Nietzsche

Here is a couple of quotes from two of my favourite literary stars.

“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

“There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.” - Aldous Huxley

IV Injecting Technique

This video is a brief guide to safe injecting.

IV Injecting Technique

The best thing you can do is to avoid ever injecting illicit drugs, but if you are going to do it you should be aware of the many risks.
 Intravenous (IV) injection within a medical setting, with highly trained professionals operating in a sterile environment with sterile equipment, make IV injecting a safe procedure. However with amateur technique, a dirty environment, and dirty drugs, there are many more risks.
 It goes without saying that you should never share ANY equipment used in preparing and injecting any substance.

Above all - Be respectful of the drugs you are taking and the dangers they pose to your health and liberty. Don't let your actions negatively affect other people.

Peace, Jim

Opiates for Depression, Anxiety, and other Psychological Disorders

I'd rather be dreaming than living
Living's just too hard to do
It's chances not choices
Noises not voices
A day's just a thing to get through
Living's just too hard to do

           - Loudon Wainwright (?)

 In the 14th century the bubonic plague spread through Europe leaving an estimated 75 million people dead from the disease. A more modern deadly plague is depression; said to affect nearly 10% of the American population.
 The first-line treatment for depression is pharmaceutical, usually with a class of drug called Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitors (SSRI). These drugs have severe side effects including, excess sweating, headache, sexual disfunction, nausea, suicidal ideation, weight gain..... WAIT A FUCKING IRONIC MINUTE - SUICIDAL IDEATION - thoughts of suicide are really not a very convenient or safe side effect of a medication prescribed to treat depression. I mean let me get this straight - I go to the doctor for help with my depression and he gives me a drug that kills my ability to orgasm and makes me want to kill myself AND sends me into withdrawal if a stop taking it. Withdrawal that will involve staying awake for days, uncontrollable yawning, and having the most mind-fucking nightmares when you do fall asleep. Nightmares so terrifying that in spite of your deathly tiredness you are deathly afraid to sleep. And then there is the electric 'zaps' that feel like you have just grabbed hold of an electric fence in each hand that strike without warning throughout the day  - and this is supposed to help you with depression how? You may think that I am exaggerating the severity of things but I haven't told you yet about how I got arrested and spent the night in jail.
 I think it was between about a week and ten days after I had stopped taking the SSRI's when I decided to go into the town centre to see a friend or two and have a few drinks. I hitched a ride the 5 kilometers into town and walked the remaining distance to the supermarket. I bought a 1.25 Litre bottle of cider (about 5% alcohol) and started walking toward my friends house. I drank as I walked and managed to leisurely consume about 1/4 of the bottle in the hour it took me to walk to my destination, stopping to see if I could convince a pair of mormon missionaries to convert to atheism and get my free copy of the book of mormon. I failed at that task but did succeed in getting to my friend's house. I hadn't called or arranged anything and it happened that they were out. I continued on through the suburban streets and decided to try another friend. She wasn't home either so I continued on vaguely in the direction of home, taking my time and drinking my cider. I was walking along in the darkness when dark thoughts of mischief crept into my skull. I started looking for the telltale silhouette of a car's locking knob not properly engaged in the 'lock' position. After a couple of blocks I came across a row of cars neatly parked across the street from their owners' houses.  Conveniently located on the edge of large public park, or, getaway route as I saw it. I spied an unlocked hatchback and quietly got in. I started looking through the car for anything of value and didn't find much more than a few loose coins and an old sports magazine. I suddenly had the brilliant idea of hot-wiring the car and driving home. Of course being quite drunk by this time, combined with the stolen car just wasn't great thinking, but it didn't get that far thankfully. I did manage to start the car and then promptly found the steering column locked and therefore not very much use at all. I grabbed my paltry loot and exited the car, then hightailed it across the park to a dark alley where I could sit and recover.
 I think my brain was in a particularly chaotic chemical state at that time. Not only was I still going through withdrawal from my not very sensible sudden cessation of SSRI medication but I was taking some diazepam periodically and had taken about 10 - 20mg the previous day. Not to mention the cannabis I had earlier in the evening and the cider I had drunk through the evening. The cider was by no means an excessive amount in the context of my drinking of that period, but combined with the other circumstances of my neurochemical condition, it led to a very disordered and confused level of thought.
 In this poor condition I thought that given my paltry score from the car, it would be completely reasonable to go back for more. It was while doing so that I leaned down to see if anything of value was stashed under the driver's seat. Doing so brought my stupid head down onto the horn for what I would later learn was the second time. The first time had been enough to alert the owners, who alerted the police, that some stoned idiot was fooling with their car. When I saw the lights approach I ducked down to hide and when they didn't pass I realised that the game was up. The disgusted looking policeman who opened the car door grabbed me out and proceeded to arrest me and bundle me off to jail where I was to be remanded until the morning court session. I was booked, and the I talked with a representative from the mental health services who explained what would happen, and also took notes of my side of the story. Then it was into a cold, lonely, liberty unfriendly cell.
 I was not very much a fan of authoritarian types like policemen so was rather annoyed when my request for a drink of water was denied. This was incredible to me that such a basic necessity was being denied because of what I thought could only be spite. To bring them around to my way of thinking I proceeded to use the metal tab on my zipper to scrape the skin off the soft underside on each of my lower arms. With some impressive but not dangerous blood running down my arms I was soon brought a drink of water in a styrofoam cup. A small victory in a sea of idiocy.
 I was found guilty but avoided a mark on my record by being accepted for 'diversion', a scheme run in New Zealand by which an offender is diverted away from the punitive type institutions and into the types of activities which educate about the downstream effects of your crime such as the effects of the crime on the victims, and the consequences of a life spent engaging in criminal endeavours. For me this involved attending a meeting with the police, my victims (a young married couple), my brother, and a community representative. I learned about how the incident had affected them and I was able to tell them about some of the circumstances of my struggle at the time. It was quite a reality affirming experience actually because it revealed the true nature of the crime - the extent of my idiocy and intoxication, and their initial fear and annoyance which had turned into increased vigilance and fear in relation to their own security and that of their belongings. It also became clear to me that faced with the information they now had about my troubles, although not changing their opinion of the wrongness of my crime, did at least allow them the freedom from ignorance of the nature of events. With this knowledge came the ability to fully process events and move on without lingering disturbance.
 Given this experience I think it will be clear to you the reasonableness of my opposition to the widespread use of these toxic SSRI type medications. I wouldn't want to see them removed completely from the prescriber's arsenal but they need to be used with extreme caution and only with patients that have not achieved success with psychotherapy or other non-drug treatments.
Given the obvious danger associated with current medications it is only logical to look for alternative pharmacological solutions to the plague of depression and one idea that intrigues me is the use of opioid drugs. It is an idea that is an ultra-powerful electro magnet turned to high and attracting controversy every time it is mentioned in public.
Opioids have been used for thousands of years in the treatment of physical pain, but modern anecdotal evidence suggests that opioids may also be effective in treating psychological pain. The law in most places seems to prohibit the prescribing of opiates as a treatment for depression but that doesn't stop some sympathetic doctors prescribing opioids for pain in some part of the body when in fact the intended target of pain relief is the psyche.
 I have heard of more than one person who on detoxing from a long-term opiate addiction developed symptoms, and were eventually diagnosed as suffering from bi-polar disorder. These same people had for years successfully maintained heroin habits with the high-functioning intellect required of the lifestyle.

So? Tell me what you think please.

A study of opiate use in chronic non-cancer-related pain and the effect its use has on rates of depression.
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/729521

P.S. I will continue to look into this subject and will periodically  present my findings on this and other subjects to the world and to those who accidentally find this blog.

Setbacks are just setups for comebacks

This activity is a proven method for treating depression. Whether it is the exercise or the scenery is a question I am still working on fingi

This guy is not depressed - in fact he is quite happy with the way things have been going for him,                     

Methadone and Positivity

I guess my first post wasn't the most positive toned communication. I am generally a positive guy so I have a gift for anybody who accidentally stumbles on to this blog thing. I have been trying to write an article on different treatments for detoxing from opiates so I thought I'd share this rough draft of the section on Methadone.
 Yes, I have been on Methadone. I was on a very small dose of 15mg. This was supposedly to treat my morphine addiction however it didn't work out that way. Being on Methadone brought me in to contact with a new set of people. People who could show me how to cook morphine into homebake heroin and how to inject my drugs. So I went from drinking liquid morphine before treatment to injecting heroin, and injecting methadone when they gave me take home supplies. It wasn't long before everything collapsed and I was off to in-patient detox in the Hilmorton Hospital, Christchurch, New Zealand. But that (as they say) is another story.

Methadone

Methadone is the trade name of a synthetic opiate first developed by German scientists in 1937. Their task was to develop a painkiller that would make Germany self-sufficient by eliminating the need for opium imports. Although the Germans succeeded in inventing the compound, it wasn’t until after the war that the formula for Methadone was found amongst files confiscated by the Allied forces and the patent was made available to pharmaceutical companies for the bargain price of one United States Dollar. In the following years the product was released under at least thirty-three brand names – one of which was Methadone

Methadone first became commercially available in 1947 and by the 1950’s it was being used as a treatment for heroin addiction. For the first time doctors had a treatment option that had a viable success rate. During the 1960’s Vincent Dole, M.D. carried out groundbreaking research using a variety of drugs to treat opiate addiction. He noticed methadone had a unique ability to not only treat the symptoms of withdrawal but also to reduce cravings for opiates significantly. It was Dr. Dole who developed the once-daily dosing schedule that is still used today.

 Further research has shown that Methadone, given adequate dosage, also has a blocking effect if any other opiates are used. It is for this reason amongst others such as level of craving present or the presence of any opiate withdrawal effects, that the dosage you receive as a methadone patient is reviewed regularly and adjusted accordingly until you feel comfortable.

Methadone is increasingly seen as a legitimate medication for lifelong treatment of opioid dependence but for those wanting to get clean it can be a valuable aid that can help the addict get back a sense of normality and a level of stability in their personal and professional life. Once a level of stability is achieved a gradual dose reduction program can be implemented. This program should proceed at a speed the user is comfortable with. Greater success rates have been found the longer a methadone patient remains in therapy.

I welcome any comments....

Blogging?

Most people who know me may consider it uncharacteristic behaviour for me to be writing a blog. Well, go fuck yourself! Anyone who really knows me will know that intellectually I don't dwell in a box. Instead I consider all things on their merits and judge them according to their intrinsic value, not the value placed on things by society. Acceptance by society is never an indication that something is meritorious or not. Just look at religion. As Krishnamurti said, "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society". And society is certainly sick. Just look at the war on drugs - still not effective in stopping people using drugs, still causing untold misery through dirty illicit drug supplies, and - very important for keeping the whole charade ticking along - still making a few people a fucking humongous stinking shitload of cash!

 Anyway, enough bitching and moaning! Keep tuned for all sorts of fun stuff, cool pictures, thoughts and what ever else I can find that is extremely interesting.