Well, it’s been a while since I posted something as I once did in ye days of olde. I know I’ve posted some things recently but what I mean is posted a blog of an almost human nature where all I had to entertain you was a few thoughts and crackpot ideas; when I occasionally read some of the old stuff my eyes automatically activate their rose tinted filters where everything seemed so much nicer.
I’m not quite sure if that was partly because I was high on ecstasy at the time I wrote or just mellow on marijuana; contrary to popular belief I seldom posted whilst drunk as alcohol usually left me too incoherent of thought (yes, I know, not much difference there!) but it was quite nice to just let the random thoughts inside out for a while, you know, let them gambol over green fields to frolic for a few hours before they were herded back inside.
These days it’s all so very different. I stopped taking ecstasy when the price dropped to 50p a pill, sure it seemed great to not have to pay £10 a pill but unless your brain is away with the faeries you should of course realise that having to buy 20 pills to have the same effect as that expensive £10 one is no real saving, especially for your health as you’ve just swallowed an additional 19 pills of something that’s not MDMA, not by a long stretch. It should also be apparent when you go to buy some pure MDMA and find it’ll set you back in excess of £50 a gram and does all manner of wonderful things to your brain, especially when mixed with music.
Much like with cocaine and to a lesser extent ketamine, what is sold as pure is seldom what the average person would consider pure to be. When it comes to drugs users generally accept anything over 60% as being pure without too much in the way of complaints, assuming they have any idea what 60% is. Likewise I always remember finding it somewhat bizarre that when you asked your dealer for a gram of coke and you weighed it out and found it less than 1.0g it was because he only sold 0.8grams…and people, myself included, accepted that! Crazy huh? Of course the only reason we accepted it was because it was a case of take it or leave it and we all wanted to get high, it always was and always will be a sellers market unless by some strange twist of fate drugs are legalised, in which case a whole lot of people are going to realise just how much they’ve been ripped off over the years by their good friend, their dealer.
Anyway, drugs aside there’s probably a dozen reasons why I’ve not posted more personal entries; forgetting how good it feels to get the thoughts in my head out is certainly one reason but also the fact that more people now visit this site than when I started putting my thoughts out there for all to see. I guess with a birthday fast approaching I no longer care that much if people see more of the realer me. I was going to say the real me but I’m not sure I know the real me so it’s unlikely anyone else will but you get what I mean I hope.
So, after all that, what do I have to say for myself? In all honesty, not very much! Life is pretty good without the chemicals, sometimes I think I miss them but I’m fairly sure that’s the rose tinted filters at work. Due to fairly excessive consumption of alcohol over the years I now find I can’t drink as I used to. Not that my ability to consume has diminished oh no, I can still put it away, but my body appears to struggle to cope; bizarrely it was only after my New Years resolution to go for a year without drinking in 2009 that I discovered I had developed a form of liver disease known as, wait for it…Non Alcohol Fatty Liver Disease!
Yes, I managed to get the version that messes with you without having to drink a pay-packet’s worth of vodka! The NAFLD turned into NASH (which is basically when the liver starts to get inflamed and swells in size) and so now I endeavour to be good and trot along to see a specialist a few times a year to be told to exercise more, lose weight and see how I go.
Sick of being told I’ve not lost enough weight, I was only 80kg, I embarked on the Dukan Diet 5 or 6 weeks before my scheduled trip to the hospital and wow! It worked! Having never tried dieting before I wasn’t sure what to expect, most people I’ve encountered who have dieted usually complain that they don’t work but after 6 or 7 weeks I’ve managed to shed a staggering (to me) 7kg in excess fat, I have also being going to the gym but not daily, it’s just been diet and a mix of gym and walking, usually at least 1km a day on days I don’t go to the gym.
Of course there’s no guarantee that the weight won’t return but much like dealing with a drug use issue, now that I know I can live without eating double helpings of dinner and half a home baked apple pie with a cup of tea, my willpower has had a chance to flex it’s muscles and I find it much easier to refrain from gorging senselessly on crap food. Yes, my brain still sends signals screaming FEED ME CAKE YOU SELFISH SONOFABITCH! but I’ve found that suffocating it with a pillow and/or hitting it with a blunt object works wonders!
My consultant is happy which makes me happy as I don’t get a lecture on how I won’t live a long and fruitful life if I carry on as I’m going blah blah blah. I now just have to watch out for idiotic cyclists instead; the other week I was walking home, on the pavement, when I heard a voice yell out from behind me, “Get off the fucking pavement!” I turned to see a rather irate cyclist who’d realised he wasn’t able to pass me unless he cycled on the road, a place he obviously felt was safer for me than himself. I’ve no shame in saying I responded with a loud, “Fuck off!” as he cycled passed while flipping me the bird…the arsehole!
Right, well I realise I could go on but I’ve already knocked out over 1,000 words and if you’re still reading you’re probably hoping I’ll end soon and if you’re not I really am wasting my time but if you are I can reveal that I gained an entry in the Guinness Book of World records for being part of the 2,227 crowd at WOMAD 2011 who played air guitar to Jimmi Hendrix’s Purple Haze.
Yes, I even played with my teeth; Roy Carson would have been proud of me! Until next time…
