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Intellectually, I know the mind is not always an ally to the individual striving for survival.

The mind is not the best judge of when to finish the game. Experience shows us a thousand cases where a life that most would consider wasted, finished, expended, still puts forth a shoot and prospers into something marvellous and unexpected. True, there may be a million cases where no knock came at the door, where the shoots fell on stony ground, but my point is that the mind is not the final arbiter in such decisions.

Other factors come into play.

Intellectually I know that at times the mind, aiming to save itself a little pain, a little torment, will convince the body to act against the body's best interests. Assuming the body as a mindless, purely physical organism, one with no desire other than to survive first, and reproduce second. The mind can trick this lump , it's not easy , the lump has a billion years of hardwired "fight-to-survive" reflexes built in, but the mind has time on its side. It can work and work and work at the defenses, like a hacker penetration testing a brand new router, identifying potential vulnerabilities on a coffee-ringed notepad, marking up a plan of attack for each vulnerability, probing the possible weakness, and measuring the response.

Time gives the mind an ease. And the mind can consider things over time, which the body, being a being that lives only in the instant, can not do.Like a dumb router that reacts the same way a million times to a million pings, the body teaches its opponent (if that's what the mind has chosen to be) all its weaknesses, without knowing what it is doing.

Intellectually, I know heroin addiction is bad for my long-term survival odds. Just take a random sampling of my friends from a decade ago and poll them now for Existence Status. Not a great response, hey. Perhaps an indication that heroin addiction is not healthy to the body? Whether it be the side-effects of the legal status, whether it be the lifestyle that comes when you choose to subvert normality, few could or would want to argue that smackism adds to the sale of "Happy Birthday Grand-dad" cards.

But all the intellectual knowledge in the world means naught when you haven't used for a day or two and you have cash and a means to score.Nowt, as I imagine they say in Yorkshire or somewhere in Britain's North.

I have tried, nay strived, these last few weeks to get through a payday without scoring. Week after week, 2 paydays a week, watching resolve crumble into despair time and time again.And I cannot even map the point at which the hammer stops ascending and starts to fall, although am I not the one in the prime viewing position to detect just such a moment?

Why cannot I see when I change? Must I poll myself every ten seconds saying "Do you want to score"? But like Schroedingers cat, this is one of those tests where the question determines the outcome. For it is to think of scoring that becomes the act. The centre cannot hold.

Watched Control, on dead Ian Curtis' brief span on terra mundis, yesterday. Depressing and enlightening at the same time. Great choice to film in B&W, great choice of Sam Morton as the wife ("Can you see it?" girl from Minority Report. She won me with those 4 words, a lifetime ago, did PKD write with her in mind?)

Intellectually, I know a lot of things, but I know they count for naught when the chips are down, when all you have is your raw heart and an emptiness that never shrinks but only grows.

And what sadder moment when you worked out that the gear doesn't fill the hole, it just pulls a tarpaulin across the rim so you don't see the work in progress underneath expanding, ever-widening. Somewhere inside there is a falconer looking for his bird.

Maybe I listen to too much Radiohead. Or maybe, just maybe, the life I am in may not be sufficient to nourish me and I am truly starving, screaming silently by sharp with hunger, and maybe I need to find something else that sustains, that nourishes.

Where I see families shopping I see chaos forming, I see the shopfronts crumbled, I see the barrows of bones. When I hear cash registers ring I hear the cry "Bring Out Your Dead", when the stockmarket report comes on I hear a lamentation growing and the keening pierces me.

This life is not for me. But I am not ready to eschew it for no other. I still have hope there is one of value somewhere.

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