Guest Post- Ruvi from Germany

This is a combination post and email that perfectly explain the struggle

It is now that I am on the journey to being clean that the darkness of my innermost temperament starts to haunt me. I was always, since childhood, remarkable for my morbidity. Nights were perpetual sources of terror, and I was afflicted for many years with the conviction that everyone I loved would die before I awoke. I was only when my mother and father really died that I become both less superstition and more desperate in my attitude towards the world, myself, and my chances negotiating between the two.

I really was always inclined to being morbid, and depressed, but 5 years living only fix to fix has a tendency to not only make Poe's rich morphine addicts irrelevant, but also your own self-image of poetry, beautiful decay, and whatnot. Life is not short, it is long. Thank god, and if only it wasn't. Let those statements sort themselves out.

Now there is no escape plan. I am determined only on one thing - don't fucking use. I still drink, I would probably smoke a joint if I liked doing it. I would probably cry on friendly stranger's shoulder if I saw one.

This is the mess after the decision, and to be honest I'm not even very clear in myself why I made the decision in the first place - not to take heroin any more - but I cling on to the decision itself because I know too that thinking I forget the reason is just one of the games that my addiction plays to get me back where it wants me - smoking the foil, which is a prelude to sticking in the needle.

The needle. I fucking hate the needle so much. It haunts my dreams. Sometimes my father is there selling me the best gear with points on the package. This is the mess of my subconscious where once it was all valleys of beauty and Keats with his Grecian Urn.

I am joking at myself. I am trying to see the funny side because, 10 months into this therapy programme, if I don't find it all humorous, myself, you, my loved ones, everything, then I might get a bit confused.

But Tracey I know that you know all of this. I know I wrote you last week that I can hardly get out of bed in the morning. I also wrote that I'm horny and yet the thought of anyone touching me makes me feel strangely repulsed. I went to my doctor and he put me on citalopram. After much thought, I tried it. 6 weeks later, nothing, so I went back. He doubled the dose….

The concept of doubling down on a dose is one I am very, very familiar with, but since anti-depressants aren't bags of brown, I didn't go with his advice. He hardly knew me anyway….

Maybe it's different elsewhere, but here in Germany virtually no psychotherapists or analysts will see patients in substitution programmes, and they are generally wary of anyone with addiction problems. One of the many invisible realities of dealing with the Aftermath. Like being treated like a dog in the methadone clinic and wanting to cry or grab the worker and ask him or her whether they would ever treat a non-addict the way they treat me….

I know I'm complaining a lot here Tracey, and I know also that this isn't much of a coherent post. But it's how I am going. Getting fat on methadone, scared to open the door, fucking up my relationships, reading and re-reading the same 19th century novels because they give me an obscure comfort. This is not much in the way of insight. But I'm sending it to you anyway, and you can post it if you like, because if I've learnt anything from your blog, it's the value of knowing there are others who are feeling, have felt, or are doomed to feel, the same…..