CLOSE SHAVE

Hello, and thanks for dropping by.  You might know, the first 22 posts of this blog are the text of my book, 'How To Become A Crack Addict', which you can read here, or buy as an ebook or kindle on amazon, if you're into that kind of thing.  From then on, this blog is the frequent musings of myself, Benjamin of Turnham Green, with pictures and songs thrown in, as a free treat.  So, here is today's treat...

CLOSE SHAVE

Even a year free from the tawdry presence of crack in my life, I am still eminently capable of cornering myself into desperate states that leave me exposed to the old preoccupations and temptations.  I don't mean this to be a doom-laden prophesy for those still enmeshed, because I wouldn't exchange now for then; but I guess it's worth noting, for myself, and maybe others, that things come and go in waves, and lack of focus can lead one blurrily into dangerous places.  And here is an example...

Yesterday, being Tuesday, I received my four-weekly allowance for being 'disabled', for which thanks.  Time was when I couldn't get through a 'money-day' without scoring within minutes of the money going into my account, even if this was at two in the morning.  Somehow, as I hope my book shows, this pattern of instant compulsion fractured, slowed, and eventually broke, with a lot of effort, help, and luck.  And the last year or so has been the best I've had in a decade or more...far from painless or perfect, but better...I'm still alive, which is more than a lot of people can say who've fallen prey to dangerous compulsions.  However, yesterday, Tuesday, I found myself in one of my tussles, in which I, the protagonist in recovery, wrestle and squirm in a sack of my own making, blindly fumbling and flailing for the knotted top, and a means of escape.  How did I get into this sack?  Did I not notice myself climbing in?

It's a slow and subtle sack, living like a beanbag in the corner of the room, which, with the slow calculation of an hour-hand, slides across the floor towards me, seeming not to move at all, but, within a week or two, is at my side, and ready to engulf.  Its perfidious progress is punctuated by little markers in the days and weeks before the disastrous denouement.  One day I might desperately want to start writing a song, but, come teatime, when I've done nothing, I'm virtually paralysed with self-loathing and a sense of wasted years, heaped upon me like so much twisted landfill, stinking, stolid, and never to be recycled.  This feeling, which I had fifteen years ago, even before the crack came along to stall things further, has been my constant keeper, sighing and wagging its finger every time I fall short of my perhaps unrealistic aspirations.  And it's not just artistic pursuits, like music or writing, that can heckle me as I stand unrehearsed before them.  It's the mounting pressure of days unspent in anyone's company, rendering rusty the cogs that used to turn so fluidly within, the nights spent resentfully in a ragged bed, still dwelling on the fantasies I used to harbour twenty years ago, which then still had a grain of potential, but twenty years on seem cobweb-clad...I, a fly upon them.

Even success can be a deceiver, suggesting that I've achieved so much in the last year, bought that chair, those clothes, even a new keyboard, and can now afford a little holiday...after all, I've got a few blank days ahead, no particular commitments, and my overdraft's nowhere near as bad as it was.  Ah yes, success, like Iago, can whisper you to death.  And it's usually after such lapses that someone rings the next morning, a friend, wanting some assistance with something, just when you've broken the bank, and your head feels like it's been steamrollered.

So there's a thought or two as to why I don't think I'll take that holiday today.  Perhaps I can think of it like this...using all the time was like bobbing along the seabed, crawling like an urchin, catching the occasional morsel of rotten tuna flesh, and believing this, at least in the moment of consumption, to be fair compensation for a month of sand and darkness.  Now, I swim with the dolphins, socially, intelligently, smilingly, nearer the light, with plankton-aplenty to feast on.  To fall from here would be a dark and sinister descent.  I've had a glimpse of the light, a taste of that plankton, and even joined a shoal.  Is it worth sacrificing all that, just for a taste of that rotten tuna flesh, and a flash from a bioluminescent squid as it hovers nearby, preying, waiting?  Would I ever rise again?

No tuna were harmed in the writing of this post.

Here is a link to a song of mine on youtube, which also has an aquatic theme...I'd love it to get up to a hundred listens...  Revenge Of The Sirens

And that's pretty much all I've got to say today.  Thanks for reading.  Back tomorrow, promise.

WHY AREN'T I USING CRACK THESE DAYS?

Hello, and thanks for dropping by.  As you may know, the first 22 posts of this blog (Jan to April 2013) are the text of my ebook, 'How To Become A Crack Addict', which you can read here or buy on amazon, if you do that sort of thing.  Nowadays, the blog is the fairly frequent musings of myself, Benjamin of Turnham Green.  And here are today's thoughts...

WHY AREN'T I USING CRACK THESE DAYS?

Good question.  I was bewildered in the thick of that horrid addiction, but now that I'm not, I'm equally vexed.  At the nadir of it, overdraft large, skin reptilian, fridge'n'cupboard empty, I couldn't understand how I'd become so hardwired to do it, regardless of the consequences.  Maybe it was because I was at the bottom, so what did it matter if I continued digging?  Maybe I was an ill thing, an addict, diseased by that threefold malady, in body, mind, and spirit.  Or perhaps I was just choosing to do it, all those times, regardless of the aftermath.  I don't know.  I just know that I did.  And that's perhaps enough, because, at the time, I disowned it.  I may not have called it a disease, and disowned it that way, but I certainly didn't allow for the fact that, bottom-line, I was choosing to use.  But when does a choice become a compulsion, and so forgivable?

Fact is I was thinking all this even then, month in, month out, year after year.  I could say 'the addict' enjoyed it, the toing and froing of an intellectual joust, the linguistic intricacies of a subtle debate, because it meant I was more concerned with writing a manifesto than putting my pledges into practice.  And so, falcon and falconer, on I arced, self-enticed.

I had no moment of clarity to make me change, although maybe I'm having a slow epiphany, which is perhaps safer than those Damascene revelations that those in a hurry require.  One year, I was using at every possible opportunity, week in week out, and then, somehow, I don't even remember when, I got a few weeks clean, of everything, not just crack.  Then I waded back into the mire, stayed there for a good eight months or so, and then, whispering to self that something needed doing, I referred back to previous successes and slotted in couple of months clean, and then, a bit more determination here, a well-timed phone-call there, and a few little things bought for the flat, mostly on ebay, I began to physically see and feel the results around me.  My mind was just healthy enough to register the gain, and it was palpable enough to cling to, nurture, albeit pretty bitterly.  Now, somehow, after over six months clean of crack, with another six months before that, I seem to have a choice, and I seem to be choosing not to bother.  And here is a list of some of the things I've gained:

a denim armchair, with side-pockets, from Tesco Direct
a shaggy blue and light blue rug, with tufty crescents in tasteful aquamarine
a new keyboard, to play tunes on
a little stack of Doctor Who DVDs
a cupboard bulging with Heinz Big Soups, and other long-term bankers
and, with an additional antidepressant in the mix, some days I almost feel like my old self, from twenty years ago, and beyond, and sometimes this is dizzying...

...but I don't think anyone ever died of dizziness.

So here's a link to one of my songs, if you fancy listening...
Revenge Of The Sirens

And that's all I have to say today.  Thanks for dropping by.