junkie

Who said that the aim of taking drugs was to learn how to achieve their effect without them? Paraphrased I know. Some sixties Rock star I think. It's taken two decades but sometimes, like this afternoon, I can get a glimpse of how to do it. Standing still on a concourse outside the Sciences library at UQ, letting the life flow by, I get a trickle of a benzo effect without the benzos. A remove, a distance. The headphones help the feeling. Still a long way to go.

Since first coming across the word i have never seen or heard a definition for it. Since i saw the change in my personal usage chart since a category for morphine became available i realized just what a wonderful job of work we might be doing for 'schnarbs'. When only a few people use the tracker an individual is obvious moreso than when many use it. After experiencing how directly the State targeted any group that looked like being a nuisance by Joh's schnarbs we are asking for it big time.

Computers, microprocessors, associated tech and just about anything that can be marketed as "new technology" to all those consumers who are so eager to buy their way out of boredom have plenty to offer but from my brief experience it presupposes that a person has a reasonably clear idea of what they want to get from this new technology.

In a small tumbling down house, with some unknown other person or perhaps more than one. The house had safe spots, i.e. locations where the dragon outside could not see the person inside, and in such spots you could rest. But for some unkown reason there was a necessity to go outside regularly and so I did. The main memory of the dream was getting back inside to safety just seconds ahead of the dragon.

While visiting a friend in the palliative care ward of the local hospital with dear friends and family around as the life was ebbing to and fro but clearly the tide was nearly out puts us in a frame of mind unique to each individual. Very few have had much if any experience of such a thing and my friend's Father has had more than his share. I knew my friend since the age of ten along with his family who lived next door but the circumstances which developed our friendship were far from straightforward shall I say.

"Life's a bitch and then you die" were the words of comfort given by a friend at an appropriate time many years ago now. Maybe as we get older the shit that makes us miserable becomes something common place. Coping mechanisms are found and hopefully over time these mechanisms become more appropriate which sounds ridiculous really unless it imposes on others. More adaptive i suppose as age and circumstances make choices more restricted but rest assured there is always something life can throw that you that reminds one of the inescapable truism that 'shit happens'.

I returned from twelve days in the Philippines yesterday morning. My plane landed at 4:12am, I was through customs at 4:45am, dropping off dad at 5:15, back at Highgate Hill and used gear by 6:05am.

I had a $75 shot to get started than a $45 an hour later. I was very trashed, so trashed I did not want to take my full methadone dose at my chemist (I had managed, during the previous twelve days of non use, to get my metro use down to just 10 or 15mg a day, and since I had used a lot of gear I did not want to top that off with my usual 17.5mg of metro).

So here I am, technically in Asia, but feeling like I am in downtown Chicago. Or suburbann Chicago, that would be a better description.

My sister lives in a former US Air Force Base, converted to residential housing decades ago. The residents are mostly European, many of them bankers like my sister, the image of an octopus head in Manila with tentacles reaching around to Vietnam, out across the South Pacific, and caressing China with a 'come hither' look from above the beaked mouth,well that's an image I am trying to smother.

When my intake of opiates is a bit lean i sometimes wake up, assuming i got to sleep, after an active dream state with a head full of ideas. In the past this may have had a lot to do with why i took certain drugs, i'm not really sure coz it never made me worry about where my mind is going. Maybe when the dreams are not resolving anything i prefer they didn't happen but this must be on a subliminal level. Anyway i slept well and woke and decided to download an episode of the Fox series Fringe before reading my book.

It's strange but true, that sometimes I am so broke that I cannot afford dinner, and my response is to somehow talk a dealer into giving me $100 credit, so I won't notice I haven't eaten. Self-deluding behaviour I am sure, but it's often easier to get a century credit that the dealer knows will be paid back before you score again, than it is to borrow $15 for a meal that may be harder to collect. Micro-scale economics in action.