Addiction = Beaten!

updated 30th September 2000

I relapsed once. But I am OK. If this writeup is now surplus to requirements, please ask for it to be removed.

But I am rather proud right now : )

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A little background. I almost lost my left leg in a motorcycle accident a few years ago. A severe compound fracture of my lower left tibia and fibula put me into hospital for 2 months and unable to walk for 6 months. To cope with the continuing pain, I have been taking many and varied painkillers for several years, despite repeated attempts to give up. Recent news about Matthew Perry's liver failure has prompted me to try and give up forever.

I haven't taken a single painkiller for about 6 weeks, the longest I have ever lasted. The previous attempts to give up all failed. But I have a secret weapon this time - Everything! (and chamomile tea, but that's a different story :-)

If you have any advice for me, any ways to lessen the pain or ways to beat the deep want for drugs or if you have beaten an addiction please mail me. Mail me if you just want to cheer from the sidelines, or even if you want to take the piss.

anthonyclark@netscape.net

is the address.

I suppose I should alter my hostile daylog that was scrawled so hastily yesterday. Yes, yes, I believe I shall replace it in its entirety.. take that, universe!

What an off night I had.. crazy annoying things before dreamland, and even crazier once there.. and, yeesh, misunderstood, that's all, just so misunderstood.

He was amazingly sweet and dreamy last night.. I just hope all of my crap isn't starting to wear him thin. It'll all pass.. just odd times in the life of jan. I think you know that.. hope you do. ..

Things seem to be falling into place, despite all of the random crap that bumps into them as they fall trying to make them sit on the surface just a bit longer instead of sliding into the correct little life.slots. I'm really happy with the way things are going, glad I have the people in my life that I do, much to smile about, really. Very much.

I think that I'm going to be going out today though I couldn't be sure.. well, I guess they are just not sure when, hasn't been verified. I'll be surfing at cable speed tonight, if all goes as planned. Weeeee! heh I'm going to get a coat today too maybe.. a haircut some time but not today I don't think. :)

Girlfriend is here noe, she's actually sleeping not more than 3 feet away. I love her. Is it possible to love more than one person? I think so. I think it's really evil that I can only give my love to one woman. I don't think it's fair, damnit, to me or them. I think they are both wonderful women that deserve love. I don't think I have a fixed amount of love and once I run out that's it, I think love can be created. This is really tearing me up inside.

I think I may be able to cover my rent payment of $250. Financial situation is looking brighter, kinda. At least until I realize I owe my school 1000 bucks (U.S.), and my credit cards about 2000 (together), still from last year's stupid actions. On account of my stupidity, I've decided to re-inact an urban legend I heard once, even though I'm only partially serious. If you want, send your spare pennies to me: Dan Maurer - 405 Normal - Normal, IL 61761. If I get anything, these pennies will go toward my tuition.

Reading list: I must finish The House of the Spirits by 6pm Sunday and Memoirs of a Beatnik before I have to return it to it's rightful owner, but I also aquired A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, and people were asking me all about A.H.W.O.S.G. and I had no idea what to say to them. A semi-autobiography? I, myself, slowing up on writing lately, but I've got ideas. I need to keep going with a piece about Jesus as a raver. It rains nearly every time I add onto it. David Foster Wallace influences my writing too much. I use footnotes, but I really don't see them as his invention, because I had always used them, well, until an early creative writing teacher told me it was a bad idea. I've re-started doing it, though. I even have published proof. Doesn't matter. I know what I'm doing. Kind of.

Schoolwork is piling up, but I don't care. I'm only here for this last year and after that I'll go to work for a while, about a year, then go off to Graduate School. I hope I'll go back to school.

Interesting new music I've heard: Horrorist's One Night in New York City: Semi-Scary techno. Mudvayne's new album kicks all sorts of ass. I've downloaded oodles of Robert Johnson mp3's. Foetus, too, considering I can't find their records anywhere near where I live. I'm getting noticeably better on the guitar now that I've set aside practise time every day for myself. I've made a couple contacts for band-formation and maybe I'll get together with them and do something.

Well, it's still tecnically the 29th here, but what the hell.

Walking to school today I was struck by the blandness of autumn in Calgary... At the beginning of university year, the foliage was showing promise. It had begun to turn nicely to a brilliant yellow on a few of the trees along the path I take to get to get to school. There was even one point in the walk where the bushes were become quite beautiful. There is one type of bush where the leaves turn from green through yellow and orange to red. All of the leaves do this individually, and the result is a brilliant multihued masterpiece. To top this off, some of the bushes had ivy twined through them and creeping along the ground below them. The ivy had turned a deep, gorgeous red. It was quite a sight, to see the dark red ivy twisting thorugh the bushes. I had even made a mental note to bring my camera the next day to take pictures of it.

And then it snowed. Two days straight. Most of the trees hadn't even started to turn yet. Now the ivy lays limp and shrivelled along my path to school. The leaves never finished turning in the bushes. They just faded to a duller shade of the colour they were before it snowed and fell off, without even browning first. And the snow disappeared right away, so there's not even that to look at and admire.

A dull fall... Makes me look forward to the winter, even though it's supposed to be one of the longest and coldest in recent memory. I can't wait for night curled up under the covers with my honey, spooning and drifting to sleep together.

Back | Forth

So I'm at Family Video, right? My brother and I are looking for Romeo Must Die, heard it was a good movie, so we're gonna rent it. Our trek took us dangerously close to the adults only door. As we were scanning the R's, I hear screaming in the background. There's some horror movie on the monitors, so it's just kind of filtered out in my head. After a few seconds it starts to get annoying. I look at the monitors. It's not that.

Suddenly, this little kid, about an 8 year old boy, comes flying out of the porno section, screaming at the top of his lungs. I nudge brother, and we share a brief chuckle at this guy's expense. Poor kid. He grabs his mom, she comforts him. He stops wailing, but the general wailing continues. It becomes evident that there's another kid in the wank room. I'm about to duck in and rescue him (heh), when he comes out. He looks about three. He's being carried by his dad.

In his other hand were five yes five pornos.

This guy was the classic perv: greasy hair, beer belly, coke bottle glasses, "Fuck You" t-shirt. Real nice guy. He pays for his porn, collects up his kids and wife and leaves in an old full-size van with curtains in the windows.

Tell me if I'm wrong, but- Ugh.
Some people don't deserve to have kids.

Ah! Weekend! Hooray... except for the fact that I have of work to do. Excel ate the data for a lab I did on the speed response of a servomotor, so I had to get up super early and go to University to see if I could get it done before my nine am class, but the labs were all still locked. So I read over other notes instead, and failed the quiz anyway.

So then I redid the lab, and put the data into Gnumeric instead of Excel and Gnumeric actually saved the data instead of writing a zero length file. Gnuplot for the graphs, LaTeX for the rest, and everything comes out nice! Hooray! It's supposed to be informal, but once you've got LaTeX figured out, it's so easy to make everything pretty!

Had an excellent conversation with a friend last night about all sorts of things. I think it started off with relationships, or lack thereof, and continued on to intellectual property, napster, music distribution and economics. After that it got into society, particularly rave culture, but more generally about how mass media has the power to influence and control culture. I deftly avoided a tangent about religion, since this could have added another hour or more to the conversation, and we ended where we began, on relationships.

At one point during this conversation, I got off a on a tangent, and followed up with "What the fuck? Where did that come from? Why did I just say that?" I literally forgot the remarks that had caused my tangent, and I completely confused myself. Thanks for following along, Matt.

This was the sort of conversation that only comes along once in a while. The kind of discourse that make you glad you can think and talk. Everyone should be allowed to have a real in depth conversation now and then, something so much more than idle chatter and so much more interesting than talking about what kind of day you had.

I think today i got my favorite birthday present.

I got to cuddle with my girlfriend for about an hour in the park, she nearly fell asleep.

Other than that, i lost alot of money at a poker game.

and bought homecoming tickets.

Did i mention my girlfriend cuddling with me yet?

Went to see "High Fidelity" with John Cusack. Was pretty funny, overall a good movie. Was basically all i did tonight.

Have to study some chem today... yeah... its saturday and i have to do homework. This is because i have an induction ceremony for alpha chi sigma on sunday, so not much studying is going to be done then. The large test is on tuesday, and i don't think that leaving it until the last minute will work. (By work i mean me passing the test)

One week left until i go home for fall break. I'm kinda looking forward to seeing some of my friends that i haven't seen since we all departed for our various colleges.

back | days | front

Wow, look at all the daylogs Is there some kind of first post thing happening here?

Out of Hospital

I am all shaky and ill. Drugged up and weak, I am sitting here at the computer trying to connect to some of you out there on the net. The sky is such a perfect light blue, the houseplants are doing well and bursting with green and the whole house is just slightly warm. It feels welcoming; somehow the chair is happy to see me, the keyboard is helping my shaking fingers type properly and the normal mess of papers seems to have the right ones at the top, just for me.

I am happy to be home.

Dana wrote There with You about me. I read it yesterday after returning home. It was so intense and sad, yet made me warm and happy inside. She is just so wonderful, I thank fate for bringing us together thus far.

I can't sit in this seat for long. My leg is supposed to be elevated and the longer I sit here, the more dizzy and in pain I get. That sucks because I have stories I need to type and poems I need to node.

But I must lie down.

Before I lie down, I must try and sort out a 24 hour free internet account. Here in the UK, they are quite hard to come by, but it looks as though Demon is the best bet so far.

I've also got to find a way to call Dana more cheaply. The several hours I spent talking to her, soaking in the sound of her voice, have cost me... rather a lot. : (

Why the hell do telephone calls cost so much?

More drugs. Later, dudes and dudettes.

10:55 BST (still british summer time? wow.)

Sorted out phonecall charges with BT. Phonecalls will now cost about 50% less. Nice. BT's "Together" package costs more each month, but reduces the overall cost of local, national and international calls. Now if only Demon were signing people up for their 24 hour free service, I would be set.

15:20 BST

girlotron gets a unique dizzy platonic smooch voucher! She read this daylog, and has informed me about onetel.co.uk's 3 pence per minute calls to the US tariff. Yay! Once I get my credit card sorted out, I will sign up for it. Thanks, girlotron!

20:20 BST

I apologise to those noders devoid of desire or love; My daylogs and nodes are mushy and you may feel either jealous or angry that I am infatuated. Please don't feel that way precious dudes and dudettes, you will feel this way soon, I promise

I phoned Dana. We talked. I said silly stuff because I was under the influence of tramadol. And her cordless phone's battery was running down. It was so dreamy and wonderful. I felt warm all over and not from drugs. I think I have decided to see you Dana. I will arrange to travel, and I will See You.

That, folks, was A decision

I just wanted to thank all the wonderful folks who helped cheer me up here last night. Some you showed your compassion openly in the chatterbox and in private messages. Everyone who was here - whether or not we interacted - was a source of comfort and joy. Still, others did it indirectly just by the virtue of writing some awesome nodes. I only wish I hadn't run out of C!s to spread in gratitude.

The night wasn't a total loss. Mom assures me my step dad is getting better and that they want to reschedule our feast ASAP. Plus, I got an unexpected surprise: my friend Chris wants to take Hubster, Munchkin and me out to dinner tonight. I know that's going to be a blast!

Family and friends are some of the true treasures that make things in life - good, bad and indifferent - worthwhile. Again, thank you.

13:19

NOT reading Usenet. The news serfer is down...

Going to be an uninteresting weekend.

YAFM of the day:

What do you want to zap? [NT or ?*]

17:43

Well, read the Usenet. Went to Taps (But not to get yiffed. Honest. =) Listening to Tubular Bells II. <NaughtyLanguage action=beware>Played more Nethack but there's a f***ng gargoyle down in the Mines and I'm scared...</NaughtyLanguage>

20:14

OK, I'm offically in need of some E2lessness for a while. I'm Uninspired. Plus, I'm busy. Extraordinarily busy. =(

Ran Nessus against my own machine. Found 2 security holes, 9 warnings and 6 notes. (The holes were closed, of course, most warnings didn't seem relevant after closer inspection.)

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Other day logs o' mine...

Noded today by y.t.:
Updated: tinysex

She's got synthethic skin, with reality tucked up neatly inside:

Nothing much can get me down these days. Contentment? More like disconnection. It's a lonely and unfulfilling state of mind. But it's safe, and easy and kind to the skin.

I made my film yesterday, which was a non-event. Just another day to casually flick past in the pages of a diary. I watched myself on camera yesterday and I couldn't recognise the person on the screen. It was an unsure person, an unclear pixelated image. It was a person who gave up giving a shit when it got too much. It's a fading person, an uncaring person. Worse still, it's an ordinary person. Hah, ordinary - and I'm not even proficient at being 'normal'.

I think I might have tried too hard to protect myself from involvement and ended up protecting myself from caring at all.

Sydney. Tonight somebody somewhere in the building I'm staying in was playing Louis Armstrong records.

The last full day of competition before the Olympics circus folds its tent and moves on. Sydney will probably never see anything of this kind again--in the city there's an element of melancholy mixed with anticipation. Tomorrow night a 14-km stretch from the Olympic Stadium to the Harbor Bridge will be exploding with fireworks as soon as the Closing Ceremony ends. Reportedly 40% more fireworks than last year's pretty awesome New Year's Eve ones. But first, the Men's Marathon, which begins at 4 p.m. in North Sydney, crosses the Harbor Bridge, and follows much the same route as the Women's last Saturday. The famous blue line painted on the road surface.

This week:
People strolling about wearing Australian-flag t-shirts, something they'll probably never have the nerve to wear again.
Others strolling about draped in the Union Jack, or Japanese, Brazilian, Greek, Norwegian flags.
"Can an Irishwoman win a gold medal in track & field?!" (Australian TV commentator's exclamation during the women's 800m final.)
Pin mania. Pin traders displaying their wares at Darling Harbor and Belmore Park. Had assumed pin-collecting was an activity restricted to trainspotting no-life nerds...then I spotted the Sydney 2000 Sports Illustrated "Guest" pin and knew I couldn't rest until I possessed it. It was like a mirage--there at a trader's one day, gone the next and not to be found elsewhere. When I tracked it down again at various places the price varied from A$30 to $125. Crazy. At last got it for $25--and five minutes later saw it on another trader's tray for $15. For a person who had no previous interest in this field, I now have a total of 5 Sydney pins (including one of a limited edition of 10,000), 2 from Munich 1972 (one shows a pistol against a stylized target--ha ha!), 1 from Moscow 1980 (a map of the USSR with "CCCP" on it), and a Chinese star from Atlanta 1996 (Atlanta pins were produced in such bulk that there's now a glut and they're virtually valueless). And there's still tomorrow...
The women's 400m final on Monday night. The Aboriginal runner Cathy Freeman was competing for Australia, and to the observer the nation seemed obsessed by this event. Somebody said later that the streets were deserted for the duration--everyone had gone somewhere to watch it on TV or one of the open-air video screens. Somebody else said later that as soon as Freeman appeared on the track in her full bodysuit you knew she had to win--in that outfit it would've been too ridiculous not to. Applause, always loud for an Australian competitor, was probably triple in volume even before her name was announced. And when she won, hardened cynics were misty-eyed and grinning; to some Australians there was a greater significance than just the winning of a race: she had, for the moment, brought the entire country--black, white, Asian--together. The 110,000 spectators in the Stadium were so overwhelmed that when they sang the national anthem they were ahead of the orchestral accompaniment, and almost drowned it out. As a Sydney newspaper's front page headline (above a photograph of Freeman with her gold medal) stated the next day: "For All of Us".

September 9, 2000
September 12, 2000
September 14, 2000
September 15, 2000
September 18, 2000
September 24, 2000
September 29, 2000
October 1, 2000
October 2, 2000

I spent the majority of last night engaged in an activity which I had quite some time ago resigned myself to never participating in again.

I spent the majority of today reeling.

It doesn't change everything, it just means I was wrong. But I could well be wrong about everything.

If you thirst for elaboration, you have too much concern for the lives of strangers. This is a note to myself among my other log entries, that this night might forever burn in infamy in my hot and bothered flashes. If you lose the details, it may as well never have occurred.

in our last episode... | p_i-logs | and then, all of a sudden...

I'm getting hooked to writing daylogs, I guess, and this bunch of everything stuff. Uneventful morning after the first week of class. Some chatting with an aussie friend on ICQ. Had food.

A friend called me asking for help for setting up a nagravision decoder, as he bought a tv-tuner and wanted to watch Canal Plus, Europe's most famous pay channel. Got it working, of course :-).

Next up to our rpg club, where I found some guys I hadn't seen for months. Got to do some work for a massive rpg we are preparing; 40 players simultaneously on some big scale model of a town, with 10 GM's GM'ing at once... yeah, I know MUDs are for these kind of things, but we are quite traditional.

Today, we did some work toward the character sheets.

Not much more worth commenting, methinks...

I have been considering going back to counseling.

It's been a bad week. Not just in the normal-life, hurried/busy/hectic pace of life that exhausts me (although that, too). Not even just the school-blahs that I get in the fall semester of every year.

Last weekend, I got manic, in a way that I don't usually have happen. I haphazardly spent over $135 dollars in a few hours, without balancing my checkbook (which for someone as obsessive as I am, is pretty strange). I then failed to blanace my checkbook all week. Still manic, although that was partially because I needed to be (week of tests and stress for me).

I finally checked with my bank on Thursday. Overdrawn.

Fuck.

I hate doing this. I hate causing my own problems, then getting angry at myself because I seem to cause the very things that annoy me the most (like paying my bank overdraft fees for checks that they SEND BACK to the stores).

I'm going to be broke for the first half of this month paying off this little spending spree.

Manic episodes don't usually affect my life as much as the depressive ones, though. Case in point: I didn't get out of bed today for seven hours.

I think I need to go back to counseling. I even took a mood analysis test that shrinks use to gauge your depressive tendancies over a period of time. The target score is 5 and if you're over 17 on a regular basis, you need counseling. I've been between a 36 and 44 for the last week.

I just get really, really scared that, if I choose the wrong doctor, they'll try to make me go on lithium. I'm pretty sure that Washington is an involuntary admission to psychiatric hospitals state, too.

I hate this.

briefly, for otherwise i may forget..

slept until about noon, then had some toast and went into town to sort the email on mum's office computer. went home with dad at 5.30, watched tv, had dinner, and headed out to the uni to the GUU's beer bar, where they were handing out free beer (woo!). Met up with some people I'd never seen before, including a guy and a girl who were really into each other, yet both had SO's.. we went to see a few bands playing, including Britney Spears and Abba tributes - also really good. Sam (who reminds me of Ali, it's wierd) decreed that we must eat chips, so we located the nearest chippie and then ate them on the way back to Jacqueline's flat, to where she was retiring, because she had to be up for church in the morning. (bah.) During our travels, we met a gorilla, Bart Simpson, and a very drunk George from Rainbow, who sang and hugged me. We also debated how a bra could be unfastened, through a t-shirt, with just one hand. Apparently it's possible. We then headed over to the QMU for cheesy pop, where I lost the people I was with, but found my cousin Al, and had a good time for three hours. I will be back next friday! :)

Got a taxi home - £6.50, d'oh, and had an odd conversation with the driver about vacuum cleaners. I need to find someone who lives nearby to share taxis with..

it's 4am on October 1, 2000. I need sleep

...Previously...Next time...

September only has 30 days? Wow.

10:15 AM EST -- I'm the exception

Shortly after I awoke, someone knocked on the door. Who else would it be this early on a Saturday than a bunch of people spreading religion? Oddly, they weren't Jehova's Witnesses, they were Christians (Which explained why they didn't take an hour of my time... either that, or the fact that I answered in my robe).

There's one thing I don't tell people very often online, but I AM a Christian (A fact I didn't reveal to these people, either). And all this time I felt that the stereotypes you people give to Christians were a tad unfair. But then, today, right then, it struck me: I MUST BE THE EXCEPTION. I'm a moderate (Not conservative, and at times, very liberal), I'm a geek, I believe in science, and I don't go out regularly trying to convert people. I'm the different one here.

This shocked me so much, I sat back down and continued where I left off yesterday with the backups and did a full system diagnostic.

2:00 PM EST -- Hell. Or work.

Went to work. Realized that next time, I'll bring the removable face for the new radio.

NEAT NEWS: Just yesterday, I was informed by my cousin (That's the term I'm using. The same one I talked to on Sunday) that CompUSA is hiring. Time to investigate.

NEW NODES TODAY: unnecessary vocal variation

Well, I finally did it, I submitted my short story to a magazine for publication consideration. Although it isn't any Olympic feat to do this, I'm pretty satisfied with myself for finally deciding that I don't fucking care if they send me some letter saying they didn't like it or it wasn't good enoough. I'm proud of my short story, and it doesn't matter if they don't like it. Really. I don't care. *sniff*

I'm exhausted. I stayed out much too late last night, considering that I had to be at work this morning at nine in the morning. But how was I supposed to resist an invitation to my friend Dennis' 70's theme birthday party? I mean, he even staged a live version of that popular game show, Match Game. It was the most profane game show I think I've ever seen in my life, but also the most hysterical. Then again, that may have been due to the Long Beach Iced Teas I was drinking. *hic*

Very busy day at work. Even though our store was filled with customers, I somehow found the time to stand around juggling bottles of shampoo to the horror of my co-workers. The customers loved it though, so fuck work. I'm a manager, dammit, so I'll juggle if I want to.

Tired. Must. Sleep.

Today is my birthday. I have finally reached the age where I can rent R Rated movies and buy superglue and boxcutters at my local hardware store.

I got a Leatherman Crunch for a present from my brother. He gave it to me yesterday during tech after school. I also got a mp3 Player that hold up to 40Mb on a Clik! disk.

Thats all for now, can't wait until next year.

Daily Evil - Saturday, September 30th

Went for a walk in the woods at midnight, alone again *sigh*. At least it wasn't full moon, the evil white face, it burnssss ussss. Sssss.

Met 4 college girls holding hands and signing loud songs to show themselves how unafraid they were. They did not see me (it being a new moon and a really dark forest trail), until one of them brushed past me with her sleeve.

Ow.

After the initial screaming session, the hapless victims fled in various directions, breaking formation. When the initial moment of confusion passed, they regrouped in an orderly fashion and proceeded down the trail at an unseemly pace, screaming all the while. I did my best evil cackle, but it came off wrong, and resulted in a sort of maniacal cough.