When I’m not flying, when I’m not soaring, when I’m not buzzing…which can’t be all the time, obviously…life is just about hanging in. I wish I was constantly a barrel of laughs. I wish I could get dosed off pregabalin 24/7, and drink until the cows come home. But that would be perpetual drug misuse. Not only is that illegal, it’s wrong too. At the moment, soberness is like a natural high. I’m sat in the boozer as is per usual but I’m supping blackcurrant and soda water with ice instead of alcohol. Do I fancy a pint? Erm, kind of…4 or 5 maybe, with a couple of smokes. But once the first one is in then its open flood gates, and in the morning I’ll be huffing and puffing having an asthma attack in an A&E doorway. Who knows? I might enter ‘blackout’ mode and start climbing into other people’s houses uninvited. Hey, it’s all happened before.
It was one starless and blurry evening when I got my sister’s house mixed up. I went round the back, like I normally did, let myself in through the patio, like I normally did, and sat on the sofa watching the TV, like I normally did. Except nobody welcomed me, because it wasn’t my family, and it wasn’t my family’s house.
They were all next door. I’d entered the wrong house. This was the Phillips residence, and they swiftly informed the law. I was so out of it that I didn’t know who I was with or what I was doing or saying. The scene, in retrospective, feels like a weird Mad Hatter’s tea party aboard an alien spacecraft. There were no drugs involved on that occasion – and that would be odd, wouldn’t it, a time when yours truly had decided NOT to blast his own brains out? Who needs drugs with whisky anyway? That wouldn’t have been fair to anyone concerned.
Fortunately, I didn’t get arrested, proceeding rather back on next door into the correct family household, where my sister was being prostituted in her bedroom by a meth abuser. I could hear them groaning and moaning in sensual pleasure. The kids were out. Everywhere was a mess. The television was broken and lying on its side on the floor. No wonder I had wandered into the wrong house, because the wrong house was a far sight better than this dumpster.
I could hardly interrupt them, but I thought it was likely they had heard me come in. After all, the stiff jamb on the back door had cracked loudly like usual. I plopped down on the springless settee and inhaled a large breath of funky stale cannabis air. There was half a doobie in the ashtray so I lit it up, unlike me, and started to toke away. When in Rome, I thought. My spirits had been ambushed by too much booze so I gathered that a little relaxation with weed wouldn’t hurt me too much. I was just feeling at my wit’s end. Something in me knew it shouldn’t be drinking neat spirits and I was paying for it. Probably now, with a tad of psychoactive influence, I would start mildly hallucinating as well. My sister’s house wasn’t the place for that. It was covered in an ultraprecise flimsy layer of dusty grime.
My phone rang then. It was my probation worker. He wanted to know if I was available on Tuesday to complete a safety assessment with a lady called Helen Flanagan. Of course I’d be there, I told him. That is, if my bubbling excitement could hold out.
I tried the hi-fi player, one of only several things unbusted in the house. It would probably be porned down Cash Generators within the week, for more meth, by one of those horny gangbangers upstairs beneath the sheets. A decent tune cackled into focus through the static. It reminded me of the millennium at Wigan Pier, when life was all about ecstasy tablets, pulling girls, and computer bugs. A simpler time, methinks of it. Bit of few quid in the back burner, bellyful of Hooch, and a fondle behind the bins at three am. What could be easier? One weekend after the other. Ticking them off the calendar. Until we arrive here…
In a kinda of limbo land really, because the need still exists to get high. And strangely, it doesn’t. I don’t know what I want actually. Just a pub lunch and a good book to read perhaps. I’m thankful I was able to write something today, and give praise upon high that I am able to keep active and motivated and my float above water.
From here on in I just want to keep going without feeling desperate or fed up. I keep trusting In Christ. I maintain an attitude of ignoring negativity. I pray to God for a bolt of humour to raise my spirits and give me a right good ole giggle up, if possible. The other day I was storming around laffing at practically anything. Everything looked funny to me. I know it will again if I drink. But I don’t want to drink. Hopefully I won’t. but hey, it’s not the end of the world if I do.
No comments:
Post a Comment