away the last sounds of the chants of their priests performing the strange rites of their Dark God.

Freud introduced the idea of dream telepathy into psychoanalysis in 1921. Telepathy - Greek: tele - distance + pathos: suffering or intense feeling - is the communication fo thoughts, impressions, and information over distance between people without the normal operation of any known senses. However, he was skeptical of the idea, and having found no evidence either in his own dreams or in those of his patients, he concluded that dream telepathy could neither be proven nor disproven. Overall, he adopted a puerile and often vulgar view of the significance of dreams.

But subsequent decades, Jung and others took a deeper approach to these ideas. Various psychoanalysists have examined patients’ dreams and found evidence for telepathy based on precise details of the time, place, sensory impression, and states of conscousness

One common factor sharted by many of these telepathic patients is that, in early childhood, they had a mother who was emotionally absent. This traumatic loss marked them and their relating to others, and left on them a fixation on a nonverbal, archaic mode of communication. Hence, the telepathic dream embodies an enigmatic, physically 'impossible' extreme of deep-level interconnectedness and unconscious communication.


Indeed, I endured most of my childhood in poverty, both material and emotional. And my parents were not involved in my life. My father was a drunkard who spent most days and nights at bars and other places dedicated to drinking. When home, he was always watching sports on TV while drinking, chain_smoking, having 15 minute long fits of coughing up tar and bits of lung, and farting.

My mother wasnt much better. Her days were used up watching whatever was on TV - we only got 2 or 3 channels, so it was either something like football, bowling, or baseball with my father; or sitting through day after day of inane gossip shows and soap operas when he was not around. In this way she spent most of her life watching TV in her “LayZ-Boy” recliner chair. During her programs, her main activity was to rake through the mangey fur of each of her 15 cats with her hard fingers looking for fleas. When she found one, she would carefully trap it between her finger nails and pick it out of the fur. Then she would crush it between her nails with a tiny click-pop sound and set it in the small pile of fleas, bits of dried skin, and scabby tufts of fur on the one clear spot on the edge of a small table. Other than to scold me, I don’t remember either of them speaking more than a few telegraphic sentences to me at a time in my entire life.

My senses were unusually sharp. The jarring blair of the TV, the rancid drunk stink of my father and his cigarette smoke; the nauseating odor of my morbidly obese mother’s unwashed body and the 1 house dress she wore every day but washed once a year in the spring. The distressing ugliness of a house that was piled floor to ceiling with trash and rotting garbage and only had narrow walkways through the filth. My life overall was so repugnant that my only wish was to escape.

I went to a poor school where there were no resources to fund anything but the basics. Bible Class was considered one of the basics. Science lab was a remote dream. On top of that, I had no friends. I was mostly isolated. Though I was a promising student in that I had good grades and a freakishly high IQ, the sciences and worldly knowledge in general never had a chance to take a strong hold on me. I saw them more as things that stripped away what little beauty could be found by ones dreams and imagination.

I spent my time either in the forest, roaming the hills and mountains, exploring ruined antebellum mansions, or dreaming. Sadly, much of the time I spent in the forest was spoiled by the trauma of the earlier part of the day and the dread of returning home.

As I got older, my days became more grim, it was harder to deal with school and the other students. My parents only got worse as they got older and I began to realize how bad my situation was. My waking life had no appeal for me, and I withdrew as much as I could. I was like a ghost trapped in this world of gentle pain. I slept longer and longer. I sought in my dreams the beauty that was missing from my life. I would enter the dream world and drift though green valleys. speed up dark ravines following fast mountain streams to their source up at the mountain tops, over brilliant blue lakes fed by snow melt, and down again though another valley, across desert, over swamp and ocean, Exploring unkown cities of fantastic beautfiul architecutre and unusual dimensions. Travelling across the void between the stars to other planets... crossing over to other realities.

Recently, I’ve become very fond of ‘Mina.’ I think I mentioned her before. Mina has completely put all other women out of my mind. That's where the dream telepathy comes in.

Mina is a postdoc where I work. I see her every day. We often go out together and do things around Paris. Mina is from Algeria and has gone home for the end of the Ramadan holiday plus a couple of weeks. I can see her but she can’t see me

She is gone, but I still see her and hear her. I even smell her perfume sometimes. She goes about her days and nights at home in Algeria in a house surrounded by gardens on the ocean. I see close details of her house, her family. I even ‘hear’ her thoughts sometimes, word for word. She even thinks about me, but that is not very often. When she does, it isn't ... she doesn't feel anything for me. Sometimes the details are ‘confirmed’ by an email or skype. Doing simple thigns like foldig clothing, eating (always late at night during the holiday. And almost always very happy to the point of being joyful sometimes. Strnagely, seeing this helps my mood and cheers me up a little in a bittersweet way. From watching her in the crystal ball and talking to her in real life, I get the impression she is very close to her family. That's an alien concept to me.

I assume she has no idea I can see her. Of course, I won't ever tell her. Sometimes I see her doing or hear her tinking very intimate and private things. It's like accidently walking in on someone in the bathroom. These are things one shouldn't be seeing, and they are always unexpected. There is no privacy filter. No idea why. I turn it off as soon as it starts happening, honest.

This hasn’t happened at this level of detail for anyone else I’ve ever known. I've tried to make it happen with others but it never did, no matter how close or intimate we were or I wished we were. Ariadne was the last time I tried it with someone. I spent a month or so looking but never found her. I wrote about that in an earlier entry. This time, it happens on its own without my seeking it or wanting it. I don't seek this. The sad part is that she doesn't think or feel anything romantic towards me. I'm left wondering why it's happening since there's no possibility of a close relationship with her.