Medication Withdrawal Symptoms Bingo

I've come off of drugs three times now (once for illegal drugs and twice for prescription medication) but the playbook always remains the same when it comes to the symptoms. You can pretty much predict what's going to happen, and when. Here's a list of what's been happening this time around:

• Can't decide if hangry or sleepy.
• Listening to talk radio at 2am (thanks, Coast to Coast!).
• One song going around your head all freaking night (In my case, it was Eiffel 65's “Blue”)
• Three hours of cat videos when you should have been doing something else.
• Muscle spasms.
• Itching.
• Aching where you definitely shouldn't have aches.
• Skull splitting migraines
• Nope, definitely hangry.
• Trying to resist the urge to eat at 3am.
• No sleep 'til the alarm clock goes off!
• Finding the wallpaper really, really interesting.
• EAT ALL THE FOODS!
• Twelve hours sleep and still can't move.
• Bouts of amnesia.
• Wondering if starting drinking again would be a clever idea.
• Eating twelve Cadbury's Creme Eggs in 24 hours. Not sorry.
• Rearranging the bookshelves at midnight.
• Vacuuming at 3am.
• Hot
• Cold
• Hot
• Cold
• Oh, just make your mind up, body!
• Ebay, Amazon, and the online food delivery place all becoming your best friends.
• Finding out your favourite pizza place is still delivering at 4am.
• Complete and utter lack of concentration. Ooo! Look! A kitty!
• Losing the ability to write. And read. And walk. And genuinely just do anything.
• Wondering if the cat's humouring you or does genuinely hate you.
• STILL BLOODY HANGRY!

This is for all my friends who are recovering, been through the recovery, or are thinking about it. You can do it! And don't forget that there's always someone around for you to talk to. Just hit the “Contact” button if you'd like to chat.

Destiny

Have you ever felt like you're on this planet to do something? Has there been a gnawing feeling in your stomach, one that, no matter how hard you try, you can't ignore?

When I was six, I knew what I wanted to do with my life. By the time I was sixteen, I was telling everyone I was going to Hollywood. When I was nineteen I had offers from film schools in Los Angeles, New York, and the Netherlands. Up until that point, all I'd wanted to do was make action films. That was it.

Then it all came crashing down when I was raped.

That one moment, that single night, killed something inside of me, crushed my spirit and made me forget my dreams. The film school I'd chosen offered to put my place on hold for a year but I couldn't do it.

I finally did go to film school, albeit in the UK but, by then, it was too late. I was desperately trying to forget my past and, in doing so, started to destroy my life. I was argumentative and uncooperative. I most certainly wasn't in the best head space to be at school. I began drinking and taking drugs as I desperately tried to prove that I was still a human being, a creature with a soul and a spirit.

But that spirit had been crushed. It was withering and dying and I was becoming an empty husk.

You know how the story goes next. I was told I needed to quit drinking as, if I didn't, I'd be due a new liver in a matter of weeks. Then I overdosed.

That shit had to stop.

For the next ten years, I pulled myself back together, bouncing around the country from place to place and job to job. Settling wasn't an option as, in the ruins of my soul, there was this inkling that I needed to be doing something. I couldn't survive doing the regular 9 to 5 routine. I didn't want to have a house or a car or any of the other trappings of life. Not until I got to this unknown destination.

I started writing again. It took time and it took effort. I had to battle through the haze of medication I'd been given in the wake of my overdose. I had to learn to discipline myself into putting words on to paper.

Writing screenplays 101: Make new "friends".

So I did and I got lucky. I've had a few things published and picked up a couple of awards along the way. I'm very proud of everything I've done in these past few years and I thought that was it. My books were getting into peoples hands and I was happy.

Then the gnawing started again. My feet became unsettled and I found myself stressed for no reason other than being stressed. I got shouty and angry. My moods were swinging and I began to question life. Was this all there was? Was I going to spend the rest of my life in a tiny town and occasionally leave to go somewhere nice for a few days?

In June 2014 I had an email from a friend who religiously reads everything I put out. “This needs to be written as a screenplay. Do NOT do anything else with it. Screenplay first.”

This needs to be written as a screenplay.

Those words whirled around my head. Could I? Should I?

Suddenly that gnawing went to a whole new level. It began to take over me until I couldn't ignore it any more. So I got to work.

It took several months of going through notes, rewriting ideas, and generally making friends with my crippled soul again. But, by the end of it, I had a passable first draft. And, for the first time in years, I felt at peace. Suddenly the stress had melted away and I'd stopped caring about so many things which, quite frankly, didn't need my energy to care about. I stopped worrying so much. It felt as though my body was singing a different song. It felt as though I was on the right track again. My gut feeling says that it is. Over the past few months I've learned to listen to that sixth sense a little more so I'm going to do it now and follow this path. Let's see where it goes!

Next stop, Los Angeles?

Ten Years Later

On August 31^st 2004, I started on a journey that I never thought I'd take. Following an overdose from illegal drugs, I began to walk along the road to becoming clean. It was a long, hard journey, one with more lows than highs. It was painful not just for myself, but for my family as well. They debated where they'd gone wrong. They wondered if there'd been warning signs. But none of it would have helped. In those few years I'd chosen to take a dark route into the pits of Hell itself.

Now, exactly ten years later, I'm going through exactly the same process of letting a drug leave my system. For that decade, I've taken a cocktail of various anti-psychotic medications to help with damage I did to my brain. Back in 2004, one friend described it as pulling the cables from a studio patch bay and returning them in the wrong order. I had to relearn how to do things. I still don't drive because I'm nervous of my own perceptions of speed and distance. I never had the chance to learn because, in those later teenage years, I was too wrapped up in what caused me to finally spiral into a life of drug addiction and alcoholism. One day, hopefully, I'll get to learning to drive and it'll be another big achievement for me to celebrate.

But now there's no need for the handful of pills every night. While I will still have the bipolar, the doctors have deemed that I'm now well enough to look after myself. I get up every day, I go to work, I can balance my finances, all things I couldn't do ten years ago when I was writhing on the floor, screaming for the hallucinations to stop. Right now I'm going through many of the symptoms I suffered ten years ago. Hallucinations, muscle spasms, nausea, exhaustion. But I know that, at the end of it, there will be a bright, new life waiting for me.

It feels good to have reached this point in my life. For me, it's an indicator that there are better things in this life. It's giving me a chance to follow my dreams and take the next step. There are plans afoot for large projects much like the ones I worked on before all of this. I'm scared for what will come next. But I'm also excited. I'm looking forward to what happens next.

Many would like us to believe that there isn't a life for those with addictions or mental health issues. Often the two go hand in hand (I still haven't stopped smoking. But I will, one day). But there is. It doesn't matter how old you are, life can begin again. It may take a major event for someone to stop their destructive behaviour. Or they may finally reach a point in the road where they decide that enough is enough. And there's help out there for everyone. As always, I'm here to listen. Click the contact button and send me an email. 

Alcoholics Anonymous 

Narcotics Anonymous

And I Have A Name

I am Bipolar.

I am addiction.

I am an illness.

I am a disease.

Yet I am not contagious.

You won't catch anything from looking at me.

You won't catch anything from talking to me.

Being around me won't suddenly take years off your life.

I am not here for your amusement.

I am not here for you to ridicule.

I am not here for you to point fingers at.

I am not here for you to talk about because I have "something".

I am not here to make you feel better about yourself because you don't have my "disease".

I am not a lesser person than you are.

I am a person.

I have a heart.

I have a mind.

I have emotions.

I have a face.

I have seen the best and worst of humanity.

I wear my scars, both inside and out, with pride.

I have seen the darkest levels of Hell and the highest glories of Heaven.

I am healing.

I am growing.

I have turned myself inside out to get to this point in time.

And I have a name.

My name isn't "disease."

It isn't "illness".

It isn't "Bipolar".

It isn't "Addiction".

It is the one I give you to call me by.

I am me, no matter what you think I am.

Cocaine Hell

Cocaine 'rapidly changes the brain'

 

That was a headline from the BBC website. My first reaction to reading it was "No shit, Sherlock". I was hooked on that stuff long enough to know the effects all too well. I was hooked on several different drugs, all dangerous, and all way too much fun to get rid of.

Except I had to, for my body and sanity. And it happened on 31st August 2004. My brain broke. Or, as one friend described it, "Pulled out the patch cables and rearranged them". It had had enough of my behaviour and decided to show me by landing me in hospital. Not fun and not pleasant. I never thought I'd be able to break that cycle but, in a way of saving itself, my body showed me how to do it. Several weeks laid up at home meant that I couldn't go out to find drugs. Sure, the dealers tried to contact me (I was a good customer with a well paying job. They couldn't afford to lose me) but, somehow, they never got to the house. Somehow I survived those first few weeks, after which I left the area forever and moved home.

I'll never forget the people who helped me through that period. The people who went to the mental hospital with me, who brought me food, or went for coffee with me. They were the steps towards becoming normal again. Yet, somewhere in the wiring in my brain, some things still haven't quite fixed themselves. For example, I don't hold a driver's license because I find it difficult to judge speeds and distances. On top of that, the medication I currently take makes me weary and unable to focus in the mornings. I'm bad enough on two legs at the moment. Can you imagine me with four wheels and an engine?! One day I'll get there, I'm sure.

But the whole experience made me realise that we don't live forever. That our bodies are fragile and damage easily. And that they can tell us when they've had enough.

31st August will be nine years since I broke my addictions. I'm going to go and bake cake. Give me a shout if you want some!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-23811712

5 Years of Silence

"But it's been
Fourteen years of silence
It's been
Fourteen years of pain
It's been
Fourteen years that are gone forever
And I'll never have again" 

'14 Years' - Guns N' Roses

It's wasn't quite fourteen years, but it felt like it. From 2003 to 2007, I didn't write. Nothing, nada, zilch. There were ideas rolling through my head but they refused to come out on to the page. I carried notebooks and pens everywhere, sat in front of computers, but nothing.

It was the loneliest five years of my life. The silence in my mind was deafening, a heavy weight around my neck. I wanted to create, wanted to be prolific, but I couldn't. It was one of the most painful times of my life.

The silence could have been caused by a number of things. The withdrawals from the vices I'd left behind. The shitty conditions I lived in for some of that time. The amount of legal medication which was being pushed in to me to counteract the effects of the illegal ones. It could have been anything.

Finally, in 2007, a spark began to blossom, crackling in to life. Oddly, I'd been stumbling around the internet looking for a piece of original fiction I'd read in the previous years. During this search, I fell across a website which only accepted the best of the best in free original fiction (sadly now defunct. May it rest in internet peace). To be featured on it, you had to get past a barrage of different moderators. If your grammar, or your plotting, or any of a number of different factors, was slightly off, it was sent back to you to modify.

Going through the different stories, I began to feel that warm, surging inspiration begin to rise. I started in my soul before it clenched my heart, sending a Bonfire Night explosion of fireworks through my brain. Suddenly all the different neurons were beginning to fire again, pinging off one another.

My first piece was a long, winding piece based on the idea of the Big Brother show (except a lot more explicit and twisted). And that was it. Since then, I've never been able to shut up!

Why am I writing this post? Because, across the internet, I see comments from would-be-writers, all wondering why they can't write. It may be a number of factors, but I see people pushing themselves way too hard to achieve something which may not be meant to happen yet. Writing is supposed to be fun and pleasurable. No one makes money off it in the first go (I started Mars on the Rise in 2009 and it was 3 years before it saw the light of on a publisher's website).

Go and look for inspiration in the strangest places.

Search the internet for those oddities. 

Does a particular song speak to you? Go and look up the meaning behind it and see if that does anything for you. 

Don't force yourself to write in a particular genre (Up until 2 years ago I hated hard sci-fi with a passion. Now there are the beginnings of several such stories on my computer).

Don't force back an idea because you hate it; you never know what it'll turn in to.

Don't try and think too hard; let everything speak for itself (not something everyone does, but it may help someone. :) ).

Go and join one of the writing websites (I got my start on WEbook). Read, submit and talk to others.

Lastly, don't listen to the rules. Rules are there for a reason; to be broken!

Feel free to share your stories, and screams of frustration around here. People do read the comments, and someone may be able to offer some advice. Most of all, don't stop trying to write. There's something in you which wants to come out.

Best o' British luck to you!

Free!

“You don't drink? Life must be boring for you.”

I've lost count of how many times I've heard that.

First, and foremost, alcohol isn't a prerequisite to a good time.

Oh, I know it is for some people. For some people, a good time is going out and drinking. But, for a lot of people, a night out, or a day out, doesn't have to involve alcohol.

Some people have never drunk, and probably never will. Some people may have tried alcohol and didn't like the taste. Some people may have drunk at one point but have grown out of it. And some people, like myself, may have drunk ourselves into oblivion so many times that it winds up becoming a hazard to our health.

A while back, I wrote about my addictions.

http://veetu-industries.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/im-addict.html

But I've never really written about what it's like post-addiction.

Yes, I still drink but it's mostly a glass of wine once in a while. I now know my limits. I know when to say no. I know what triggers me to go on a drink and drugs binge. I know how many drinks I can have before I'm going down that slippery slope again. Mostly though, I don't touch alcohol.

However, there are those who, once they've acknowledged their addiction, choose never to drink again. A good example is Izzy Stradlin (former GNR) who, when he cleaned up, gave up everything from heroin and alcohol through to coffee and painkillers. Along with David Ellefson (Megadeth), Izzy was one of the influences for me to clean up and stay clean.

And you know, we're not boring because we don't drink. Nor do we think we're better than anyone else because of our lifestyle choices. We've just realised what works for us. If you come across someone who doesn't drink, or doesn't do drugs, don't call them “boring”. Politely ask them why and perhaps they'll tell you a story. ;)

And while I'm here, here's the lyrics to the song I've been banging on about for weeks!

If you're scared then walk away, cause there's no need to feel ashamed,
Yeah we all feel the same.
I fell in love with rock and roll until I found out it was false,
And plastered on a face for me.

Woah, where's you passion, where's your fire tonight,
Woah, I can't believe there's nothing you're willing to hide,
Woah, I want to believe,
I set my body on fire so I could be free.

So I could be free, yeah.
So I could be free,
So I could be free, yeah.

And don't be told it can't be done, because the best all die young,
Yeah we all feel the same.
And if there's nothing left to say, just have the guts to disagree,
Or plaster on a face for me.

Woah, where's you passion, where's your fire tonight,
Woah, I can't believe there's nothing you're willing to hide,
Woah, I want to believe,
I set my body on fire so I could be free.

So I could be free, yeah.
So I could be free,
So I could be free, yeah.

Free,
Free.

Free,
So I could be free, yeah.
So I could be free,
So I could be free, yeah.

I'm An Addict!

Hi! My name's Rae and I'm an addict!

Well, former addict now. Once upon a time, I was hooked on cocaine, amphetamines, ketamine and alcohol. At one point, I pretty much blew my brain thanks to everything I was taking. I was hooked and I loved it. I didn't care that my skin was yellow, my hair was thinning and I was on the verge of losing my liver.

Addicts can be selfish fuckers. I didn't care who was picking up the tab as long as I was drinking, eating, getting high and had a place to sleep. I didn't care if my hand was in your pocket. Hell, you'd better count your fingers once I was done with you. I didn't care as long as I was as high as a kite and had something to bring me back down. Some people may remember me from those days and, to them, I'm sorry and I thank you for staying beside me and believing in me.

For the most part I was a functioning addict. I held down a job and had a relationship. But one day the lights went out. Something in my brain flicked off and on and I found myself spiralling downwards. Hallucinations, shakes, I had the lot. Whether it was an overdose or just my brain deciding it had had enough I don't know. I was admitted to hospital for brain scans and eventually put onto medication to level everything out. One friend dutifully took me to the hospital whenever I needed to go. We spent a lot of time discussing life, the universe and mental health. To him I will be forever grateful. That was in 2004. A couple of years ago I was finally diagnosed with bipolar, something which may be a result of the “breakdown”. I'm still on medication and may be for the rest of my life. I still hallucinate from time to time. The worst episodes see me locking myself away in the windowless bathroom.

It took me four years to get back on my feet. Four years of not working, not writing, not doing a lot of anything. I hated myself. I felt useless and broken, a waste of space and a drain on resources. Several times I contemplated suicide. Eventually a wonderful person in the north took a chance on me and gave me a job. I was finally able to feel something akin to pride.

I've moved since then and am still in touch with the wonderful people from the north. I work another job now. My first novel has been published, my second will be out in October and I'm currently working on my third. Occasionally my brain still flips out, still breaks down. So I still have to be ultra careful, not pushing myself too hard. Occasionally I forget and everything stops.

Why am I writing this? Why am I airing my dirty laundry? Because, no matter how you're feeling, life's not useless. If you feel like crap remember that the sun will rise tomorrow. If you feel like life has lost its lustre, go and find something which inspires you. Never give up no matter how bad you feel. There will always be bad times but there is hope. There are people who are willing to help you. Tomorrow is just another day, another step closer to the person you want to be, another chance to do what you want to do. No matter where you want to be, keep going.

If life gives you lemons, make lemonade!