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. April 2007 .
01/04/07 19:42 [Sunday]
Since this afternoon I have been suffering the effects of drugs, presumably ASM. I am depressed in my mood and at the same time angry that I have again been so unpleasantly drugged. As the effects seemed to get better around tea-time but have since worsened, I suspect something taken at tea-time my best guess being water used to make coffee. I am distracted now by the presence of Dawn and cannot think clearly enough to write.
01/04/07 19:47
Dawn has left the room - I am in the kitchen - but I am not sure whether she is having a bath and how long I shall be free - of distraction - to write.
01/04/07 19:48
She wants me to talk to her while she has a bath. I would like to set down the unpleasant effects of the drugs I am suffering, and hope to do so later (and hope my memory does not lose too much detail).
02/04/07 03:46 [Monday]
We went to bed soon after 8 pm. Thinking back to what state I seem to have been in from time to time yesterday, it seems likely that while we were out at Merry Hill early in the afternoon - returning to the bungalow about 2 pm - someone entered and introduced drugs - that is ASM - into the bottled water which was used later on - specifically, around tea-time - for my cups of coffee. I tipped that water away yesterday evening, but now I find myself suspicious of all foods and drinks in the house including specifically water bought yesterday at Merry Hill. This fear - if you like to call it that - is a function of the severity of the unpleasure I suffered yesterday evening.
02/04/07 03:57
This fear results in me now being disinclined to eat and, in particular, to drink anything we have in the house. This is causing further unpleasure. Of course I am not dehydrated and don’t need to drink to maintain myself in life, but my throat is dry and sore and I feel a natural desire to drink. Of course one doesn’t need to drink various drinks - it is possible to live on water alone as regards drink. However, drinking a variety of drinks does enhance one’s experience of life, just as variety as a general principle enhances one’s pleasure in life.
The response which springs to mind to yesterday’s drugging is to destroy all food and drink in the house. This would ensure I took in no further drugs from that food and drink, and formerly I would have thought in terms of the responsibility of those introducing the drugs for such waste giving them pause. But it seems evident they do not at all mind causing cost to Dawn and myself. Therefore I should think through - as I never previously have properly - what would be the consequences of a decline in the funds we have available to us. In conventional terms I think it is very unfair that advantage is taken of us so that irrespective of incurring further cost as above, I have not earned as much in my life as I should have and we now get by on what according to figures I saw on TV is the borderline of poverty. I mention that, but I do not think it is helpful to think in such conventional terms as the perpetrators of The Experiment evidently do not.
I reiterate - to try to bring the point home - that the strength of my feelings this morning - evidenced by the extremity of my considerations - is a product of the extent of the unpleasure I suffered yesterday evening.
When I was lying in bed in the process of waking up - say half an hour ago - I was thinking that there was a time when home computers did not exist, and for example although the internet is useful for checking up on our bank account, people managed - I myself managed - before the internet came into existence. What I’m thinking you see is that carried far enough a decline in our funds would mean I would be without a computer. I was thinking also about compact computer memory devices, and why it is I find them useful, and the fact that they did not use to exist. But I think I must stop this writing at least for a while.
02/04/07 04:26
Dawn would like to go back to the park home for a few days at the suggestion of her son who says he would be willing to stop there a night or two. I am in two minds here as Dawn derives pleasure from being with him but on the other hand I feel much more at risk there of being drugged. Moreover often it turns out that he does not want to be at the park home much - although it’s true on this occasion he has almost promised. A further consideration is that the latest we have been told - in as usual a vacillating series of changes of plan - is that Dawn’s grandsons now with us will be going to their mother on Wednesday, so if we are in north Nottinghamshire they would need to get from there to London. However, I expect their mother’s ex-partner (apparently ex-partner) or one of her friends could pick them up. We ourselves need to be back in Kingswinford Thursday to see the psychiatric workers.
02/04/07 04:35
I am risking one cup of coffee made with milk bought at Asda Merry Hill yesterday and coffee granules bought there and then too. The rest of the milk I have tipped away - and I believe all other liquid drinks in the house. I shall probably soon tip away all coffee granules we have.
Actually, there is a carton of cranberry juice I haven’t tipped away - arrested because Dawn likes to drink it. On the other hand, it may be drugged and she may have been ‘hypnotised’ into preferring it.
I wonder if Dawn would wake up if I turned the tap on and left it to run - thinking to get rid of and waste drugs in the water supply. I wonder if it would be possible in some way to rupture an underground pipe to cause waste in a less noticeable manner.
02/04/07 05:12
I have got rid of the coffee granules, and the remaining piece of Christmas cake which two or three months back I strongly suspected. One useful side-effect of what I am doing is that Dawn - presumably - will try to ensure we keep little food and drink in the house (what I mean is food and drink left unattended is always likely to be interfered with).
To explain the mechanistic way I think about the mind: what I am doing in getting rid of a lot of foods and drinks is consequent on severity - or possibly intensity - of the unpleasure I suffered yesterday evening. In a similar way when I ‘ran away’ from Harworth in September of last year, it was not a random still less a ‘free’ act: it was generated by what I had suffered from drugs the preceding day or two. One implication is that the degree of the stimulus to such actions can be judged by the extremity of the actions. For example, why do some people live out of doors - homeless? In some cases it’s true it could be due to lack of capacity to organise themselves - pay bills on time etc - but in many cases living within society is worse for these people than living outside of society. In the Middle Ages - an example I have used many times - some people took themselves off into the forest and lived on their own with animals. They were not constrained to do so: some people find the society of their fellow humans intolerable. I don’t know what the current psychiatric thinking is, but in Armond’s time this was not believed (my presumption is that Armond did not constrain me to be with people for the purpose of making me suffer).
02/04/07 05:46
Reflecting on the matter, both Dawn’s son - as I mentioned - and her Harworth daughter have invited us to consider returning to north Nottinghamshire - the daughter changed her mind about visiting us here yesterday, and suggested we might like to take the kids (the presumption at that time was, including the grandsons currently with us) to a park near Rotherham - and I ask myself if these suggestions were made on behalf of the Authorities. If so, I ask myself whether something specific is planned - some specific experiment, as it were - for the Easter break, or whether in fact it is part of a general policy to accustom us more to being in north Nottinghamshire. It is without question much safer here in our own bungalow. For example, it would not be so easy at the park home - on a rented plot - to consider rupturing underground water pipes.
02/04/07 06:01
I am actually rather happy and clear-headed this morning, which surely must be some sort of rebound effect. I am optimistic that given time at the bungalow to perfect my security I shall be able to make it very difficult to drug me here, and I feel more confident eg about wasting water by leaving the taps running.
02/04/07 06:14
I feel inclined to eat some cheese and biscuits, but of course the cheese may be drugged and the margarine may be drugged (and even the biscuits could be drugged). It is difficult for me to trust myself to eat foods on a whim, just as impulse shopping for food and drinks is something I should strive to avoid.
02/04/07 07:54
I now feel it likely that my ‘happy and clear-headed’ condition resulted from drugs in the coffee I drank or the milk it was made with - both since jettisoned. Since Dawn got up I have reverted - although now again I am recovering from it, especially as I am sitting out in the fresh air - to a mild form of my condition of yesterday evening, that is lack of interest in things and lack of fight, but mixed with resentment and what one would have to call depressed spirits. Also, my sore throat having got better - I think after drinking the coffee - it then got worse again, leading me to want to drink again. The result of that was that after Dawn had made my breakfast - eggs, bacon and toast with marg - we walked round to the Spar and bought 1l of semi-skimmed milk chosen by means of a random number generator. I think I benefited from the fresh air of that walk too, although I was a bit puffed corresponding I would guess to ASM in the milky coffee drunk earlier. A short while after returning I noticed a marked improvement once again in my sore throat, but even so I am now drinking a mug of hot milk, the milk bought this morning at the Spar (all other milk in the house having been chucked).
It isn’t a certain argument, but one would think that because drugs in foods/drinks these days cannot properly be dosaged - unlike say when I was given drugs in cups of coffee at work for Dudley Council, or in meals at the café The Best in Retford - they cannot be being given for their medical effect. My guess today is that they are given more because it is known I find them unpleasant, the interest being in my avoidance response.
02/04/07 11:17
I have spent the morning in bed, but the ASM I must certainly have taken in this morning’s coffee is now wearing off. I could tell it was when I had become wider awake and was thinking back to the way my mother and Armond treated me in years gone by when I was suffering effects of ASM. Now I am up out of bed and somewhat bad-tempered, which I take to be more a rebound or withdrawal effect than a primary effect of something (such as stimulant). My latest guess is that the coffee contained a mixture - as usual - of stimulant and ASM, and my behaviour under the influence was the subject of interest. But there must have been very little stimulant for me to suffer yesterday evening as I did - and this morning, I suppose - such pronounced effects of ASM. Of course, having got rid of the coffee this scenario will not now transpire - unless more drugged food or drink is introduced into our home and I can be induced to persist with it and not notice it and get rid of it. Dawn has taken no coffee - nor any of the suspect milk - this morning, but there seems to me to be indication she also took in a mixture of stimulant and ASM - possibly in her SlimFast or cranberry juice (although there wasn’t much of the cranberry juice) - the stimulant affecting her more violently than me earlier on - as usual - but the ASM now leading to unhappy underactivity (possibly exacerbated by my own unavailability in my usual mood).
02/04/07 18:22
Around 12.45 pm we caught the bus to Merry Hill - Dawn, the boys and I - and I was still rather out of things. In fact, I am only now recovering properly - or seem to be - from the interlude of severe disruption due to spiking with drugs. This afternoon I went back to bed, and suffered severe discomfort in my legs making me suppose I had taken in stimulant drugs with today’s lunch. I am concerned to try to understand how I have been drugged, in order to try to reduce the likelihood of a repeat. Because today’s effects seem to have been new, rather than a continuation from yesterday, my presumption has been that the coffee I drank early this morning - when I risked one cup - or the milk it was made with contained the drugs. Then again this afternoon’s aching legs seemed to constitute a new effect, so I am tempted to the view that either the milk we bought this morning from Spar was drugged - although it was chosen randomly, the implication being all the semi-skimmed milk for sale there this morning, or at least all the 1l bottles, were drugged - or that this afternoon’s effects were due to drugs in the tapwater used to boil the veg for lunch.
One can’t help noticing that this spiking has occurred at a time we have had visitors staying with us - Dawn’s deaf daughter and her ex-partner (apparently her ex-partner) with Dawn’s granddaughter overnight, and grandsons overnight and now. It might be as simple as that Dawn was distracted yesterday by the number of people she was making drinks for, and made my black coffee - which I felt some doubt about at the time yesterday, having reached the conclusion milk will always be safer - with tapwater (or perhaps with the Volvic which seemed to be drugged before we recently went to London). Or it could be that a sweet I accepted from the three-year-old granddaughter contained drugs. In either of these cases it would seem - unless there was a separate spiking this morning from the Spar milk - that this morning’s effects were actually a carry-over from yesterday, even though in the early morning I felt markedly better. The tapwater theory is simplest - a mistake yesterday in making my black coffee, and the tapwater used today for the veg - but would imply that this morning’s effects were indeed a carry-over from yesterday and this afternoon’s effects - different as including aching legs - were due to such a small quantity as is absorbed by boiling veg.
In my present mood I feel we should discourage visitors staying with us, certainly overnight - although in the past I have welcomed their company. If they must come, I shall try to be extra-vigilant, which may include making my own drinks and will certainly include declining anything the visitors offer me to be taken by mouth. Apart from that, it is a possibility that foods sold at the Spar are all of them drugged - certain ranges of foods in the early morning, anyway, which we might have been ‘hypnotised’ to fetch - so I should try to entirely avoid shopping there. This might be problematic if early in the morning I find myself without say drink other than tapwater. The solution to that seems to be to procure water and test some of it, and if it is found safe seal it up - in case of as it were emergency need - with a banknote. I don’t really understand how the coffee I drank early this morning could have been drugged, unless that is it - the coffee or the milk - was interfered with as we slept - which would mean by the boys, and although they did get up and move from one room to another last night, I think it unlikely they got at the coffee or milk (it is faintly possible they opened the door to an agent of the Authorities). The milk was chosen randomly from the shelves at Asda Merry Hill - yesterday afternoon - and the coffee granules were chosen on the same occasion, not literally using a random number generator but subjectively I felt it was an unled choice. It may be quite sensible then to suppose this morning’s tiredness I suffered was a carry-over from yesterday, and by some freak combination of stimulant drugs with ASM and the quietness of early morning after a night’s sleep, I felt better briefly in the early morning.
The boys seemed very subdued this morning, but this afternoon after the trip to Merry Hill - in fact after drinking squash bought there and made up (this afternoon) with tapwater - became boisterous, but again now seem to be subdued. Dawn has drunk some of the squash too - with tapwater - in fact two glasses of it this afternoon, she tells me, and she says now she feels ‘strange’ and ‘deflated’. So suspicion does fall on the tapwater.
02/04/07 20:12
We have all been in the lounge with the TV on, myself on the internet checking up on our bank account. Dawn says her legs are ‘jumpy’ and from her manoeuvres with them it looks as though the feelings she has been suffering are those I myself suffer attributable to ASM when stimulant is admixed. Also, I feel very warm, but the others say they are just about right and certainly not over-warm.
I can’t say I feel fully awake, but neither do I feel sleepy as sometimes I do even so early as this.
Dawn - presumably affected mainly by ASM - is happy to have the company of the boys, and to join them in the lounge. I am rather the opposite when affected by ASM: I am too easily distracted in the presence of other people. My guess would be Dawn is essentially sociable, deriving a boost to serotonin from the company of compatible others even though sometimes she finds it difficult to sustain communication especially with people she does not know well or who are less compatible.
02/04/07 20:29
This Amilo Pro takes quite a while now to empty the recycle bin. I am wondering if it has been got at: if for example I have been observed by one of our guests - or several times over a period - and the boot password learnt.
03/04/07 04:26 [Tuesday]
I have been awake, I would say, for at least an hour suffering with a headache. I have now got up and taken two Paracetamol with milk. I would like to think what I am suffering this morning is in the nature of a hangover after the recent spiking, and that no fresh drugging - later on yesterday say - has occurred, but I do not feel confident. I seem this morning to be easily subject to ‘niggles’: fluctuating perceptions - both from without and in surveying structures internally - which are not strong - that is they do not have high amplitude - but the fact of the fluctuation is drawing my attention to them and causing me some puzzlement or bafflement - that is I am held back from action while at the same time processing or trying to process. A thing I might compare it to is tenderness of the skin after sunburn.
One example I can give of a ‘niggle’ this morning is the fact that on this Amilo Pro there is a lot of hard disc activity, which in combination with the fact recently of slowness to empty the recycle bin causes me to fear some corruption of the system has occurred - whether related to the Authorities or not - and the system is no longer in a pristine state. I feel therefore that I should reinstall the system but I am not at present able to organise myself satisfactorily to do so. I do not feel that I can hold in mind all the facts I should hold in mind - and I certainly can’t do such a thing in the background as I carry on other tasks, which ordinarily I would expect to be able easily to do - to successfully and confidently prosecute a reinstallation.
I am aware too that I have not updated my website for about three days. I feel disinclined to do so yet because what I have written over the past three days seems - in surveying it within my mind - to be such a muddle. This is related to lack of a clear internal view of the boundaries of substructures, that is lack of a clear view of the taxonomised arrangement of concepts I have had to do with over the past three days. I am held back by the lack of clarity in my mind, in exactly the way that muteness in schizophrenia is caused by lack of a sufficiently clear view of what one has to say that it crystallises into definite individual words (and not ‘half and half’ as I once tried to explain).
Another ‘niggle’ or ‘worry’ I have is that my digestion is upset and when I emptied by bowels most recently - two days ago - I had difficulty corresponding to what I have conjectured before, a combination of inadequately processed material in the intestine but a strong urge to evacuate, this syndrome produced either by the ASM I suffered on its own or by some combination involving ASM and a promoter of evacuation - either a stimulant drug such as I am familiar with or an irritant of the evacuative mechanism (some sort of laxative). What I mean is the combination of inadequate processing by the gut with an increase in the activity of the muscles evacuating the intestine cannot be natural.
03/04/07 05:05
I am tiring. My concentration is failing and I am yawning and my eyes feel tired. I quite welcome this as an invitation to go back to bed, but fear my headache may worsen or I not be able to sleep or even rest for some reason or other. I was hoping to check up whether I should be saying ‘half and half’ above or ‘half-and-half’ but for now I must leave that as an exercise for the reader.
03/04/07 07:00
I went back to bed and to sleep, getting up again about ten minutes ago and spending those ten minutes in the garden hoping for one thing that fresh air might relieve my continuing headache (which however is duller and less severe than it was). I have come back in on the basis that it is cold outside.
The seemingly excessive hard disc activity continues on this Amilo Pro.
... I am still being held back somewhat - made underactive - by ASM in my system. My thoughts are revolving around the latest Amilo Pro system backup I made - supposedly a definitive one - dated I think 2007-03-10 [in fact 2007-03-12]. What I am imagining in my mind doing - and I’m sure would have done instead of sitting here these past few minutes, held back as I say by the ASM - is verifying that date, and then checking whether I have a Paragon backup of the same date - that is of the system in the same state - on my portable hard disc. I believe I have two Nero backups on DVD of the system then, but one is at the park home. A further complication now, further delaying me from action in the real world, is the presumption that if I reveal the existence of that DVD backup at the park home on my website, it will be found and exchanged - this presumption and fear causing me now extra processing. It will be observed that this extra processing is consequent on communicating or rather thinking of communicating, although admittedly the circumstances are most unusual and not what your average schizo in thinking of communicating would need to deal with. Still, it points up that having an expectation of communicating - that is not being entirely on one’s own - does increase the processing requirement, especially if one is distrustful - in this case with justification - or does not understand the behaviour of the people one has an expectation of communicating with. I would say myself that ‘normal’ people understand other ‘normal’ people intuitively - they can put themselves in their shoes, especially if they come from the same group (race and language say). My way of understanding people, I would say, comes from experience observing them and theorising about their behaviour. This explains why I did not use to understand and cope with people so well when I was a teenager with less experience, and it explains why I do not cope with them so well now if prevented from organising my thoughts by being given ASM. Indeed this way of understanding my understanding is another side of the coin which says my seriatim reflective process is what keeps my schizo lower processes in check. Even so, it is something of a puzzle to me - I can’t be sure any of my theories are correct, or which - what the Authorities are up to - or have been up to - in arranging since 2004 for me to have perverse computer systems. I can’t genuinely be sure the perversion continues, my fears being extrapolations from what happened in 2004, boosted by what I have taken to be evidence - such as the Dc1 type files - and of course my inward presumptions (again boosted by evidence - that the Authorities want information from my computers - notably the stealing in August 2005 of the hard drive from one of my computers).
I must say, presumably corresponding with a reduction in the ASM I am given and my consequently better theorising and understanding what is going on - although as I say without certainty in particular aspects - I do feel the Authorities are more sensible people than formerly I believed them to be - and indeed than their predecessors in Armond’s time were. I am puzzled therefore at what I have gone through the past few days. I do not think as formerly I would have that the unpleasure I have suffered is as nothing to the Authorities. I think it may result from a mistake - with the tapwater - or it may be the Authorities took as it were a calculated risk of causing me to suffer, thinking to make discoveries (although I can’t understand what discoveries as for myself I have discovered quite enough about what ASM does to me). What I mean I think is that I no longer feel personally got at. It may be that some of the advisers to the Authorities are calculating vivisectionists, but then again - as I have said before - I do not have knowledge how the committees of the Authorities take decisions, such as those leading to my recent unpleasure. Another possibility - quite a compelling one really - is that these decisions are taken without over-much forethought. On the basis that this drug I have recently suffered is not uncommonly given, in dosages corresponding to what I have suffered, the Authorities might quite carelessly think, ‘Let’s try it.’
Yesterday morning the degree to which I had suffered the day before led me to take action to try to save myself from a continuation or a repetition. This morning the same thing - the degree to which I have suffered the past two days - is leading me to process to try to understand why it happened. This corresponds to my powers of thought returning. A thing which is surprising is that yesterday early morning I did take action, and I would suppose that the ASM effects must then have been in some remission, but also of course the degree of the suffering - as I think I said - would provide motivation to take fairly easy although sub-optimal action (chucking away food and drink).
03/04/07 12:44
Through the course of the morning I had a continuous headache, despite having taken the two Paracetamol I believe I mentioned having taken. We took ourselves - Dawn, the boys and I - to Merry Hill again - the boys finding such a procedure day after day surprising and tiresome - the idea behind it of course being to try to ensure we have a fresh randomly chosen supply of food and in particular drinks (and today in particular, bottled water following the scheme I outlined of making a provision of an emergency supply of water tested and safe and sealed - this is the idea once I have satisfactorily tested it - with a banknote). The bus back from Merry Hill was late - or possibly one was missing, because when it came it was virtually half an hour after the appointed time and they run half-hourly - and I was feeling the cold and damp and thinking back to the similar occasion Dawn and I waited in the snow for a bus which never came, the week after which I developed something akin to pleurisy. Presumably related to the demoralisation - and one imagines reduced serotonin - caused by waiting today in the cold and damp, I was beginning to doubt whether there was any point to the emergency-supply-of-water scheme. After all, the Authorities seem to manage to drug me whatever measures I adopt, as in the recent case. However, there is in fact a good argument for having an emergency supply of water. In the early morning when I can’t obtain a randomly chosen drink - for example the 24-hour BP garage in Kingswinford can’t be trusted (and in the night hours you cannot go in and choose for yourself) and the Spar which opens early was in doubt yesterday based on the milk we bought just after 7 am - and I might be tempted to use tapwater, having an alternative guaranteed to be safe would be a good thing. Even in the recent case it might have been the tapwater which affected me, and even if the Authorities can trick me from time to time by other means - eg possibly through a three-year-old girl giving me a sweet - the tapwater is most suspect and there’s no need to throw in the towel and allow myself to suffer on every occasion They might choose. This especially given the degree of the interference in this recent case - lasting into today, the third day of effects from the drugs.
Speaking of the time the effects have lasted, because this morning on the trip to Merry Hill, and indeed this afternoon before coming to the park where we are now, I have been feeling miserable, I was asking myself if I have suffered repeat drugging since Sunday (and in fact since yesterday lunchtime when it seems likely I took in a substance affecting my legs). As I am much happier at the moment - since being roused on arriving at the park by the questions and needs of the kids - I conclude I have not suffered drugging today. In particular, I am inclined to trust the water we bought at Asda Merry Hill - unlikely to be drugged anyway as chosen from several available, using a random number - which we have used - at lunch-time and now - to make coffee. (The coffee granules also selected in the same way I am inclined to trust.) My general conclusion is that being drugged too severely with ASM one is simply knocked out - so that on Sunday I went to bed early, and stayed most of Monday in bed feeling that even fresh air would be no good to me - but that if the effects are less - based on a lower dosage or on the effects wearing off, as in my case today - the change in feelings and behaviour produced by the ASM depend in a complex way - not as Armond would have suggested on wilful determination, eg to associate with other people or to pretend one enjoys doing so: wilful determination being interfered with by the action of ASM on dopamine transmissions from the frontal brain - but on factors such as light in the sky (usually corresponding to time of day), phase within the sleep cycle (and whether one is suffering lack of sleep), and stimulation from the environment eg from people (or indeed animals). If one accepts that ASM does some good to some schizophrenics, my conclusion is that the correct dosage is essential, and carers and the patient should become fully familiarised with the effects of the other factors. I must say even in the depths of the years of my over-medication, I gained some enjoyment from Spring flowers, and this is not just nice-sounding poetry: the change of the seasons, and in particular the reappearance into the environment of the colour of Spring flowers, stimulates the senses. Moreover (with the proviso that over-doing the dosage, as in myself in years gone by and this Sunday just gone, leads to irretrievable stasis) depression has a tendency to lead to more depression - in both a serotonin and a dopamine interpretation - while activity tends to generate rebounds from the environment leading to greater complexity in one’s life and consequently even more activity. The problem with the latter of course in the case of schizophrenia is keeping the self-feeding of activity (and mental activation) within bounds, and I am willing to believe antischizophrenic drugs might sometimes be part of the answer.
03/04/07 13:37
A point I would make about drugs, having read blogs by patients or carers mentioning frequently that dosages higher than the recommended maximum are used (in Britain) - as they were in my case in years gone by - but also having read scientific studies saying of risperidone for example that giving dosages higher than 6 mg a day produces no further amelioration of symptoms: if the patient does not improve on the maximum dosage, there must be a temptation among prescribers - an incorrectly founded temptation, given the scientific evidence - to imagine that higher dosages might do the trick. If the drugs are supposed to do good, surely - the incorrect argument goes - giving more of the drugs - especially if the patient does not vigorously complain of adverse effects - will do more good? Even if the patient does improve given say 6 mg of risperidone a day, the temptation may still be to suppose he will improve even further on a higher dosage.
03/04/07 14:44
Returned now from the park I find my bowel difficulty, as one would expect on the assumption the ASM is wearing off, is lessening but has not entirely rectified itself.
03/04/07 18:02
This afternoon I found myself speaking in a rather excited and jokey manner to the boys, who were downloading music from the internet and IM’ing to their Dad on MSN. Particularly because this state of excitement I was in came to an end abruptly - actually when we turned on the TV for Blue Peter, although it had already started - I wondered if it had been due to stimulant drugs. However, I conclude it was not due to drugs, firstly because of the absence of physical symptoms such as urinary frequency or urgency (although it’s true I did feel a need to empty my bowels - but not with any urgency or hint of diarrhoea), and secondly because the calming-down was not unpleasant (except perhaps for a minute or two, corresponding to noticing the change) and certainly involved no depressed mood. Now in a calmed-down state my mind is working I would say quite well, and I have no feeling of tiredness or bored emptiness of mind. Hence I conclude the state of excitement was caused by the wearing-off of the ASM - a rebound effect in fact - in combination with stimulation from the kids - simply having the kids available to talk to and amuse, really - and came to an end for reasons to be explained when we turned on the TV - the TV instead of providing additional stimulation must have provided a distraction from the more responsive kids (more responsive than the TV I mean) inducing a sort of passivity (especially as the kids were then at a stage where they could amuse themselves on the internet, and besides were themselves distracted from responding much to me by the TV). As they say, TV kills conversation for which read human interaction.
It is to be noted that whatever the explanation in terms of a boost to my mood from serotonin or a stimulation to my mind from dopamine, I interact more and better with other people when I am not under the influence of ASM. In Dawn’s case I wouldn’t say that blocking dopamine improves her communication - not with people she knows well, anyway - (although I don’t say it significantly interferes as it does in my case) but it may cause her to be more sociable as a means of boosting her serotonin in compensation for the depletion in dopamine. It seemed to me last night, anyway, that she was more desirous of being with the kids and benefited more from being with them.
04/04/07 06:33 [Wednesday]
I woke up about ten minutes ago over a short waking-up interval such that there is a definite distinction between being awake (now) and asleep (say fifteen minutes ago). When previously I have been under the influence of ASM mixed with stimulant, it has seemed to me that the seriatim process has lagged the lower processes in waking up, this based on the fact that after I had been awake a while - awake and capable of taking in sensory information and writing notes - the organisation of my thinking clarified and plans - say for the day ahead - began to form. From my experience since the weekend just gone - Monday in particular - it seems that under the influence of ASM on its own - in a reasonable dosage, I must conclude [my view now is that a sedative agent as such was also included - note added 23/04/07 17:00] - all my mental processes ‘lag’ in waking up: there is no clear division between being asleep and being awake, and even in what should be fully day - based on light in the sky and on what should be my phase in the sleep cycle - my awareness drifts in and out (although the output side is more affected: that is my actions and my planning to take action are more interfered with than my taking in of sensory information, and even than my retention in memory of the sensory information although as far as I understand it the latter is made less effective by the absence of clear organisation of the information taken in - that is understanding it in terms of summarisations and explanatory theories which in the undrugged condition the seriatim process performs makes memory more effective).
04/04/07 06:55
Our bank account has drifted into overdraft again. It’s a waste in bank charges to be in overdraft, and as in 2004 and 2005 - then based on the fact that my defensive measures against the Authorities without proper planning were costing me so much - I am thinking of doing without a bank current account and living on a cash basis. NatWest granted us an overdraft facility unasked last year when a large amount went through the account from the sale of the house in Kingswinford: for some reason I thought then that it might be useful so I did not decline it; however they did inform us that we could at any time reject the overdraft facility so as soon as we’re back in credit that’s what I’d better do. When I was a child and had no means of paying other than cash, naturally when I picked things up in a shop thinking to purchase them I had to add up how much the total was going to be before going to the till. Nowadays one tends not to do this - say in supermarket shopping - but it would be a good practice to revert to.
Again on the subject of money: from the time - as early as 1980 I think - when I discovered I was being surreptitiously drugged my presumption was that I would be paid - and in fact paid a large amount, especially given what I suffered during my first hospitalisation and the fact that the drugs I was given afterwards made me incompetent to work - for the advantage taken of me. It strikes me that the Authorities in those days did not regard matters in that light: they were not aware that the antischizophrenic drugs I was given - even in 1979 before I was officially under treatment - were such an interference that I could not do my work properly - and in fact probably thought these drugs would improve matters for me (and again I point out the total absence of any realistic assessment of factual evidence) - and would have thought in terms I suppose of the amphetamine-led psychosis as being the only real interference I would suffer. What they felt about hospitalising me - first planned, I conjecture, for the end of 1979 when it was hoped I myself would seek psychiatric help - and the branding I would suffer as schizophrenic, and the effect this would have on my work prospects, I cannot say. It may be that they thought - although this is barely credible, given the inadequacy of the evidence available to them when I was at Cambridge - that I was schizophrenic and would probably have ended up in hospital anyway, and they were not worsening my situation by hospitalising me based on an amphetamine psychosis more they might think ‘bringing out’ my schizophrenia than producing an emulation.
05/04/07 14:27 [Thursday]
I am quite enjoying life at the moment, a combination I suggest of absence of drugs in my system, the grandchildren being with us - something of a mixed blessing, but good on the whole - and the lighter (and warmer) days of late Spring with the promise of summer around the corner. I am finding again what a pleasure it is to have a motor caravan, to be able to go out locally and have a picnic place proof against the weather and with some of the comforts of home - including relatively good cooking facilities compared to camping, and a toilet - as well as to be able to go further afield and rest or sleep the night almost anywhere on a whim. This afternoon we took the boys again to the local park, and cooked lunch in the ’van after which they amused themselves with a football while Dawn and I ‘tidied up’ (ie the ’van). We are back at the bungalow for an hour or two before we go down into Kingswinford to collect Dawn’s tablets and we hope get some plants from the flower shop. Tomorrow we are going back to Nottinghamshire possibly for a week but there is also a possibility we may spend time in Wales (depending on whether Dawn’s son and his girlfriend can arrange to come).
This morning we left the bungalow in good time for our appointment with the psychiatric worker - one only as the other was on annual leave - saving a lot of time on finding we could park the ’van in a public car park without height barriers very close to the Community Mental Health Team centre. A problem with the ’van - one of the main reasons we use buses so much - is it is a big vehicle to park, and cannot get under height barriers.
I find myself asking myself if my suspicions of being drugged with ASM are overdone, especially given that the recent drugging earlier this week was unmistakable and much worse than ordinarily I suffer or think I suffer. My suspicions are that by combining stimulant with ASM the effects become more difficult to detect, and amount - depending on the dosages - to interference with my inner thinking process without much interference with my interactions with the environment: in fact - again depending on the dosages - the stimulant component might well connect me better to the external. Again, if the dosages are wrong - too high, basically - the combination is likely to cause me frustration and wasteful anger.
Last summer when we looked after the boys as we are now this Easter, I was made very drowsy on unpredictable occasions by some drug which might not have been ASM; at that time I was having injections which I suspect much of the time were a low or a zero dosage - presumably of Risperdal - but from time to time may have been more potent. My memory - without actually looking back at my diary - is that I was not thinking very clear and useful thoughts about character recognition, but the reason for that might have been that I was occupied so much with thinking about my family - Dawn and the boys - and more practical matters than character recognition. After the boys left us in the September - in fact starting before they left us, but in the September after the main part of the summer holiday was over - I did start thinking and writing about matters related to character recognition. The reason might have been a reduction in the dosages of ASM affecting me - whether in the injections or otherwise - or there may have been other reasons.
06/04/07 05:51 [Friday]
I started to wake up about fifteen minutes ago when the first hint of the dawn chorus started up. Dawn and I did not go to bed till approaching 11 pm although the boys asked to go to bed - and did go to bed - soon after 9 pm. From the lightness of my own sleep and the sensitivity of both Dawn and myself to slight stimulations - the slightest touch, say - and of course from the fact that both of us were wider awake last night later than usual, it seems evident we - Dawn and I - took in stimulant drugs last night the most likely theory being that someone entered the bungalow while we were out yesterday evening - we went to the park again then on to Merry Hill in the ’van - and switched the bottled water we had left in the bungalow. I am now drinking a cup of coffee made with milk not knowing whether the milk also will have been switched.
It seems to be a common occurrence for our water to be drugged before we drive from here to Nottinghamshire. I have in the past conjectured it is to make sure we get there and are not kept back by lethargy, but it strikes me now it could be to try to ensure I am alert while driving. If this is so, it makes me suspect I am a lot of the time drugged with sedative drugs probably ASM, presumably by the same means of the bungalow being entered and drinks switched. This especially as often even nowadays I get sleepy early at night. (Another possibility I have mooted before is non-ASM sedative drugs so that we can be spoken to in the night hours without being awakened.)
Having mentioned that - non-ASM sedative drugs - surely it is the case that any sedative drug even non-ASM reduces the sharpness of my experience of life? My complaint about ASM - given that unpleasant side-effects are absent - is that it interferes with the clarity - the resolution - of my experience of life, including on the output side - that is I sit about and do less - if stimulants are not concurrently given. Well, sedation of any type surely does the same, and if I am actually more or less asleep surely it’s worse than having some perceptions even if I am stilled?
The latter is not the case. To be awake to perception but to play little part in what is going on - because of stilling of the output side - is worse than being knocked out in sleep. And to be awake to perception and my mobility maintained by stimulants, but unable to think properly about the experience I am having - due to my reflective process being interfered with by ASM - is also worse than being asleep. I do not say that this would be the case for everybody: after all many people undrugged have just such an experience of life, that is they perceive and act but do not think as much as I do. If I am put into such a state - and I believe I was in the early years of the new Millennium under Kurian - I do not resist it - as for example I did (in a weak sort of fashion) being drugged with ASM without stimulants in the 1980s under Armond - although part of the failure to resist might have been accustomisation after so many years under Armond’s thumb. However as I have explained when the period of living only half a life came to an end around the end of 2003 I was made very angry when I was able to compare what I had then in the absence of ASM with what I had had for decades being given ASM.
People who hallucinate generally find the hallucinations bothersome and unwelcome (from what I read) and if ASM gets rid of the hallucinations they will welcome ASM. Schizophrenics who overthink but do not hallucinate - this as far as I can make out being a result of high levels of dopamine transmission in the middle brain but without satisfactory organisation from the seriatim brain - may welcome ASM less I suspect. There seem to be two types of result from such overthinking, viz hebephrenia corresponding to sometimes total disorganisation, which I am willing to believe (although I have no direct evidence eg from reading blogs) is subjectively unpleasant; and paranoia corresponding to logical organisation (presumably due to an almost satisfactory seriatim contribution) but with mistaken estimation of probabilities (due to dysfunction of neurotransmission in the middle brain) leading especially if hallucinations are also present to a delusory view of the world usually involving the subject feeling persecuted. In the paranoid case I can believe feeling persecuted is subjectively unpleasant, but a major problem in the paranoid case I suppose must be the patient’s behaviour based on his delusory view: it may for example lead to him murdering prostitutes. I presume in paranoid schizophrenia too the patient may resist medication on the argument that the medicators are part of the scheme persecuting him (that is he may believe this not for good reason that they do not listen to what he has to say about the unpleasant aspects of the medication, but for delusory reasons, although dismissing his complaints about the medication must surely bolster his negative regard for the medicators). In fact I suppose - especially if Armond was not aware of the contribution of amphetamine in the state of frustration I suffered which led me to smash a radio giving an excuse to hospitalise me in November 1980 - this might explain Armond’s attitude: he had evidence I might be violent - as in later years I was against Caroline’s car - so he presumed I was in a paranoid state and this was the reason I resisted the medication. It may be so given that he was negligent in trying to understand the basis of my behaviour: if he had been assiduous he would have found out - again assuming he did not already know - that stimulant drugs had led to my outburst. Truly then the people responsible for my suffering over the years are those who have secretly given me drugs and allowed foolish psychiatrists to form mistaken views based on the unlikelihood that what I said about being secretly drugged was true. Dr G in 2005 absolutely would not entertain the supposition that I had been drugged when I had gone to A + E’s complaining I had been, which astonished me at the time given that I believed he had been advised by the perpetrators and was in fact part of The Experiment. Looking at it from his point of view it is so unlikely that someone would be spiked time after time that he did not entertain it as a possibility. So as I say the main responsibility - as it is for my gambling losses - lies with those secretly drugging me, and psychiatrists have some responsibility as not properly seeking to rule out the possibility that I genuinely had been drugged.
However, I can be thankful that those who have cost me so much in the past, even though they show no sign of compensating me, at least now use their power to interrupt the effectiveness of the prescriptions of foolish psychiatrists - in the dosage of the injections I was having last year, for example. As I have said, I must hope there is now in place an adequate structure of safeguards in determining what drugs I can be given (and for example that I shall not frequently suffer what I suffered at the beginning of this week).
06/04/07 14:36
We set off from the bungalow behind time as usual, about 12.30 pm. Now we are at Tamworth having just had lunch. Part-way through the meal I began to feel physical symptoms of anxiety, notably tension in the stomach. I felt this around the same time yesterday - I think it was yesterday - and wonder if the water which I concluded contained a stimulant drug interfering with my sleep last night had in fact been switched earlier than I thought - or had contained drugs when bought from Asda Merry Hill - and the drug it contains is adrenaline or something related, producing these symptoms of anxiety. I say this because about twenty minutes before noticing the symptoms just now I had drunk a cup of coffee made with the water in question, whereas my drinks earlier today - and later yesterday - were all based on milk.
Since yesterday I have been taking capsules - three a day - which I bought yesterday at the pharmacy attached to our GP surgery in Kingswinford intended to counter the symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome. They seem to be working, and in particular ridding me of the bother of wind in the intestine. This morning because I felt slightly full but not inclined to empty my bowels early - possibly because of the effect of these capsules in countering looseness - I thought I might be constipated - caused that is by the capsules - but in fact my bowel movement later was quite normal. (Once again I apologise for being so explicit on a topic some would find it not polite to mention.)
I can’t say with complete honesty as I did yesterday late afternoon that I am perfectly happy with life at this moment, but the only fly in the ointment consists of these physical symptoms of anxiety, and based on yesterday they pass off quickly. Other than that I am happy, and in particular am suffering no lethargy or disinclination to take action - eg this morning I was quite ready to empty the ’van toilet cassette and did so without much delay or seeming effort - and no interference with my thinking that I can tell - except distraction by the needs of the boys which as I explained is not unacceptably onerous as in itself it provides mental stimulation which at a later date - come September, perhaps, like last year - I can turn to good use as providing activation - that is having the memories of the holiday providing activation - to my brain/mind.
I have read through part of my diary of last summer, and in May I became able to think clearly enough to write computer programs to do with character recognition. However, through the course of the summer - certainly June into July - I was thinking more about the operation of the mind, and suspect from time to time I was drugged with drugs affecting the mind, giving more to think on that subject - and possibly the basic reason I was dwelling so much on the mind rather than character recognition was that nighttime voices were offering questions as occasionally I suspected at the time. This year the reason I suspect is that not being drugged - except very occasionally like last Sunday into Monday - I am deriving interest and pleasure from more normal more relaxed stimulations - such as holidaying with Dawn and the boys - and am less obsessed with pursuit of achievement emotion in the form of success in getting computer programs to work.
07/04/07 07:03 [Saturday] In north Nottinghamshire
I have been awake and up out of bed here at the park home for half an hour now. I have been watching Click on the BBC breakfast news - topics related to computer technology - and I mention they say ‘the video stream is always available at bbc.co.uk/click’. We got here about 5.30 pm yesterday, calling on Dawn’s son on the way and at his and the boys’ request leaving them with him at his Dad’s. Dawn and I had a tea-time meal of pizza and she spoke to her daughter on the phone, and we agreed to go round there later to baby-sit - Dawn’s daughter was going to a hen night party and her partner was going to the pub as he usually does on a Friday night. Just before 8 pm therefore we went back to Dawn’s son’s house and collected the grandsons, then went on to Dawn’s daughter’s - she had gone out and her partner was about to go out - and took charge - if you can call it that - of the cousins - the boys with us from High Wycombe and Dawn’s local daughter’s son and daughter - until around 11 pm. Much of the time they amused themselves playing Simpsons Monopoly, which I must say provided amusement to me - although I was only observing - and I think all round. I did also get on the internet and check up on Clifton Park - or rather Clifton Park Museum - in Rotherham, which Dawn’s daughter had suggested we might all visit. When Dawn’s daughter’s partner got home soon after 11 pm his children went to bed and we brought the boys home to the park home where although they said they weren’t sleepy I suspect actually they fell asleep soon after the lights were turned out.
Yesterday as it turned out I took only two of the Colpermin capsules for irritable bowel syndrome - the dosage instructions saying one or two three times a day - and waking up this morning the symptoms had slightly returned. But now I have taken a capsule - about half an hour ago now, soon after getting up - my innards are quietened again. We collected half a container-full of tapwater yesterday at Dawn’s daughter’s, and I have put the coffee percolator on. I shall drink a cup now.
07/04/07 07:32
Last night we were invited to take the boys round to stay with their cousins Dawn’s local daughter’s kids today and overnight tonight, so when Dawn has spoken to her daughter to arrange things - Dawn is still in bed at the moment, although I can hear the boys stirring - I daresay that’s what we shall do.
My mind now straying to something going on in parallel in it at the same time as what I have been writing about - and a self-observing introspective ‘meta’ sort of thing: the advantages really of using this Rich Text Editor of my own designing is that with a single key-press I can set down the date/time in my preferred format, and with a single key-press also I can save the document with a standard filename (based on the date/time of saving). I find my mind turning with some interest again to the question of improving the Rich Text Editor, which may indicate freedom for me now for a number of days past from mind-altering drugs and also - if it is genuinely ever a factor - from nighttime questioners. In fact I feel remarkably relaxed in my mind at present and consequently free to think; this might conceivably be a ‘rebound’ after recent drugging with drugs which produce distractive feelings of anxiety (and I can’t really be sure how many days I have been suffering them, if for example the dosage was increased gradually). I have also for a while been distracted by the symptoms I have had of ‘irritable bowel syndrome’, and what relationship that has had to the drugs I have been given I can’t be sure.
The way I use this Rich Text Editor at present involves running a prog on the final document produced - the document for a day or part of a day for the blog - to re-format it for paragraph spacing and for smart quotes, after which I read the resulting RTF into MS Word in order to integrate it into the current website page (almost always the Recent page).
08/04/07 06:09 [Easter Day]
Yesterday morning as far as I remember when the boys got up not much was done. There was some debate about whether we might meet up with the rest of their family - specifically their mother (that is Dawn’s daughter we visit in London) and sister - in High Wycombe for their sister’s fourth birthday which is tomorrow (Monday). They find it a bit boring being with us I gather, especially the elder brother who misses his Dad and mates in High Wycombe.
We had an early lunch of soup yesterday, and afterwards took the boys to see their cousins they had been with the night before. Yesterday they were able to go into the garden and do more physical stuff - play on the trampoline - and were happier I suspect. In fact they wanted to stay there while Dawn and I visited Dawn’s aunt in another part of Harworth, so that’s what happened.
At the aunt’s I found I had urinary frequency - I needed to pass water three times - but whether the cause was coffee she gave us while we were there - the drug in it would have to be quick-acting if so - I’m not sure. I did have slight urgency to visit the toilet while we were at Dawn’s daughter’s an hour earlier, now I think of it. From the physical effects on me - ones I have come to recognise, including urinary urgency and frequency - and the psychological effects on Dawn - later yesterday - the drug affecting us was a stimulant, and as I don’t remember noticing any corresponding effects the night before - in particular no sleep disturbance - I would think the drug was first taken yesterday, possibly in the water we had procured the night before from Dawn’s daughter’s tap (which on a previous occasion I concluded had been drugged, however surprising it is to find tapwater drugged at a house not specially adapted - but one must conclude it is not difficult to introduce drugs into the water supply of one particular house, presumably by getting at the pipework between the main supply under the pavement and the stop-tap in the house: a method I think cannot be in use at the bungalow in Kingswinford as requiring too close approach to introduce the drugs: there I have suspicions based on the fact that at some point early last year the pavement along the cul-de-sac right along from the opening of the cul-de-sac past our bungalow was dug up). Come to think of it, though, this night just past I noticed no sleep disturbance either - except possibly that it took both Dawn and myself somewhat longer than usual to get off to sleep - but I do notice wind in my intestine this morning, and yesterday evening I had a sudden need to evacuate my bowels and then it was mainly of wind.
After we left the aunt’s and uncle’s yesterday we picked the boys up from Dawn’s daughter’s, and went to Dawn’s son’s house - or rather to his girlfriend’s near-by - to pick up the son and his girlfriend as arranged previously by phone. We shopped for food at Carlton Co-op - including a carton of grapefruit juice which I chose and later came to suspect when I became confused as to when and where we had bought it, making me suspect ‘hypnotic’ interference subverted though by Dawn’s clearer recollection - and drove to Clumber Park. Again there the kids were able to engage in more physical activity - with a football - and seemed happy. It was here that Dawn exhibited the ‘psychological effects’ I mentioned of a stimulant drug. She became impatient at loud music from a car a little way off, saying she had a headache caused by it and using rather aggressively critical language. Also - a more telling sign - she adverted without any external cause - that is it simply forced itself into her conscious awareness from within her mind - to a subject she has railed on in the past in an exaggerated manner, that is my previous female acquaintance. (The reason I think she has exaggerated feelings on this subject - the parallel reason also she has exaggerated feelings on having been separated from her son in the past - is that in her first marriage she was very dependent on practical assistance from her husband - in negotiating with the world from day to day, as you might put it - and when his attention was distracted by other women, she suffered badly from loss of this practical assistance.)
Now I think of it, Dawn did show signs of the effects of a stimulant drug while we were at her aunt’s - implying that the drug had been taken in earlier. The result I am thinking was due to such a drug was that she found it easy to produce speech. It’s true she is at ease with her aunt and uncle as she is not with people less well-known to her, but nonetheless in this case she was producing more words than is usual for her. But an interesting point, comparing her response to stimulative drugs of this type with my own, is that even though she was better connected to the external in the sense of speaking more, her attention was still taken up with what was in her own mind, leading to what she said being based more on that and not being fully integrated with what her interlocutor was saying (a mild effect only, though, giving the impression she was slightly ‘in a world of her own’ or at least following her own train of thought). My conclusion is that - unlike say when we were at her ex’s the other week and I said she had been speaking more confidently - yesterday less - or zero - ASM was acting on her at the same time as the stimulant drug.
At Clumber yesterday evening we had a meal in the ’van, then after the kids had fed the ducks at the lake we took them all to Dawn’s son’s girlfriend’s and left them: they were going to sleep at Dawn’s ex’s (Dawn’s son’s Dad’s, that is, where he lives with him) overnight. Again this arrangement increases my suspicions that in Dawn’s and my food/drink here at the park home there are drugs - quite possibly in the water: both the tapwater and the water from her daughter’s. Last night Dawn and I went to Asda near Doncaster and bought for one thing a bottle of Asda own-brand table water which I have used this morning in the perc, and am now drinking coffee made thus. Another reason I don’t think there was ASM mixed in with the stimulant drug in whatever we took yesterday containing it was that I myself had no adverse psychological effect, no resentment or - seemingly - unclarity of thinking. The major complaint I myself would have of yesterday’s drugs was soreness of the throat which I suffered quite badly around the time we went to Asda (say 8 pm).
08/04/07 07:23
The preconceptions which schizo type people have, if I may call the bases of thought that - that is the mental structures deriving from past experience (and held within long-term memory) - which play sometimes too great a part in their interpretation of current events - for example Caroline’s address in Dawn’s awareness playing too great a part in her reconstructive perception of the address her son and his Dad had lived at, or past experience of women leading some male schizophrenics to conclude all women are effectively prostitutes - where do they reside in the brain? (My own guess would be they reside in the middle brain, and if the frontal brain has strong and effective control links downwards their effect can be moderated: this from my own experience.)
Another question which occurs to me is, why are hallucinatory voices in schizophrenia almost always negative? Evidently - from what I read - hallucinations arise from too-strong dopamine transmission from the lower brain into the middle brain, but also there must be some dysfunction within the middle brain - presumably again arising from too-strong dopamine - to form the meaning of what the ‘voices’ say, that is to form it in generation and in interpretation (an exaggerated form of what happens when an ordinary person uses internal speech, but without so much ‘conscious’ control of what is said, for which read control by the frontal brain: I don’t know, but similar I imagine to a child using internal speech). The answer I find myself coming up with is that the negative nature of what the ‘voices’ say arises from low levels of serotonin, corresponding to elevated levels of dopamine (as discussed previously). Low levels of serotonin will create a generally pessimistic view of the world and in particular in the assessment of one’s own capabilities, that is in one’s expectations of succeeding in what one attempts (giving rise in the schizoid or negative-symptom schizophrenic case to a low level of activity in the real world). Furthermore, being with other people will perhaps not boost serotonin in the ordinary way, and in fact being with other people may reinforce the subject’s low view of himself if he always finds he communicates badly and people laugh at him, are frightened of his strange ways and avoid him, or anyway ‘look askance’ at him.
08/04/07 09:54
Dawn got up about an hour and a half ago, and soon afterwards - whether before or after she had drunk a cup of the perc coffee I am unsure - her nose was streaming. My nose also - noticeably since perhaps half an hour ago - has been running, and because also I have other symptoms - based on feeling excitable and more connected to the external and correspondingly in two minds when it comes to deciding what I want to do this morning (because drawn by immediate sensory attractors while not yet out of the mindset of internally envisaging and cogitating for the future) - I begin to suspect the drugs I had supposed were in the water are actually in the perc coffee. I think it was last time we were here at the park home - although my memory is unclear and it might have been an occasion at the bungalow in Kingswinford - I mentioned being distracted by Dawn - not meaning in that instance unpleasantly interfered with in the clarity of my thinking, but rather pleasantly affected by her physical presence - and it is similar this morning, causing me to wonder - somewhat irrelevantly - if on that former occasion it was the same perc coffee affecting me.
For the sake of completeness of information I mention that yesterday around this time in the morning my nose was running a lot, presumably for the same reason that is probably drugs in the perc coffee. I also mention that yesterday evening - at a time the drugs taken in the morning would have been wearing off - I had thoughts I might have set down, but did not find time before we went to bed. They were again related to mental experiences involving being ‘in two minds’ corresponding to a transition, yesterday evening from connection with the external to ‘the mindset of internally envisaging and cogitating for the future’ as the drugs - presumably stimulant drugs - were then wearing off whereas this morning they are ‘wearing on’.
Another thing I noticed yesterday in both Dawn and myself was that the presumed ‘minor stimulant’ drugs increased the appetite, having somewhat paradoxically an effect identical to many antischizophrenic drugs (‘major tranquillisers’). The effects I note now, of being distracted towards the external, also paradoxically replicate somewhat the effect of ASM in subduing internal envisagement and cogitation, but they are not too unpleasant unlike in the ASM case where there is no compensatory benefit from attention to the external but on the contrary experience of the external is simultaneously spoilt - at least for me - by reduced resolution.
12:52. We are out in the ’van - at Dawn’s mother’s grave actually - and I am taking the opportunity to examine the ’van with particular reference to the lights which do not work because a fuse keeps blowing. The left rear sidelight (I don’t know the proper term) and the front right sidelight, together with the speedometer panel light - all connected to the one fuse - don’t work. I am wondering if I could codge up a wiring circuit simply to by-pass and replace the faulty one. But to do it properly it would need to be connected in such a way that these sidelights would only come on if the ignition key was turned at least to position 1.
I note too that the coolant level is below MIN. Also an external cover to the blown air heating system (for the living accommodation) has fallen off so it is possible extraneous objects might enter and cause trouble (although there is still a protective grill in place).
08/04/07 13:30
We have now returned to the park home from our outing, during which I made some notes on the Dell handheld device [above] - which incidentally I was not using on our recent visit to London, or indeed while at the bungalow, because I had left my card reader here (at the park home) and had no way of downloading what I would have written. The first port of call this morning was Dawn’s sister’s - the one we visit more often - but the family were not home; so we went round to the other sister in Harworth and stayed there - her daughters arriving with younger members of the family after a short while and her son getting up out of bed - for just over an hour, I would guess. I find there is a temptation now to relate details of the conversation, which evidently derives from the residual action of the stimulant drug being the same effect which promotes output of words in speech (from Dawn for example) and causes sometimes - in my own experience - too much concentration on detail at the expense of summarisation or an overview (this being the case where the drug-taker ordinarily has satisfactory powers of summarisation and overview, which myself I feel certain depend on the activity of the seriatim frontal brain in relation to the middle brain). In this instance I am saved from the mistake of giving too much distractive and irrelevant detail - possibly falling into the error of giving no detail not the least flavour of the conversation - which with higher dosages or stronger stimulants I am not, by the quantity of introspective transmissions from my middle brain to my frontal brain and the power even given the stimulant’s residual effect of the frontal brain to control my language output (and I hope my readers will be able at least for the sake of hypothesis even without true belief to comprehend my strange presentation in terms of brain structures). (I note I fall into the mistake of giving an unusual amount of detail and an unusual amount of commentary based on that detail, deriving from the quantity of my mesocortical projections into the PFC whose activity is evidently stimulated by this stimulant drug - apologies for my lampoon of Anissa Abi-Dargham: see Saturday 24 March 2007.)
09/04/07 05:44 [Easter Bank Holiday Monday]
I got up about fifteen minutes ago having woken up over a short interval as the dawn chorus started up. Again I have slight discomfort in my abdomen including wind and a sensation of ‘wetness at the rear end’. I am persisting with my Colpermin capsules for irritable bowel syndrome but reading the leaflet find they are usually required for only one or two weeks each time the problem flares up. Evidently irritable bowel syndrome properly so called involves painful spasms of the large intestine. Dawn has been diagnosed with the condition before, and recently has had abdominal pain. In fact last night she was having sudden attacks of pain - presumably spasms, and presumably brought on or exacerbated by the recent stimulant drugs because we have both suffered although she more than I - so bad I phoned NHS Direct for advice. In fact I wonder if it would be an idea for her to take Colpermin, a thing which has occurred to neither of us because it was not for spasms that I was taking it.
Yesterday afternoon the boys were playing Monopoly - an edition given to them by Dawn’s son when he passed a lot of his old toys and games on to them yesterday - and were quite boisterous about it. After a time - perhaps an hour or more - it seemed to me they were losing their concentration and their interest in the game as such - especially the younger brother - but I can’t be sure I can trust my perception as my own state was changing with the drugs. I conjecture what happened - about 4 pm - was the psychological stimulant effect on me of the stimulant drug taken probably in the perc coffee in the morning - no later than 9 am therefore - was wearing off. I became less able to tolerate the antics of the boys and went and sat outside. In fact I remember wondering as I sat out there if they themselves had taken in stimulant drugs possibly in their squash made with tapwater just after lunch. However as they responded to my annoyance as they may have seen it - or at least to the fact of me getting fed up - by themselves calming down and in fact ceasing the Monopoly and turning more quietly to a card game, I conclude their excitability was natural and not drug-induced. Although the psychological stimulant effect was wearing off in me, at that time physical symptoms started up - which it strikes me now may not have been caused by the drugs but on the contrary masked by them, notably a sore throat which continues in the form of dryness without pain as such this morning. I recall a week ago when I seemed to have been drugged on the Sunday and warily risked a cup of coffee on Monday morning - while in the process of chucking out food and drinks - my sore throat then improved on drinking the coffee before later worsening again. Of course it could simply be that a hot milky drink naturally eased the soreness, which at the time I would have given as the reason if specifically questioned.
This morning I am drinking the grapefruit juice bought the other day at Carlton Co-op even though the day it was bought I suspected it. That day my memory seemed slightly defective or perhaps I should say confused, which at the time led me to speak of the possibility of hypnosis. This usually happens - or has happened in my experience - when my understanding has been made defective by ASM, and I ask myself if in this case too ASM was included. However, it may be that confusion due to a stimulant drug is a sufficient explanation, interfering - through a mechanism which it’s true I cannot find an explanation for - with either the laying down of memory traces or with my introspective observations while under the influence - the day the grapefruit juice was bought which I believe was the day before yesterday, and also a similar effect yesterday when for one thing I was less attentive to what was happening in the game of Monopoly even before I became ‘fed up’ and for another could not remember without Dawn’s prompting what drinks the boys had taken and when.
Another possibility to explain my memory difficulty is that a minor sedative was included with the stimulant drug - presumably to counter sleep disturbance. There is some evidence for this in the fact - difficult to understand and overlooked heretofore - that - particularly two days ago, when I conjecture I first took in these drugs, with the perc coffee - my eyes became tired as the drugs started up their effect; and furthermore in the fact of promotion of resting and digesting with the result of wholly adequate processing by the bowel and not the least stiffness in emptying my bowels - which again I considered simply a return to their normal functioning and overlooked it as a possible effect of drugs.
09/04/07 10:04
I have spent all this time making alterations to the January 2007 website page, mainly involving simply regularising the picture filenames. All I intended originally to do was check the consistency of my spelling of jokey and perhaps insert more links to Top of the page. The boys have got up and are playing Monopoly - seeming to enjoy the disputes it generates - in their bedroom. Dawn got up, went back to bed and now seems as if she is getting up again.
16:22. We have stopped off at Kings Wood on the way back from Asda Doncaster to Harworth where we have left the boys playing with Dawn’s local daughter’s children. Since lunch - as far as I can piece it together from imperfect recollection of my state of mind - I have been noticing the effects of ASM. The best guess is that it was contained in the Evian water Dawn used for the lunch - to boil veg and to make up corned beef hash - which had been left unattended in the park home the weeks we were away in Kingswinford. The first symptom was tiredness corresponding to a species of sleepiness but not relaxed sleepiness - as I have explained I used to suffer in years gone by from the depot injections I had (I don’t think the lack of a relaxed feeling necessarily implies the concurrent action of a stimulant, not in my own case anyway).
When we got round to Dawn’s daughter’s - the daughter not being there but her partner left in charge of the children - I was beginning to wake up a bit. My conclusion - especially as an hour or two later I was in a condition of annoyance - is that, even though stimulant need not be present for the tense unrelaxed feeling, in this case stimulant was acting and from the same source - presumably the Evian - even though it seems quite strange that the ASM effect showed first. The alternative is that all sorts of foods or drinks have been drugged variously, and while it does appear that the perc coffee contains a stimulant drug and certainly not the same mixture of drugs which is affecting me this afternoon (I have drunk none of that coffee today) I don’t understand the theory on which different things are drugged differently - things we are likely to take together producing a confusion of effects - and am reluctant to believe lots of different things are drugged in lots of different ways.
16:47. We were given coffee at Dawn’s daughter’s by her partner and while it might possibly have contained a stimulant drug I am sure in myself the stimulant effects - at least wider-awakeness and greater alertness - started up before I started on the coffee; Dawn drank her coffee sooner than I but even in her case the stimulant effects - greater talkativeness and a feeling she mentioned of hotness (but she doesn’t believe the effects she suffers are due to drugs) - came on surely too soon to have been attributable to the coffee.
Leaving there as I say we went to Asda, and part of the annoyance I felt about then as we were approaching Doncaster centred round inattention to details of planning - in particular not making sure we had enough money - which I blamed on the ASM.
After we came out of Asda Dawn suggested we might take some flowers she had bought inside to her mother’s grave, and still then I felt incapable of planning properly - that is deciding what I wanted to do - but more than this reluctant to put any suggestions to Dawn for the reason that I had not worked them out properly - being unable then to think on my feet - and therefore could not hope to put any reasonable suggestion forward persuasively and convincingly. I point out that in my belief this is exactly the reason schizo type people - usually undrugged - fail to put forward a confident point of view of their own.
However, this mental incapacity seemed soon to ease - presumably because of the growing contribution of the stimulant effect, and I ask myself what stimulant it could have been and imagine it must be a ‘powerful’ stimulant possibly even genuine amphetamine. I suggested to Dawn that we might stop off here at Kings Wood on the way home - quite a cogent suggestion as I knew Dawn would not want to stop on the busy Asda car park because of the people walking about and the general busyness (and I myself was somewhat distracted from making my notes - these notes - which it was my hope and intention to do) and we have not been to Kings Wood before so there was an argument on the basis of exploring (but only in our vehicle) a new place - and she seemed happy to agree (which suggests the combination of ASM and stimulant presumably also affecting her is not such as to make her aggressive or dirigiste, which indeed she is not today). All in all my conclusion must be either the drugs were weak and have worn off already or (much more likely) their effects cancel pretty thoroughly - in both Dawn and myself.
09/04/07 19:17
Following on from my suspicion that there might be genuine amphetamine in the Evian which all of us have taken today and which apparently the boys and Dawn took yesterday and possibly the day before in squash and black coffee respectively, I am re-considering the boys’ quietness around this time yesterday and again today, in evidence particularly from the elder who from his moustache is plainly in his young adolescence. Amphetamine is abused for its power of producing euphoria - not affecting any of us here now - but on the other hand is used to quieten hyperactive children. My general way of regarding it would be that it stimulates the activity of the frontal brain, leading to more reflection and less impulsive activity in immediate reaction to inputs from the environment (almost the converse of hypoactivity of the frontal brain leading to non-suppression in susceptible schizophrenics of hallucinations and less suppression or rather control of confusion in the middle brain - the general idea being that an effective frontal brain leads to ‘self-control’ that is better organisation of the lower processes - but amphetamine being more related to output than input and of more value in ‘controlling’ impulsive output than suppressing hallucinatory input). The reason I would hypothesise for the absence of euphoria in those apparently under the influence here is the almost certain combination of ASM with the amphetamine. In myself I feel the effects are more or less cancelling out - on the assumption we are in fact under the influence of drugs - with possibly some slight reduction in resolution of my thinking. In Dawn I think the result is slightly better reflection in connection with what is going on around her, that is rather less separation of her internal cogitation from her responses - which one could argue are usually inattentive - to environmental stimuli, that is to the real world. I am a bit confused by the fact that the elder grandson seems more quietened by the putative amphetamine, although on theoretical principles I would expect an adolescent beginning to be capable of seriatim reflection to have his reflectiveness increased by stimulation of the frontal brain, and his excitability in reaction to environmental stimuli correspondingly reduced: but I have read that hyperactive children - which I take to mean preadolescents - benefit from amphetamine.
Yesterday the boys became quieter seemingly as a result of my own quietness - which I believed for myself was due to sub-amphetamine stimulant wearing off - and this possibly makes sense, again considering the behaviour of the elder brother, who it seemed to me decided more for himself to hold his tongue (as it were) and correspondingly began earlier to recover his tongue - although with more restraint compared to earlier excitability - whereas the younger seemed more cowed by feeling he was in trouble and it was required of him to hold his tongue. I would point out also that in the game of Monopoly the elder brother was winning, even though the younger is more intelligent and in fact the elder asked for help with the arithmetic of the money. I take this to imply the elder - and not only because of his more developed seriatim, but this enhanced by amphetamine (at least on this hypothesis) - was planning better - in fact being a better Capitalist in investing for the future (within the game).
This all seems to hang together as a theory, but on the face of it it seems unlikely that we would be drugged with genuine amphetamine. However, very strange things do happen in connection with The Experiment.
I mention without at present trying to interpret it that Dawn has had a lot of wind today and seems to have a big appetite. The elder grandson seems to have no appetite.
09/04/07 20:29
I point out that this visit to the park home so far I have put £10 in the electric meter, and an hour or two ago the reading was £8 credit.
I am reading through the March 2007 website diary, and have got to the end of 04/03/07.
A somewhat unpleasant symptom I have had for about two hours now, I would say, is lack of mobility of my face. This is fundamentally the ‘mask-like expression’ and I must conclude results from ASM even countered by amphetamine - presumably because amphetamine affects exclusively the higher reaches of the mind/brain (although I know from experience that sub-amphetamines create movement in the facial muscles, that is a more lively expressiveness). Indeed, thinking about it, the theorising above states that amphetamine reduces motions close to the external.
09/04/07 20:52
The effects of the drugs - at least the amphetamine component - are wearing off, as is demonstrated actually by my noting the effect I noted at 20:29, which earlier did not present itself sufficiently to my introspective attention to find its way out of my typing finger (more poetically: my pen). What I note now, quite suddenly really, is awareness of sounds and in particular the sound of the washing machine - which heretofore I was too ‘wrapped up in myself’ that is in my internal cogitations to remark - and the fact that corresponding to the input sounds there was output activity - moving my head and eyes, and my facial muscles which had been stilled, and likely other parts of my body as well - in such a fashion as to convince me the output was closely linked to the input. It seemed clear to me not so much from theory but almost by direct perceptual awareness - suspect I know, but we must bear in mind the high number of my introspective links now freed from suppression by the combination of ASM and (presumed) amphetamine - that the linkage from input to output was close to the external, not involving much seriatim interference (in the sense of downward control, although the upward introspective awareness was on the contrary recovering). My tentative conclusion is that this combination of ASM and ?amphetamine models negative-symptom schizophrenia by increasing the activation level of the frontal brain so that the subject thinks instead of acting; also decreasing the effectiveness of introspective links from the middle and lower brain to the frontal brain.
On this basis I wonder about the effect on Dawn, which has not been at all to increase her negative symptomatology. On the evidence of her continuing elevated level of appetite [and she mentioned she was constipated] I conclude she must - unlike myself - be under the influence of quite high dosages of ASM countering any amphetamine she may have taken in. My guess would be that the boys are affected by the same drugs as myself.
09/04/07 21:26
The principle is that amphetamine disconnects immediate reaction to environmental stimuli and replaces it with better thought-out determination of output by the frontal brain, and it does this by increasing outputs from the frontal brain (and possibly reducing inputs to the frontal brain - ie introspection). Thus it is feasible that in Dawn the usefulness of her frontal brain is increased to the level (I’m sorry to claim to be quite effectively connected myself) it naturally is in my case. It would work in hyperactive children more from the point of view of disconnecting immediate reactions than from replacing them by frontal-brain determination of output, the latter being little available to preadolescents. In fact the immediate reactions might well be replaced (usefully) by external-parent-figure determination of output (as seemed to happen yesterday in the quietening of the younger grandson).
Too high dosages of amphetamine seem to lead to too-vigorous pursuit of short-term goals. In other words the supplantative frontal-brain determination of output turns into pursuit of easy goals not properly deriving from connection with the external (eg dancing the night away, the dancing involving synchronisation to the beat where the synchronisation is in effect a constant fulfilment of expectations that is effectively achievement of very short-term goals).
10/04/07 03:15 [Tuesday]
As I have been in quite a light sleep on and off since going to bed just after 10 pm, and have now woken up fully I think and got up - although with some soreness of the eyes - I feel I am confirmed in my supposition that yesterday I - and presumably the others, who I have also heard moving in their sleep although evidently less affected than I (because they are still in bed more or less asleep) - was affected by amphetamine, the effects not yet having fully worn off. The obvious question is, in what way does this 3 am (more or less) waking differ from the regular 3 am wakings I suffered when under the effect of risperidone? The answer is that this morning I am straightaway ready to go, with no lagging of the seriatim process - I can immediately organise my thoughts and my plans, as is quite evident from the structure of what I am writing - and there is no hampering to physical activity - associated with which I have a feeling of freedom, not only of mind but of movement, in that I could ‘at will’ take myself off for a walk or to get fuel (to mention something I did use to think of doing at this time of night) or indeed back to Kingswinford (taking the others with me should I decide to go, which however is unlikely but nonetheless I feel free to do so) - but at the same time no urgency to do something to keep myself amused - no feeling that the park home even at this time of the morning is understimulating (and in fact I can hear traffic, which must be partly because it isn’t Christmas Day morning which I think was when once I mentioned the lack of stimulation, but partly also because my brain is more activated by the few odd sounds I can hear and probably my senses are more acute compared to the dull sensorium of ASM) - or driven by anxiety (eg that obtaining fuel in the daytime will be an onerous task or in fear of incarceration in Bassetlaw Hospital, the latter though covered by our plan to return to Kingswinford tomorrow and write a letter of apology to Dr E whose appointments with us both have been brought together and forward to Thursday).
To construe that rather long sentence in additional detail: evidently in my mind there are motivations and also ideas for activity based on events in the past. That is there is concern not to fall into the hands again of Bassetlaw psychiatrists; and there is the recollection that formerly I considered fleeing from them to Kingswinford; also that in the past I did flee to Kingswinford, although not quite for that reason; also previous ideas that I might go out in the night for fuel or simply for a walk. These bases for action though are not at the forefront of my mind, producing a feeling of urgency that I should do it now (the latter feeling usually in the past baffled by concurrent ASM). Instead, all the various ideas are present in my mind - but ‘at the back of my mind’ - simultaneously, and being able to survey them internally and choose between them - or to set them all aside and spend the early morning more in fantasy than in action - corresponds to the subjective feeling of freedom. Another point is that in surveying in particular the motivation of not falling into the hands of Bassetlaw psychiatry, I take note that we have an existing plan to deal with that - at least in the short term. In other words, in that particular instance organisation within the mind - not precisely fantasy, but related - is sufficient to forestall real-world activity this early morning. In the absence of such organisation - under ASM I mean without satisfactory understanding or memory of existing plans or in their complete absence - real-world activity could take place unnecessarily and therefore inefficiently and without proper effectiveness.
Let me say introspectively that sorting things out in my mind in this way - that is putting together explanations giving the reasons for things that is describing causal networks, in this case as so often involving the bases for my own behaviour (including thinking behaviour) itself an exercise in introspection - gives me considerable pleasure, the same type of pleasure as I derived a week or two back from observing and later thinking about in terms of explanatory theories the behaviour of kids on a bus from Merry Hill. I suppose the reason this morning I am dwelling more on my own behaviour is that that is what is present to my awareness now this morning, that is in the absence of other stimulating evidence through my senses (evidence through my senses being limited to the faint sounds of traffic and the familiar view through my eyes of the inside of the park home, plus as I focus more on my senses in mentioning them the heat from the halogen heater). I suppose that would also explain my focusing on my own introspections when I was a teenager - that is that I never went anywhere or did anything out of the routine, whereby I might gather sensory evidence from outside of myself (apart perhaps from watching TV).
My wordiness here clearly confirms further the action on me of a stimulant - a mental stimulant that is amphetamine. I invite my readers to compare the structure of what I am saying this morning - the informational beauty, in fact: not a million miles from activational power, the power to get the neural structures of my readers (the ones who follow) going - with the ‘structure’ contained in my wordiness under the influence of risperidone (or whatever combination of ASM and effective stimulant it was).
I mention that I am drinking black instant coffee made using Asda own-brand bottled water bought yesterday and selected randomly and most unlikely to be drugged.
Reflecting on the basis of pleasure - sometimes euphoria - given by amphetamine, as compared to the unpleasure of schizophrenia even though amphetamine and schizophrenia are related in exaggeration of dopamine activity - that is the pleasure I get naturally eg from observing kids on buses and later thinking on it, but exaggerated by amphetamine (and probably exaggerated in me this morning because of yesterday’s amphetamine, leading me to attach more significance than may be due to the superfluous twaddle in what I am writing): the pleasure of amphetamine almost certainly arises not from elevated levels of dopamine but from frequent surges in serotonin when the level of dopamine falls temporarily, eg on achievement emotion which as I have said under the influence of amphetamine one goes out of one’s way to obtain by tackling easy short-term goals.
10/04/07 04:57
In continuing to check over March 2007 I have reached the end of the 10/03/07 entry.
11/04/07 07:40 [Wednesday] Out and about
Yesterday we came to Skegness - actually Fantasy Island at Ingoldmells near Skegness - where we have spent the night in the motor caravan on a paid-for site (costing £14 for our party for one night, plus £10 returnable barrier key deposit). The main thing really in my mind to be set down is that I have been suffering - since yesterday afternoon, I think (although yesterday morning I remember I woke up and got up just after 3 am) - what might be characterised as sleep disturbance, with correspondingly a disturbance in my level of activity - bodily and mental - which outside observers might like to call dyskinesia. The fundamental reason for setting down the facts - when I can get away from these preambulatory explanations - is to seek to understand what is going on, as a means of coping better with such a situation in the future and even avoiding such a situation (which I am sure is blameable on drugs). (The effect of the drugs - the effect foremost at present anyway, attributable I would think to genuine amphetamine - is to stimulate my frontal brain which has as a major part of its function the unravelling of causal networks.)
I got up this morning at a quarter to six, feeling in reasonable fettle and certainly no longer tired or sleepy, not even drowsy or bleary in waking up. I did lie in bed for a while either awake or in the process of waking up - perhaps for fifteen to twenty minutes - but rather than attribute this to drugs blurring the separation between sleep and wakefulness I would attribute it mainly to my reluctance to make a noise which might wake up my companions and thinking out how to do things - slowly - in such a way as to minimise the disturbance to them. (The boys from High Wycombe are still with us; also Dawn’s son and his girlfriend - he phoned up yesterday morning about 8 am asking us to pick them up at 10 am and saying they could come to Skegness for one night and two days ie yesterday and today. The way things are turning out though we may be able to extend the holiday.)
After I had got up I took my director’s chair outside and sat for a while drinking milk. Dawn woke up and came to see where I was, and then made me coffee (made with milk) and then breakfast. I had a second cup of milky coffee afterwards. I then began to slow down - that is suffer bradykinesia - and also now I reflect feel the cold more. Dawn went back to bed - she is sleeping still - and I sat down on the bed, stilled in body and mind. I cannot say exactly how much thinking I was doing or what I was thinking - maybe none and nothing - until - the first thing I remember thinking after sitting down after breakfast - I felt how unpleasant it was to be neither fully awake nor properly sleepy let alone actually asleep. In other words it was like a condition of stimulant overuse or combination of stimulant with ASM - such as I have suffered in the past and presume am now - which emulates the need for sleep while yet being unable to sleep of stimulant overuse over a period. A little after that I was telling myself that it was not a natural state I was in - it was not for example tiredness after insufficient sleep - and was noting that my body was stilled through interference with the brain taking decisions to move the body. Expanding on this, I reflected that in schizophrenia stillness - eg catatonia, or simple underactivity in company - is a result of overthinking in such a way as to come to no decision what is the best action to take: in other words activity is suspended while thinking is going on. In the case of ASM, the neural circuits leading between inputs and outputs - or between plans and the outputs which would effectuate the plans - are restricted. The state I was in was the latter not the former, I concluded.
Now I noted that the state was changing, inasmuch for one thing that I was thinking those very thoughts. My mind was becoming more active. This activity of mind - continuing now with these rather wordy reflections (based as I said on a desire to expose networks of causes) - convinces me genuine amphetamine was admixed with ASM, probably in either the coffee granules or the milk used. My bodily activity is not particularly enhanced - that is compared against the earlier bradykinesia it is, but not compared against my normal condition - and my senses don’t seem significantly better connected to the external. Hence, as I say, it is a mental stimulant likely genuine amphetamine, and not the sub-amphetamine type of stimulant I have been more used to in recent years.
Yesterday afternoon I had a similar experience of lethargy and tiredness so that after arriving on this site I lay down and slept, the kids having gone off to the Fantasy Island proper with its roller-coasters and what-not; and waking from that I was very stimulated - even excited - in my manner as Dawn and I went for a walk to the beach. (Also I emptied my bowels for the third time yesterday.) At the time I couldn’t form much of a theory what was affecting me, and was thinking in terms of a reaction of sleep disturbance consequent on the previous day’s amphetamine I had theorised I had suffered. My pretty certain conclusion now is that foods or drinks are switched or drugs introduced either by the kids or by someone admitted - eg into the motor caravan in the night - while Dawn and I are asleep or unawares or absent. Yesterday afternoon in suffering the lethargy and tiredness I mention - making me unalert and eventually asleep - I also became slightly paranoid, fearing we had been led here - it was Dawn’s son suggested this site - so that I could be truth-drugged or similar in my sleep. This paranoia it is now evident to me resulted from the drug combination I was suffering at that time yesterday - possibly the same combination as this morning or possibly slightly different (as I feel no paranoia now - but then again I have worked out to my own satisfaction what is going on and hence am not in a condition of uncertainty and failure to understand leading to a high processing requirement: my dopamine levels have come down).
I feel no paranoia now, and don’t in fact much mind being given combinations of ASM and genuine amphetamine which as far as I can determine cancel out. Of course I do suffer minor problems as the levels fluctuate - for example this morning’s bradykinesia and unpleasant feeling of needing sleep but being kept awake: however that was short-lived - and of course the cancelling-out must depend on the relative dosages being right.
Yesterday evening I had some thoughts on the possible effects on Dawn of the amphetamine I was then thinking we might both have been given, in light of the fact that she hasn’t taken her Risperdal for a day or two, but since I cannot be sure she did take in any drugs yesterday and my thoughts reached no clear conclusion, I shall leave that matter for now.
My thoughts now this morning seem to be becoming rather less clear. In particular I have been unable to sort out in my mind an explanation how I can suffer paranoia from being given ASM if paranoia corresponds to high levels of dopamine. I think some qualification is needed to the high-levels-of-dopamine theory along the lines either of an unremittingly-high-levels-of-dopamine theory or a theory which says that in some people - perhaps people whose degree of introspection is such that the effect of ASM is reported to their seriatim process - dopamine levels rise to combat the effect of ASM. What this latter would be saying - which seems actually the truth - is that because I am aware of ASM affecting me even in the absence of gross ‘side-effects’ - that is my seriatim frontal brain has a sufficient survey of lower processes to know they are suffering interference - the seriatim tries - battling against the effect of ASM of lowering r