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Ever hear about that point in time after years of drug abuse. When you don't care about anything? When the things you cared about mean less or close to nothing to you?

I am at this point. I no longer care about anything. Family is meaningless. I don't try to hard in school and I am failing. I don't get my daily tasks done. Its been wake up, do drugs, go to work, do drugs, smoke weed, and sleep for ages now. I have always smoked weed. I am bipolar, but anxiety kills me the most.

Getting the money isn't as easy anymore, so I have fallen out of the game. I don't care about those who I have used or ripped off. I have become manipulative and edgy. I fight with everyone all the time who loves me. I don't care about what is at stake. All that matters is using.

When I use it is the best part of the day. I don't eat that much anymore. I have these days where I cry and hurt the ones I love with the things I am saying and make threats. I do whatever it takes to get money for my next fix. I go to work blasted out of my mind. I am not scared. I have gotten charges. The biggest downfall is Mania.

Drug use is a game. There is a point for everyone where it becomes NEEDING instead of wanting. I cannot get through any day now without smoking Weed, Heroin, or Meth. They are my demons but they sure can fucking swim. I cant ask for help. I am on my own. There is no turning back.

My life is passing me by. I am losing out on so much. I don't even remember what I did yesterday most days. I am forgetful. I kiss my guys ass for the stuff because I NEED IT. I get anxious, cry, nervous, shaky, cant eat, cant sleep, body aches, a fever, look flushed, and very irritable. I am scared.

I want to stop it all. I want to get better. But drug use always holds me back. I am scared to withdrawal. Rehab is not an option right now. I have to much to lose. I cannot keep living a lie though everything that I say is a lie to make sure that I get my fix now. It feels like time is standing still. It has been years. I cannot cope.

Is this it? Is this the end? Will I recover? It all started with just ONCE but then that turned into EVERY DAY. Hard drugs are no joke. Anyone can get addicted. Drugs do not discriminate. Some of us are weaker then others. Some of us have very little to live for.

Are you at this point? Everything is falling away from you. You lost control. The drugs DO YOU. Your worthless. Your a liar. How did you recover. Is this end? Should I be ready.... Will I be damned to live like this until my early death..
Ever hear about that point in time after years of drug abuse. When you don't care about anything? When the things you cared about mean less or close to nothing to you?

I am at this point. I no longer care about anything. Family is meaningless. I don't try to hard in school and I am failing. I don't get my daily tasks done. Its been wake up, do drugs, go to work, do drugs, smoke weed, and sleep for ages now. I have always smoked weed. I am bipolar, but anxiety kills me the most.

Getting the money isn't as easy anymore, so I have fallen out of the game. I don't care about those who I have used or ripped off. I have become manipulative and edgy. I fight with everyone all the time who loves me. I don't care about what is at stake. All that matters is using.

When I use it is the best part of the day. I don't eat that much anymore. I have these days where I cry and hurt the ones I love with the things I am saying and make threats. I do whatever it takes to get money for my next fix. I go to work blasted out of my mind. I am not scared. I have gotten charges. The biggest downfall is Mania.

Drug use is a game. There is a point for everyone where it becomes NEEDING instead of wanting. I cannot get through any day now without smoking Weed, Heroin, or Meth. They are my demons but they sure can fucking swim. I cant ask for help. I am on my own. There is no turning back.

My life is passing me by. I am losing out on so much. I don't even remember what I did yesterday most days. I am forgetful. I kiss my guys ass for the stuff because I NEED IT. I get anxious, cry, nervous, shaky, cant eat, cant sleep, body aches, a fever, look flushed, and very irritable. I am scared.

I want to stop it all. I want to get better. But drug use always holds me back. I am scared to withdrawal. Rehab is not an option right now. I have to much to lose. I cannot keep living a lie though everything that I say is a lie to make sure that I get my fix now. It feels like time is standing still. It has been years. I cannot cope.

Is this it? Is this the end? Will I recover? It all started with just ONCE but then that turned into EVERY DAY. Hard drugs are no joke. Anyone can get addicted. Drugs do not discriminate. Some of us are weaker then others. Some of us have very little to live for.

Are you at this point? Everything is falling away from you. You lost control. The drugs DO YOU. Your worthless. Your a liar. How did you recover. Is this end? Should I be ready.... Will I be damned to live like this until my early death..
My article will be published next week in JAMA (The Journal of the American Medical Association). It describes the work I've been doing on a widespread neurological disorder. I worked hard for a long time on that project, and in the rush to finish, I was miserable. I didn't sleep well, and my daily morphine intake went way up trying to deal with it all.

In the end, science is a truly thankless and unappreciated profession with poor compensation for the amount of work put in, the required amount of education and training, the constant devotion, and no job security. This applies mainly to anybody under the age of 50. As with many other professions, The Baby Boomers, had it easy if they wanted to become scientists; anybody of average intelligence and a college degree could easily become a tenured professor if they put in a little bit of effort until around 1990. If you are skeptical, most people probably remember some stupid, yet tenured, professors they had in college. But times have changed.

Today, there is no lack of STEM (college graduates with degrees in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math) workers. The whole thing is a fraud perpetrated from the level of the President on down in the name of cheap labor. The truth is that there are roughly twice as many STEM graduates than available job openings per year. I discourage everyone from becoming a scientist. Don't throw away your lives.

Anti-biotic-resistant tuberculosis is re-emerging in the world as a public health threat. It has been found in Russia and eastern European and as many as 1 in 100 have it in some African countries and India. The bacteria that causes TB, mycobacterium tuberculosis, are airborne and infest densely populated parts of cities: apartment blocks, homeless shelters, hospitals, city buses, and subways - basically, crowded, dank, poorly ventilated, dirty environments.. The classic symptoms of active TB infection are constant coughing with blood-tinged sputum, fever, night sweats, and weight loss.

Being away from civilization for a year in the desert sort of re-energized me. I needed a break from crowded city living. It was good to be away crowds. More and more, I'm reminded of why I like the desert.

The population of Paris and its immediate adjoining suburbs exceeds 12 million people. My work is in the center of the city in the Latin Quarter, and I hadn't been outside of Paris yet. I imagined distances to be on the scale of American cities where the edge of the city, especially big ones with 10 million people, like Houston or Los Angeles to be literally 25 miles or more away and unreachable by foot or bicycle (without being shot, robbed, hit by a car, or burned alive by the hot sun).

A few weeks ago for work, we needed to do something in Alphaville, a lab at the edge of the city. We would be taking the Metro today. Le Metro is the name of the Paris subway. As we walked toward the metro, the boss started talking about pickpockets and scammers that infest Paris. She reminded us, especially me since I was new to Paris and seemed to her to be as pure as the driven snow, to be careful. One scam she warned us about is very common; that is panhandlers who pretend to be homeless.

She had a female friend who used to give money to a "homeless" woman who begged at her metro stop every day. She would say, "I need money. My children are hungry. I have 4 of them - some milk money for my baby please." The female friend gave money to this one beggar every day for years. She would often ask about the children. One time, for whatever reason, the beggar woman had a blank look and said something like "oh yeah my children, they're OK. They're hungry give me some money please. i need to buy groceries for them."

So she gave money, but this time she became suspicious. One day, the bosses friend followed the beggar woman to what she expected was to buy food as she left the subway. Instead, the "homeless" woman sent to a bar and she spent hours sitting and drinking. When confronted, she admitted there were no hungry children in her custody, and she wasn't even homeless. The thing was a scam. Everybody has probably heard a similar story.

Like she said, the hungry baby scam is vary common. I mean, even I have seen the scam first hand. That reminded me of this one time in South America, this scrawny emaciated girl accosted me in Spanish and asked for money for her baby. She said her baby was hongry. The beggar woman was skin and bones herself. She stood aournd 5 feet tall and looked like she'd been in a concentration camp with her sunken eyes, hollow cheeks, etc. She couldn't weigh more than 50 pounds. She said she was 18 years old, looking at her, I knew she had some kind of problem. I was in a poor country, after all, where there is no social safety net. People really starve to death there. I didn't really believe that she was skinny for lack of money, but I was curious to find out.
Source: Wikipedia


The reversible binding to MAO-A by moclobemide allows amines such as tyramine to displace moclobemide from MAO-A allowing its metabolism and removing the risk of a hypertensive crisis that occurs with irreversible MAO inhibition.[86] 2300 people in multiple clinical trials who were treated with moclobemide in doses up to 600 mg with no dietary restrictions, none experienced a tyramine-mediated hypertensive reaction.[54]

The potentiation of the pressor effect of tyramine by moclobemide is only one seventh to one tenth of that of irreversible MAOIs.[88]

Reversible MAOIs were developed in the hope that they would exert efficacy in depressive disorders but with less of the toxicity of the older irreversible compounds; moclobemide's discovery and marketing brought the renewed interest in MAOIs due to an absence of dangerous tyramine food interactions and potent antidepressant effects.[7][113]

There is no need for dietary restrictions in contrast to people on irreversible MAOIs and apart from an important interaction with other serotonergic enhancing agents such as SSRI's and pethidine, there are few serious drug interactions

No significant rise in blood pressure occurs when moclobemide is combined with amines such as tyramine containing foods or pressor amine drugs, unlike the older non-selective irreversible MAOIs which cause a severe rise in blood pressure with such combination.[3]

--

86. Lavian, G.; Finberg, JP.; Youdim, MB. (1993). "The advent of a new generation of monoamine oxidase inhibitor antidepressants: pharmacologic studies with moclobemide and brofaromine.". Clin Neuropharmacol 16 Suppl 2: S1-7. PMID 8313392

54. Versiani M, Nardi AE, Figueira IL, Stabl M (1990). "Tolerability of moclobemide, a new reversible inhibitor of monoamine oxidase-A, compared with other antidepressants and placebo". Acta Psychiatr Scand Suppl 360: 24–8. PMID 2123366

88. Zimmer R (1990). "Relationship between tyramine potentiation and monoamine oxidase (MAO) inhibition: comparison between moclobemide and other MAO inhibitors". Acta Psychiatr Scand Suppl 360: 81–3. PMID 2248084

7. Roth M, Guelfi JD (September 1992). "The efficacy of reversible monoamine oxidase inhibitors in depressive illness". Can J Psychiatry 37 Suppl 1: 18–24. PMID 1394027

113. Rudorfer MV (1992). "Monoamine oxidase inhibitors: reversible and irreversible". Psychopharmacol Bull 28 (1): 45–57. PMID 1609042

3. Fulton B, Benfield P (September 1996). "Moclobemide. An update of its pharmacological properties and therapeutic use". Drugs 52 (3): 450–74. PMID 8875133
Blue as the gloomy sky. Blue like the dozens of tacky snowflake beads falling to the floor. Blue: the heroin addict’s face during the final overdose.

“I’m so blue… without you…” Another Christmas song comes to mind as I write advertisements for holiday companies too lazy to do the work themselves. “I feel so blue…” However that Elvis Presley song goes, it sticks in the mind, but what did he know about being blue anyway? He ate his peanut butter & banana sandwiches like a hog. The man grew rich as he gorged himself with the poison of fame. Did he ever stop to think about what his pathway to destruction meant, or was he fooled to the very end thinking that path was pure gold?

I was fooled every time I took that forsaken hit. I feel so old now and much too worn. I remember thinking I would keep doing this till I died. Nothing could ever match up to the euphoria from that last sticky trail on foil, an evil road to hell if there ever was one.

Then I died inside when I lost everything: apartment, family, and future. I guess dying on the inside was enough, because I’m clean as a whistle now as far as heroin habits go. I came out physically intact with a few facial scars and eternal insomnia, but I’m a changed girl, a new woman, right? Right?

Tell that to the girl who snuck out of her boyfriend’s house to meet some Mexican just out of jail, just for a few more, oh, the last hit, I SWEAR. I told him with a smile that I would be back later that day. Whatever. He was a cute dealer, and at the time, I figured I would be back.


Then I return to the house, locked out and as ashamed as a two-faced bitch like me could be. I started crying, but my tears are never real. I got a second chance.


“Use one more time,” They say, “and you’re out!”


“I’ve never known anybody to get off heroin.”


I grimace as they give me the lectures. I smoke cigarettes and sneak vodka to ease the need for blackest devil and best friend. I look at my painted toes, sparkly lies that say I’m still a little girl. Nothing more.


I am nothing more.


“Nothing but blue skies, all day long.” Jazz music sucks. I hate remembering such simplistic joy. The only blue I see is the coldest kind. Blue lips from death and blue veins from my barest survival.


My heart is frozen forever. Heroin cracked the ice and made dark aqua pools of blood gush out.


Everyone asks me, “Do you even care? Are you listening? What do you fucking live for, Crow, because it’s obviously not to love anyone but your DAMN self.” I sit there and stare. I agree with them, but I say nothing, for what could come of any arguments?

They’re humans. Stupid humans, just like me. I observe and see true love bringing them misery, one by one, every single time.
True to form, ahem, I wrote too much - tu tut! So this is just a testrun to see if it works... what are you supposed to put in a blog I wonder?:)
Source: Ram Dass lecture at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center: Part I. The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, vol. 5, issue #1 (1973), pages 82–85. NOTE: Maharaj-ji is also known as Neem Karoli Baba.

At one point J was into my shoulder bag which I was carrying. I was looking in there and I found this little bottle of LSD. I had brought that to India. Not because I was particularly eager to take it, since I had taken it up to here as far as I was concerned, but because I thought I might meet somebody who I could give it to who would tell me something about what it was all about. I thought, after all, I'll give it to these holy men; and I'd give it to different holy men like a Buddhist monk and I'd say "How did it affect you, sir?" and he'd say, "It gave me a headache." I'd give it to somebody else and they'd say, "Well, it is good for meditation." Somebody else said, "Well, meditation is better than this." Somebody else said, "Where can I get more?" There was the standard set of reactions that you'd get in the West. You didn't have to go to India to find out all those reactions. So I found this bottle and I thought, "Gee, you know, this guy is going to know. I'll talk to him about LSD."

I go to bed. The next morning a message comes: Maharaj-ji wants to see you. We go over to the temple around 7:30 or 8 in the morning. I'm walking towards him. I'm about as far from him as that booth back there, and he yells at me, "Where's the medicine?" I'm not used to thinking of LSD as medicine, so I was a little confused. I said, "Medicine? What medicine?" He said, "The medicine, the medicine." I said, "LSD?" "Yes, bring the medicine." So I went to the car and I got the medicine and I brought it back and "Let me see." So I put it on my hand. I had all different kinds of things in there. "What's that?" I said, "LSD." "What's that?" "That's mescaline, that's Librium, and that's"—you know, a little traveling kit. So he said, "Does it give you siddhis?" Now siddhis in India means "powers." But I had never heard the word before. It means spiritual powers, and since I never heard the word before and they translated it as powers, I thought he wanted like vitamin B-12. You see, I figure he's an old man, he must be losing his power and he wants vitamin B-12 and I didn't have vitamin B-12, so I said, "I'm sorry, no, this doesn't give you that kind of power," and I put it back in the bottle. He says, "Nay, nay," and he holds out his hand, So I put one pill in his hand. These pills were 300 micrograms each. He looked at it. "Come on." So I put a second one—that was 600 micrograms. He looked, so I put a third pill on-that was 900 micrograms—which seemed like an adequate dose for anyone—and he went like that, see, took all three pills-and I was around him all that morning, and nothing at all happened. Like, "That's your medicine, groovy, that's interesting." Nothing happened at all.

Now it's interesting that I came back to America after that and I told many people and in fact published it and said that this man had taken 900 micrograms of LSD and nothing had happened. But all the time I was saying this, there was a gnawing doubt in my mind, Just a tiny little one that maybe, since I was so confused at that time, maybe what he did-he took the pills and he threw them over his shoulder, you know, and it was all a magical thing, and he'd never taken them at all. So it is interesting to follow the sequence through, since now we can see another round this time when I'm back in India. One day he calls me up to him and he says, "Say, did you give me any medicine last time you were in India?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "Did I take it?" I said, "Well, I think so." "Did it have any effect on me?" I said, "No, I don't think so." He said, "Oh, Go away." So I went away and the next morning I received a call from him and he says, "You got any more of that medicine?" I said, "Yeah." "Bring it." So I bring it. I have what is comparable to 1500 micrograms. I put it on his hand, and one pill is broken and he gives that back to me. The rest he is holding in his hand, and this time, as if in response to my slight doubt, he takes each one—and he does it very carefully to make sure that I see that it is going into his mouth and he is swallowing it, you see. After he swallows all these pills, he looks at me as if panicked and he says, "Pani—can I take water?" And I said, "Sure." He asks, "Hot or cold?" and I said, "Either one, it doesn't matter." He's calling, "Pani, Pani, bring water, bring water." They bring a glass of water and he drinks it down. Then he says, "How long will it take to act? How long will it take?" I said, "Well, I don't know, about an hour or—something will happen in an hour, I'm sure." So he calls a man over and he has a man with a wrist watch and he's holding the man's wrist watch and he says to me, "Will it make me crazy?" And our relationship is very intimate so I said to him, "Probably!" So at this point he goes under his blanket, which is what he sits with, and he comes up looking absolutely insane! At which point I think, "Ugh, oh, what have I done? I've let this old man take this strong drug and now he's gone crazy—oh, what a terrible—it'll be an international incident, and it's terrible, and I've blown it again." Then he laughed at me—and at the end of an hour, just nothing had happened. And I was there all day and nothing had happened at all. At the end of the hour he says, "You got anything stronger?" I said no. "Oh." And he said these substances were known about in the Kulu Valley, long ago, but all that knowledge is lost now, Then he said, "It's useful, it's useful, not the true samadhi, but it's useful."

Then later when questioned about LSD by some of the young Westerners that were with him, he said, "If you're in a cool place and you're quiet and you're feeling much peace and your mind is turned toward God, it's useful. It's useful." He said it will allow you to come in and have the visit—the darshan—a saint, of a higher being of a higher space—higher consciousness is how you can translate it. But he says you can't stay there. After a couple of hours you gotta come back. He said, you know, it would be much better to become the saint, rather than to go and have his visit; but having his visit is nice. He said it strengthens your faith in the possibility that such beings exist. At the time he used Christ as the saint he was talking about. He said it allows you to have the visit of Christ but you can't stay with him. It would be better to become like Christ than to visit, and LSD won't do that for you. He said it will strengthen your faith but it won't make you into that. He said love is a much stronger drug than LSD medicine.


Input on this account given by another American who was there:


I fondly remember my first guru, Neem Karoli Baba, taking three tabs of Ram Dass’s Sandoz Laboratory acid in the late sixties and then throughout the day asking Ram Dass if and when it was going to have some effect. It’s really Ram Dass who went on a trip that day. It didn’t seem to change Neem Karoli Baba’s consciousness much.

Lama Surya Das (Jeffrey Miller). The Zen Commandements. Zig Zag Zen: Buddhism and Psychedlics. Alan Hunt Badiner & Alex Grey (editors). 2002-2015. Page 185.

NOTE: A new edition of Zig Zag Zen is coming out on May 30, 2015.

http://www.synergeticpress.com/product/zig-zag-zen-buddhism-psychedelics
I can't believe you Claire...

You know,
I quit drinking because of you.

Ever since that day, that day I came home and opened that bottle, you left tinychat.

Till this day it still haunts me.
You left me. You left me all alone.

From that moment on I vowed to never drink again.

I've decided it's time to give up smoking white.. I'm sick of the mood swings, cravings afterwards, and the prospect of having disgusting teeth.. I don't want it to be the highlight of my day anymore, so fuck it. I've had my last blast off, a fat one, earlier, and have vowed for that to be my last.

I have a drugs test at the end of the month, and I want this to be out of my system by then. I plan on postimg each day, when I'm craving, to help remind me of why I'm giving it up instead of giving in. It's so readily available, and offered to me every day,but fuck it I can do it.
Unexpected error: Error reading from file: Input/output error

Half my entry is gone. The USB drive where I was working on this entry is malfunctioning.

Ariadne found my name and email in a totally ordinary way. I would have been impressed if she had read it in a deck of Tarot Cards or drempt it. That's impossible, of course, but it is fun to imagine. She knows somebody who talked to me at the party, and they told her. The delay is because she had been skiing for 2 weeks in the Alps at Davos.

I've been seeing Ariadne since last week, and we seem to be hitting it off. This week, she had been trying to reserve a cabin for us at a resort within a few hours from Paris. My French isn't good enough to deal with reservations over the phone, and there was nothing on the internet, so it was nice of her to try. Anyway, slim chance at that because it's a holiday weekend and all Paris would be trying to do the same thing. We would take the train Friday night (yesterday), ski all day sat, sun, and half of lundi, then take the train back and be at work on Tuesday. Too late now, obviously. Everything was booked, and the weather is bad for skiing anyway. We will do something else for the holiday weekend.

Ariadne isn't her real name, I mentioned her real name in a previous entry, but I'm going to use Ariadne for the blog.

If there's an afterlife, my parents are probably looking up at me and gnashing their teeth in their own little pit in Hell. After my 3rd year of college, I realized I wasn't really happy with what I was studying. I had learned enough about the Corporate world and Clinical Medicine to question my path in college. I had straight As as an electrical engineering/neurobiology/preMed double major. (Premed refers to a concentration of electives and is not a full major.) I didn't want to become a YUPPIE working for 'the Man' and become an enthusiastic part of a morally corrupt system that I see as celebrating the shallow things in life, promoting unsustainable ways of living, and cheapening our existence. I wanted to earn an honest living and work to improve people's lives on a large scale. I don't buy into the type of feel good thinking that says that merely being polite, recycling, not farting in elevators, helping old ladies cross the street, or having your own children and teaching them to be "good people" is sufficient. I wanted to be active and invent something, come up with some idea, solve poverty, find a cure for AIDS or cancer or something that would bring about a big improvement in the quality of everyone's lives. (Currently, this is exactly what I am working on at the Institut. The project is probably too ambitious, and I won't make much of a dent in anything, but I'm trying). I knew I didn't know anythign about how to do this or even about the world in general.

Other than summer jobs, I didn't know what work was like. I had no male role model to emulate or follow. That alone made things very difficult, but it seemed like everything else was against me as well. My parents had never worked during my life, and they were uneducated to the point of being illiterate. My father was an abusive drunkard. With the dream of becoming a fighter pilot, he joined the Air Force, and when he didn't qualify to fly a plane but was instead assigned to work on the ground, he faked an injury. He was discharged and given "Disabled Veteran" status even though he had never been within 3000 miles of any conflict. That and he was awarded life-long disability payments. With no need to work, he didn't.

My mother only complained: the monthly handout was too small, it cost too much to feed me (I was so skinny and small for my age, my parents had investigated by Child Protective Services for that alone), she complained that my clothes cost too much (my clothes were 2nd hand and my shoes were $1 Bobos from Family Dollar.). She liked to complain about how much she had to spend in gas driving me to the hospital because I was sick all the time (medical care was free). I was a burden and she always pointed out how much more money she would have and how better her life would be if I had never been born. Despite that, she never got a job to improve our situation. She was content to be married to a monthly government check and let us live in poverty, the poverty of alcoholism and abuse. Even as a child, I realized that the only thing my parents would do in life was serve as examples to others of what not to do in life.

Without anybody to help me or give me advice, I decided to take a year off college, and I thought that wandering, writing in a journal, doing art, and working might be a good way to figure out what to do. The only problem is that I would be completely on my own. It wasn't 1950 anymore, and times had changed for the worse. Somethign like that was very hard to do in the 1990s. I had a full academic scholarship including living expenses, but my scholarship money would not come in for the year that I was taking off. I didnt have the safety net that parents owe their children, they were still alive, but they had never been "parents" to me in any way other than in the sense that they gave birth the same as stray cats and dogs in the back yard. I didnt have any savings. I had been completely on my own since age 17. So I had nobody to help pay rent for me, give me any advice, or in any way make this transition easier. I wasn't on good terms with grandparents or with my many aunts/uncles/cousins by default - they hated my parents. They also hated me, but I have no idea why. I had never asked them for money. I had been a straight A high school student (admittedly at a 23rd rate public school in a bad zipcode), and I had straight As in college, a top tier research university. I had never been in trouble with the police or had any behavior problems. I didn't use drugs very often because I had to concentrate on my studies, and when I did, it was low key.)

You could go nearly anywhere on Greyhound for $60 so I bought a bus ticket. The first place I went was New Orleans. While wandering around and hanging with gutterpunks and other homeless in the French Quarter, I ran into a friend from my home town, Monkey. He was nearly 10 years older than me and also living on the street. He showed me how to function on the street. He showed me a few squats, and my favorite was on top of a wall abutting an abandoned warehouse on the bank of the Mississippi just up stream from the French Quarter. It was high enough that nobody could see us up there. Other humans and pigs wouldn't bother you. The former rob you. The latter beat you, take you to jail, and sometimes shoot you if you are homeless. He showed me where to get food. There were several soup kitchens and feeding stations within walking distance of our squat. There was also a grocery store, Verti Marte, on Governor Nuchols in the French Quarter that sold a Po' Boy or a Meat and Three for $5. It was enough food to last all day. He showed me University of New Orleans on the edge of Lake Pontchartrain. They didn't ckeck IDs at the university gymJ. We would blend in with the students, and go in and lift weights, but the main point was to take a shower and do a little laundry. The stalls had doors on them so I would wash my underwear and socks with shampoo.

The dream started as soon as I closed my eyes. There was no obvious transition in awareness. I noticed dream characters talking to me. Plots lines and back sotries unfolded to reveal different dream seauences very quickly. I'm standing on a city street on the edge of an ocean. There are a few pedestrians walking quickly. It's getting dark and a storm is moving in fast. I felt the urgent need to find shelter. Heavy storm clouds were over the ocean. The wind was picking up. I didn't have any money or anywhere to go. I didn't know anyone. In the dream, I remembered back to a winter I spent homeless in New Orleans. I remembered that Monkey had a spot on a wall next to an abandoned warehouse on the Mississipi river just upriver from the French Quarter. We would climb it and sleep on top. It was sheltered by an overhanging roof.

To my left (West) is a sea wall. It lines the sidewalk for 100 meters or so and ends against a brick building seven stories tall. The city extends to the east, but tall buildings block the view. I climbed the wall and looked down the other side. There was a pit, like looking down from the top of a hydroelectric dam where the water is pouring. It was very deep. A srip of land and another wall was on the other side and beyond that, the ocean.

The backstory to the dream popped into my head like a déja vu. I was on the planet Deneb gamma. It was a colony world of the Orion Arm Hegemony. I had been shipped here on a sublight transport ship, but there had been an accident during my cryosleep. My life support system had malfunçioned and fried the memory centers of my brain. I didn't know who I was or why I was there. All of my bank information, assuming I had any, had been lost. I didn't have any money. There was no Emergency Contact information on me.

At this point, the flow of the dream started to break up. Suddenly, I was on the other side of the pit, on the strip of land looking out at the ocean. Ragged black clouds, violent wind. Now I was standing on top of the far wall, and I could see the ocean.

A maelström miles across, turning very slowly. It looked like it would swallow the city on the edge of the sea. It was extremely deep and the bottom was hidden in blackness. It could have been a black hole. I was still lucid but was convinced that the dream was real. I really thought I was about to die. Now, I was on the lip of the maelström being tossed around in the water, feeling and hearing the raging wind and sea spray. I had already crossed the event horizon and was falling in. I would be annihilated.

Recovery:
Just think of it as though you are walking down a frozen winter road,
and you can see a toasty, warm cabin up ahead.
You know you can make it there,
and it'll be so good and cozy once you get inside.
It's just a shitty walk,
and really windy,
but you can still make it there.
You have to make it to the cabin.
You have no choice or you will freeze to death.~

~Verri
the worst days start waking up tired and stressed, running flat-out and forgetting hunger but remembering why i never took to stimulants, while sipping coffee – black.

the worst days start with dreams reprising memories i wish i could forget. i'll get up feeling knives in my neck and hope that i can get through the day without having to crack a smile.

the worst days start remembering that the hero is the biggest idiot in the room, then finding the mask in my pocket and learning that the idiot is me. the people know i'm fucking clueless, but they don't seem to care. whenever we're in the red again it feels like the only thing i can do is close my eyes, breathe deep and pray that someone will come and take the mask from me.
Sorry, I've got to vent this shit. 2 weeks ago, I went to my pharmacy for my daily pickup, everything was fine, the next day, a Saturday, another pharmastist told me it was at the drug and rehabilitation centre, and I couldn't have it till I went there. They aren't open on weekends.. So, script gone. Nobody had told me till it was closed! No call, text, letter, anything from my 'care worker'.

(If you miss 3 days, you lose it. On Saturdays you get a take out for Sunday.)

Frustrated, I phoned the centre to explain on Monday. The clinic nurse blamed me, saying it was my responsibility to collect it from the centre every two weeks, and it had been there from Tuesday. I've never had to go there every two weeks, and I've been taking it for monthe. Nobody had informed me at my last appointment I had to be there every 2 weeks. She wouldn't listen, and went on, and on about it being my fault and responsibility. Now, I admit, I shouldn't of, but I told her it's also the services business, hers and my caseworkers, to return voice messages and their responsibility to inform patients when they need to be there.
Now, because of 'how rude' I was those 2 weeks ago, they ignored 7 calls from me last week. Instead of getting a script now, now I must several group meetings, 20 miles away from my house. I live in the countryside in the uk, no car.
Instead of being able to get clean ASAP, now I am screwed...
I've been stuck in a room for months, years even.. sleeping for sometimes 18 hours a day, from exhaustion, and trying to avoid reality by being asleep. Pathetic. I've smoked heroin, day in, day out, trying to block being depressed and stop the anxiety. I have been fooling myself by thinking that 'next day' will be better, someday I'll magically change, or, when I'm down, reminding myself that I'll probably die soon from the recurring pneumonia or perhaps, pick up a needle and overdose.

I've been so brain dead inside and numb, trying to block my past and present, grim reality. I've been in denial for so long, as the alternative just seemed to be stuck with obsessive thoughts about suicide. I've built up a barrier in my head to not have to deal with what happened in the past... argh..

I'm struggling to make sense of things. Every time I think about my past, my suicide attempts and what led me to them, I just feel pain in my stomach, my brain goes blank. I then go back to my routine of trying to block it out, by smoking opiates, sleeping all day and getting absorbed into movies and television, getting absorbed into characters lives. I guess I have no fulfilment, excitement or fun, so I momentarily enjoy getting absorbed into the stories that do. Pathetic, I realise.. I am my own protagonist, I don't want this life any more. I am sick of struggling, of being depressed, constantly smoking h.

I have tried getting help, by opening up to numerous drug careworkers, seeking advice and support on how to deal with the problems that are causing the drug use, but they simply tell me to stop using, as if it were simple as that.
However, there is a catch 22. Flashbacks and vivid memories of suicide attempts, rape, domestic violence.. it is even hard to type. I just got stuck in one of those depressing gazes for far too long. I felt as if I were reliving the darkest of times again, and I can't concentrate on anything else..

God damn.. It's as if I've been waiting for some hoping of enlightenment, some kind of alternative, practical coping mechanism, or strategy to deal with these things, and -then-, I thought then I'll be confident in giving up heroin.

I understand now, I was excepting and asking for too much of them, to give advice on ways to live without drugs, how to deal with my problems that are causing the addiction. I need to find my own
I'm not sure if anyone is really following this, but if so, sorry for not updating in a timely fashion ;)

DAY 4 - After having a rough day after taking 1000mg naltrexone (no idea if it was to do with the naltrexone or not) the previous night, I took 650mcg the next night. Couldn't sleep so I took 5mg zolpidem. Woke up early and felt even worse in the morning, maybe the zolpidem was a bad idea. Perhaps such a small dose might have caused a sort of paradoxical reaction or intense rebound.

DAY 5 - Took 100mcg last night. I keep falling asleep quickly but my overall sleep quality and length doesn't seem to be improving. Diarrhea is still improved though.

DAY 6 - Took 100mcg again. Same as the previous day. Diarrhea was back a little, but that may have also been because I took some magnesium.

Overall it's hard to say what, if any, effect the naltrexone is having because I am normally kind of up and down anyway and my symptoms vary depending on the weather and my hormonal cycle. But I'm not feeling magically way better like some people report soon after starting LDN. However I've also been erratic with the dosing and taking much less than a normal LDN dose (1.5-5mg). Not sure what to do, I wanted to try to go back up in dose more gradually, but now I have an opportunity to do another type of experimental therapy so I'm thinking of stopping the naltrexone while I do it.
Breakfast

This morning, the sides of the toilet, the wall and floor around the toilet, and my pyjama bottoms were all smeared in shit. My flat reeked. I felt OK. I won't post any pictures for this diary entry.

After cleaning the bathroom, I took a shower and got dressed. Breakfast was difficult. In the refrigerator is a half-loaf of stale bread, a limp and moldy green cabbage, 2 cans of Indian Tonic water, and some batteries. On the counter is a nearly full bottle of wine and a carton of eggs.

I haven't bought groceries for a week and food is running low. That's not as bad as it sounds. There are more than 100 restaurants and food stands on my street within 100 meters of my flat. This is some of the best food in the world, so that's where I usually eat. It's expensive but I'm eating better than I ever have in my life, as long as I don't try to cook my own food.

I used the edge of the counter as a wedge and broke the French bread in half. It was like a piece of wood. French bread is called a 'baguette' here, and it is the long, skinny un-sliced kind that some American supermarkets sell in their bakery section. When it is eaten still warm from the bakery, it's soft and delicious. There are 3 bakeries across the street, and it was delicious the day I bought it at one of them 3 months ago. I nuked one half for a moment in the microwave. I stood over it and watched it because I accidentally set some bread on fire microwaving it the other day. Even after heating, it was still so hard that it hurt my teeth and cut my mouth when I chewed it. Next I cracked open a raw egg and sucked it out of its shell. (I burned a hole in my last pan last month after forgetting about the water I was trying to boil. My eggs are free range family farm eggs delivered by a retired couple.) I wiped the egg drippings off my face and out of my beard with a towel that hangs from a cupboard handle.

I made a cup of Earl Grey tea and went over in my head my situation and what happened last night.

I see monsters. I'm losing my mind, and I can feel it going. Maybe having a girlfriend will ground me, help me keep my head together. Maybe I should see Céline from one of the Paris Fashion Week parties. Or maybe I should see that grad student, Pinar, who offered to practice French with me if I go up to her lab. But there's no chemistry with either of them so it doesn't matter.

I have barely slept in 2 weeks. First I was pushing myself to finish writing an article before the submission deadline, but after the second Paris Fashion Week party I went to, it was the thought of a strange woman that was doing this to me. She never told me her name, but in a dream it was Ariadne so I call her Ariadne.

I drank 3 bottles of neomorphine cough syrup at 8 pm last night hoping that it would help me sleep. Two hours after quaffing the medicine, I felt the fantastic opiate buzz. It didn't bother me that I had the worst case of opiate itch of my life. Side effects didn't stop there. Soon after that, I had sharp stomach cramps and waves of nausea. These must be the effects of one of those 'inactive' ingredients listed on the bottle. I gave up on trying to read because that made things worse.

I lay down on my pallet and wrapped myself in my rat's nest of blankets. The room was spinning. I turned off the light and tried to relax. Soon, I felt like something had built up deep inside my body and was ready to explode out of at least one end, maybe both. I jumped up and hurried to the toilet. A spray of watery diarrhea and gas exploded dangerously far from the toilet bowel.

This lasted all night. Get up, assplode, rinse off in the shower, go back to bed, and repeat that sequence about 10 times. Of course, I didn't sleep, but cocooned myself in my blankets listening to the voices in my head with vague interest. They were constant. The effect was like being in a crowd. You can hear that 100s of people are talking all around you, and if you listen to the loudest ones and those nearest you, you can hear their voices distinctly. They were all very ordinary. What I heard and could follow was mostly in French or English. Other languages I thought I recognized were Spanish, Chinese, and something Middle Eastern. Sometimes there were conversations about distinct things. Usually I could only hear one person in the conversation as though they were on a phone or just talking loudly to themselves the way some schizophrenics do. Once I distinctly remember a male and female voice arguing back and forth to one another. They were having a lovers' fight.

At some point, I found myself in sleep paralysis. This time, I decided I would check out the neighbors in my building. I went through the top floor. There are 2 other apartments on the top floor besides mine. Sleeping people. I worked my way down a few floors and heard a woman singing. It was very strange, eerie and very beautiful. Her song had a haunting melody that I would have put onto paper and become a composer of music if I knew how to write music. At the same time, the sounds had become like fractals. They seemed to grow and expand as complex components of subtle musical textures. It was unlike anything I have ever heard in waking life. I don't remember but I think I might have cried as I listened. I never saw the singer. I'm curious to know who it is.
I ran away from home once because my dad kept beating me.
So I went to my friends house and we smoked weed, all day, every day, for a week.
That's what they do you know.
So I decided on Friday to turn myself in because the cops were looking for me.
I didn't want them to take my ass back home cause my dad would beat me again as soon as the cops left.
So I made sure I was in juvy.
I feel like the most OG nigga in the world for doing this but
I took 8 grams of weed and brought it with me to the police station.
When I turned myself in and they just started to call my dad, I unwrapped the sack of weed and rolled some of it into a joint.

Then, I lit the joint in the motherfucking police station. The dude at the desk was stunned so much it took him 5 entire minutes to call other people in the room to arrest me. I smoked like a fourth of the joint too lol

anyway. I spent about a month in juvy for various shit, and my dad never beat me again after that.
No matter how far you think you've dragged yourself down.
and created this hole, there is always still a way out.
It was easy falling in,
but now we have the force of gravity against us.
Winning,
And that force is Addiction.
She doesn't want us to succeed.
She doesn't want us to breathe.
She just needs, needs, and needs.
Draining your passionate dreams.

But we have intellectual minds that can solve problems....
Dig yourself some stairs! Evolve!
It takes longer to get out of the hole than when you climbed,,
but with enough effort, and pride,
you can do anything to which you set your mind.
Together we can climb these clay walls,
and revive what was once your all.
It simply takes time.

Time heals all wounds.

I believe it to be true.

Time, Patience, Understanding, and Love.

Without having these four elements,
life feels unbalanced,
and people like us try to mask it,
with substances that just make it worse...

Just say "no"....

Its one word that can save you from a life of hell.

I know it seems hard, but when it comes down to it,
"no" is a two letter word that takes a fraction of a second to say.....
In that fraction of a second, a Heroin addict got shot for ripping off his dealer.

All because he didn't say " no"
Just pass on and throw away everything that has to do with your demon
That's the first true step to quitting....
its emotional to throw away your toxic memories,
but its many times more liberating once you do release....
and you may have bad anxiety at first,
not knowing what to do once you have all this free time...

Use The time too heal your wounds.
Use Patience to give them strength
Use Understanding too know you're not alone..... and,
Use Love to see yourself for who you really are.
Just finished another day at work, today was supposed to be my day off. Also, anotification went off on my phine this evening, reminding me that my first day of abstinence from crystal meth starts tomorrow and will last for 30 days. If after that 30 days I still want to use, after just barely getting though the withdrawals and severe depression and beginning to feel like an actual honest, productive individual who is beneficial to society, then I may... but I pray that God gives me the strength to refuse any offer given to me in the form of dope. I still havent been able to set a doctors appointment to see someone about getting my UTI cleared up... if that is what is causing me to feel like I have to pee every day, all day.
I almost fell out of my chair when I read an email this morning. I didn't recognize the name of the sender, but it was somehow familiar. Hesitantly, I clicked it open. It was Ariadne from the Paris Fashion Week party. Her name is actually Andreia. All the letters and sounds were there A A D E I N R. A perfect anagram, escpecially considering the unusual spelling.

Maybe this is why dreams are useless for picking winning lotery numbers. With their strange synchronistic properties, even if sometimes there is really something there, there is always just enough wrong. Maybe the digits are reversed, the date is wrong, or the location is wrong. In the long run it is no better than guessing.

She didn't tell me how she found my name or email address, but she sounds sure she knows that it is me. No, my memory of the conversation is not faulty, I never told her my name, and that was verified in the email. She never told me hers, also verified. She hinted that she went to some trouble to contact me.

She must have somehow gotten the guestlist for the party and emailed everybody with a name that looked american (nearly 1000) or soemthign.

This after I have finally stopped thinking about her all day. I don't know if I should reply. As sick as I was these past two weeks, if I see her again, it will start all over. Worse, if we somehow have a relationship, she will be able to control me. I had become completely infatuated and obsessed with her, while she feels absolutely nothing for me. The relationship would be one-sided, with me being the one who anxiously waits for her to get off work or call, while she busies herself with her job or her hobbies and only thinks of me as an after thought when she's finsihed with all of the things she would rather be doing. All of my past relatioships as bad as they were, I have never been in that position. Just like I did nothing to find her. I could have hacked into the computer that had the guest list for the party and tried emailing all of the women on the list.

As a designer specializing in arcology or something, on the surface, she could possibly meet thoe rewuirements, (artistic, has a higher IQ than me, keeps herself in good physical condition, but not violent when somebody disagrees with her). I have no idea if she is smarter than me, but she was able to track me down somehow. Something still bothers me. She might be the woman of my dreams, but I'm afraid she's not a dreamer. She was never in any of my dreams. I've got to be picky after all of the bad experiences I've had.
"Men can be heartless and vein by taking you self -esteem and scrubbing the toilet that is your flushed self-worth in murky water unfit to drink or shit on top of. They layer it on piece by piece. It robs you of sanity, dignity, solitude, and the chance at real love"

Very true Oh I'm sorry.... How dare I.... How dare me to discuss my feelings. How dare I jus simply ask you about what's goin on with us in our 'relationship'. I never say anything at all. I take pride in being a girl that is very chill. I take pride in the fact that I don't nag and have 'talks' everyother day. We've established that we were boyfriend and girlfriend a long while ago. And I'm sorry, but im not stupid. I notice how our relationship changed... How uve been pulling away. Ever so slightly, that I can't call you out on it. Ever soo suddle, that if I said something, U would pull the "what r you talking about" card to make me look crazy. Sooo I don't say anything. I let it go on. For awhile until u say something that triggers it and I can't take anymore. Now unlike most, do I expolde... No. Do I call u names and start accusing u of things... No. So what do I do? I simply want to talk to u, like an adult in a mature relationship.... Can u imagine that?!?! How dare I talk to you as an adult in a mature relationship! So what do u do... U get defensive in 2 seconds and begin a fight. A fight that totally was un called for and totally avoidable. And the funny part is that YOuR WRONG. I didn't even do anything and ur the one who is wrong, yet your yelling at me... For telling u my feelings none the less!
Like what the fuck?!? Ur fuckin impossible I don't even wanna know what it's like fighting with you during a real fight!

Maybe I should jus take the hint... That ur no longer really into me. That u don't love me (because u still haven't said it yet and we've been dating for awhile). That you jus keeping me around for the sex and jus to have someone with u through a few nights a week.
Funny that's when ur nice to me... When we're having sex. That's when ull leave early hanging out with your friends, bc ur horny and u text me and my stupid ass says "yes I'll come over". But bc ur my "boyfriend" I push out the little voice that says "why does he leave hanging out with his friends early jus for sex? Why can't he leave early other nights when u jus wanna hang out?" I wanted to be the "cool" girlfriend and not argue or cause a fight. But every girl has her limits.... And my bad that u finally pushed the wrong button.... Said something alil too far that cause me to say "we need to talk". How dare I How DARE I!!!
My eyes open.... Only takes moments to realize where I'm at. Far far away from the dream land I was just in. Far far away from the life I once knew, that I was ok In, "doing good" making family proud, making enemies jealous... The "good" days. Life was ok then. Much better then where I am now

"Fuck" I say in my head. Another day waking up in my 'single' size bed, back in my parents home, almost reaching the age of 28. A far far step from when I moved out on my own at the age of 23 with my boyfriend of 8 years. We had a nice size house, a nice size bed. He was a handsome guy. He was a good guy. We practically grew up together. We were almost like a power couple... Ganging up together when something threatend one of us. Intimidating other couple how we made being together look so effortless and 'cool' we were with eachother in not fighting or getting crazy or jelous ....
Well here I am now, in my childhood bedroom, alone ... About to begin another stupid ass day doing the same stupid ass stuff. Change u ask? Why can't I change? Well bc I'm a addict and paralyzed in fear

I can't believe I left him, I left that life, I chose to do this, I chose to throw away a relationship that was relatively ok

Now, he's getting married to someone. He moved on and his life is moving forward.

But me? I'm jus going backwards.

I know what I must do. I know I need to face these Demonds. But I'm stuck in this limbo that life sucks and I need the opiates to get through this stupid ass day. This stupid ass work shift. But at the same time, I want change. I want happiness. I want a real relationship again. I want my own place.

How does it end?! How do I get through this. Is death easier (tho I'd never go through w it)

Everyday the problem gets worse and worse. When will I stop fighting?! When will I start fighting the good fight?!
As the episode of punked was on, were they target the Olson twins. The pretended to be kidnappers that force them to decide who will live ,and if they don't chose they both die. Little did they know the guns are empty that are pointing at them only the gun give to Kate and Ashley is loaded . The tables where turned as Kate claims she wants her sister to live and picks up.the gun. The joke.was on Ashley when Kate took the gun out of her mouth and shot Ashley. Of course it wasn't a fatal shot Ashton Coucher made sure they never received and small arms training for their role on Full House. If the Kate only played along Ashley wouldn't have bled out. Did she have cake on her face, but the real punk was on the Olson parents, KATE had to she if she could co Vince their parents that she was both Olson twins. Her parents would not good sports so.Kate was performing her biggest role, as someone that will be.sent to.jail if her parents realize Ashleys never coming home, not alive at least, you'll see what I mean.
Kate had no.idea that.Ashley was being sexually abused by her father. So Kate ,the actress she is, didn't break character when she would run from her room to Ashley's to receive the second good night kiss from her dad.When thinking she was in the clear having made it across the hall into Ashley bed little did she know what she was in for.As the problems piled up so did the laughs. Ashley reappeared, only to.serve as a body if any one looked in while dealing with another twist.
She was almost in the clear when tilted her head for her father to kiss good night as he also had. As she waited to for a peck , Mr. Olson had different ways of showing his love to
Ashley. She quick got the point ( no pun intended ) when a she felt the extent of his affection up against her as he got in to bed. Their was no mistaking Ashley had been servicing he fathers every need. AS any good actress knows the show must go on this Olson movie was not gonna get instead and let's.say perform certain acts if an Olson twin movie would not be read pg for the first time.
"Your punked" That when the mother walked in on them in to say " you just got punked. Mrs. Olson was in on the prank and was her idea. Little did her husband and " daddy's little whore" she affectionately nicknamed Ashley. She said I wanted to punk.them like they do me, she had an idea what was going on for years. NOT until she found out he only touched Ashley did she realize she must have come on to him. It only stands to reason they both were the same exact body if a child mollester he would. Have done the natural thing and switch them like during full house. When one was starting to.cut herself , move on to the other .


Above is an 18th century etching of the Institut where I work. Back then, it was still a Franciscan monastery. In the previous entry is a photo of one of the many statues here - he is in a niche before the stairs just outside of my lab.

I haven't slept well in about a month. I'm in such a bad mental state and feel so sick in general that I have been taking morphine to try to stay focused and keep my mood from getting worse than it already is. Sometimes I wish I had access to Kratom because it's a better pick-me-up than opiates. I'll explain that later.

My troubles began because I was having a hard time writing my article, I was in over my head, and people who had promised to help me weren't helping. With the submission deadline for my article is fast approaching, I had to intelligibly describe the research I've been doing here for the past four months. That was not the hard part. I had to read and then discuss more than 100 long and obtuse articles, discuss them all in the paper, and relate them to my findings. Some people do this easily, but for me, no. Since this is a new line of study for me, digesting so much material was awful. Overall, it was really more like writing a chapter for a medical textbook. Actually, the last part of it is a chapter in a book. The good thing is that it has already been accepted by a high impact medical journal, hence the deadline, and the findings are expected to have a high impact among the neuroscience community. It will help my career if I decide to stay with this thankless line of work.

I finally got the paper under control, but then something else happened. After the second Paris Fashion Week party I went to last week, I met a strange woman. That is what has been keeping me awake for the last week. She never told me her name, but in a dream it was Ariadne so I shall call her Ariadne.

Every night it is the same. I lie down exhausted. No matter how tired I am, I can't fall asleep. Sometimes it gets so late that morning birds start chirping outside my window. Eventually I fall into that un-restful, trance-like state known as sleep paralysis, but then, my mind springs wide awake. With a feeling of dread, I get up off my pallet on the floor and float out the window. It's usually still dark. First, I usually go to the Eiffel Tower or maybe I go sit on top of the nearby dome of the Pantheon. It's currently being repaired so there are lots of scaffolds and construction platforms upon which to perch.

In the dream, I need to find Ariadne. More than 10 million people live here so I never feel hopeful of finding her, even though it is only a dream and I should be able to do anything I want. I methodically scan the city. The view from the Eiffel Tower or the top of the dome of the Pantheon is fantastic. City lights spread out to the horizon. I read somewhere that the city is nick-named the "City of Light," and it fits.

Its layout is the result of centuries of building, tearing down, and rebuilding. Long streets radiate in patterns from central points and carve through long rows of high buildings that touch each other. Smaller streets and alleys and walkways and corridors divide them further. Here and there are domes and towers of palaces and mansions. Cathedrals are peppered around the city.

I pick a direction at random and jump off the tower, free-fall for a moment, catch mayself, and then fly over the government palace near the base of the tower. I move north-east tonight looking down at the millions of apartments and houses, always calling her name. Many buildings have an airy quality with their angular roofs, skinny chimneys, spires, and iron work roof-top gardens and platforms. Wrough iron balconies cling to the sides of many buildings with lush green plants dangling runners. They could have been magicked out of a rain forest. A lot of the courtyards have gardens, and they are begining to bloom. In some, fountains sparkle in artificial light. Old cobbled passages wind through narrow spaces and under archways.

Then I make my way back to the Hôtel de ville or the Louvre near the city center to keep my bearings. I get lost in dream cities just like I get lost in real cities in waking life if I don't pay attention. Last night was cloudy, and I couldn't see the stars for reference.

The clouds high above are the color of sodium vapor lamps, just like any modern American city at night. I stay away from them and keep my altitude near the rooftops. That way I can look for her, but I don't go so high that I am caught in the Winds of Time or just get lost in the yellowish clouds. I always wake up when that happens and have to spend another 2 hours trying to get to sleep again.

Aside from the fact that I am completely lucid, I can't control anything in the dream. The only exception is that sometimes I can make few random objects or fake people appear and disappear. Compared with the lifelike and realistic fabric of the dream and the lifelike people that I sometimes see in the dream, the objects and people that I consciously bring into the dream look like toddler refrigerator art and quickly lose their shape and fall apart. I can never make Ariadne appear or even go to her. I have been trying all night every nigh for more than a week.

Obviously, I can fly and move around and explore the dreamscape, but I can't even open a door. Instead, I have to go through walls. Sometimes I can do a teleport but it's always to a random location and never accurate.

I methodically enter buildings, houses, flats where i think she might live and call her. Her name echoes back. It's not like the echo in a cavern, but a weird inhuman sound that echos at unexpected intervals, each time slightly altered. It's a dream, a very elaborate one done in life-like detail. I enter strange French houses and see strange French families. Sometimes the children see me. The adults almost never do unless they are extremely old. I search buildings one by one, walking in , well floating in; unable to open doors or windows, I pass through solid walls. 1000s of sleeping people 1000s of sleeping families dreaming their own dreams completely unaware of me.

In my dream, I sometimes see into their dreams. I hear their thoughts. It is unpleasant to look at what others are thinking or dreaming. Some are anxious thoughts buzzing around in their brains like trapped bees. If telepathy were real, it would be torture to experience it.

Sometimes the people are awake doing ordinary things that don't interest me: watching tv, talking , working, doing unmentionable personal things. I look away.

Last night, I walked in on a stunningly beautiful naked woman. She was lithe and blond and her vag was neatly trimmed. Her breasts were spectacular, and at that instant I felt like if she would let me touch them, I would live forever. Thus distracted from my search, I stood in front of her in her ordinary living room, fascinated for a moment. She was walking around, sometimes facing me, but didnt seem to see me. There were book cases, sofas, chairs, art on the walls, even a mirror. I never look in the mirrors in this dream. She, like everything else in the dream, was beyond real, so real that I felt like I was looking in on a real person and violating her privacy. I vaguely wondered what dream sex in such a realistic dream would be like. But I have a one-track, mind as the expression goes, and I left the room calling Ariadne.

This has been my experience nearly every night, nearly all night, for the past week - I lie awake. There is no rest for my mind.
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