Legal Highs

Here are some examples of the psychoactive substances I more commonly used. The top three, M1, MEOW and BUBBLES, are basically variations of Mephadrone, the golden age of legal highs. These date back to 2009. Aren't they beautiful? I remember being persuaded into trying some for the first time and having virtually no faith in something you could buy legally from behind a counter. Surprisingly, it was pretty powerful stuff. I tended to snort it, like coke. It was maybe a touch more empathic than cocaine though. I’d never been able to afford much coke in the past, but because this stuff was dirt cheap, just nine pounds for a gram, I could afford to act like Scarface on it. It was pretty liberating. I had myself some awfully long-night binges on Mephadrone. In the end, it turned my knees blue. I shit myself. I thought it was a permanent condition. Great times, though. Always available, and a pure product. You knew it wasn’t being cut with God knows what that bunged your nose up. Note how it says plant feeder on the label. They were also known as bath salts. These terminations were legal loopholes to get them on the market with zero responsibility.

The next row of packets are basically Ecstasy tablets. They were more powerful than standard Es, but slightly more dirty a high. Not as lovey. Just one gave you mad double vision, and one time I had the most amazing CEVs from them (closed eye visuals). Whenever I closed my eyes I could see the most incredibly vivid and detailed patterns. The best way to describe it would be a web. If you look very closely at bank notes, you can see miniature intricacies. It was like that, but it was animated. I remember sitting in a dark room, absolutely mesmerised. I was in a trance. I don’t think life will ever get so good again that I’ll be able to buy cheap Es legally from a shop! These APBs didn’t last long, though – they got banned almost straightaway. Note how it says Not For Human Consumption. I’ll just feed them to my plants then shall I?

The next one on the bottom row, BLAST, was like a mild trip. PINK PANTHERS were like mild amphetamines. I was sorry to see these suffer from the blanket ban in 2016. It offered a safer viable substitute to a dangerous street drug. I blame SPICE for that. I’ve never bought a smokable legal high, but they were the ones doing the most damage to people. I’ve only ever tried it once. I had two puffs and was totally stoned. What that drug does to people is nothing short of wacky. People are rolling around in their own sick in public off that shit. But I look back fondly at my small collection of wrappers, almost envious of the time when they were all so readily available. It took all the shadiness away from drug dealing – and made drug taking acceptable. For a brief moment in history, all the usual laws of society as we had always known them seemed to be upside down. It was now legal to get off your face! You could buy drugs in the shop! And they were cheap as chips!

P.S I can only speak for myself, but partaking in the recreational use of these substances did not affect my mental health in any way, shape or form. Because I’m unfortunate enough to hear voices, it’s perfectly reasonable for the layman to assume that all these wild chemicals have interfered with the balance of my brain. Now, that may very well be true, but I’m still sat here stringing coherent sentences together, and I know in my heart of hearts that no amount of drugs can cause an individual to suddenly start hearing audible phenomena. The two, at least in my case, are unconnected. Just thought I would clear that up. And, while doing so, stick a big middle finger up to the mental health profession. They are all about drugs too, remember. I know which ones I’d rather take. You’re welcome.

Quarter Dozen Sticks

This is the tale of a quarter dozen sticks. That’s three, if you’re thick. The first one involves a guy I beat up in school. We used to play this game called Zulu, where I was the Zulu getting hunted by everyone else, and we all threw sticks and stones at each other. Myself and this other guy took it a bit too far and ended up getting into a personal vendetta. I remember staying outside one dinner time and still twatting him as everyone else was settling back into their fourth period. There was only me and him left, and I distinctly remember winning. Went back in, carried on with the day, and thought nothing else of it. Until the next morning. The next morning, as I prepared to leave for school, he was waiting at my front gate with his big brother. His big brother had a big stick. I was trapped in the house. I had no big brother myself, no Dad, and my mum was still in bed. If I had had any sense I would have snuck out the back, but I think I went out to them and faced the music. I don’t remember getting boshed, so I must have talked myself out of it. Still, I was scared.

I recall years later hanging outside an off-license – this is like a scene from Benny Hill, this is. All of a sudden a tall lanky lad runs past us with his top off, wielding a big stick in his hand, chasing a shorter bloke up and and out of sight. Me and my mates just look at each other as to say what the hell? Two minutes later the tall lanky lad comes back the way he had come, pegging it for his life, chased by the shorter bloke, who now had the stick. It was funny as. It was like being on the set of a sketch show. Talk about role reversal. The shorter bloke must have wrestled the stick off him around the corner and took the advantage. One minute the tall lanky lad is doing the chasing and the next he’s been chased himself. You couldn’t make it up. Finally, I remember Wes. Wes was a cockney, staying in a Northwest hostel. One day he came hurrying out of Asda. He wasn’t quite running, but he was walking as if he’d just robbed a bottle of spirits. And that was exactly what he was prone to do. Next thing, this burly security guard comes bursting out after him. This is in a busy Asda carpark. Instead of trying to run away, or simply giving up and handing over the stolen goods, Wes produced a stick (it might have been a kosh), and holds it up, as is to squat the security guard. The security guard stopped in his tracks and Wes continued to walk away. It was like a show of force, a good bluff. I’ll never know if Wes would have used it on him, but he probably knew beforehand that the bluff would be enough. This guy was serious about robbing his booze from Asda. He didn’t mess about. Ok, thanks. These have been the tales of a quarter dozen sticks.

Medication

In my early twenties, I decided to try and get out of working for a living by signing on the sick, so I went to see the doctor for a note. His exact words to me were, “If you’re mad, I’m mad.” Nonetheless, after some arguing, he dispensed to me some anti-depressants. They were known as Dosulepin. I only took them when I was wired, coz all they did was put you in a coma. If you weren’t depressed to begin with, you sure would be when you realised that you couldn’t get up out of bed. I once took five at once, for a buzz. I remember, it was a Tuesday. I woke up on Thursday. The slumber was so seamless, it took me a while to work out that I’d missed an entire day. Far from ‘Happy Pills’, I called them ‘Zombieland Pills’, and that was my first induction into the world of medication. It was made apparent to me from the beginning that something just wasn’t right. Weren’t these things supposed to make you feel better? They became popular with my mates when they wanted to kip after a night on coke. Years later, when I told the psychiatric establishment that I was hearing voices (how stupid), I was introduced to Olanzepine. I remember falling asleep in Wetherspoons on this junk. It was Zombieland with coupons, plus it made you eat like a horse. Again, I only took it when I needed sleep. Next came Quetiapine, which is less sedative and without the appetite increase. They just juggle the meds around as if we are good old guinea pigs, at the end of the day. Trial and error, they call it. They don’t realise how addictive these things can become. You can come to rely and depend on them if you’re not careful. There’s something comforting about settling into an induced coma. That’s all they are, essentially – tranquilizers. Doctors pushing synthetic drugs on a daily basis is no big deal in today’s society, but God forbid you smoke something that grows naturally out of the ground now and again; that would make you a law-breaker and a bad example. Think of the shameful reputation that genuinely feel-good party drugs have, and compare that with the holier-than-thou shite that doctors are pushing. My psychiatrist recently called medication a ‘lifesaver’. Lol. The side-effects of this garbage need two whole pages to list.

Next, when they became aware that I wasn’t taking them (I spat them out in hospital for months and months), they made me, yes, I repeat made me, receive injections. Clopixol, then Depixol, right in the arse. I had no choice in this matter. Otherwise they would have transferred me to a more secure unit and forcibly administered them. I resisted this for some time but in the end agreed just to get the hell out of there. I’d still be there now otherwise, all oiled-up, fighting a goon squad in some lockup like Charles Bronson. Just several side-effects of these injectables, and of anti-psychotic medication in general, is gynecomastia, impotence, and a distended midsection. In layman’s terms for you and I, that equates to man boobs, big belly, and no dick. I think I would rather stick with the mental illness! Not that I have one, but nor that that matters to them. They have drugs to push here. Beds to fill. Money to make. It’s a horrible thing to enforce drugs on unwilling parties. If they worked, I might be able to see their point. But the fact is that they don’t work. They never have and they never will. Of course, I can only speak from personal experience. I know people who’ve been on meds for thirty years and rave about them (I know quite a lot of deluded people, now that I think about it). Knowing you have crap floating about your system that’s doing nothing at all worthwhile is almost like a handicap. A curse. Taking a chemical for hearing voices is like putting a plaster on a broken leg. It’s like giving an aspirin to a burning man. Far from being do-gooders with all the tools to ‘help’; in some more enlightened circles, psychiatrists are labelled criminals. Crooks. At the very least, they are just plain wrong. They invent ‘illnesses’, and then they invent the subsequent drugs to treat them. If that’s not a con, then shoot me now. Plus they deprive you of your liberty for unlimited periods of time, all without a single crime being committed. There’s no science at all behind this powerful profession. What they are peddling isn’t real medicine. It’s all opinion. And it’s got a terrible, torturous history. I could go on, but I’ll save it for another time. The best medication is not toxic. It’s the open air, exercise, fellowship, and talking therapy. It’s a ticket to Disneyland, not Zombieland.

A Bog-Standard Blog Entry

Hello all. Things have been quiet lately. Too quiet for my liking. I’ve been dying, in a sense. Dying as in getting older, and slowing down. Don’t worry (or clap), it’s not terminal. Just something we all go through when approaching our late thirties, I assume. Still, it’s no excuse. There’s never any excuse for not writing (apart from maybe having no fingers). Anyway, I’ve been to a writing class tonight, and because I’ve not attended that particular group for absolutely ages, it seems to have had the desired effect. I’m now determined to compile and self-publish a book of shorts I’ve been working on for the last two years or so. It wouldn’t have occurred to me otherwise. They would have gone on sitting there on my flash pens if not for tonight’s class. I’d say hard drive, but baby, I ain’t got no hard drive. My computer crashed. Is there any bigger hindrance to a so-called writer? I lost heaps of work, because when it comes to backing things up, I’m about as efficient at that as I am at doing the dishes, or changing the bed linen, or paying the bills…which is not to say that I never do it, but that, if truth be told, there’s sufficient room for improvement. So, a goal. I’ll give myself a month to accomplish it. I’ve had no goals lately, nothing to aim for. It’s been pure limbo. Then again, without a hard drive, I’ve only had the pleasure of the television. The best thing I’ve watched lately was the Michael Jackson night on Channel 5. I have to admit I was enthralled. I used to think he wasn’t guilty but now I think he was. The plain fact is that none of us will ever know. It’s a shame how he went from being the one and only Michael Jackson who everyone loved into ‘Wacko Jacko’ with a load of question marks hanging over him. Quite sad, really. What I’ll remember him for is wearing an umbrella indoors, wearing his PJs to the courtroom, and dangling his baby out of a hotel window. Not to mention his dance moves in those pop videos of his. The whole sex charges fiasco is something his genuine fans wish never happened. It’s a slur on the genius of his legacy. Apart from that I’ve just had books to entertain me. I usually revolve between Herbert, Koontz and King, because they’re reliable. I find it a risk reading a new writer because some of them are bad. They start off promising but fade. I’m with Ian McEwan at the moment. His style is of the utmost but his content is dodgy. He’s the kind of writer who gets shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and crap like that. So anyways, just thought I’d drop by. I’ll be back in a month with my new book of shorts (it’s going to be called SHORTS), so you can hold me to my writing goals. We do need goals, no matter how pathetically small. They get us through the day.

And It Was All A Dream

The strangest thing happened. I was lying in bed and sleeping and oversleeping and then sleeping some more, half-dosing for most of it so not really sleeping at all. I could concentrate on the radio for much of it, and was aware of the author Dennis Lehane doing a charity event in my local public library. He was reading the entirety of his novel Shutter Island in one sitting, live on air. I followed much of the story during my snoozing, kind of dreaming along with it, and replicating scenes from the movie in my mind’s eye. I became immersed in Martin Scorcese’s cinematography. I really wanted to drag myself up and roll on down to the library, this was a fantastic and unheard of opportunity, but my medication had other plans. I simply could not summon up the will to get out of the pit! I was too groggy from my pills. Finally, after many hours, I managed to get up and shower. It was time to get into my special-occasion yellow dress (which I’d never worn before), and make the trip to the library. I was astonished by the set-up. As expected, it was a sell-out (I made a generous donation). The town’s press was there, a flood of photographers and journalists, with a tightly-knotted bunch of excited fans. There were illuminated waxworks of Ben Kingsley and Leonardo Dicaprio, a simple but spectacular touch, with the author sat up on a candlelit pedestal, calmly reading from his famous paperback. I’d made it just in time for the ending, my favourite part, and was ever-so-pleased that I’d made the trip. I never would have forgiven myself if I’d missed this. When it was over I stayed until the very end, until after all the autographs, handshakes, and signings. Then I approached him and told him how much I had fallen for the main character, Teddy Daniels. I said that to be so monumentally fucked-up was actually an endearing trait in a person, that denial is a very important aspect of life. We deny our own deaths every single day, I added. I even told Dennis that I myself had been diagnosed a paranoid schizophrenic, something I very rarely disclose to anyone. I spilled my nervous heart out to him, unexpectedly. I have no idea why. Maybe because he looked so winsome and perfect while reading out his beautiful story.

I noticed a flicker in his eye, and a stutter in his breath. Something told me that he had taken quite a shine to me. Maybe I imagined it. Anyway, I left the venue with ideas of romance on my mind. I was sure something had clicked between us. My hero had not let me down. I climbed out of my dress and back into bed a very happy girl. Then I drifted off back into my slumber as if nothing had happened. When I next woke, my dress was still hung up in my closet with the label on as if I had never donned it. The whole thing felt like a dream, but I wasn’t sure. I honestly didn’t know. It was so real. It was so vivid. I rang the library and they said they didn’t know what I was talking about, they had had no author readings for two months. I searched online and found the same result – no history at all of Dennis Lehane doing a charity event whatsoever. Dumbfounding. So I messaged him on Twitter. He emailed me his cell number straightaway, asking me to call him immediately. I did so. And the next minute I was talking to my favourite writer in person – in reality, in the flesh, in the actual living world.

You were the cute girl in the yellow dress, he said. I blushed. Cute! But the thing is, no reading event had ever taken place…he’d dreamed the same whole thing himself! He had dreamed he had a single session reading of his book Shutter Island at a strange library in a strange town, and I, somehow, had met him in his own dream, in our own connected dream. We, as people, had never met. Or had we?

                                                                                                                

 © Zombie Publications 2017