Wednesday 23 July 2014

HOW TO SPOT A RELAPSE

Hello, and thanks for dropping by.  As you may know, the first 22 posts of this blog are the text of my ebook, 'How To Become A Crack Addict' (Jan to April 2013), which you can also buy on amazon, if you do that kind of thing.  Nowadays, the blog contains the musings and epiphanies of yours truly, Benjamin of Turnham Green.  So, here is today's inspirational speculation...


HOW TO SPOT A RELAPSE

1. The doormat can't be seen for letters.
2. The washing-up's begun to smell.
3. The game-show channel has been on all day, and the last episode of Family Fortunes seemed too familiar.
4. You're playing incessant Pac-Man online, and actually putting your name in the high-score chart.
5. You haven't seen anyone for a few days, even though you could easily have met a friend.
6. You may get up, but you don't eat until your ravenous, maybe late afternoon, probably at the fridge door.
7. You're entertaining the possibility that a bath with Radox may change your life.
8. You're eyeing up the hoover, wondering how much it might be worth.
9. You're reading the twelve-step book for the first time, in search of loopholes.
9 (a) You find many loopholes.
10. Yes, you definitely saw that episode of Family Fortunes last night, or was it this morning, maybe at dawn?
11. In a bout of virtue, you make it to the shops, but you're walking slowly and obviously, in the hopes you'll be spotted by someone you've used with, which, if it happens, won't be your fault.
11 (a) All you buy is milk, but rather than going home, you start weaving through streets to a place you're sure you once used.
12. You're dialling variations of a number that you think belongs to someone you once used with.
13. You dredge up a grudge that hasn't bothered you for weeks, and dwell on it, from the victim's perspective.
14. You study passers-by to see if they look dishevelled enough to hook up with.
15. You turn down a street you vaguely remember using on, and look for that door, it was red, number seventeen?
16. You're thinking it's as good as fate now, so you may as well just get it over with - upping your game, you go loiter around that tower-block you know is no good.
17.  And my final way to spot a relapse is if none of the above applies to you, ever.

Well there's a few thoughts on what I was like before a relapse, and it's a grim place, torn between wanting to use, but knowing it's wrong, dangerous and damaging.  Many's the hollow afternoon I'd lie there, craving a life, but too impatient to do anything about it.  If I'm honest, I knew as soon as I woke up if I was going to use, but I'd tell myself that it wasn't a forgone conclusion at all, and that a new trajectory might present itself, a life-changing tangent I could fly off on, to love, luck, a new life.  Then, a few hours later, I'd be tortured and torn again, so alone it felt like my head was full of setting clay and, by then, it was like I had to use, just to assuage the desire to use, and all the sorrow it was causing me.

It was like being in a strong current - yes, it was hard to swim against, but that didn't mean there was no point swimming.

Oh, and here is a song of mine, if you'd like a listen...  Masochists Anonymous

Anyway, I think that's all for today.  Maybe tomorrow?

Sunday 20 July 2014

THE RELAPSE

Hello, and thanks for dropping by.  As you may know, the first 22 posts of this blog are the text of my ebook, 'How To Become A Crack Addict', which you can read here or buy on amazon, if your morals allow it.  Nowadays, this blog is the fairly frequent musings of your faithful blogger, Benjamin of Turnham Green.  Today's entry is a sorry tale of relapse after a period of freedom from the maelstrom of 'active addiction', as they lovingly call it.  But don't worry, it has a happy ending.


THE RELAPSE

Well, having let my life get even more empty and directionless than usual, I found myself, or should I say lost myself, meandering along the Goldhawk Road of a Tuesday afternoon, officially pleased I was piecing my life back together, secretly seething I'd not been reimbursed for ten blighted years, or awarded a CBE for services to impatience and remorse.  A studious pupil, satchel full of lessons unlearned, I turned the corner by the cheap barber's, to find an old familiar door, in maroon gloss.

I knew I'd made a mistake as soon as I arrived, but I'd come too far, and, as the door swung open, and my pasty hostess saluted me, I stepped over the threshold in dread and desire.  She ushered me in, and after a few words of polite catchup, I once again found myself ensconced in the gnarled wicker chair I knew from the ruined years, with cat-scratches and sunken seat, breathing in the thick, greasy air, made so by years of cheap cigarettes, and assorted fumes, in a place where the only wind was breathing.

You know what a relapse is like.  There's a clue in the name.  If you want to read a gory account of one, well, there are plenty scattered through this blog if you look.  But what made this day especially galling, apart from the almost unwilling, jittery use of crack, and comforter heroin, was the sinuous presence of a mottled cat, and the scant pageant of humans that passed through in various shades of day-centre chic.

The cat, a tortoise-shell with Marlboro Lite lowlights, frequently insisted on springing onto the table, in search of a bag of fishy treats, last spotted by the ashtray.  Rizlas, lighters, and little bits of cling-film would be jostled around before a flapping hand shooed the thing away, lest it caused grievous damage to the wares - but its tail, floating like a comma, punctuated a stained afternoon.  And when other people were scuttling from office-blocks, travelling on the tube, thinking what to have for dinner, our gross reunion tapered away, my hostess mostly engaged in mock-medieval battle, and I, in wicker, dragging on flavoured bleach, with a cat's tail arcing like a slow whip before me.

A guest decked out in drop-in denims sauntered in, keen to make a significant purchase, news of which rendered me a sycophant.  Would he feel sufficiently munificent to grant me a smoke, a couple more hapless stabs at happiness before I wandered home disconsolate?  I'd been clean nearly a year at this point, and things had been so much better...generally...but the casual saboteur sensed it was time to test the rules again, check if the same laws applied...they did...they were way above my pay-grade to dissect.  What's more, our denim companion had no intention of sharing his wares, and he was off just as soon as the haggard delivery-teen placed them in his waiting mitt.

So, it was back to me and my hostess, but she was still clashing swords with hordes, and didn't really feel like talking anymore.  The feline was still skulking around, springing on and off the table in search of ancient treats, but when, maybe it was fumes, or just disillusionment, it was sick on the wicker arm of the chair, it seemed meet to make my excuses, and I ventured a goodbye.  She said how good it had been to see me, I said the same, hating what I'd done, and worrying that she and her boyfriend might think I was back on the beat, ready to be a regular fixture.  The cat followed us out, darting under a car, as I spouted assurances I wouldn't be a stranger, skipped a bin-lid with alacrity...but who's this?  Denim was dropping in again.  He'd been given the wrong amounts, and was down by twenty quid, which is a basic unit of currency in that world.  My hostess paid lip-service to his plight, but she didn't want him going back in, just to phone and hassle the guy to cough up, which he almost certainly wouldn't do.

It was over, and head down, bitter as battery-acid, I began the walk home, feeling like I'd kicked a jigsaw all over the floor, one that had taken me months to complete.  All I could hope for was to go to bed, wake up some time the next day, regroup, recommit, and kind of forgive myself - but it's hard doing any of those things when your brain feels like it's been paved over.

Like a penitent moth, I fluttered lopsidedly home, singed, ready to stick to the wall for a bit, and not get all hung up about that angelpoise down the hall.

Moth cannot live on light alone.

And that's all I have to say today, apart from here is one of my songs, which you're welcome to listen to by clicking...  Revenge Of The Sirens

See you tomorrow, perhaps.

Friday 18 July 2014

RECOVERING RECOVERY

Hi, and thank you for passing through.  You may know, the first 22 posts of this blog are the text of my ebook, 'How To Become A Crack Addict', which you can read here, or purchase on amazon, if your morals allow that kind of multinational collusion.  So anyway, here is today's little entry for you.  It's a few ponderings about recovering a lost recovery.


RECOVERING RECOVERY

Firstly, I don't much like the language of addiction and recovery, including the words 'addiction' and 'recovery'.  They seem to smother, in the former, a set of choices we come to regret, and come to call addiction, perhaps as a disclaimer, or a mantle we're glad enough to wear if it gives us an identity, or gets us out of trouble, or both.  In the case of the word 'recovery', what is it that's being recovered from, a disease?  Oh yeah, that disease of addiction we hear so much about, that disease of bad choice after bad choice, attempt after attempt to reach, and stay on, that plateau of whatever kind of euphoria it is you're striving for.  The disease that twelve-step groups and various support agencies call a disease because it sounds a bit medical, psychiatric, psychological, a bit of a sociological dis-ease.  You know you're on a losing wicket when you're adding a hyphen to a word to bolster your case.  But, being a whore, I use the words 'addiction' and 'recovery' because I want people to stumble on this blog, find succour and solace herein, and possibly entertainment - and, linguistic skirmishes aside, I don't want to wake up in the gutter, or worse, not wake up in the gutter.

In recent months, like a soothing priest, with illegal proclivities, someone has been skulking, cowled, in my hall, whispering stuff.  A few months ago, he quietly mentioned that I wouldn't be seeing my music partner anymore, thus freeing me from the weekly commitment of learning a new song.  She was moving on to do new things.  It's amazing what a hole in your diary can do - an empty Wednesday can have the charm of a picked boil, and the same scope for infection.

Then he congratulated me on a period of fiscal prudence.  I'd managed to save up to go away with a friend and, this achieved, I could now relax the reins a touch - even though I was still £1,500 overdrawn.  He commended me for having applied to work in my local Oxfam, but when they didn't get back to me for a few weeks, he suggested they might not want me.  My days and weeks got emptier and emptier, until old feelings of failure and stasis began weighing me down.  One friend moved to Cornwall, another just got bored of me - then, after days of toying with the thought of using, and how it might 'be ok this time', I found myself on the road to relapse.

I was scared as I meandered down the road to an old familiar house, containing two old familiars, but even when I rang the bell, a part of me hoped there'd be no answer, and I could wander home and make good of the day, or at least save it from disaster.  But, bell pressed, I heard movement within, the front door opened, and there, welcoming me, was the ashen-faced ghoul I'd come to call a friend.

Invited in, and a few nice words exchanged, I soon asked if we could 'get something', and she knew I didn't mean a takeaway.  Still apprehensive, my innards felt like an abandoned hearth, and I thought I might die if I had crack again...maybe my body and brain couldn't take anymore...perhaps the long gap since the last time would mean my tolerance was low.  Rationalising our qualms away, she rang a local vendor, who, as chance would have it, was only based a few doors away, and it wasn't long before a preteen with a mouthful of cling-film was tapping on the window, and our brains were a storm of anticipation and denial.  In he shuffled, politely spat the tiny, glistening packages into his hand, and my hostess placed them on the ash-clad coffee-table.

I'll fill you in on the relapse, and its consequences, in tomorrow's entry, because I'm a little tired right now.  But please be assured, things didn't pan out too great.  And here, if you're not already in a coma, is a song I wrote, which I would be chuffed if you'd like to hear...  My song, 'The World Is Full Of Whores'

Hope to see you again, maybe tomorrow?

Friday 11 July 2014

BRIEF ENCOUNTER

Hello, thank you for dropping by.  As you might know, the first 22 posts of this blog (Jan to April 2013) are the text of my ebook, 'How To Become A Crack Addict', which you can read here or buy on amazon, if you do that kind of thing.  Nowadays, this blog is the fairly frequent musings of me, Benjamin of Turnham Green, along with some of my artwork and music.  So, here is today's musing...


BRIEF ENCOUNTER

I met myself on the 94 bus.  I got on at the usual stop, on my way to the coffee-shop I frequent.  Two stops along the way, I got on again, but I didn't look so great, bit shabby and stooped, pasty-looking I'd say.  I sat down in front of myself, not having noticed myself in the seat behind.  And I couldn't help wondering what would happen if I introduced myself to myself, which I then dared to do.  'Hello,' I said, 'it's Ben, isn't it?'  He turned politely, I'm relieved to say, but there was a steeliness in his eyes, like the shutters that come down when the chemist's shut.  His cheeks were  mottled, there was a spot by his mouth, and a slight flakiness to the tip of his nose.  'Been out and about?'

I knew I was teasing him a touch, but he graced me with a reply all the same.  'I haven't had a particularly good time of it lately,' he murmured discreetly, and I knew the tone, I felt it, as if my own throat was still moulded to recite the phrase without resistance.  'Have you been using?' I enquired.  I knew I'd hate this question because, when I've been using, I hate being asked if I've been using.  'What do you think?' he snarled, and even I was surprised at the acidity in his tone.  'Well, I'm guessing you have been,' I surmised, trying to self-counsel, 'but don't despair, because I haven't used for some months now, somehow, and I can only guess that if I can do that, you can too.'

'Yes, I guess so,' he agreed, trying to give off an air of one who's listening, and may even have just had a small epiphany.  We fell quiet for a second or two, and he pressed the bell for the next stop, one before the coffee-shop, where I was to alight.  I was tempted to get off too, but, apart from the fact it would have looked a bit strange to onlookers, I knew that I would be tempted to go where he was going, and where he was going, I knew, might kill him, and therefore me.

And I didn't want a suicide and a murder on my conscience.

And that is all I have to say today, apart from here is my most recent song, which you may or may not enjoy...  The World Is Full Of Whores

Thanks for dropping by.