If you scratch my back now I swear I... [Archive]

VincentVan

15-02-2005, 13:23

Thanx Apradavra
I apreciate it

well I´m still here. 9th day. I never spent so much time on line before and I start to have the feeling that the monitor would like to spit in my face. I have´nt been out in a week and I´m sure that look in my dog´s eyes means he is pityng me. He scratches the door to be let out and before going about his doggie business, he looks back at me as to say :" Ain´t ya comin´man? c´m on get a grip on you" and off he goes. The fucker.

I´m down to 10mg, but today is such a wonderful scandinavian day and I dont think I ´ll manage to stay nailed to this chair any longer.

From the window I can see the sun shining over the fresh snow on the trees and reflecting on the still waters of the Størebælt.

a blackbird stares at me from the top of my fence , but he probably does´nt like what he sees ´cause he flies off to some better place.

Denmark is dressed to kill today; I bet she does it to mock me.

The first thing I did this morning was to check the condition of the highway I would need to drive on to get to my connection. They are excellent. "Are you sure?" I asked to the operator. Perfect - he said-I drove that way myself a few hours ago" "Thank you " I said. But what I ment was Fuck you. Last night I made a list with all the reasons why it´s worth to go through this ordeal. It´s got 38 entries, but somehow this morning they don´t seem so convincing anymore. I need to go and see the smile of my baby daughter every hour or so to get my strenght back. I kiss her blond baby hairs and for some reason I feel like to cry. Yes, I know I´ll have to give it up , but why should it be right now for Christ sake? I just got paid for a few articles and there is plenty of dough on my account. The tank of my car is nearly full, and in such a day I could even drive with the rag top down. Slip a CD in the stereo and in less than an hour I... oh my God . What ´s wrong with me? My wife is back . I can hear her car coming up the diriveway. She does´nt suspect anything. She thinks the reason I´ve been locked up in my office for more than a week is because I´m very busy with my work. In reality I havent done anything productive for two weeks or so. I said to my publisher that I´ve got a virus,and he just bought it without a comment,and the school where I teach is closed until monday for some stupid scandinavian holiday. This is the ideal moment to shake the monkey off my back.Soon my beautiful wife will start to ask questions; of course,like every junkie , I´m an excellent liar; but in the state I´m in would I be beliveable? It´s now or never. Or is it?

justin77

15-02-2005, 13:35

what up maing, i know what you're goin through.....i'm day 8 off hydrocodone and percocet myself. i envy your determination cuz if i could have got more by now i would have. 2 days i will have more, and i havent slept in a week. my heart has starting beating very wierd i think from lack of sleep. i live in south carolina.....us, and its about 75 degrees F today in the middle of winter. summer like weather and all i can do is think about those damn pills and sleep. WHAT A GREAT CYCLE I'M IN

VincentVan

15-02-2005, 14:01

Hi justin

don´t you have anything to help? just raw and cold turkey? It seems that for the situation you are in a bit of benzodiazepines would be great help. A few drops of valium maybe? Unless the main reason you don´t sleep is because you are afraid to. As for my determinationthe idea that anybody can envy it really makes me lough. Where the fuck is it right now?

justin77

15-02-2005, 14:36

yea it was pretty much cold turkey. i had 2 10mg valiums when i ran

out and i've taken one of them. I did actually get about 4 hours of

sleep that night, and in reality i guess i have slept for about an hour a

couple other nights. it's funny you mentioned that about the valium

cause i usually keep some around but now that i need them i dont

have any. i have a paranoia about buying pills from people i aint

close to so i get my shit through . because of that i

cant get stuff whenever i want which is probably good but right now

it fuckin sucks.

Edited by: justin77

justin77

15-02-2005, 14:41

on a side note there aint no way i'm quitting......thursday will be a damn good dayhttp://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/smileys/smiley17.gif

justin77

15-02-2005, 14:52

as far as your situation, you are trying and that is all anyone can ask. the drugs are good man you cant help it. If its REALLY what you want, to quit i mean, then you need to drop this flirting with it, you have no chance if you keep that up. All you can do is all you can do. As far as I look at myself, I know I can quit for a week here and there to keep my tolerance down and for that i consider myself good people.http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/smileys/smiley2.gif

Apradavra

15-02-2005, 15:05

good for you justin77, your gonna get high off low quality pills, and then brag about it tosomeone who is trying to break a habit hundreds of times more powerful in both, the effect of the drug, and the effects of withdrawal. Imagine taking three hundred vic's and two hundred perc's, at once, youget that buzz in one huge rush, and then after the rush, youbegin to feel godly for a long amount of time.....well, that is the big H...Andit seems as though elio has a lot more going for him in his life to make him want to end his useage than you do. Sorry man, i have been where both of you are, and trust me justin77, you dont even know, but keep it up and you will.Your rhetoric and junky wisdom will get someone who wants a real end to a bullshit way of life, well... pointless info.....elio, YOU are doing the right thing man, i myself have a beautiful girl who knows nothing of my useage and even the idea that i have to lie to hide hurts.....you have wayyyy too much to live for man.....its now just a waiting game...again, you need any advice or anything, pm me...peace guys

justin77

15-02-2005, 15:28

first of all abracadabra you dont know what the fuck i got going on in my life, so fuckin shut your mouth about shit you dont know about. secondly in my sleep deprived state i thought he was talking about getting off pills too, HE NEVER MENTIONED HEROIN. What the fuck are you talking about brag? When did I brag? I was trying to give him somebody to swap messages with. But you a big person for getting on a message board and coming down on someone you have no clue about. THAT is beyond bragadocious lameness. And as a ten year crack addict before i even saw a pill, i know what the fuck it is to be on hard shit and not be able to get off. But again you opened your retarted mouth and know about who i am and all about my life from a few messages on a fucking message board YOUFUCKING PRICK BITCH

justin77

15-02-2005, 15:55

elio,

sorry man i didnt realize you were on H before and that is very serious stuff. people around here are given methadone for pills and heroin, so i stupidly assumed you were on pills. i hope the best for you man, keep up the great work.

VincentVan

15-02-2005, 17:08

WOW
cool down guys. As the black torpedo in Pulp Fiction says "let´s be like Fonzie. And how´s Fonzie?" You dont have to apologize man. Any experience with getting rid of any addiction has my greatest respect. Somehow I think is not so much the substance you are addicted to that makes it harder or easier as he toughness of your neurons , and mine right now seem have the consistency of rotten jello.

Probably somewhere there is somebody going through hell to brake his liquerice addiction.Tryng substitution therapy with IV cotton candy that of course is not like the real thing. Well ,maybe ,I would respect him too. Maybe. and thanx for being there guys. There somewhere. Thanx. You would´nt belive how much you all mean to me right now. Am I getting pathetic? Don´t care. I ama pathetic junkie. I´ve never been much into forums. I use the computermostly for work or occasionaly to write some code or hack a bit. But I don´t know what I would have done without this place to let some steam out. And hey ,another day is nearly gone. Go , go, get the fuck away from the calendar you miserable , useless collection of miserable hours, of painful minutes, and endless seconds.

The pink hue of the sunset on this northen sea reflects on the brilliant snow. The sky blends its blues and purples under the watchful eye of two clouds sailing fast towards the west. It´s so fuckin´beautiful. and soon I´ll have resisted one more day . Life is´nt all shit after all.

Apradavra

15-02-2005, 17:31

whoa....listen guys....i really didn't mean for this to happen. For one justin77 i assumed you were a young kid who just began the long road to opiate addiction, the bragging i was talking about was your claim of re-upping on thursday. Man, thats the last thing someone who cancop their shit at any moment, and chooses not too,butwants sound advice on how to stay away from the drugwants to hear at any time.... let alone during de-tox.

Justin77, You are more than right, I do now know whereyou have been, or what you have been through. I apologize for jumping down on you like that. It just seems as though elio really has alot going on for him, and he seems as though he isreally close to beginning a new life. And i felt like you were almost rubbing it in his face. Ten years on crack means you have experienced much of what i have not, I again apologize for jumping to conclusions.

I've been on large amounts of opaites and benzo's daily for several years. (H, M, fetanyl, Diazapam, Aprozolam, just about it all) Either way, elio needs some positiveinfluencesas of now,we shouldnt besaying shit to each otheron here like immature littlebitches, I know, my attitude began this all, and in the future, I will not let my myself jump to conclusions on this forum....

to elio, sorry about the drama man, i just feel that where you are right now is a place that needs as little bullshit and negative influnces as possible. Keep it up man, there are people there for ya....

Apradavra

15-02-2005, 17:34

also your message before my apology was wisely worded, I didnt see this when i posted my first post....apologies to all....

and its sad, but them damn drugs are pretty fucking good....http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/smileys/smiley5.giftoo bad they fuck up lives as they do....

justin77

15-02-2005, 18:13

it takes a goodperson to admit whenthey arewrong and apologize, so thanks for the apology and i accept apradavra.........i was wrong in that i shouldnt have mentioned my re-up to another detoxer trying to quit. peace to all.

MrFinger

15-02-2005, 22:19

elio,

For what it's worth, is this past year I went through about 9 or 10 violent withdrawals. Vomiting the bitter yellow fluid for 48 hours straight, the anxious weakness(struggling just to make it up a flight of stairs), weeks of sleeplessness which led to bad delirium (not good) and at times even schizophrenic like hallucinations and countless other issues. I tried methadone for about a year before but ended up eventually switching back to heroin. Some of the withdrawals this last year were because of lack of any other option, completely bottomed out, sick and during utter poverty. Other times they were out of pure desire to move on with life and accomplish the things I originally had set out to do… things which my heroin and other opiate abuse seriously impeded. I have been clean for about 4 months now, clean off opiates that is, I continue to occasionally use various benzo’s, marijuana, alcohol, lsd and other hallucinogenic since my last bag of heroin but all of those are things which don’t demand daily use from me, or any significant habitual use.Be careful with the methadone, you don’t want to use it for too long if you are aiming to get completely off the opiates. If your body has time to acclimate to the methadone it can extend the time of your withdrawal a lot. In this last withdrawal phase I chose to go cold turkey, I wanted it to be horrible and horrible it was. I will never forget it and those memories help me stay clean when the opportunity rears it’s head. 9 days is a great accomplishment, things will get better and in time the endless hours will pass, sleep will come and things will slowly improve. I guess it’s different for everyone, everyone has there own issues to come to terms with, different levels of addiction, different true desires… I live in NY,USA and it can be pretty hard being a long term heroin addict around here. Inconsistent quality and inconsistent prices can make the idea getting a proper score everyday a joke(no matter who you are) but regardless some people manage to stay stuck with it for the rest of there lives… what draws that line isn’t clear, at least from my eyes it isn’t. For me the pain of withdrawal seems like less than the pains of a modern day heroin habit, the pains of not achieving my life’s goals, to not be there for the one’s I love… So far, I’ve been able to maintain a clear enough head to get by without it.I hope you can keep up with it. I think more people kick this stuff than the statistics show, I think a lot of people like to keep it as much of it secret as possible, I know I have… Best of luck. Hopefully at the least this post helped pass some time.

MF

VincentVan

15-02-2005, 23:27

MrFinger
my honest and heartfelt congratulations. 4 months off the stuff really is an achievement. And thanks a lot for the advice; but, you see this is not the first time I kiked the habit. Hell in more then 25 years of on and off relation with sister H I really can´t remember how many times i kiked the bitch. I did it with methadone , I did it whithout, I did it with pills, with morphine , with long trips oversea. I did it cold turkey , raw turkey ,sick turkey I fucked the turkey. The only thing I´ve never tried is being institutionalised in some community or clinic.

Too fuckin´proud I guess.Too public.Too humiliating. Even for a junkie like me.
The graphic description of your withdrawal brought back a few memories. If you got 3 minutes to waste try to read a topic I started in this forum called "the way it feels". Do you recognize those simptoms? , Those feelings?, Those thoughts? Or is it just me being an expecially sick fucker?

I often wondered about the scene in NY. I´ve got a sister living there. She married a Yank so now I´ve got two little american nephews about 12 years old and since I love them very much I kinda worry about them. I have been there myself a few times(short stays only) but I never tried to score. It seems so freaking... extream, if you know what I mean. A good friend of mine moved there about ten years ago. She was the very pretty daughter of a family of kenyan-italian millionaires. Within 2 and a 1/2 years she got AIDS and died. Maybe she had it before she went there but I doubt it. I dunno.
Read that thread of mine I told you about , I would really treasure your opinion.
And keep it up.

"...mais ou sont les neiges d´antan?" Francois Villon.

MrFinger

16-02-2005, 00:26

Hey,
While I was on methadone I met quite a few people who had been using for 25+ years and I must say that the things I learned from them are some of the things that sit on my mind now when I need to resist temptation. I think before this 4 months of clean I was about 5 years in the hole. Before that I messed around with weaker opiates but never had withdrawal symptoms. I've tried to quit a bunch of times, including going in-patient at a clinic outside of NY once which was a nightmare. I've heard that there are a variety of clinics out there and I'm sure there are some good ones out there, but not the one I went to. From what I can remember, on the night of my 3rd day there I had a lot of problems going to sleep, so they started loading me up with every type of psychological drug they could think of... I awoke that night on the streets. Apparently, they drugged me out of my mind and let me leave on my own will, who knows what happened after that. I don't think I tried quitting raw turkey... but for all I know I may have fucked a wild turkey that night. I read your other post and I can relate 100% percent with the thoughts you expressed, especially the phone call part... and also losing touch with the person who you were before the drugs, the person that the one's close to you may think you still are. Withdrawal is definitely some hard shit. New York can be pretty nuts, it will eat you up if you let it, it will take advantage of you just about anyway it can if you let it. I didn't not grow up hear and by the time I moved here I already had a heroin problem... for a while I didn't need to go cop on the streets, my neighbor sold dilaudids which got me by. Eventually I did have to hit the streets and that was pretty rough, but after a while you can adjust to just about anything... it was a lot easier finding it after i started going to the methadone clinic. I've squatted for a while here but this last year got a place of my own again... it's been a real trip on the love boat let me tell you. Anyways, I hope this chatting is helping you through your attempt at kicking.

MF

VincentVan

16-02-2005, 01:30

Oh yes, yes
it´s really helping an umbeliveble lot. Really it is surprising. I´m sure whithout you folks I´d never have managed to keep my mind busy all this time. The book I´m reading is very intresting( F. Argaud "On the origin of peoples") but I can´t stick to it for more than half a page. Strange because books helped me a lot in other detoxings. My guitar and my sax sound strange; and weird to the touch. And really I don´t know anybody I can talk to. Not about this anyway. My sweet ,sweet wife of more than ten years does´nt suspect anything and I really cannot break her heart. Not again.

She dragged me away from India some years ago, or I guess I would still be there. Buried in some indian cemitery probably. And she feels sure that after that I have been more or less clean, off the heavy stuff anyway. God how wrong she is. God what a shit I am.

So , thanks god for this place , for music, and yes for you guys.

" Death be not proud - Though some have called you mighty and dreadful - Thou are not so."

VincentVan

16-02-2005, 14:32

10th day. 7,5 mg methadone. Misery. Nervousness. And specially boredom.

That´s it. I´m outta here. Today my wife drove to her parents. She took my baby with her; unknowningly depriving me of my main source of strenght. I keep finding a lot of seemingly excellent excuses for my pityful weakness. I´m home alone with the cleaning woman. A most annoyng little tamil whose name is Cita, like Tarzan´s monkey. And she looks the part too. She barges into my office and starts dusting the shelfs of my library. "Are you OK?- you don´t look OK!- You work too much. You should go out a bit " She dusts some more, then she looks at the pinapple can I´m using as an ashtray. "Mind if I open the window?" she says opening the window. "why don´t you go take a walk with the dog while I clean up in here?" I light anoter cigarette: " Cita if you don´t let me work I will not be able to pay your wage. Vanish. please." " oh , that´s OK" she says " I´ll just take that instead" she says pionting at a plasma TV I can´t figure why I bought. She probably think she is funny because now she´s got a smile pasted all over her silly face. That´s it . I´m outta here. I should´nt have taken the 7,5 mg methadone. Now I´m gonna need an higher dose. Maybe this can be a reason not to go. No, not good enough. I´m gone. " Death be not proud - Tough some called thee mighty and dreadful - Thou are not so"

Apradavra

16-02-2005, 14:52

hey!!!!

come on man, your soo close to forgetting more of the feeling everyday...i dont know what to say, your being a very strong person, probably stronger than i could be in such a situation, but you have WAY too much to stay clean for. Your last post you said how much you cared for your wife and child, by getting high its just going to delelope that "dope mask" which will cover your every second of life. I just find it much harder to find real emotions, (love, happiness, anger, anything) while I'm using. I guess that is maybe why most people do use, to get that sheild or mask, you dont need it elio you seem to have a lot going for you.....good luck

MrFinger

16-02-2005, 21:17

Well, whatever you choose now don’t let it effect your long term goals. If you really want to quit you need to keep at it, don’t let one or one million slips keep you from getting to where you want to be. The stuff out by you is probably a lot stronger than around here, and easier to get at? That must make it difficult. Maybe you can try to score some of the buprenorphine pills with the Narcan in them, those seem to help people through detox stages. It took me straight year of stubbornly trying to quit and I know I'll always be facing temptation, I made attempts before but never kept trying for a whole year straight, some people are at it longer, keep with it, never stop learning from your mistakes. Try everything you can think of, even the things that don’t seem like they will work… you never know. If you keep at it and time doesn’t catch up with you, eventually the cards will start turning up in your favor. Visualize how things will be if you keep using, and how things will be if you quit… and never forget it. Things I’ve come to realize that you probably already know:
1. When your reasons for quitting revolve around making other people happy you are more likely to relapse. Just about everyone I know who has tried to get clean for the sake of someone else relapses, feels like complete dog shit about it and that feeling makes them want to use even more. A real nasty cycle. Usually those people you are trying to make happy don’t know how to correctly support you through these episodes anyways, so you should really do it for yourself first.
2. For me it is about 100X harder to get past the first stages of withdrawal with money available than without. It’s so easy to cave, the smallest thing can make you say fuck it. If your stuck, and to get something would be a long involved hassle that might not even pan out, it’s a lot easier to stay with it. The easiest withdrawal I ever had was in jail, there were no other options, period.
3. I think a lot of it boils down to motivation and determination. If you really want to quit and you’ve got things going on in life that your habit is messing up than you need to make a choice. If there’s something driving you to use, you need to figure out what it is and how to handle it another way. Figure out what’s stopping you from trying hard enough to get on with out it.
Ha, anyways, this is all babble you probably already know. Oh well, Best of luck,

MF

VincentVan

17-02-2005, 03:54

It´s terrible. I really am a spineless scumbag. I´m so ashamed . I´m even ashamed to tell this to you guys who have been so umbelivebely nice to me. Yes. I collapsed. Twin Towers style. Hit by something much more powerful than a 747. What´s left is a pile of ruins and a big gaping , smoking hole where once there was my heart. Something frighteningly powerful took control of me and drove me to those dreaded haunts I swore to forgo just moments before.

I jumped into my car tryng not to think about anything else butmy destination. Once I got there I asked to the pusher if I could shoot in his apartment so that I had to think as little as possible about what I was doing, and seconds later I was back into the the warm arms of my evil secret mistress. I payed and got back into my car.

The minimum amount this guy would sell is the equivalent of about 150 US$. On his scale this buys you 1gram of white or 2 grams of brown.

I bought whe white. Driving on the way back home the full meaning of what I had just done hit me like a ton of bricks. Depression set in. I took the packet of Lucky Strikes where the rest of the dope was hidden and I threw it out of the car´s window. Inside there was about 4/ 5ths of my purchase and a few Lukies as well. I regretted what Ihad donealmost immediatly. But I had no choice . I really could not bring that shit into the house where my baby lives. There is a limit even to my meanness. But not to my idiocy it seems. MrFinger do you really think that if I want to quit for other people´s sake I´m bound to fail? Not great news. Because I´m afraid I do not care enough about myself. Why should I care about such a selfish cunt?

You are right : if I would not have money or at least so little that I would be forced to make painful choices , it would probably be easier to kick the habit. But what can I do? I have a family to feed, bills to pay, and , thanks God , a steady income . I even envy you your jail period. Do they give you something in Us jails to help you with withdrawl symptoms? In Euroslammers I have heard You can have methadone. But I don´t know. I´ve never been in jail. Sometimes I think I´ve been too lucky, andthis is the way destiny makes me pay for it. I don´t know if the stuff here is stronger . I never tried to score in the US. But I am pretty sure it´s much easier to get. Supplies and prices are very stable and the authorities much more tolerant.

Here in Denmark anybody can just walk into a pharmacy and get for free a governementsponsored bag with inside sterile syringes .needles, sterile water, a little container to mix your dope in, cotton, a plaster and a paper with a few advices aimed at addicts. When pharmacies are closed there is some vans going around junkies haunts to distribute clean tools. In Copenhagen there are also some kind of vending machines where you can put inside your dirty syringe and get a new one in change. Same in Holland and most other EU countries. When I found out how difficould can be to get a syringe in the US I really got surprised. What do they want ? widespread epidemies? In major cities usually there are areas where the police tolerate dealings to keep the junkies away from the nice neighborhoods and the eyes of respectable citizens. My pusher is always avaleble. 24/7. He has been for years.You just have to go to his place and he would happily provide you with anything you might wish.Tools included.Ring to him and within an hour he would come and deliver anywhere in town. A few timesI enen called him from my cell phone and he delivered in my office in the school where I teach. I´m so ashamed. My students look up to me. The headmaster sincerely likes me. But that did´nt stop me anyway. As I told you I am a prik.

I still have my methadone . From tomorrow I´m gonna try again. These nine days haven´t been totally wasted. My tolerance is diminished . Tomorrow I´ll start with 25 or 30 mg methadone. I really hope I´m not deluding myself again.

Thanks MrFinger , Apradavra and Justin. I owe you.

"Better to reign in hell than serve in Heaven" Milton. "Paradise Lost".

Apradavra

17-02-2005, 15:13

Hey man, we all fall, its just a matter of getting back up.Maybe start small with the 'done. As long as you didnt use repeatedly, your tolerance should still be down a bit. Maybe try begining with 20mg's of methadone. Cause once that shit is in your system, the WD's can be worse then from the dope.... And like i said before elio, everyone falls sometime, its all about the getting back on the right feet at the right time....also, Man, your connections would make it hard as all hell to quit, so i can see where your coming from.And "they" say a user needs to stop using for themselves, not their parents, spouses, or friends. ButI believe that whena userstops using for themselves, all those other people will again fall into play, because once again, the user is "himself", not a maskwith dope-pinned-eyes and cotton candy emotions......i hope this makes sense....and oh,your not a prick man, you just happened toform a relationship with one of the most difficult experiences tolet go of....your doing just like millions of other dumbass humans do, one breath at a time.....

MrFinger

17-02-2005, 17:48

“MrFinger do you really think that if I want to quit for other people’s sake I’m bound to fail?”
Everybody is different; I think it’s harder for people who are trying to quit something for the sole sake of others because there is so much guilt involved when a relapse happens. And for many, guilt can be a real big part of why they continue to use. That doesn’t make it impossible though.
At the same time if you are quitting because you don’t want the people close to you to think of you as a bad person or you don’t want those people out of your life, than perhaps you are really quitting for yourself. There is a fine line there.
Tossing 4/5’s of a gram of stuff is an unbelievably hard thing to do, that is quite an accomplishment, you showed a lot of inner strength there. LSMFT!
I met a teacher once who was addicted to speedballs, he would load up a bunch of syringes in the morning for use throughout the day… that’s pretty bad, and I believe after awhile someone noticed. The US looks down real hard on teachers with drug problems. If that is also the case in your country, it must be a stressful affair. Maintaining two lives so different from each other is an overwhelming experience.

“When I found out how difficould can be to get a syringe in the US I really got surprised. What do they want ? widespread epidemies?”
In NY they have needle exchanges; they give out all the supplies you need and usually a meal too. First time in they verify that you are in fact a junkie and then give you an ID card. The card can help if you get stopped by the police with just a syringe. These places are few and far though. Also, somewhat recently most pharmacies will sell syringes here, you need to go to the pharmacist and ask for it, you must be over 18 years of age I think. They don’t give you anything else with them, so many will end up using tap water and cigarette filters, which isn’t so healthy. Because of this there a lot of Hepatitis, some AIDS and other things to worry about. So far, have avoided these diseases/viruses.

“Do they give you something in Us jails to help you with withdrawl symptoms?”
The jail I was in didn’t give methadone or anything else out to help ease withdrawals. Luckily, for me I had a valid prescription for ativan at the time and was able to get that which helped a little. I would save the days worth and take them all at night time so I could at least get a little sleep. Even worse, if you show signs that you are going to have a real violent hard-core withdrawal they will put you in the suicide watch section of the jail, which is pretty bad(dirty cells, urine soaked mattresses, you get some bad food if your lucky, insane angry inmates throwing there feces into the hallway, etc). I knew about that before I got taken in so during admission I played it as cool as possible to make sure I did not end up in there.

Best of luck, be honest with yourself, don’t forget about tomorrow, my green tea tastes like bad fish,

MF

"Human feeling. That's beyond my range. I'm rotten to the core." --- Jean Paul Sartre “No Exit”

VincentVan

17-02-2005, 22:27

Thanks guys.
You are right. It´s not really for others that I MUST give up , it´s because I don´t want my daughter to grow up to find out that her daddy is an addict. I dont want my wife to loose the respect that incredibly , she still has for me. So I guess ,basically , I do it for myself after all. Jeez , I´m even more selfish than I thought.

When my saintly wife notices that I look wasted , I always tell her that I took some benzodiazepines (Valium usually) to sleep or because I was nervous. She looks a bit annoyed but she always buys it. For such an experienced lier asI am, it´s likeshooting on the red cross.

And it makes me feel just as bad. Then I go and lock myself in my office for days on end to read ,write,smoke and drink J&B. I wrote a few books under the influence of opiates and they are definetly my worst, I hate them. I wrote some when I was sober and belive it or not I even wrote some (two) when I was kicking the habit. My publisher called me this morning and said that it´s incredible how my last work is different from that of last month : "Like two different persons" he says. He made me lough. The geezer. He should know. My readers should know. The big shot politician I interwiewed today should know. I lie to everybody . Automatically. I don´t need to think about it. When I noticed that I had started liyng to myself it begun to really bother me. When I started to lie to my baby I just could not stand it anymore. I´ve got to do something about it. I just wish I could drop three or four personalities that i don´t need , and that are all products of this ineffable substance.

I´m also afraid that if people would realize that I don´t respect myself they would stop respecting me . So you are right : I´m selfish enough to give it up for my own sake. I´ll do as you say Apradavra, 20 mg. 4 pills. I´m very surprised that I still don´t feel the need to go and take them. I shot up more than 24 hours ago. I think it was beween 2 and 3 in the afternoon . Can´t even remember, but I´m still cool. I´ll definetly take them before I go to bed anyway. I don´t want to wake up in the middle of the night sweating cold. Tonight I need some sleep. Make love . Maybe.

Yesterday I went to bed at 6 in the morning. "I was busy working" I said to my wife. "Poor dear - she said - I know you work so hard for us too". Can anybody belive what a shit I am? When I stood up , short before midday,my wife and daughter were not home. I did´nt touch the breakfast lovingly prepared by the cleaning woman, drunk an espresso, jumped in a suit, put a tie around my neck , a banana in the raincoat´s pocket,and drove to a long planned interview. I prepared the questions during the drive to the city. A couple of hours after I e-mailed my day´s work to the magazine. Then I rang up the chief editor "... so , what do you think?" I asked.

" Great, great work. You ´re in great shape I can see..." I almost wish someone would notice . I think I´ ll go to take my methadone , kiss my baby and get another bottle of J&B .

See you in a while guys. It´s great to be able to talk to you.

"Death be not proud - though some called thee mighty and dreadful - Thou are not so."

MrFinger

18-02-2005, 00:34

When it comes to quitting I think it's ok to be as selfish as you want. Why do so many empathetic artistic people get hooked on heroin? Seems backwards, I guess they are right when they say addiction does not discriminate.
I know what you mean when you say that your writing suffers for your opiate use. Honestly that was one of the big motivating factors for me. Listening to the recordings I made, the songs I wrote, watching the video footage of live performances from when I was on opiates makes me want to tear my insides out and scream at them. All this time and effort wasted on crap music while on crap drugs. No one else seems to notice but I do. Things are coming together so much better now that I have gotten some clean time, for me, the feeling of putting out some quality material is way better than any opiate. Some people feel they write better while on Opiates, that must make it unbelievably hard to quit.
Hope the methadone keeps the morbid edge off. When using methadone to detox, I like taking it every other day at lowering doses… people have called me a sadistic bastard for suggesting this in the past though. For me, methadone keeps me off sick for closer to 2 days than one, sure I’m a bit anxious and fidgety the second day but not physically ill. Later,

MF

"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me." --- HST

VincentVan

18-02-2005, 01:58

MrFinger

you know what you ´re talking about. If somebody exist who feels that he works better under the effect of opiates, well , I can only pity him.He will never stop. Heknows what his end will be.

When I look back at what I produced with the help of the needle I can see how untrue, artificial, unfelt it all sounds. It´s not so much that it´s badly made, as much as I can see in it the cheap tricks of the trade,the recycled feelings, the impressive, shining sovrastructure lacking any real fundaments, and I bet it´s the same for your music too. No wonder . Writing , words or notes, must come from the heart. You can´t do it when your heart is dead.

Youmay trick publishers , readers and assorted jercks, but you´ll never be able to convince yourself. And it´s not use to think " So what? I do it for money" If you have got a penny worth ofbrains you´ll start to compare it with the rest you have been able to do , and you will think " God , what did I do to my intelligence?"

As for the Methadone dosage, I take decreasing amounts too but every second day? I wish I could. No 24 /28 hours at most. When I drop under 1 mg (yes I need to do that) I need too take it every 12 hours (always decreasing doses). I use 5mg pills (I just took 4 and 1/2, 22,5 mg) and when I am under half a pill (2,5mg)I swich to the syrup and keep on decreasing until I´m using a 1cc syringe to spray it into my mouth. Under 1cc (1 mg) I fill the needed amount into the syringe and then I top it off with water , so that in 4 days I am drinking pure water.

However the last time I´ve been able to drop to zero has been more than 18 months ago. It took 3 weeks of idylliac skiing holiday in Italy to drop from 30 mg to zero . A month later I was back where I had started from. Really , I don´t think I´mas smart as some people seem to think.
I´m so happy to hear about other people ´s detoxing or drug related experiences because for a lot of reasons nobody seems to feel the way I do. And that made me feel like a real freak .

This place really is a godsend.

"It will not be the fear of madness - to keep at half mast the flags of imagination." from " The manifest of expressionism".

VincentVan

18-02-2005, 02:18

Oh I forgot , I´m sorry to hear about the green tea , but why do you drink that crap? Why not swiching to J&B ´n ice? Or whatever you drink in the land of the free? Jack Daniels orFour Roses, may do so long.

"There is a fair behaviour in thee - And tho that nature with beauteous walls - does oft close in pollution - Yet of thee I belive thou hast a mind - Wich suits with this Thy fair & outward character.." ( Shakespeare "XII night")

manda

18-02-2005, 03:11

Fuck. I'm glad you all worked out that misunderstanding. As an outsider reading, could tell neither meant harm to the other. That's really cool, to apoligize and move on. Right on!!! My type of people... Peace is better, who wants to fight, diss, or be dissed??? I hate people that hold grudges, thank God you guys represent the spirit of the forum. Fun, friends, forgiveness.

Elio- You're guilty cause you relapsed...locked yourself up in your office, not sure if you're in any condition to talk to your wife...Just forgive yourself...Please. It's not a violent crime, and we're but mere mortals, trying to say we have more desire to be clean than a chemical is strong. Isn't it odd how there are no drugs to simply cure drug addcition?

Men made these posions, and greater men will fall than I. Why weren't ancedotes developed? Because there aren't any out there. All you have is you, man. Fuck, it ain't like it's easy, is it?

At least your wife's beautiful and doesn't do it. Still, you must be very lonely...I hope you stay on the forum. Good place for you to feel comfortable, I hope.

I ain't got no answers, bud. Just don't turn on yourself.

Edited by: manda

VincentVan

18-02-2005, 03:42

You´re right about the antidotes Manda. I guess you have to find them into yourself. And I agree with what W. Burroughs wrote in "The naked lunch" that soon somebody will invent a drug that you´ll need to try only once and will keep you hooked for the rest of your life. Orsomebody already did?

"C´m on , this place it´s everything. C´m on . I´ll show you..." Jim Morrison.

MrFinger

18-02-2005, 17:51

J&B on ice? That’s a scotch right? I don’t think they carry that in the states, maybe they do, just not in my corner wine/liquor store. I think we’ll be traveling over seas this summer(watch out… they finally let me have a passport), I’ll have to try it out. It’ll have to be a Wild Turkey on ice for now. Or better yet some fine port. The green tea was because my girlfriend likes it… she had a cup ready for me the other morning when I ran in to her… it was a nice gesture and I couldn’t say no, I think she got the hint after my first sip though. What can I say, I’m a pushover. Any normal person would have probably chucked it after parting ways, not I, that would be a waste and simply does not fall within the universal laws of MrFinger.
I’ve yet to meet anyone who detoxes with methadone the way I do… for some reason the stuff stays in my system for a long time… which is odd because normally I have a pretty high metabolism. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the 5mg pills, I’ve always had the 10mg, the 40mg wafers or the liquid(which I never liked). I remember once sneezing while drinking it and getting it all over the car window… the driver was pissed. My nose was on fire. And all I could think was, what a waste.
I fully understand your technique, especially the continuing to take it even at the smallest levels. When I went to the methadone clinic there were people who had been on 5mg a day for years… just because they had to do something everyday.
Keep it up,

MF
"Pain shirts my lucky day"

VincentVan

18-02-2005, 19:49

Second day
20mg methadone. Back to fuckin´square one. Horrible. But now I have decided: I´m gonna get rid of my demons. I can´t fail again. I know it´s easy to say this after only two days and with the methadone molecules jumping all over your synapsys. The hard part will come in a couple of days. Or maybe tomorrow. I just don´t want tothink about it. Hey listen to this ! The radio is playng an old song that seems written about someone I know. It says:
"...have you heard about the lonsome looser? He is a looser but he keeps on tryng " I think I´ll phone to the DJ and tell him to fuck off. Even radios start to mock me. The singer sounds american. Do you know who this band is? Hell , they wrote my hymn. My fuckin´national anthem. Sorry to hear you can´t get J&B mate. Great stuff. Great confort. My old publisher introduced me to it. He drunked because of it´s color. J&B is much lighter than other scotch ,you see, so people would think that he was drinking scotch & water instead of the straight shots he always ordered. And that was enough to prop up his selfexteem. Truly , everyone has his own private torturer to deal with. Mine seems to be an expecially skilled one ,unfortunally.& A fuckin´champ in his trade.

You say that you are gonna travel oversea soon .If you´lllet me know where you planning to go , I´ll probably be able to give you some informations ( apart for drugs) , There is hardly a corner of the globe I have´nt tried to hide into. Europe, Middle east, Africa, South Asia , Far Est, Central & South America, The happy isles of Oceania... I´ll be happy to be of any help. As you helped me.

Keep in touch. All of you.

"...The first condition of right thought is right sensation - the first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it..."

MrFinger

18-02-2005, 22:39

Is that the Little River Band? I think so, yet not entirely sure. The radio always mocks me no matter what's going on, so usually stop listen to it and play DJ on my own, then I find that I am mocking myself even worse so I put the radio back on.
At the moment I think the UK, Germany and Belgium are pretty much set, there will probably be other places but that depends. I don’t know much about Germany or Belgium, I have relatives in England and Scotland that I only met a few times so hopefully I can catch up with them. I watch documentaries like a fiend so I probably no more than I realize. I have only traveled North America up until now, I am very familiar with the majority of the US, particularly the east and west coasts. After reading The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles I am frightened of Africa, it’s probably a lot more pleasant than the pictures in my mind. People will probably figure out that I’m some type of junky because I’m from the US and not fat(sorry, I just watched Supersize). Or maybe not.
Anyways, as soon as I know more about exact areas I’d love your opinion of what are good things to check out. I like locations that capture the essence of the surrounding area.
Your determination to get through this sounds good. Accept each horrible feeling that goes through your body and press on, one sensation after the other. Cut them down to size. Take control, and be proud of your efforts. It’s almost like holding your breath for a really long time, that panic, discomfort. You will not suffocate. It just feels like you will, let your determination keep your head clear and set sail towards better days.

MF

“And then the day came,
when the risk
to remain tight
in a bud
was more painful
than the risk
it took
to Blossom”

Anais Nin

VincentVan

19-02-2005, 00:16

The little river band? Never heard of the bastards. And I listen to a lot of american music. Not just classics like JeffersonAirplaine, Greatfuls, QMS,Frank Zappa ,oh you are from NYC right? so let´s say Talking Heads,VelvetUnderground, Lou Reed etc. Have you ever heard of an ´80s band from Florida called "Spirits"? I always listen to them when I drive in this last period.A fotografer I work with,told me he´ll nevercome near my car again because of their music. What can a fotografer know anyway.

Let me suggest you an european band: "Vaya con Dios" they are from Belgium so if you are going there you may get to see them live . It´s worth. North America is one of the few places I can´t say to know . I have been to NYC a few times to visit relatives and once to visit some collegues at McGill University in Montreal. That´s it. I like to think of it the way Jack Keruak describes it. Or , to talk about somebody just dead, H. Miller in "Big Sur & the oranges of Hyeronimus Bosch.

But, you see, most of my wanderings, have been to run away from my obsession; and there was really no point in going were I knew I would have found it there , waiting for me. You got a very wrong idea of Africa. Besides Bowles or Conrad (in heart of darkness) write about west Africa. I lived 6 years in Kenya ,and really, it is a paradise ( That´s East Africa. The one Hemingway writes about in "Green hills of Africa " and " The snows of Kilimanjiaro"). Excellent dope too. My mind seems to revolve always around the same Goddam (enough As?) axis.

It´s probably time to take my pills . I´ll be back very soon. Edited by: elio

VincentVan

19-02-2005, 00:28

oh ! You´re gone. So long my friend.

Apradavra

19-02-2005, 04:21

Elio, I just wanted to see how your doing, I myself am a writer as well. Im a student at a state university, and Im in my fourth year with a minor in Sociology and a major in English Writing.I can see as well where my writing is effected by my time spent using. Sometimes, to tell te truth, my poetry especially,has a different edge when I write while high, i dont know if this is positive or negative influence. I noticed you mentionedyou enjoyedKeroauc's decsription of NYC, I love the zest in his writing, some find it too much. I must have read'"On the Road"a hundred times before i took that journey myself when i was 19. There is nothing like seeing the world.I would like to hear more about your experiences living abroad. It seems you have seen alot, and have alot of great stories to tell of. I would like to hear some if you ever get the urge to share. Live long and write much my friend...keep up the good attitude with your de-tox and life in general....apra

VincentVan

19-02-2005, 15:01

You know what Apradavra? I kind of guessed it. After so many years in this trade you get to notice how people handles and juggles with the words. If you go back 11 postings you´ll find what I think about "Writing under the influence". I don´t do poetry. Never did. I´m too shallow to sound credible. Sometimes I read some though. Dead poets. French mostly. Baudelaire is a favourite. An addict I can relate to. And Paul Verlaine. Prevert too. Did I tell you I´m 50% frog? Istart to get cold feet. Some (most) of my works have been published in the US too; I´m afraid that my paper thin cover can be blown any moment , and somereader/ collegue/editor/publishercould guess my identity. God, what have I done? Do you think it´s possible?

I must try to give as little personal hints as possible. Are´nt you afraid Apra?

About my so called "experiences" around the world, ask and you´ll be answered. For the last few years I have been living in Denmark. I´ve got a house. A garden. A window with a wiew of the Baltic sea. I have got a car, a dog, a wife and a family. I´ve got bills to pay, an hangover , my books, my demons.A job (or two ), an office to hide in, and many other things besides. But specially , I´ve got my faithful addiction that follows mewherever I go.

And ,apart for my baby, (she is just a few months old), I had all these things in many other countries before. My girl ( she was´nt my wife then) has been following me and my addiction around the globe for the last 17 years; but my wanderings ,(my excapes really), started long before I had met her.

About Keruack:" On the road" it´s his masterwork. Maybe too much so. Do you know his other works? "The Dharma bums" ? "Vanity of Dulouz"? "Satori in Paris"? When I need quick cash, I translate american authors, but I won´t tell you in what languages. It would be like posting my adress and cellphone number. I hope you understand.

Thanks for asking how I am . You are the only ones I can give an honest answer to, forcing me to think about it. But this is getting too longwinded.

I hope you´ll be back soon . I need you guys. I really do. I don´t trust myself enough to stand up from this chair , and monday I´ll have to start teaching again.

It sucks. So long. your Vincent Van.

MrFinger

19-02-2005, 21:08

I've never heard of the two bands you mentioned Spirits or Via Con Dios. I'll be sure to check them out. I listen to everything that I possibly can. In general, I read, watch and listen to everything I can. Jack Kerouac is one of my favorites. Jim Caroll pegs NYC pretty good, but he's more of a poet than a writer. I write on an occasion but never for anyone else to read, I guess lyrics are the exception, but that doesn't really count. Do you ever go back and read an old book you wrote? I like to put my own music in my mixes. Yikes, unfortunately I really must run, weekends are very busy for me. Best of luck,

MF

VincentVan

20-02-2005, 00:21

Vaya con Dios, MF, not Via... They really are magic. The guitar liks, the vocals, the texts specially. Great stuff.

If you wanna check out the "Spirit" , Try the "live" or the "Spirit of 76" albums. The singer was called Randy California.The drummer Ed Cassidy. And Larry "Fuzzy" Knife played base.

No. I rarely go back and reread my own works. Only when letters or enquires from readers or editors force me to . Or when I really can´t remenber what a critic is talking about. I don´t think anybody really rereads his own work once it has been published. It´s not like listening to one of your own old songs MF. Those feelings, those old words, old insights and sensations, now are the past. They don´t belong to me anymore. They start living their own life. Some willlead a successfull life, others will not. Of all of them I will always remember the moment of their birth, the long and difficult periods of pregnancy, or the easy deliveries, but I have not power on them anymore. Better forget about them and move on.

Not long ago, the copyrights to one of my first works, written so long ago I could hardly remember what it was about, has been sold in a book fair and translated into a language I can read. When , in a doped stupor, I spent some time perousing the paperback, I could not recognize it.I actually had to pick up the phone ,congratulate the translator ,and tell him that I thought that his work was much better than my original. He loughed. But I meant every word. I still do.

What do you think Apradavra? (can I treat you as collegue?) Am I very sick? I know I am. I can feel it. Why do I hate myself so much? Many people like me. Some even love me. But I know they do not know me. Not really. They just know what I want them to know. I`m a master dissimulator. And lier of course. There is two books that maybe ,one day, if I´ll have the strenght to tell some of the truth, I will write. One is called : "Pushers". The other: " The shallowest man on earth. An autobiography." I hope you will be back soon. I need all of you. And I really hope that somehow , sometimes, I will be able to do something for you too. Please feel free to ask. I know I owe you. Apradavra go back two postings. I answered to your questions and asked some in return

All the best. Always yours

VincentVan.
Edited by: elio

Apradavra

20-02-2005, 07:04

Elio, yes, you can treat me as a collegue, and as a friend, even though we may never meet face to face, we share many a sorrow, and you have many great things to share with this world. As for answering your ?'s, no your not sick Elio, you have a strong monkey on your back, and if anything, what your going through and learning frm your addiction is making you a stronger person, not a sick person. And am I afriad? Why would i be afriad of another writer, why would i be afriad of someone who cares about his family so purely it can be felt over the stupid internet andseveral thousand miles, why would i be afriad of someone who has gone through much of what i have....I wouldnt--Iwould choose this person as a friend...I have read other works of Keroauc and loved them, though not like "On the Road", (I think i was too young and impressionable when I read "On the Road" for the first time), and I am guessing you know of Burruoughs well also? I seen you quoteNaked Lunch, I have read"Junkie" numourous times, among others. Elio, I want to hear more of what you want to say, Im listening if your talking. Our chats help me, i hope as they help you, i really have no one i can talk to this about. Its all hidden like a family secret, even my family knows nothing of...

I know the feeling you were speaking of when you wrote this---"But I know they do not know me. Not really. They just know what I want them to know." I know that feeling all too well, and man that fucking sucks to lie to the people you love. Even though dope makes that mask, it forms that shield against the ailments of reality,even though dope can seem to cure all...i still hurt when i lie to get high, I still hurt when iperform as a professional conman and junkie tothe ones i know i love, despite my dope-pinned-mask, i still hurt from the guilt of using. ButI still use, a wheel, a circle cycle, of pleasure to guilt to rationalizing to not knowing what the fuck your going to do tomarrow when you wake up and have to face another day....its a cycle and for most of us witha dopemonkey upon our shoulders, it goes something like that...Elio, you are not sick, or do you make me afraid to learn more about the person you are, your just like the rest of us, and as humans we are allsusceptible to human fallibility...and for the people such as ourselves who have seen this side of life, its hard to let go of, and its hard to hold on to, and it takes away a person bit by bit, til there is nothing left but an empty shell, how about neither one of us becomes that empty shell, what do you say Elio? til then, take care my friend...apra

VincentVan

20-02-2005, 16:40

Funny how to find someone who feels the way I do , I must look beyond an ocean. Well hidden ,behind several layers of armours of anonimity, I still seem to be able to relate to another human being. I´m really fuckin surprised. Answering to your questions now:- American literature, for me , beside being a welcome source of income in times of need ,is both a passion and an inspiration. I´m firmly convinced that the only creative writing worth reading ,in the past 20 years or so , has come from the Americas. Maybe Rumsfield is right after all. This continent is too old.

Because of my job I´ve beenable to meet some well known Yankee writers. Some are selfish pricks. But some , besides being master craftsmen, are very intresting people too. I´m thinking of one I have ben in touch with lately. His addiction to alchool and pills is nearly as frightening as mine ( even if I feel mine is more shameful).

He became a millionaire and a celeb (in some circle at least), but he looks and sounds so miserable , that even I feel forced to do something for his self exteem. He seems to have entered a kind of Faustian pact that takes him to ever higher crests and lower depths. In some of these depths he lost his family and life.Built another , and lost it again. I don´tknow how many times. He is a lot older than I am, but when I think about him I can´t help seeing my own´s life route, winding down the same well troddenpath. And it scares the shit out of me. Still , obviously not enough to steer into safer waters.

Don´t live me my friends . Not now. What could I do without you? Yes , I know what , but for how long , before the way home will be lost forever? My monkey is sitting in the car waiting for me. She wants to go for a ride. Will I be able to let her wait?

"... - Made up your mind where you´re going when you move out of here?- the man said at last. - Because move you must, some time, you know..." Dylan Thomas. "Adventures in the skin trade"

Apradavra

20-02-2005, 18:16

VincentVan,

For one i must stop calling you by your old "screenname", apologies for that, and for another, i just wanted to say your knowledge of literature, both old and new, british to american,isextremely impressive.You are a very cultured and intelligentperson. You must stop torturing yourself through the self-hate and throwing labels onto yourself. Yes, weall judge ourselves, and evaluate the person we are, aspeopleit seems wehave to look in the mirror and tell ourselves who weare, because thatis who we then project to the world. Vincent, (I hopethats the name you would like to be calledby)you can only make yourself feel worse about the situation by treating yourself so...i know how horrible it feels to have to do some of the things people do to stay high, the lying, the masks, the way you feel you are not the person people think you are-- this all hurts. But you are an intelligent person, across an ocean and internet you appear as someone who has a family whom he loves, and loves him in return. However you stated yourself how good of an actor and liar you could be...and i dosee why you would lie about the person you are on the internet, because here you a person can be whoever they want, or they can be themselves and see what people have to say without having to worry about face to face rejection or betrayal.... I, however,dont think you are lying about who you are on this forum, your being the real person you are, leaving the lies and masks put away....and your not a bad person, your a man with an addiction--to put it bluntly. And its gonna be hard to give this shit up, im sayin that for you, andfor myself,fromboth of ourexperiences now, but to be as intelligent as you (we?)are, i think this dope monkey on our backs, can be rid of, its just one of the hardest things i have ever tried to rid myself of.....sorry about my ramble...take care

MrFinger

20-02-2005, 20:27

That makes sense about not going back and re-reading an old written book. There is more of a sense of finality there, once the book is finished the show is over. Any given song I write I may end up performing it 5 or 6 nights a week for years.
Next time I am at a record store I will have to check those out, do you think Vaya Con Dios(sorry for my earlier butchery) has made it to US shelves? Or will I have to steal it off the internet? It looks like Spain has been added to my overseas agenda, Spain seems fun. I would love to check out France, trying to set up (Rouen, Angers, Toulouse, St. Etienne and Dijon). Paul Verlaine is the poet that hung out with Arthur Rimbaud, correct?
Are there concert venues in Africa? It seems to be taboo on the circuit. I am really looking forward to traveling, this never would have happened if I didn’t get my act together. I definitely drink more now that I have been getting clean from the opiates… but being a drunk and a musician seem to go hand and hand.
If you ever plan to visit NYC let me know and I can fill you in on a whole bunch of interesting things to check out, literary historical sites, things no tour would ever come close to showing.
How’s it going anyways? I hope all is well. Translating works must be tricky, there must be some difficult decisions to make at times. Most of the authors I read that have been translated in to English have several different translations… and you’d pretty much have to learn the language for yourself to tell which one is the most truthful. You don’t have to lie out here, no one is judging you, what the heck, lie if you want, no one is judging you,

MF

VincentVan

21-02-2005, 03:45

LOL http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/smileys/smiley36.gif The idea of someone ,so truly fucked up, that lies even to people who has never seen and probably never will, and that are tryng to help him, managed to make me lough even in my present state. I´m gonna use it in my "The shallowest man on earth" , if ever I will write it. Woody Allen could make a great movie out of such a character. Or Danny de Vito maybe. I remember a movie where DdV plays a very shallow guy whose wife has been kindnapped and where the kindnappers turn out to be much more decent folks than either him or the police. The movie was stupid to the extream, but his performance was masterly.

I´m thinking of opening a new topic called "The shallowest person I ever met", where people could post their portraits of the most selfish assholes they ever run into. We , who have been wheelin´and dealin´, hassleing , fallin´and risin´ on the scene , for years ; I´m sure got to meet all the top runners. And just to think about that lonely lier who can´t be honest even to his net pals or to his therapist put me in a happier mood. Maybe there really exist people more egoist than I. You see , guys, some days ago I had a kind of illumination, an epiphany really. I was writing a posting somewhere in the forum, and I suddenly realized what I was doing hanging around here : Psycotherapy! This is psycotherapy on the cheap.

I have never been to a shrink , so it took me some days to figure it out. It´s not that I´m too tied assed to go and see a pro, but this is not America guys, where the first two numbers on everyone´s cell phone memory are the shrink´s and the stock broker´s. Where folks start conversations by saying: "My therapist said..." A guy I know lost custody of his kids, not because he was seeing a shrink, but because he had in his past. And because his wife was a bitch, of course. Well , you have put me in " A New York state of mind". I´m gonna play Lou Reed´s " A perfect day" , and take my pills.

Now. MF. Concert venues in Africa ? Yes. Plenty. Lots of great, starving artists all over the place.If you like that kind of music obviously . Almost like Cuba. Uops, I guess, for you, Cuba it´s off the map uh? Anyway this year Bob Marley´s anniversary is beingcelebrated in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), where the world´s biggest rasta community lives, and where their god "Jah" is buried. If you wanna be introduced to african music you should start with Paul Simon´s ( Yes, Garfunkel´s friend ) album "Graceland", made with some of the best african artists around.

Yes , Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine, Theophile Gauthier, Charles Baudelaire ,Alphonse Karr (and others less intresting )were a bunch of absinthe drinking, opium eating and hashish smoking buddies known as the "decadent" poets. Members of the "decadentist" literary movement , that , outside France , so much influence had (among others ) onOscar Wilde and De Quincey author of "confessions of an opium eater". Baudelaire , by the way, was the french translator of Edgard Allan Poe andDe Quincey. In his masterwork "Les fleurs du mal" (Flowers of evil), you´ll find many poems about opium, hashish , and the so called "artificial paradises" , an expression he actually coined. Maybe later, if I dont fall asleep I´ll quote some for you.

If you are going to Spain (go in the summer), you must include the islands in your tour. Ibiza & Formentera, and also the Canary Is. , apart for the very turistic Gran Canaria the other islands are well worth a long ,dreamy stay. My first LSD trip was taken in Ibiza. So long ago. If you will hang around this thread I´m gonna give you places to go and adresses to visit for everyone of the EU countries you mentioned. What the hell, I may even give you some phone numbers. Maybe by E-mail.

Apradavra, you are so kind. But do you know what it does to you to be forced torob your baby, your faithful , loving wife, your work, the people who like you, day after day , year after year, of the time,of the emotions,and the resources ( both spiritual & financial), you should devote to them? Never to allow anybody to get too close to you , because you are afraid they they may guess your shameful secret? No secret lover, no hidden past will ever make you feel as bad.

Always carrying with you that horrible, stinking cancer that , from the inside eats away at your flash and soul. Always afraid that somebody , suddenly would smell it and blow away your flimsy cover from the world of real people; living your heartnaked , shivering,bleeding , out in the cold. It kills your spirit Apra.& nbsp;& nbsp;& nbsp;& nbsp;& nbsp; And now at least some of that spirit ,it´s not mine anymore. It belongs to my little daughter. I own it to her. She is so beautiful. So perfect. So pure. So good. She is worth every effort, every painful ,tentative step I´ll take in trying to be a good father.But I´m afraid I´m not good enough. She deserves better than me. I know that. And I can´t bear it.

Well, this is really to long. If you´ll be back to visit me (please) I´ll answer the rest of your inquires. Tomorrow I have to start to teach again. Wear asilly, fake smile and face my students. I´ll try to log on beforeI go, instead of visiting my connection. I really hope I have´nt bored you.

So long. Yours VV

"Et les moins sots, hardis amants de la Démence, - Fuyant le grand troupeau parqué par le Destin, - Et se réfugiant dans l´opium immense."C. Baudelaire "Le Voyage"
(And the least foolish , intrepid lovers of disorder,- Fleeing the heard restrained by destiny, - Take refuge in Opium´s Vastness.-) C. Baudelaire "The Voyage"

MrFinger

21-02-2005, 16:35

Vince,
Baudelaire is one of my favorite poets, particularly the Flowers of Evil. I like a lot of French poets which is a shame because I have always been told that in order capture the full effect, one must be able to read French. Which I may or may not ever learn. I can speak Spanish and Puerto Rican, I haven’t found much need for it in my reading, but it has helped me score some good dope at times… and also perplexed some drug dealers.
I know the Graceland album pretty well, in fact it brings back some good memories of long drives across the country.
I don’t know too much about African music, other than it’s rhythmic influences on other forms, I know a few people who have immigrated from South Africa and other parts, but they seem to listen to American music. Yeah, Cuba would probably be outside of my grasp. It stinks that as an American, one has to wonder if they have a bulls-eye painted on them when they go traveling to certain parts.
While I was going through my last withdrawal episode I read all sorts of things on the internet, from posts to guides, statistics, other people experiences, you name it. Which helped me a lot. It’s a great resource for cheap confidential help, in a do-it-yourself type way…
You can lose your kid because you used to see a psychotherapist? … … … wow. The US seems very open to the idea of mental help, it’s not frowned upon to go see a therapist, there are support groups for just about every kind of malady you can imagine, hotlines to be called… lots of options. For quitting heroin alone there are several varieties of groups for people quitting… artists quitting heroin… white collar business workers quitting heroin… bowlers quitting heroin… middle aged desperate housewives quitting heroin… I don’t know if it is that way in your country.Even if it was, if you are living the double life and being figured out would have costly circumstances, these options aren’t available no matter where you are. For me there has always been two separate groups of people I know, people who use and people who don’t… I’ve always kept the two apart, the people who don’t use, don’t know I use and vice versa. For lots of reasons, some of the people would worry too much about me, it would damage my reputation amongst others and also now that I am being clean it’s easier to stay that way having a group of people who don’t use and don’t know what I’ve been going through… for me that helps a lot.
Having a child can really put your life in perspective. Now there is a being as innocent as this world will allow under your care. Your lives are tied together tighter than anyone else in this world. Just realizing this and acting upon this makes you a far better parent than many addicts I have seen. It sickens me just thinking about what I have seen… mothers nodding out on the train with baby in arms, drug dealers having there children make the deal, fathers cashing in all there food stamps and government aid on drugs while the mother and child are at home starving with out diapers. I could think of a lot of people that would sit well on the "most pathetic people" hall of fame… What would the induction ceremony be? A swift kick in the ass?
Good luck with your teaching, things lack that can be difficult while kicking. Those wretched commitments that can’t be put off… I’ve had to do performances and recordings while sick and it’s hard… I imagine that teaching and performing must share many aspects.
Later,

MF

justin77

21-02-2005, 18:56

Vince you made a reference to robbing your wife and baby of resources such as emotions and finances and i can very much relate to that feeling. I dont have any children yet but my family has suffered greatly for my past and present addictions and it kills me to think about it. If i had only hurt myself it would be nothing. I sometimeswonder what life would be like for my wife had I never touched any drug and it makes me sick.....but she stays with me and loves me nonetheless and for that i owe her more than i could ever repay. I havent been posting in this thread lately cause it sort of makes me feel guilty that i am not putting much effort into recovery now and you are going at it with all you've got.

On a side note, i do envy you vince for living in a country that from what i've heard is much more tolerant of people and their needs. I supposedly live in "the land of the free" but i often question how free i actually am. We dont hesitate to take over other countries and force people to take on our way of life even though it may not fit in with their centuries old customs. We imprison addicts without offering them help or a clean alternative to their "junky" habits. I am an addict and if i truly was "free"i would be able to sleep at night without worrying aboutbeing arrestedand destroying both my life and my wifes. I wish i could pick up and move across the atlantic to holland or some other tolerant country where my ancesters once roamed and enjoyed real freedom.

Hope your day went well with your teachings

Edited by: justin77

VincentVan

22-02-2005, 03:29

My dears
It´s so bloody nice to come here and chat whith you guys. I really don´t understand why I have never done it before. The only other forum I hung around to had been a hacker´s forum closed some years ago. It was when I had just moved to Denmark (this is my wife´s country MF not mine) and I had some time I used to learn to write some code, and to spend talking to those wackos. Once, the chatting turned to drugs, and a finnish guy claimed to have done something so unheard of,and so illegal I´m not sure I can talk about it in here. Anyway I told him to get lost and that I´ll never belive it. Within two days he hacked into my HD, then into my publishers server, got my real name my adress and sent me some of the stuff by ordinary mail in a cut out book. I got so freakin scared that I kept a safe distance from any fora until a few days ago. You´re not like that, uh guys? I hope not because I start to be addicted to you in the way some people get addicted to their shrink. Talking of wich: Here too there is plenty of groups and privates. But I can´t join groups ,as for a private shrink, I dunno, Maybe I would really end up paying somebody to lie to. LOLhttp://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/smileys/smiley36.gif

Last night you really inspired me. I took pages and pages of notes for "The shallowest man on earth" project. I may really and up writing it some time I´m less busy. But it´s not gonna be an autobiography. No fuckin way. I´m far too coward for that. If it will ever come into being it will be a fantasy work.

I´m thinking about a NYC hack, forced to write about european stories he does´nt undestand and he´s not interested about; and european people he either envies, hates or despises. A drunk. A manic depressed , sucidal, pluri-divorced, who lies even to people he does not know and exploits everyone who happens to cross his path. But he doesnt even notices because he thinks everybody else is just like him. It may actually do me some good to work on it. Autopsycotherapy.

MrF It´s great to hear you like Baudelaire. He´s long been one of my favourites, although he really deserves to be red in his language. Nearly everyone of his words are double or triple senses. He just can´t be translated. And this is a professional point of wiew. However if you speak spanish , then , french , italian, and with a bit of effort portuguese too, come very easy. My sister teach some of these languages to Newyorkers. She says most pick them up easily .Specially those with some european background. Of course.

And Justin, don´t talk that way about the land of the free and home of the wackos. When people or collegues do, I always end up defending it. It´s easy to find things to criticize or even to hate in America. America is everything and whatever.

You´ll find the worst and the best , the lowest and the highest , living (mostly) pecefully side by side. I don´t know why I´m telling this to you tho.LOL. (We europeans are all wiseasses. Teaching yanks about America)

Really I must go to bed. Tomorrow morning , at a ridicolous hour , I´ll have to drive downtown (the only real city in this silly country) and choose some photos for my work. Then I´ll have a few hours with just too little to do before teaching. It scares me , because I´m perfectly aware of how week I am. And how strong are the tentacles of my forbidden, disgusting, exciting, dreadful, intoxicating , passionate mistress.

I hope I´ll show some cojones. I´m really not sure. I´ll tell you tomorrow.

What´s happened to Apra? Come back. Let´s talk books a bit more. Do you like south americans? Marquez?, Lorca? the brazilians? or US west coast writers. Was´nt it you quoting Bukowsky? How about a New Yorker: do you like Dos Passos? C´m on ! Come back.

My quote tonight must be something about doubts. Of wich I´m so full at the moment: thinking about what to do in the morrow. To do it or not to do it? Why not , why yes, what if , but then... shiiiiiit.

Let me think.oh yeah. Of course.

"...Next after him went Doubt who was yclad- In a discolour´d cote of straunge disguyse - That at his backe a brode Cappuccio had, - And sleeues dependant Albanese-wyse: - He lookt askew with his mistrustfull eyes - And nicely trode, as thornes lay in his way...."

Edmund Spenser "The Faerie Queene"

justin77

22-02-2005, 19:01

man i took 5 10 mg hydro's and 2 350mg soma's and i'm feeling quite nice. i dont have a H hookup(i have all other hookups butH and it would be quite nice if i did). i think the feeling i have right now must be as close as i'm gonna get to it without the real deal though. why am i telling you this? i guess i just have nothing else to do. i'm in transition between jobs. TheSmiths from UK are a damn good band to listen to while jellin. My wife is off at work teaching at an elementary school and i'm just passing time..................

MrFinger

22-02-2005, 20:22

Wow, someone hacked your system and all of that because of some dispute on a forum? I can’t speak for everyone here, but I know that even if I had the know how to do such things, I certainly would not do it over a dispute on a forum. If people hacked each other for every dispute on a forum there would be a world wide hacking epidemic. I guess that proves that sitting in front of a computer too long really can drive you insane.
I hope to find the time to learn French, it would be nice to get to the real truth of what I am reading… and as a bonus it seems to work well on the ladies.
I like your idea for your book. Writing can really help get out of a bad place. I’ve heard of many famous authors writing themselves out of a bad state. Also, a lot of people write pretty good material when dealing with such a painful and traumatic event.
When you have commitments to uphold it is so hard to stop using, it’s a really sad thing when your addiction gets to the point where nobody notices when you are on it, but everybody notices when you aren’t. It’s what makes a functional junky I guess. I hope you have the ability to water down your commitments so that extra pressure doesn’t nudge you back… if you can get there it’s worth it. Not having to worry about being dope sick is worth any price to me.
Speak of Charles Bukowski, I happen to be reading Hot Water Music right now… It’s pretty good. I’m slowly making my way through his enormous collection, so far I think South of No North is my favorite, his stuff is a pretty fast read for me. What a strange character he was. Dos Pasos’ Manhattan Transfer is a must read in my books. I’m thinking about reading The Life of Pi by Yann Martell anybody read this yet?
The Smiths are pretty cool… I like the Morrissey album with Lifeguard Sleeping, Girl Drowning on it. I think I have spotted Vaya Con Dios and am going in for the kill. Spirit still evades my tracking skills, Spirit of ’76… is that referring to the American independence? Or Al Teague’s Land Speed Racer? Probably the earlier, but as a Land Speed Record fan I can’t help but wonder… I personally dug Art Arfons more than Al T. though.
Well I gotta end this. Vango, if your work is making getting clean hard maybe you should try to get some time off. I know you’ve probably tried this approach millions of times, never give up, take advantage of every little thing you can,

MF

VincentVan

23-02-2005, 13:29

My dears
I´m simply too devastated, too dead inside, too full of despise for myself , to write something that would force me to think about how I feel. To top it off I also crashed the car into a truck. Thanks God for KASKO insurances. Be back guys ,please. As soon as I´ll be able to collect some forces, I´ll tell you more and answer to all your questions. I´m sorry. I´m so sorry.

Your VV.

"No tongue : all eyes: be silent." ( Shakespeare. "The Tempest .)

MrFinger

23-02-2005, 19:52

Damn… things sound like they are getting pretty intense by you. An accident involving a truck? That sucks… Are you ok? No need for apologies. Unfortunately, don’t have much time to write now. I’ll try again later,

MF

Things like this seem to haunt. Like skeletons, pushing in full force, trying to catch up with you. Rubbing it in your face. They are real quick, they will take everything they can. In the end, there are certain things that will always be, that can not be taken. Underneath all of that despair, down to your core.

VincentVan

25-02-2005, 02:23

To whomever it may concern.
I´m back I´m back in more than one sense. Back to my Luky Strikes infected office ( I´m really not french enough to call it a studio without riskingto breakinto a lough.). Back to where I have been countless times before, in trying chasing my damnation away . I´m also back from a short assignment in a neighbouring scandinavian country ( the distance that would take you to the capital of your state brings me across the territories of at least two nations) .

I took my wife with me. Spent 24 hours toghether, just the two of us. We left our little trasured descendent to her granny and off we went. I´m so happy we did it. It was the right thing to do. It was quite a while since I hadseen her so happy.

Sometimes she still looks like child , she can still smile and be happy for life´s little things; and if , at times, she looks pensive or blue, a word , an expression or just a little gesture are always enough to bring that childish light back into her eyes. I wish I would be like her. I love her. I wish I would be better for her. I wish so many things. The job was ( of all things)about overfishing in the North Atlantic. Cods specially. I fuckin`hate cod.I´ m not sure it would be such a bad thing should they finally disappear. (horrible thing to say). The fotografer I took withme was a young guy from New Zealand, very shy and very kind. He took more pictures of my wife than of cods and fishermen and he just e-mailed some to me. She ´s very pretty. "Crappy light for landscapes" He kept on saying. Actually he used also another word for crappy; I can´t remember it now, but he told me is a newzealander word that describes the balls of shit stuck ona sheep´s wool. New Zealand contribution to the english language.
" Of course it can be fixed!" The mechanic said when he saw my devastated car hanging from the towtruck. He walked around it a bit and I could sense that he was thinking that this was going to be how he would pay for his greek holidaynext summer. "How did it happen?" he asked. I was dreading the question.&nb sp; " It was very icy. I just could´nt stop." But I guess it sounded more like "mind your fucking business" , because he did´nt say a word more. Good. I´could`nt very well say: " You know , my eyes suddenly closed, while driving to work, and when I could open them again, the dam`d thing was spread all over the big , hard ass of giant truck." Could I? No; I´m forced to lie even to semiliterate mechanics. What should my daughter think? Hell , what should anybody think.

I´m still alive anyway. The most unworthy always survive. It´s one of the basic laws of our society. The car dealer loaned me another car until mine is ready to be destroyed again. It´s almost like mine. Newer. Better</LABEL> actually, because mine is a convertible and to drive around with a rag top in this scandinavian weather is like going about Alaska wearing flip flops. Great in the spring but a bit out of place right now. I have always been a bit out of place, come to think of it. A stranger. I was born a stranger. Two strangers married and in a foreign land a new stranger was born. And it was me. Enough. I don´t want pity, just a bit of understanding for fuck´s sake.

Listen to this. Last time I visited my supplier of dreams and poisons,a little before I crashed into the truck, I preposterously tried to pick a fight , or at least a heated argument with him, until he finally told me that I was out of my mind ( I was), and to get lost. I thought this would keep me away from that adress for a while. Well, a few minutes later he rang me back sayng he was sorry.He actually said that I was right and that he never meant to be rude to me. I still can´t belive it. The guy is far more intelligent than I ever thought. Or an excellent businessman , at the very least. A short time later I lost consciousness and the accident happened. Somehow H is always involved with everything that happens to me . Bad things but maybe some good too. Or am I just deluding myself again?

We´ll have to talk about this some other time guys,´cause I have something to finish to read and a lot of sleep to catch up.

I hope you ` ll be back soon and tell me something of your own life. I start to think I´m the only real misfit even in this forum.

I wish you all the good you have done for me. Your VV

"Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, - Who never to himself hath said, - This is my own, my native land! - Whose hearth hath ne´er within him burn´d - As home his footsteps he hath turn´d - From wandering on a foreign strand ?-

Sir Walter Scott.

VincentVan

26-02-2005, 15:24

No replies. No comments. Silence. I´ll wait for some sign of life before writing other postings. I´ll be sorry to see this place die, but maybe it´s for the best. More deafening silence.

"...Indians ,indians , what did you die for? Indians say nothing at all." (Jim Morrison)

Apradavra

01-03-2005, 19:12

Man oh man Vincent,

From your second to last post it seems life has been throwing some curve balls at you. You got in a fight with your dealer? Wow, pretty fucking ingenious on your part i must say, devilishly ingenious on hispart for calling and apologizing. You said maybe some good comes from H also. Well, I think the good and bad will come no matter what, the H can be an important deciding/determining factor, but life is life is life, and there will always be some bad and some good, no matter where H is in the spiderweb of one's life. The way you describe the time you spent with your wife, the way you describe your child in previous post, your writing shows your admiration and love for the women in your life. I know i am far from truly knowing you, far across the world, but vincent, you need to stop being so hard on yourself. I know what it feels like to despise who are you. It sucks. It comes with the H, it will go away. You have people in your life who you make happy, who love you, if you were as lowly as you describe yourself, your beautiful wife would not have fallen in love and followed you around the globe for year after if you did not have something which set you apart. If you keep talling yourself your a bad person, you will belive it, if not already,but the selflabeling, although necassary on a sociological level, doing such harmfully isnt necassary while ending a long past with a mean addiction. I know i sound like an ignorant therapist, just be nicer to yourself, your not a bad person. Your knowledge of literature is fucking amazing. Do you have a book of quote or the knowledge of an informative intelligent school teacher, I'm pretty sure i know...http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/smileys/smiley1.gif

I just wanted to say hello, and also...is pot legal in Denmark? (just wondering)

Take care, my life has been hectic as all hell, ill save that for another post.

apradavra

VincentVan

02-03-2005, 04:13

My dears Apradavra, Justin77, Mrfinger and whomever may be reading these words

every time I come back to our virtual meeting point and read your comments and observations I suddenly relax, start to think beyond my masks, and become again able to talk with sincerity, without second goals and without the need to hide myself from the listener. The way it should be between friends. I´m sorry I´m not able to share with you the J&B, the ashtray and to look at you in the eyes, but then , of course , I probably woud´nt be able to talk to you in same way. Anyway I´m happy you are back. Very happy.

Hey , have you noticed how many folks lurk around this place? Jeez, it ´s one of the most visited topics in the opiate section. I really wonder who these hundreds of people may be. Who are you folks? What do you think? Where do you live? Who do you love? Whatis it thatmakes you sad, happy, pensive, scared? What is it that makes you run? Or tick, or dream? If you´ll tell us I can promise you would´nt be judged; just listened to and maybe understood. That´s what happened to me.

Dear Apra ,( or Justin, MrF, or whomever else ), I wish you would tell me a bit more about your lives and thoughts, so that I may be able to do some scratching too. I think mutual scratching would turn out to be a positive thing for all of us. After all that´s what this place was meant to be for in the first place. Belive it or not, but my students always turn to me in times of trouble. They say that they feel they can talk to me without fearing of being judged or betrayed. " You are not like the other professors" some said. I smiled and inside me I thought " You fuckin´ bet!".

Yeah , the school. The reason I have been away from here lately, is because the school started again. When I opened this place it had been closed for a week for some stupid scandinavian holiday, regaling me with 4 to 6 hours more of free time a day. That was the main reason why I thought that it would have been the ideal time to get rid of my obscene vice. Well, you know how it ended. Fuck.

Really Apra, your words are extremely sweet and kind, but I can´t find any excuses for my disgusting weakness; not any I can actually belive in anyway. I have been more or less stoned 24 hours a day Sunday and Monday. Today , obviously, I felt horrible. I was in such a state that I could´nt finish an article I had to send this morning about scandinavia and the EU constitution. Can anybody think about anything nearly as boring? Anyway I had to record it on a dictaphone and pay a typist to write it down. My fingers were shaking. My eyes burned, I had strange pains in strange places and just to exist felt like torture. I downed5 1/2 pills of methadone (27,5 mg) , and an hour later another 4 1/2 (22,5 mg) but I could have swallowed the all fucking bottle. I looked in the mirror , despised myself, shaved and went to teach.

To teach. Really is ironic. What can anybody ever learn from a failure like myself ? I feel I can be useful , at best, as a warning story but these young intelligent , beautiful kids, really value my opinions and my teachings. It never cease to amaze me. I feel like I´m cheating them too. And they really do not deserve it.

Yes , I can quote Shakespeare, Spenser, and Wilde. Emerson or Thoreau. Montesquieu, Voltaire, Baudelaire ; Cervantes and Lorcaor Camoens and Pessoa. And talk at legth of Dante and Petrarca, and many more , all of them in their original language. It tends to impress people when you quote in german Kant, Hegel or Shopenaueror Nietzche; when you know your Plato from Aristoteles and you´re able do delve in their influences on the philosophers of the middle ages or in the history of the art of Renaissance. Or more prosaically when you can adress intheir own languages both the poor arab immigrant who washes your car and the italian visiting professor. I know. I´m not so stupid not to realize that I know a few things. But this is not the point. The point is what you use these things for. To impress folks? to get book contracts? to cheat your students into beliving you are a good person ? What? I would like that people would appreciate me, or maybe despise me, not for the things I know, or for what I have published, or for what I have done in the past, but for what I am now.

Right now. And i know right now I´m worth shit. Yesterday I talked to that american writer i told you about. In the next posting I´ll tell you about. He divorced again. He´s nearly as fucked up as I am but he is much much richer. I always wondered why if you are an american writer you get payed ten times as much than if you write in Europe. I find it annoying.

Oh, hash & cannabis in DK are not strictly legal but they are tolerated: if you carry stuff for your own use nobody bothers you. If the stash is more voluminous you will get a ticket of about 50 $, If you carry Kilos you may end up in the slammer for a few weeks. However in Copenhagen ( the beautiful capital of this fair country) there is the famous comunity of Christiania : A part of town, with his own restaurants, workshops, concert halls, houses etc. Where hash is freely sold & bought ( and smoked).The main road of the area is an open market where you can find at any time dozens of different kinds of smoking stuff, and often something more too.

Now I really must go to bed, or I will not be able to function tomorrow.

See you soon. l ´ll wait for some replies before posting again. I start to get the feeling I talk to myself.

And You invisible listeners , make yourself be heard.

So long

VV

Apradavra

02-03-2005, 04:32

Good to hear from you Vincent,

I will share many stories in the days to come, I tend to write my best while killing an old habit. I am glad all is well for you as of now, the done your on is a pretty small dose, same here, i dont feel great, but Im not dying yet. I sure wish some of my professors had the insight which can only be obtained through the life and experiences people such as us and many others have known daily; for decades.

Good night my friend, good luck in your classes tomarrow and for the rest of your school week, we shall speak soon.

Apradavra

Apradavra

02-03-2005, 04:33

And many apologies for my grammatical errors....http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/smileys/smiley4.gif

later everyone,

apradavra

Apradavra

02-03-2005, 04:56

One more thing and this will be my last post. (for nowhttp://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/smileys/smiley1.gif)

Dear vincent,

I dont know you, but i do admire you, and not for your knowledge of great literature, and not forthe unique ability to capture the gortesque essence of being an opiate addict, but because you seem very real. Down to earth, in cyberspace where one can be whatever they please. Remember my comment about how people can be whomever they choose, this is thread is like acyber home for what i can't let out in my real home;where I am fake to my roommates.And i beleive you are a person with good intentions, you're not out to harm people, you know right and wrong vincent, H does not. sorry about my many post, again, take care,

apradavra

<B style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">[/I][/B]

<I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"> "If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people."
[/I] --V. Woolfe<B style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><?:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />[/B]

MrFinger

02-03-2005, 16:18

Hello,
So I just got back from being on the road for a bit. Basically one big mish-mash of shows, benzos, beer, port and a wild blur of socialization. Looking back at the crooked photo's on my camera, there is much that I don't remember of the trip. Anyways, every muscle in my body has been exhausted beyond belief and I am hung-over to the point where each tap on this foreign nicotine stained keyboard sends spikes through my eye sockets… it's very sight sends me to the bathroom. I will write more later when my head is level and I am at my apartment. I think I am in Williamsburg now.. or somewhere in Brooklyn anyways... close enough to home...

MF

justin77

02-03-2005, 16:38

hey yall, just wanted to stop in and say hey. my life has become an internet poker fiasco. addicted to say the least. i have found that hydro and soma combined give an undescribable pleasure that i know i will never give up. sad to say the least. i spend some time looking for jobs on the www but my bachelor of science degree in finance is good for just about nothing. surely my wife is close to shooting me in my sleep. but then again i dont think an angel could do such a thing. i got a decent sized check in the mail from a trust my grandfather set up 70 years ago which will help achieve greater laziness. i slipped up and smoked crack last week for the first time in i dont know when. a guy came buy to pick up some pills and he had some crack he wanted to barter. i couldnt resist. my wife was furious. but again she forgave me and blamedit on my "genetic disease" and we moved on. pills are my life, what a feeling.

MrFinger

03-03-2005, 03:30

Ok, I'm back and no longer in the hung-over hell, infact maybe a little bit tipsy. I believe Vince asked to hear a little bit more about our lives and problems. Well, as far as staying off the opiates go, my biggest problem is that I encounter opiates everywhere I go. If someone looked in from the outside they may not believe what they see. I am at war. Always finding myself in the position where people are just giving me drugs, expecting nothing in return. Just, "Here MrFinger have some drugs...". To better describe how weird the situation is let me note this fictious situation:

<knock knock knock>
<A opens door>
A:Hello?
B:Can you help take the garbage out.
A:Sure no problem. I meant to do it anyways, but lost track of time.
B:Great, we could really use the help.
<A helps move the buildings trash to the proper location>
B:Thanks alot, here's 50mg methadone, 2 ativans, and 4 orange oxycodone for your troubles.

<A sighs, goes home, calls C up, gives free drugs away...>

Most people would be envious of A. A has hardly left the building and got free drugs. But, I can't help but fear for A. Because I know A well. A is surrounded. A is very stubborn, but surrounded. Will A crack someday?

MrFinger

VincentVan

03-03-2005, 03:53

It´s so good. So great. So ...right to find all of us on this corner of the web to care about lives of friends we had never met. Knowing we can´t be betrayed and therefore unafraid of the sudden nakedeness of this soul that had been hidden forso long. Here I am. This glass of scotch is quickly melting away the last shreads of my heavy carapace, and here I am, the way I should always be. It´s so good to be among friends.

Welcome home MrFinger. I hope NY will be waiting for youin her best attire and make your homecoming as pleasant as it could possibly be. We all deserve a hero´s welcome, we warriors of the mind. Only we may ever know what we have been through. You did´nt tell us tho, are you happy to see again these familiar metropolitan streets or would you rather have avoided their sight, their smell and feel a bit longer? Is NY good to you? Well, I hope so. I don´t know her very much. And I know shecan be, and she has been good to people. However , every time I go away from her, from one of her majestic bridges, or carried away on the wings of a jet airplaine, I never fail to get a feeling of relief. Just like when you know that you managed to avoid some sort of danger. I look at the imposing silhuettes of the high rises fast disappearing underneath and I always think " well , once again I made it out of there" Dont misunderstand me :I really enjoy my NYadventures (most of the times) but one of the best kiks I get out of that city is the feeling that I´m able to leave it, one more time in one piece. What does a New Yorker think about that? I guess humans get used to anything, big apple included. My sister love it, for exemple, but I really can´t understand why.

Dear justin77, you have been describing some situation that I know all to well. I know exactly how it feels to know that the person that should brake ahammer on your head is going to forgive you again. And again.And to wonder whythe hell she does it. And never being able to find a logical answer.

To decide to change your lifestile ( at least for a while) and then find in the mailbox the unexpected check from some magazine or publisher you had forgotten all about, and put off the tough choices for some short time that then tends to become longer and longer until you can´t remember why on earth you thought about to change at all, or if indeed you ever did. I never tried to smoke crack. I sniffed quite a bit of cocaine ,specially in Cuba and Jamaica because everybody was sayng that it was soooo good. Yes , it was; but not all that different from that I had been buying in Milan (Italy) some months before. Is crack very different from the snorting of the powder? Is it as addictive as they say?

Apradavra , I´m ready to do my part of scratching whenever you will require it. I´m not sure I´ll ever manage to be as conforting as you have been with me but I´ ll do my best. Anytime my friend. Anytime. If you don´t considerme too nosy I would really like to know what you are writing about at the moment. Fiction? Jurnalisnm? You said you write poetry, do you still do it? If you are intrested I have nothing against telling you what I am working on at the moment. Even if most of my time in the last years has been taken by mercenary work, I still manage to carry on some of my own projects. Very different stuff, according to the different periods that my life and my addiction go trough. "Like they are written by very different people" as my publisher said. Yes, they are written by different people. People who just happen to have the same face and the same name. And that are all me.

For the last two weeks ( or is it more?) we have been in the throes of the wildest snow storm I have ever seen in all the years I have spent in scandinavia. It has been snowing and blowing and freezing for far longer then I feel ready to bear, and this weather has started to influence my mood, my actions and my existence far more than is reasonableor healthy. I look out of my window and under the leaden, unchanging sky, I look at the shining cristals of snow twirling and drifting towards the frozen beach. The familiar blue expanse of the Baltic sea, that so often had been smiling at me, has suddenly turned reproachful and unforgiving. It took on the colour of old iron and the hardness of it as well. The light fights it´s way through the thick shroud of diamonds and lead and get diffused in an unchanging dawn without shadows or colours that lasts until another frozen night comes to swallow it and to supplant it with the cold sparks of distant, indifferent stars . You see them reflected on the black sea, or on the candid snow and you know how bitter and biting the cold must be beyond the windowpanes. What´sgoing on? I long for the warm rays of the sun to come back and melt away the ice that has enveloped my world and my spirit. I even long for some rain , for anything but this unmitigated vision of hell.

But this is the day of thelongest dawn. When the wolf abandons it´s lair and the crow is master of the skies. When no waters can quench the thirst and the spirit, unsated, wanders aimelessly to seek relief. This is the day of the eternal twighlight, whenthe bitter wind has slayed thedelicate hues of thepast and the memories of a kinder, fairer age have faded from the hearts of the peoples. The day of the endless cold ; that from the northern airs has seeped into the heart and from there into the soul, chasing away from the eyes the warmththat had been found there in bygone times. Days of bitter moons, of biting sunrises. Along a frozen river of these unforgiving landscapes my sick body may finally lie and the mind find numbness, abandon and yes, finally, peace.

I´m sorry guys . I got carried away. Methadone and scotch if carefully blended with the right music, can have intresting effects it seems. I hope you got what I meant to say. How I feel at the moment. How about you? I told my story now, I ´ll wait for yours.

"...Then he said to Sherazade: -Sister, for the sake of Allah, tell us a story that will help pass the night since we all know that sleep will not come to give us relief...-" (A Thousand and One Tales of the Arabian Nights)

Your friend

VV

purplehaze

03-03-2005, 06:10

Well in my opinion quiting is the hardest thing to do on anything, but drug users are the best poetic people u will ever meet they know the meaning of pleasure and pain and can express every word with great detail and one of the hardest things to do is quit but just think that there isnt no more, ive only tryed this once, when trying to quit smoking weed i told myself well there is no more everybody is out there is no more plants on the earth so im not missing anything and i obvioded meeting anybody that had done it intill i acheived my goal so i could pass a drug test for a job and did they hire me, no, so screw it ima keep on toking lol gl man

MrFinger

03-03-2005, 06:24

Coming Home To New York,
I will always embrace my return. Where at one moment you can be at a table of friends and another be a foreigner stumbling for familiararity. It's a gigantic crossroads. I can understand what you mean when you talk of the comfort of leaving the NYC area. I feel similar when leaving Cleveland,OH, Chicago,IL, San Fransisco,CA, New Orleans, LA, Detroit, MI or anywhere really. But at the same time, I like being able to dissapear in to the city, to feel almost like a ghost, invisible. To know I have a comfortable apartment to dwell... dwell like a vampire in his coffin, able to resist temptation... even when surrounded by fresh blood. I guess that dwelling could be placed anywhere, now it is NY. And what you walk out into each day can be completely different from the last here. I guess the mystery comforts me. The way the ups and downs are all amplified here, it's so dramatic. Being somewhat of a performer I am drawn to the drama. I feed on the awkwardness. The discomfort comforts me. Everywhere has it's risks, it's pitfalls, death is inevitable, so why fear it. What dangers in the NYC are you afraid of? How does it differ from the other cities you've visited? How do you feel returning to your home?

MrFinger
"At first I thought I would succumb, but I had a strong tower to lean upon, my wife, a woman of infinite tact and wisest counsel." Washington RoeblingEdited by: MrFinger

Apradavra

03-03-2005, 16:02

Mr Finger,

"I feel similar when leaving Cleveland,OH, Chicago,IL, San Fransisco,CA, New Orleans, LA, Detroit, MI or anywhere really. But at the same time, I like being able to dissapear in to the city, to feel almost like a ghost, invisible." wow, i can truly understand this feeling of coming into Any American City, I have travled this United States from sandy shores along the great Pacificto the tall dirty cities of the choppy Atlantic, just to see what was going on. The ambiguity of city life is great!!! Whats around the next corner? Whos lurking where? So many questions, so many answers....

Vincent,

I have little experience with foreign cities and lands. Your stories captivate me. I am on my second day clean, and my last binge was pretty fucking mean, i would begin with four(4) 40mg oxys, two(2) 60mg. mscontins, that kept me til noon, when i repeated again. I did this for a good while, well, as long as i have been gone at least. I am using methadone to ease any pain, i feel like i deserve it though,my pain, Im on 20mg,s in the morning, and Im taperinrather quickly, if it hurts, maybe I shall learn something..... Which is doubtful considering my occupation... you wanted to hear of my life, well, heres what ill tell as of now. My occupation? What jobwould cause physical pain?...Well, I'm an APP (Association of Professional Piercers)certified Professional Body Piercerworking ina beautiful college community while finishing my double Major at a state University. Im double majoring, English/Writing, and Secondary Ed. I have a minor in Sociology, while further studying Social Psych. I have helped a local National poet publish his last book, which is dedicated to me, he told me now that i helped him with his last, it would only be fair for myself to allow him to help with my first....I hope it doesnt detere anyone that I may be one of "them" to you guys (the guy with the tattoos and dreadlocks, he may do drugs...http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/smileys/smiley5.gif...that would suck, i just say this becausefrom what i read, i know you present a verypresentable appearance vincent (a mask?),but i do have stretched earlobes, heavy polynesian tattoo work, (all under my clothes, i have to teach someday...http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/smileys/smiley2.gif) as well as numerous bodypiercings. I am well liked in my community, I give Poetry readings along with Professors from the University every week, the room seats 400 people, and last week it was spilling out the door. no more seats!!! (And i was fucking loaded, like a real asshole, my reading wentgreat, i just feel though i cheated my self.)To go in front of all those people, you cant see them because of how the light shines and blinds you, but you can feel them. And its better than any shot i have ever taken, better than sex in some ways, to let it all go, and then to be applauded and admired for something one loves. Its just feels right, so right.... By appearing as i do, which i have been into "alternitve" lifestyles since my early teens, many people see my earlobe spools, or when I go shirtless to a beach people see my many hours of tattoo work, (all very tasteful, and well done, I actually even won for my arm piece $300 at a tattoo convention which had a contest for the best peice, alot of people were there, left $300 richer...it was good times) and they must assume I am either a deviant criminal, or drug addict. I guess since I am a simple drug user who breaks no other laws, it must mean i am a criminal as well....http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/smileys/smiley5.gifEither wayi do get alot of pre-disposed notions on the person I am before people meet me, of the many friends and aquantences I have, maybe 10 know of my addcition, my beautiful girlfriend of many years is just finding out, because I am telling her....truth is best.... So i find myself trying harder to prove I am not what people think, it gives me drive. The dope did help me deal with any insecurities, it gave me the courage to smile at the old woman eyeballing my earlobes or other piercings. Im afraid I will begin to tell people to "fuck off" now because without dope, this world is alot fucking meaner, i am sure noticing the menacing looks much more than while using, and IVE ONLY been off two days...sheesh guys..thank you allfor listening. Now that my "junk cells are dying"as burroughs would say, my ability to communicate with the written (typed?)word is soaring, i have many more stories to tell, just ask my friends,

thank you all for listening,

Apradavra

"Think where a man's glory

most begins and ends...

and say that I had such friends..."

Edited by: Apradavra

MrFinger

04-03-2005, 04:36

Hey Apra,
Glad to hear you are making the effort. It's worth it. Don't take the feelings and anxieties you are having while going through withdrawal too seriously. Opiates opened me up a bit to the world too, I used to be a hermit, and thought everybody was looking at me negatively. While using opiates I realized that this wasn't so. You are going to naturally feel shitty about yourself while withdrawaling(is that a word?). Depression, anxiety and high tension are going to make you exta sensitive to every little thing, every little look... it's like your body is learning to feel again, it's used to trying to feel through a wall of opiates, so it's gonna hurt at first. If you had become more open and outgoing because of your usage, you will probably not revert back to your original ways, whether you were aided by drugs or not, you have learned something. Tatoos and piercings can be an awesome projection of your person. Don't worry about those old ladies, they were probably just jealous that they weren't younger and couldn't try to get with you. Get off the shit, you will be more amazing without it. Be stubborn, break the stereo-types.
Speaking of tatoo's, I've been thinking of getting one or two to cover up some scars, one to cover my shooting arm, the other to cover a scar from a knife fight I got in with my dad when I was a kid. I can never seem to settle on something that I think I can live with for the rest of my life... so I live with these lines. How long does it take before you stop noticing your own tatoo's? How long does it take for them to feel like part of you? These scars always seem foreign.
Vince, how's it going with you? I hope you haven't cast full ambandonment to your efforts. I'm looking forward to reading the book you are going to write. I gotta say, it's strange that you share the same taste in cigarettes as myself. No one I know likes Luckies. Are they more popular where you are, or are you just a conosour(sp?) of fine toasted tabacoo(sp?) like myself? Most people I know smoke Newports... yuck.
This has gotta be the first two nights in a row where I've been able to just relax, stay home and not worry about anything. Just drink port, hang out with my girl and watch movies... good times indeed. I gotta go watch Chinatown now.
MF