August 2007.

I have woken up after a period - perhaps fifteen minutes - of restlessness including aching legs which surely must be a reaction from or a final fling of yesterday’s ASM. I have woken up with nasal congestion. We must have gone to bed about 9 pm - I think it had just got dark - because Dawn was tired (affected by some drug or perhaps a reaction to earlier amphetamine in the tapwater), so I have had probably almost seven hours’ sleep (this longer than really I need and possibly helping explain the restlessness as I have been waking up, by virtue of the mismatch between the fact that I have had so many hours and the fact that it is still dark. In other words I suppose, without drugs (and in the absence of other factors such as my wife wanting to retire) I would have been awake later last night - as in my younger days I used to be awake long after it had got dark, even in the summer - and would have expected to wake this morning at or soon after first light.

Speaking of wakefulness late into the night: when I was at Cambridge - broadly speaking (I cannot remember if it was different in 1976 when I was living out of college and suspect I was being drugged less) - I used to go to bed early - in my first year sometimes very early (say 7.30 pm in the winter of 1974-75) because my mind was empty of anything much interesting to do - but in the vacations I used to stay up late, till about 1 am or 2 am. When I was at work, likewise, in the summer - I suppose starting summer 1979 - I used to go to bed before it was dark: I remember at the height of the summer light period I never used to need to shut the curtains (except presumably those of my bedroom).

01/08/07 04:07

I am drinking coffee made with water collected on the journey north recently and coffee granules bought at WhistleStop on Birmingham New Street station, both of which have seemed undrugged over recent days.

Looking back at the prog which occupied me most of yesterday, I can’t say I am dissatisfied - it does what I wanted, especially as regards what I have been calling ‘digital’ alteration of colour, where all blocks of colours similar to the given colour (that is similarity exceeding some threshold) are altered to a single new colour (this useful in regularising blocks in say a scanned drawing) although for photos it gives unnatural results and the ‘analogue’ method I tried is not so successful - but I can’t say either that I am ecstatic with self-praise at having done a wonderful job (this presumably because of interference still, or residual, with achievement emotion).

01/08/07 04:52

So this is one of the more successful ways my prog can by used (‘before’ and ‘after’ shots):

(This diagram is excerpted from my 1979 diary.)

01/08/07 04:59

I feel better and better pleased with what I have achieved in that prog, looking at the output results above. I would guess as I am waking up more, the effect of yesterday’s ASM on my capacity to feel ‘achievement emotion’ is receding (the other possibility is the coffee I have drunk or the hot cross bun I have just eaten contain amphetamine, but I think this less likely).

01/08/07 05:16

I am trying to understand what seems to be the most recent version I have of my Visual field analysis prog (dated 2007-05-28). The startup form is Form4:

The checkbox options are fairly easy to follow - for example whether to display characters on the screen as the prog is trying to recognise them, and come to that whether to ‘Turn on recognition’ at all (etc) - and the ‘Test::-’ in the top right corner was something I was trying out along the lines of finding a natural division of the visual field by trying to make each subdivision (in this case I was trying sub-rectangles) of the field of equal ‘interestingness’ in terms of ratio of black pixels to white pixels. The four command buttons above the OK button were mainly so that I could test the prog as I was devoting myself to different aspects of it, without needing to put in each time options such as Skip first few lines = 5. Recognition test run dates from some time ago when I was involved with getting the prog to actually recognise characters, instead of (this year really) pre-processing the scan to get better outlines of the characters. Plot greyscale distribution derives from when I was making first attempts to distinguish ‘black’ from ‘white’ and was graphing the frequencies of greyscale values (0 .. 255) found in a lineage from the scanned document.

The pre-processing tests differ in that Pre-process n lines sets the number of lines to be processed (to 10 although this is easily altered) and sets the filename of the document for use (“Scan for use in OCR (2).bmp”) whereas in Pre-processing test these are not preset. As the prog is written at the minute, as soon as the startup form loads, it prepares certain files (all of which actually were for printing out various stages in recognitions, for debugging purposes) and then invokes Pre-process n lines. This in turn calls picload (with Scan for use in OCR (2).bmp as the parameter) which is now in Module1.

01/08/07 06:41

I am looking at the procedure picload to try to simplify the overall prog for purposes of trying out ideas on pre-processing.

01/08/07 06:47

Form1 is the Form into which the document scan image is loaded (into Form1.Picture1). Form2 contains four PictureBoxes for displaying (that is printing) output (except Form2.PictureStop which is used as an area over which to hover the mouse pointer to signal to the prog that it is required to interrupt itself). Form3 contains three TextBoxes which were used to display characters (eg during recognition) as arrays of 1’s and zeroes (or equivalent). Form4 has already been described as the startup form. Form5 is best described by showing it:

Finally, Form6 contains a PictureBox to display graphical output, plus bells and whistles such as a TextBox for use for descriptive headings.

01/08/07 07:39

Form2.Picture2 holds the image extracted from Picture1 (the original document scan) of the lineage currently being processed. Form2.Picture3 holds the same thing but scaled (with the idea that tramlinesize should be as close to 8 as possible given the fact that integers are involved).

10:33. We are on a Central Trains train from Doncaster to Lincoln (calls Gainsborough and Saxilby) because Dawn is still hankering after living in Lincolnshire and I admit I like Wragby - where there is no railway station: we enquired - so the idea is to make enquiries at estate agents and to find out about public transport in Lincolnshire (I know there is a bus service out of Lincoln calling at Wragby).

I feel wide-awake: not unnaturally so, but without any sign of drowsiness or heaviness or soreness of the eyes - which I have suffered for so long almost constantly - and I must presume I have avoided drugs today and the wide-awake feeling is noticeable by contrast with yesterday in particular. Dawn on the contrary says she feels tired.

Before we left home I was doing well with paring down the prog Visual field analysis. I had deleted much unnecessary stuff - unnecessary if one is dealing simply in terms of pre-processing - to do with extracting and then recognising individual characters, but there may remain some procedures redundant as regards pre-processing. (I have in fact managed to get rid entirely of Form3 and have greatly simplified Form4. One or more of the Modules may be able to go, even without re-distributing their code.)

Readers will note my pleasure at ‘tidying up’ and saving ‘space’ of one sort or another. Dawn has been in a similar frame of mind recently - I don’t know whether it was with or without drugs - in which her expression of it was to sort out and chuck out clothes.

13:10. I suspect the milk we bought on Doncaster station - which I have drunk perhaps a pint of and Dawn half a pint - contained drugs, or possibly the M + S butter I have been carrying about with me. I think I detected an unnatural stimulant effect after drinking the milk, and now I am unenthusiastic to speak - interrupted in fact in trying to explain my views on moving home to Dawn, this interruption constituting a breach of expectation in fact a species of frustration: unpleasant not because I am disabled now from speaking but because I had got into a flow of speech I would not (I believe) ordinarily have been in - or if not unenthusiastic - because after all I regret the interruption - then disabled by hoarseness of the throat.

Because I have had these symptoms - hoarseness and associated frustration as we’ll loosely call it - and because in the past I have been surreptitiously drugged and with terrible effect in the past, I am suspicious that food or drink we buy today may be drugged. Because voices have spoken to me in the past in my sleep leading me to take distorted decisions and in fact do things I otherwise would not have done, I am suspicious of continuing ‘hypnosis’ of the same species perpetrated on Dawn or on myself, possibly compounding with the drugging by leading me or us to select stores to shop at where we are at increased risk of being sold drugged foodstuffs. In turn I feel sure drugs of a sedative nature make it more likely we shall be drugged, because - simply put - the perpetrators have less fear of waking us.

As a result of all this - fears from the past revived (or not allowed to rest) because we are sometimes still drugged and perhaps still sometimes ‘hypnotised’ - I have to use effort - and money - which ordinarily people would not expect to have to lay out. I think it unfair, for example, that arguments of the type above - entirely reasonable suspicions and fears based on what I have suffered so terribly in the past - lead me to chuck out what might be perfectly good foods. I think it unfair that I am led to spend time thinking about the best way to ensure I am not ‘hypnotised’, and to spend money on equipment I feel may help in that regard but which I would otherwise not buy. This is apart from what I have suffered - including loss of income from employment - in the past.

(I would presume from my focus here on the wrongs done me that I have in fact taken in a mixture of amphetamine and ASM.)

What I started out asking myself before entering the discussion with myself leading to these notes set down here was why should we move home: what motivations lead people to the stress and cost of moving home? My parents lived in the same house for over forty years. I have no desire of my own to alter our living arrangements - better the devil you know, I say - but Dawn seems distressed - although was not previously and I suspect the involvement of drugs and ‘hypnosis’ originally to lead her to what seems now a fixed goal, to move to Lincolnshire - so I am made to consider the possibility.

[Recent suggestions why we might move, to be nearer Dawn’s family in case she falls ill.]

13:46. I’ve just drunk most of a glass of milk which Dawn fetched for me from a café. It strikes me that on the basis that ‘hypnosis’ might easily take the form of a general suggestion - given eg last night - that we should buy and drink milk when we are out and about the following day - rather than specific post-hypnotic cues to buy certain stuff at certain shops - once having had suspicions of milk it would be as well for the rest of the day - or even for a day or two thereafter - to eschew it.

14:09. I have slight discomfort in the urinary and bowel departments which I take to be more than continuing constipation from yesterday, and take to be in fact further evidence I have taken in drugs today. Furthermore it is not easy - certainly not a pleasure as often loping along is these days - to walk round the streets of Lincoln. I accept the weather is hot but the true reason the effort required seems excessive, I believe, is the failure of achievement emotion - eg on making progress step by step, or after each phase of progress (I am not looking ahead to the next corner - often useful to break down a journey, and think of stepping stones or flagstones with bears at the interstices - and setting it as a goal giving rise to pleasure when achieved) - which would give a boost in the form of basking interludes even basking interludes of negligible duration (because it is the serotonin boost which gives pleasurable urgency to resume, not the rest as such).

(The rambling about bears at interstices is good evidence in itself of failure of my usual seriatim organisation, plus of course the overactive middle brain which makes such a seriatim a necessity if schizophrenia is to be avoided - overactive in the sense of producing far-reaching clouds of concepts.)

16:43. Nasal congestion now and I am noticing a feeling of haste. Earlier my eyes felt tired - presumably leading me to suspect the milk bought in Lincoln (although actually I can’t remember the timings) which I suppose was the likely source of the stimulant presently affecting me. I don’t know that I can attribute the nasal congestion to a stimulant although now I notice I have a headache, possibly implying a mixture of stimulant and sedative effects.

01/08/07 20:26

We boarded the southbound Virgin - for Birmingham - on time at 1957 at Doncaster, and on our southward journey we have just left Sheffield (said to be ‘on time’ on time being 2023). Earlier we were in Lincoln and after returning to the park home - having felt effects of a stimulant drug about which I made some notes on the handheld device [above] - I became markedly calmer and my mind clearing began to think efficient thoughts on things to do, related to travelling south to Kingswinford (what needed to be packed etc) but to other matters as well: in other words my capacity for overview - and calm undistracted untroubled overview taking in many subjects in a multiplexed manner (that is not in parallel but switching freely between them under overall organised control) - returned after the slight feeling of harassment being out and about in - and travelling to and from - Lincoln. Reflecting on the experience thus, it is clear that the harassment natural in going out and about - especially travelling in places not very familiar - was exacerbated by the stimulant drug, resulting in the markedly noticeable calm - entailing the capacity to think clearly on more abstract topics, that is topics not directly related to the here and now - which came over my mind on return to ‘home’.

These notions evidently developing ‘subconsciously’ around that time after our return to the park home, and later, on the bus back to Doncaster - having been visited (a most welcome visit) by Dawn’s daughter and her family in the intervening hour - I had thoughts on activation affecting the lower brain, the middle brain and the frontal brain from looking at the sky (and thinking about other more or less stimulating sights for example recalling trips to see planes at London airport in my childhood, and watching trains in my childhood and more recently - and taking note that some people would find such trips and sights not stimulating but boring) and considering further the question of travel. Now on the train south - as I said - as we progressed out of Doncaster I found I began to be more subject to distraction from feeling too rushed, but now it is less so - this renewed relative calm assisted I do not doubt by writing this (equivalent to reading Sherlock Holmes stories when I was troubled on first going to the grammar school) that is retiring somewhat - through mental activity, that is something one can wilfully ‘choose’ to do - into my mind which is familiar territory wherever I am in physical reality. (In other words I do not attribute my renewed susceptibility to feeling rushed on leaving Doncaster to a fresh assault with stimulant drugs: such drugs - and ASM on the other side - interact with naturally arising ‘psychological’ effects due to the context one finds oneself in, which can also be interacted with by learnt processes - for example it is not impossible one could learn or be taught some sort of meditation equivalent to finding calm from the familiar territory within the mind which I myself have hit on in a form by as it were trial and error at least since my experiences on first going to the grammar school.)

I naturally think in terms of as it were private mechanisms such as techniques of meditation, but I do not say social support is never possible. The thing is ‘support’ from other people almost always involves communication which for a schizo type person may further overload the processing requirement. I would remind those who would help schizophrenics through psychiatric intervention that less is more.

I have also had thoughts on feeling so rushed one achieves little as against the opposite, that is feeling just sufficiently roused by the need for action including mental action (thinking out what to do for the best) to act more efficiently and effectively not less. This is evidently related to the inverse U-curve representing the optimum level of dopamine, but much more can be said than that (if and when I have leisure).

01/08/07 23:54 In Kingswinford

We arrived at Birmingham New Street ahead of time - we arrived about 2130 instead of 2144 - and I was able to use the toilet, my bowels activated by the earlier stimulant. We crossed to Moor Street and caught a train from London Marylebone to get to Snow Hill waiting there for the 2157 which was late. We left about 2210 and had experience of a lineside fire in the Hawthorns area. We got to Stourbridge Town in time for the number 256 bus at 2305 and walked from the end of [omitted] Avenue in Kingswinford. On the bus from Stourbridge I was looking on the bright side and thinking how much easier it is for me not having to drive from the Doncaster area to Kingswinford. On arrival in Kingswinford I was happy not so much this time to be back in a familiar area but to have variety but variety without too much complete novelty. This pleasure certainly indicates I have taken in no ASM today and may be enhanced by the stimulant taken in today, in much the same way that the calm on arrival at the park home earlier was enhanced by contrast with the rather hectic time we had had in Lincoln. The pleasure is pretty certainly enhanced by a rebound after yesterday’s ASM.

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02/08/07 04:36 [Thursday]

As I have been waking up - since I got up about forty-five minutes ago to go to the toilet to pass water - my mind has been active. Having got up now though - within the past five minutes - it seems sort of empty. It isn’t empty though and pleasurable ideas for things to do - starting with a continuation of my character recognition programming - are beginning to arise. Also, one would not expect my mind to be empty because there are continuing (or residual) stimulant effects not only in my brain activity as I have been waking up but in sore eyes (bloodshot too, but without bleariness) and sore throat. I seem to have some elevation of libido although - this presumably related to the absence of admixed ASM and consequently availability of mental interests possibly leading to what I have said is often a more significant and gripping emotion (for me) than physical (sexual) orgasm in ‘mental orgasm’ - it is only a slight distraction from what is otherwise coming into my mind. The explanation for the seeming emptiness of my mind on getting up I am sure is distraction from words spoken in my sleep probably over the past hour. However, these also are relatively little distractive now my mind has properly got going (with sleep receding) and - without ASM - my own thoughts are arising in competition.

One effect of ASM in the past when there have been similar scenarios to this has been to increase my paranoia in a sense, and certainly to make me presume the voices in my recent sleep had some definite objective to be met basically by giving me what were more or less directives (and when I have been more paranoid - presumably on higher dosages of ASM, depending also on the individual drug used - I have presumed the directives were aimed at getting me to do something troublesome for myself, such as photograph a psychiatrist and thereby lay myself open to detention under the Mental Health Act). This morning however I think in terms of the voicers desiring me to have pleasure - possibly sexual pleasure - rather than unpleasure, and not to be insistent - this I suppose related to their relative weakness set against the strength of my own thoughts arising now in unmatched competition, really - and to be more in enquiry than giving directives. (I am reminded that if you ask questions of weak-egoed people they tend to take them rather as imperatives: thus if I say, “Are we going to Marks and Spencers?” the presumption - from Dawn, for example, depending on her condition at the time - does tend to be that I desire to go to Marks and Spencers and am more or less insisting or commanding that we go there. It’s true interrogatives in language do carry implications for the hearers’ activity - including brain activity - greater than declarative statements, although somewhat less than imperatives do. A definite tendency will arise in the hearer to pursue the answer to the question, just as a definite tendency will arise on hearing a command to follow the command, and this particularly in children this forming the basis - the need to set aside the tendency to follow the command - of the game ‘Simon Says’. The tendency of schizo hearers to elevate heard interrogatives into a definite basis for action is no doubt parallel to their tendency to elevate what are or were merely hypotheses into a definite basis for action, in other words to act as if what is or should be merely a hypothesis until tested out is in fact the truth. It seems obvious to me that this too is parallel to delusion - where some hypothesis, for example that I am specially called by God to murder prostitutes, based on some perceptual or pre-processing evidence, possibly flawed if hallucinations are present, leads me to take action in the presumption, which is close to belief in such an instance, that the mental constructs involving and leading to the delusion represent the truth.)

It is easy to suppose that action based on delusion arises because there are insufficient processing resources to unravel the truth or otherwise of the hypothesis which becomes the delusion, together with some environmental activation forcing action of some sort. If the latter is absent rather than florid symptoms of schizophrenia negative symptoms will be seen, the sufferer abstracting himself from connection with the real world in order to pursue the unravelling of whether the delusion - and other puzzles in his mind - are true or not.

02/08/07 05:32

Within the past twenty minutes I have drunk a glass - say 250ml - of American Ginger Ale bought yesterday evening at B-- Co-op, and stimulant effects seemingly from this drink are now distracting me from what was going through my mind and might have formed a continuation of the above (to do with my own delusory or semi-delusory beliefs of the past, such as that Dr E was not genuinely a local Worksop psychiatrist, and going back to the 1980s what my strange ideas then - such as that speakers on the radio repeated words I uttered myself aloud in my own home - were based on).

02/08/07 05:57

I’m not absolutely sure whether there are any drugs in the Ginger Ale - I have always had more difficulty recognising the presence of stimulants except at higher dosages when the effects of ASM on my introspective ability become predominant and I fail to notice ASM especially if I have become accustomed to it over months and years - but it seems to me my eyes are more sore than they were, with a sort of tiredness which was not there before; also I seem to detect nasal congestion - albeit slight- where before there was none; and I seem to detect an incipient headache where before there was none.

I started on this bottle of Ginger Ale last night after getting back to the bungalow. I drank two or three glasses before going to bed. There’s about 200ml left of the 1l bottle.

02/08/07 06:24

From the effect just now on my bowels of the Ginger Ale - no doubt enhanced by a continuation of effects from yesterday, and similar to effects yesterday, but almost certainly brought on just now by the glass of Ginger Ale taken this morning - I must conclude all the drinks bought in B-- Co-op yesterday evening (and presumably all the drinks bought at the kiosk on Doncaster station in the morning) contained drugs (and presumably all the drinks in the shop did, except perhaps the alcohol). Can I believe that innocent purchasers - even if they drank loads of drinks bought there - would notice no effect? If it is so, then it follows that Dawn’s sensitivity - like everyone else’s but mine, the argument is - is not particularly affected by partaking with me of these drinks. If this is so, the effects evident in her must derive mainly from the tapwater she drinks, which must contain much higher dosages than in these drinks I buy. (I must presume - on this theory - that shop assistants at places like B-- Co-op would only intercept innocent purchasers if they wanted to buy large quantities of drinks, as it could not for certain be ruled out that such a purchaser might drink say pint after pint of milk. But then again in a quiet place like B-- I presume it is rare for a stranger to arrive and unheard of for a stranger to buy drinks in bulk.)

On I think Monday 2 April 2007 when I was so affected by some sedative agent that I retired to bed for much of the day, Dawn seemed unaffected. What I must imagine is that the drugs then in the tapwater were at an insufficient dosage to affect her much - given that the grandsons were stopping with us - but the drugs in the drinks I had bought for myself mainly - possibly at a similar concentration to those in the tapwater - were enough to affect me significantly.

Yesterday Dawn did show some effects of stimulants - around mid-day presumably from the drinks we had bought on Doncaster station (and she drank more than I because I stopped after becoming suspicious) - but one may presume only schizo type people would react anywhere near so strongly, and as psychiatry can expect to have caught up with most of them the risk of a severe adverse reaction in a purchaser randomly arriving at Doncaster station and buying drinks would be negligible (especially as I say given that the kiosk attendant was presumably instructed what to do in the extremely unlikely event of someone wanting to buy the whole chill-cabinet’s worth of drinks). Given too that Dawn seems to suffer effects of sedation from the tapwater it may be - as in June just gone - that the tapwater contains ASM (although no longer at such a dosage that I notice ASM ‘side-effects’ in Dawn) protecting her from stimulants in the drinks we buy out and about. Yesterday because she had taken little tapwater and that hours before, around mid-day she showed effects of the stimulants in the drinks bought out. (In fact from her occasional tearfulness over recent weeks it may be the ASM in the tapwater is reserpine as I previously suspected. However at the park home in recent weeks there have also been stimulants in the tapwater, whose adverse effects on Dawn I have reported. Possibly the idea was to discover the effect on her of various combinations of stimulants and sedatives to determine what could be risked in drinks sold to us while out and about given that she is likely to share them with me.)

I note I am - my thinking affected by stimulant drugs - going down the route of presuming there is some long-term intention to give me some particular combination of drugs in drinks we buy out and about. However, investigating the effect on Dawn of drugs in the tapwater (as above) has I am sure in itself fruitfully thrown up information and ideas (and theories from me if from no-one else). Perhaps given that I am known to detest ASM - I recall however I suffered ASM in the milk bought in Harworth last week, and two days ago in the stotties bought at Asda Doncaster - it is mainly stimulants whose effect on me is now under investigation, the effects of stimulants emulating in some respects - especially in those susceptible - effects in schizophrenia.

02/08/07 07:46

I have been dozing presumably indicating a sedative in with the stimulant. I was dozing yesterday too but to a less degree presumably as stimulant was already in my system from early on or from preceding days; and Dawn is dozing now too (presumably from the effects of drugs in tapwater). There is no confusion such as I associate with barbiturate.

I am asking myself if the sedative agent producing the blanking I used to suffer in the months before Christmas was opium or related (as I suspected based I think on advice from nighttime voices) the idea being to investigate the compare and contrast of different sedatives not just ASM.

02/08/07 09:11

We have been in bed sleeping, and even now having got up because I have an appointment with the GP at 9.45 am I feel dreadfully tired. I must presume the sedative agent involved was in the Ginger Ale - I have chucked the remainder - and was at a higher dosage compared to the drug mixture in drinks I took earlier yesterday. Alternatively the basis of the problem - excessive sedation now - lies in the transition from north Notts to here, in that in north Notts I was - perhaps - more or less continuously taking in drugs so that the stimulant component was not over-compensated by the sedative.

02/08/07 16:44

I have spent the past one to two hours in bed, mostly asleep although latterly I have been waking up but have found it a slow and difficult process, that is I have been almost awake for a while but have relapsed from time to time back into sleep and have found the failure to be awake in this period unpleasant. I suppose there is little question but that the drug affecting me this afternoon has been an antischizophrenic drug, and I am almost certain I remember the condition of being close to sleep in the particularly unpleasant way I have tried to describe, from my experience in the 1980s when I would lie on my bed much of the day drifting in and out of sleep of the same sort without any accompanying feeling of relaxation. I believe the drug I was then being given was Modecate and there is an oral form called Moditen.

My eyes are sore now and I am not fully awake, but as in the early months of 2006 I am feeling better as sleep - or whatever condition it is in this instance like sleep - is receding. My first guess would be that recently I have been given - or rather tricked into taking - single doses of various antischizophrenic drugs, to see what I make of the effects. The other day at the park home affected by something I guessed was in the stotties I was not rendered sleepy or in today’s condition like sleep not anyway to such an extent that I had to take to my bed. I don’t think this was just because today I have taken a higher dosage: today’s experience has been not only more debilitating (for the duration) in that while in bed I have got nothing done - and before going to bed I got little done: I was trying to open the digital electronic safes here at the bungalow having it seems not recorded the password then in use and I have managed to remember the password and open the safes but have learnt little and made no real decisions for the future in doing this - but more unpleasant in the sensations not exactly physical sensations but sleep-related sensations. I have to say I have experienced no akathisia or any noticeable effect in my legs, whereas with Modecate in the 1980s (although presumably this dosage is much lower) I did suffer badly with akathisia.

In the summer of 1980 I believe the first antischizophrenic drug officially tried on me was Depixol in a test-dose injection. Prior to that I had certainly been surreptitiously given reserpine but possibly never a more modern antischizophrenic agent. When I reported the severe effects of the test dose of Depixol to the CPN who came to my home to administer a second injection - two weeks later I think - he decided not to give it and I believe Armond then tried me on a number of different antischizophrenic drugs in oral form. I know these included Orap (that is Pimozide) and Sparine (I remember saying to him that I found Sparine just tolerable). When I was hospitalised in early November 1980 the first antischizophrenic drug I was given - after an injection possibly of Haloperidol to subdue the initial agitation I had - was chlorpromazine, I think in tablet or possibly elixir form (to make sure I swallowed it). This resulted in postural hypotension so that I passed out after which some such words as ‘sensitive to chlorpromazine’ appeared on my notes. I can’t say what drugs were next tried during that hospitalisation but on discharge in early February 1981 I was having regular - I think fortnightly - injections possibly of Modecate. The appointment card I happened to retain from the summer of 1986 reveals that then I was being injected with 100mg Modecate every three weeks. I’m wondering if I retained this appointment card because the injections were discontinued - the one for 30 July 1986 was apparently not given, although written on the card as planned to be given (and I can’t help but notice that date, 30 July) - possibly because I ran away to West Yorkshire. I remember doing so and sleeping one night - I think only one night - in my car, in the summer possibly about a year before I had the house in Keighley to run away to (and I may have been sufficiently activated by the fact of Emily Brontë’s birthday on 30 July 1986 to run away at that time or just before that time).

I note incidentally that resulting out of today’s drugging with an antischizophrenic drug possibly one related to Modecate I am casting my mind back to the period of my treatment, but I have to say this time without any real feeling of hostility or anger, this supporting the evidence anyway of an absence today of significant stimulant affecting me. I must say, I am interested to unravel the sequence of events in those almost ‘missing years’ of the 1980s and 1990s, missing not only inasmuch as my experience during those decades was attenuated but also in that my memories of them have never come forward much. I have never read through my diaries of those decades since having written them, anything like fully or with anything like proper understanding.

Let me say - further - that my presumption is that the drug which has affected me today is not in the coffee I am continuing to drink without much concern, but was given deliberately in some ‘one-off’ manner (possibly in the coffee we had in the café at Brierley Hill market, or in the orange drinks we bought at Home Bargains - both of which the coffee and the orange drink Dawn also took and seems unaffected; we have about four of the orange drinks left). As regards the absence of effect seemingly in Dawn, I would relate this today to the experience on for example Monday 2 April 2007 and would also presume from it that my response is most unusual in its strength and that Armond would not imagine it possible (although he was negligent in not making enquiries when I made the complaints I did and it is unfortunate that evidently my parents understated the severity of my reaction if any enquiry at all was made of them, eg by the Experimenters in those days presuming these latter were independent of Armond).

I am quite willing to believe that throughout most of the 1980s I was being given Modecate, because when I was hospitalised at the end of August 1987 (for six weeks) a big thing was made of a ‘new’ drug - Piportil - which I would not find so terrible (this notion of newly developed drugs which I would find suited me better has come up time and again, certainly since 1987, when in fact as I have sought to theorise an explanation for - something those prescribing the drugs were remiss in not doing thoroughly before prescribing, and also the drug companies - my difficulties have resulted from the primary antidopamine action of all antischizophrenic drugs and have not constituted simply sensitivity to ‘side-effects’).

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02/08/07 18:07

The drug affecting me today is not the same as the other day derived I believed from the stotties. The stottie drug had side-effects of nasal congestion and discomfort in the legs, whereas today’s does not have these effects but principally ‘sedation’. Neither seems to have affected my mood as such.

02/08/07 18:19

Looking back at my diary of last June where I had been looking back to the 1980s, I note that in February 1986 I ceased to be required to attend the day centre at Barnsley Hall and took up my pretence of research at Wolverhampton Poly (as it was then) instead.

03:30 05/06/2006

I recall now after I was released from my hospitalisation of 1987 (around the beginning or middle of October, I think) I started to attend the ward I had been on - D Ward at Barnsley Hall Hospital - on a one-day-a-week basis. This continued until that hospital (an old asylum) closed, when I started attending Burton Road Hospital (again presumably one day a week) as an interim measure, and then the newly opened Bushey Fields Hospital which is the psychiatric in-patient facility now in use in Dudley, to the rear of Russells Hall Hospital.

From March 1987 I started being surreptitiously given a stimulant again, probably amphetamine. This started the sequence resulting in my hospitalisation that August. I have conjectured a major objective in detaining me then was to find out about my purchase or proposed purchase of a house in Keighley to run away to, that is (as in more recent years since I ran away from Kingswinford in September 2003) what it was I found worth running away from. On Monday 5 June 2006 I said It seems around this time [Spring 1987] I ceased to have depot injections, but what led to that conclusion when reviewing history last year I cannot at present say.

I seem to remember reporting to Armond my suicide attempt at a time - reporting it that is - when I was still attending the day centre. Certainly in the first half of the decade the 1980s I suffered terrible anxiety and depression which I associated with attending the day centre (because I felt worse when there and the anxiety was centred on thoughts of being there when I was not there). This resulted in my eagerness to go to the Poly instead, but quite who thought up that get-out I can’t remember (I do remember initially Armond was reluctant, as some months previously he had seen no reason to reduce the days of my attendance at the day centre from three a week to two although he was persuaded to do so). Armond detained me in hospital for one weekend after I refused to attend the day centre - presumably about 1985 - so that I returned to attendance. In other words the severe distress I was in - centred on attending the day centre - eventually penetrated even Armond’s insensitivity so that the days of my attendance were reduced from three a week to two and finally I escaped altogether to the pretence of research at Wolverhampton Poly. Putting it in those terms seems to make clear how little intuitive grasp of schizophrenia Armond had - he himself had no schizo traits in his make-up - and what he understood of the subject had been gleaned by - no doubt hard-working - study of the literature. The major defect he had - it was a defect because it led to my considerable misfortune - was being self-confident and convinced he knew the answers. Indeed the originators of the Experiment - of whom he may have been one - had an unfortunate tendency to presume they understood schizophrenia and that it was relative easily solved - they had over-confidence again - which included a mistaken belief that medication even in those days went quite a long way towards effecting a cure. It is that type of psychiatrist - many nowadays may be different, or willing to be different - that I think of when I think of them as simple-minded and presumptuous the presumptuousness founded in ‘unwarranted mutual admiration’ to quote a phrase of my own. Straight-forward people like Armond may get on well with others similar, but unfortunately - related I think to the complexity of neural intraconnections - schizo behaviour is anything but straight-forward; indeed this lack of straight-forwardness is what makes life - the processing requirement of life - so difficult for the schizophrenic or nearly schizophrenic. And because the difficult processing requirement arises from the structure of the schizo brain, it is worse than useless to tell the patient to pull himself together which in effect Armond was telling me in saying I must make an effort to be more sociable. Why the f*ck should anyone not naturally sociable make an effort to be so? Many do, I know - or at least pretend - misled by psychiatric advice or from the necessity to escape psychiatric treatment including sometimes detention.

02/08/07 18:59

I was not made to attend the day centre following my first hospitalisation starting at the end of 1980. It could not have been realised that the treatment would so debilitate my capacity to go to work, that in fact effective March 1982 I resigned from my employment with Dudley Council. Presumably it was decided on my discharge from the second detention around April 1984 that because I was not in employment I needed something to occupy me. Therefore despite the horror of those years in retrospect, it appears I was only attending the dreadful day centre through 1984 and 1985 (spending two Christmas breaks suffering fear of the return) and in February 1986 I escaped to my Poly ‘work’.

Of course what happened then - recollections now returning - was that the anxiety (and depression) got transferred to the Poly attendance, where I was supposed to mix with people but hardly did so at all, and I became concerned that I was unable to get anything done - the research was supposed to be to do with character recognition, this obsession of mine over the years - because I couldn’t think. Again that interlude lasted less than two years: I was supposed to go into college from time to time in the summer of 1986 but did not do so, and before the summer vacation 1987 came along I was trying to get out of attendance as I had tried to get out of the day centre. Part of this wish to escape was thinking about ways physically to escape, looking into renting a garage around April 1987 with the idea of buying a small campervan and eventually later in 1987 buying the house in Keighley.

As I said, in the summer of 1986 I was being injected with Modecate every three weeks this not having changed - except possibly the frequency - since 1984 when I must have first been put on Modecate.

02/08/07 19:20

I have found out some dairies from those years:

Volume 8 covers Tuesday 30th August 1983 e.v. - Friday 30th December 1983 and contains information stuck into the front cover, including

831104.0903

Ringing tone.

0905. High pitched whistle.

800518.3 (part).

programs to write:

chess

acquiring morphemes

compacting text

optimising code

optimising knowledge base

poker

mine-a-million

text editor

On Wednesday 19 October 1983 evidently I went for the day to Cambridge, as I have a Visa card receipt dated 19.10.83 from Bowes & Bowes a bookshop there for deposits on O.E.D. (Compact ed.) and Brontës Life and Letters. This year too I was evidently trying to find a house (in Kingswinford) to buy to get away from my parents. In fact they purported to offer help in this regard, but of course nothing came of it and the idea lapsed. There are constant references too to what I had eaten and symptoms such as my pulse rate (usually on the slow side) indicating that I strongly suspected I was being surreptitiously drugged, in the foods I thought.

Volume 9 covers Sunday 1 January 1984 - Wednesday 25th December 1985.

02/08/07 19:55

For the past hour (say) I have noted I have a dry mouth. Now nasal congestion and headache are developing. We have just had our evening meal of mashed potato with onion, runner beans and pork steak (the veg boiled in water from one of my bottles, probably originating from the public toilet at New Street station) followed by ice cream. We had some of this ice cream last night but none today until now. The last thing I took by mouth prior to the evening meal was a cup of coffee possibly two hours ago.

Volume 10 covers Thursday 26th December 1985 - Tuesday 19th August 1986.

14th July 1986. [Monday] 19h25.

This morning I went to the Poly but there was no-one there to let me into the room so I read the front and back of the Financial Times in the library then came home.

My father was off teaching this morning and before he got back Armond telephoned. My mother answered the phone and took a message. My father phoned him back just after 2. I can’t really understand what he wanted to say. I think it is because it is almost six months since I was last in hospital. He said that as I was now doing this course at the Poly it would be difficult to find an excuse for taking me into the hospital. My father said he wanted the section renewed. (He says this is so that I can go on getting invalidity benefit with no argument.)

This afternoon I went with my father to Kinver lock on the canal and walked downstream for 20 minutes (until we could get no further because of nettles) and back. When we got home I lay on the bed.

This evening I lay on the bed then listened to the Radio 4 news. Gilts went down today by as much as £2. Since the end of that I have had a cup of coffee and listened to “Plastic Letters” by Blondie.

When I get up from lying down I feel dizzy for a while. This has only come on recently. Pulse 84 at the moment.

15th July 1986. [Tuesday] 19h36.

This morning Armond telephoned and spoke to my father. Then I went out with my father to Stourbridge and Brierley Hill. In Stourbridge we went to Wimbush’s and then to Halford’s where my father got some special wax for his car. We went to the Abbey National building society and he withdrew £80. He went to Lloyd’s bank and paid his Access bill while I went into the post office and got leaflets about income bonds and the investment account and another form for buying government stock. Finally we went to the library and my father returned an overdue book (but they didn’t fine him as he is a pensioner). While we were there we looked at the Financial Times. In Brierley Hill we went to Kwiksave mainly for bread and to the market for potatoes.

When we got home my father phoned Armond. As far as I can make it out they admit my section lapses after six months out of hospital and they are saying they will let it lapse on the 27th inst. My father and I are to go to see Armond and Dr Edwin on Thursday at 12:30 p.m.

This afternoon both my parents were out and I lay on the bed listening to Radio 1. I also washed my hair. This evening I saw “Bewitched” and “Pets in Particular” and listened to the Radio 4 news. Since my cup of coffee I have been lying on the bed [….]

17th July 1986. [Thursday] 19h37.

Today I haven’t done anything much. This morning I watched yesterday’s “Family Ties”. We went to see Armond at 12h30. My mother was out in my father’s car so I drove us (my father and I) in my car. Armond wanted me to continue with the injections but I said no. Dr Edwin was there but he didn’t have much to say. This afternoon I sat with my father in the dining room exchanging words as he did the crossword. A man my father knows from the Providence Group (John Barry) came and replaced the radiator on my car.

This evening I listened to the Radio 4 news and since then I have been talking to my father and mother as he cut the front lawns and she watered the back garden [….]

27th July 1986. [Sunday] 18h41.

No pyjama jacket last night.

This morning I read bits of the Sunday Telegraph, in particular bits of the city section. Then I went out for the day with my parents to Upton House. We stopped in Stratford on the way and ate our sandwiches and sat by the river and I played with the Link machine. There was no tea-room at Upton House so I had drunk all my coffee by the time we got home. My father expressed a desire for tea as well (at Upton House, I mean). We watched a man giving rides across the Avon on a man-powered ferry at Stratford. He wound the thing along a chain just below the surface of the river.

The Link machine said I had £10-72 in my Giro account. I thought at the end of May there would be the last of my standing orders to the Esperanto Association, but it hasn’t been paid. I intend to terminate the subscription anyway as I don’t get much out of it. (Also, my boxes of the magazines they send are full.) I don’t intend to subscribe to the Schizophrenia Association either. They only send a newsletter about once a year and they are on the side of relatives rather than the patients.

I haven’t written here before about my intention to let these two subscriptions lapse, have I? I try to note down everything that goes through my mind, but I don’t remember it all. Evidently I don’t think I shall be going to the Poly tomorrow. The next thing I have to do is write a program to generate features and I don’t see how I can do it when my thinking is reduced by the Modecate. When I used to write computer programs, ideas would fill my mind. I would notice errors as I lay in bed waiting for sleep. Now my mind is empty all the time. (That’s why I fall asleep so easily.)

It will shortly be time for Anne Nightingale (I wonder how old she is) and later “Family Money” and “Sunday Evening”. The latter wasn’t very good last week as John Hammersley wasn’t there. Someone was standing in for him. I think he won’t be there today as well.

This evening so far I have had a bath and watched “Wild Britain”. And the BBC1 news [….]

1st August 1986. [Friday] 19h02.

More rain today. For the past two nights I have been wearing a pyjama jacket. In the bath yesterday I noticed my legs were not restless. I could think about them without moving them. Previously they have been most restless when I have been in the bath. I am now only taking four procyclidine a day.

This morning and this afternoon I read to the conclusion of “An Excellent Mystery”. First thing this morning I read the main article in the Daily Mail city section. Usually I just glance at the gilts prices. This afternoon I put the books I have bought over the past month or two into the main sequence. I have now read them all. I have read all the books I have acquired since going into hospital on 1mar84 except for two Asterix books.

I have detected myself planning today. The Modecate prevents this activity. I hope to buy a nice thick Feint book which I saw in Mark & Moody for £6-something to use as my diary when this volume runs out. I want to pay for it on Barclaycard which means (to get maximum credit) I ought to buy it late next week. Also, I get an income bond interest payment next week and £1000 from the NSB investment account. So on Wednesday when I collect my £46-85 invalidity benefit I shall withdraw £100 from my Giro account and post the £1000 warrant I should then have to my Giro account. Then on Friday I can pay the cash I will have in hand (£46-85 + £100 + £15 in front of me now) plus a cheque for (say) £250 into a new Anglia building society account. Next Saturday I can see the prices of gilts in the Daily Telegraph and if the price is right send off for £250-worth or more. (Gilts were down about 3/8 today, according to Financial Report.)

This evening I listened to the Radio 4 main news and (because my father had it on for information about the man who is buying up Walsall football club) I saw “Midlands Today”. There is a horror film on Central tonight. I doubt if I will be able to stay awake for it. But hopefully shortly I will be able to stay awake, when the Modecate has worn off. I used to enjoy Friday night horror films when we first had a portable TV in 1973.

Another thing I did this afternoon was listen to Abba’s Greatest Hits, I shall now listen to Eurythmics: “In the Garden”.

02/08/07 23:27

I have been looking out diary volumes to identify the periods covered. Diary Volumes 0, I, III, 4 and 6 are in a firesafe now at the bungalow in Kingswinford. Volume 5 is travelling about with us as it is the one mainly being typed up at present, especially the ‘monograph’ I wrote about March 1979 (and I believe there may be a final typed version - typed in 1979 that is - in the garage). Volume II is at the park home.

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03/08/07 05:35 [Friday]

I have woken up and got up seemingly in a short period of perhaps ten minutes. Having got up though my eyes do seem slightly bleary - a sedative effect - rather than sore which would be a stimulant effect. They do not seem as readily mobile as they might be (whereas what I am calling soreness I imagine would correspond to increased muscle tone in the muscles controlling the eyes, and therefore a greater readiness to be mobile). I have slight nasal congestion, again a sedative effect corresponding in some way to constriction of the nasal passages as opposed to dilatation which would be a stimulant effect associated with greater availability of oxygen so that more activity could take place in a given time.

Thinking in terms of stimulation/sedation: in the natural way sedation takes place mainly in recovery after a necessary effort which has been particularly vigorous and therefore costly in resource usage (eg leading to tissue damage such that stasis and keeping out of the way of trouble gives time for repair). To the extent that resting occurs in preparation for future vigorous activity, it is a waste unless there is some damage to be repaired. If the organism is already in perfect health, there is no point to resting. The point of mental sedation - for example occurring naturally in the basking period after achievement - is to clarify or even empty the mind of notions which would otherwise continue inappropriately and constitute a distraction. If I have been puzzling how to achieve promotion in my job, it is inappropriate to continue to think much about it once I have achieved promotion, because this unnecessary mental activity would distract me from actually doing the more senior job after the promotion. Mental sedation using drugs has at its basis the idea that mental activity occurring naturally is because of a dysfunction too vigorous, so vigorous in fact as to be distractive, confused and in fact self-defeating. Thus inappropriately great anxiety may lead a person to rush about frantically - certainly in his mind - like a burnt chicken and in doing so achieve nothing. In schizophrenia the extent of the clouds of concepts arising - these are the terms I am now thinking in - is such that puzzling, that is paradoxical and seemingly self-contradictory, clashes of concepts are observed unravelling which - or trying to unravel which - becomes a distraction from an ordinary life. Still, myself I would advise great caution in Society for example deciding to medicate somebody who is distracted by thinking about a possible relationship between ‘the moon revolving round the Earth’ and ‘an apple falling to the ground’ from going down the pub even though the latter is an activity psychiatrists with the power to section may enjoy engaging in.

03/08/07 06:05

Dawn seemed to imply yesterday that she would like to leave early today for Nottinghamshire. Of course it is costly to go up and down every week but Dawn says it is the fault of having to see Social Workers in the West Midlands: in fact a lot of her distress she says is due to the interference of Social Workers in our lives (as has been a lot of her distress in earlier years before she met me: so she has learnt to expect bad things of Social Workers which actually adds to her distress in the present, a kind of perpetuation of the unpleasantness of the past just as looking forward to something with pleasure exaggerates that pleasure by in effect transference from another time). The other main component of her desire to leave the bungalow - to sell up in fact - is its association in her mind with my past involving other women former friends of mine. And as regards moving to Lincolnshire in particular, she says herself she was ‘looking forward’ to it, that is she had formed an expectation - a goal - whose relinquishment is not easy.

Anyway, it strikes me I should update my website while we have the internet - cut off recently by Virgin Media due no doubt to our non-payment but reinstated yesterday - because I do not want to risk the Amilo Pro on the internet at the park home - nor indeed here - till I have backed up the system as it now stands (seemingly unflawed). (I suppose an alternative would be to take the PB not the Amilo Pro up north, already set up for internet at the park home via the BT line.)

03/08/07 06:22

Having re-discovered the pass-number for the safes here at the bungalow, I am going to have to open up the one sealed with a banknote to replace the batteries (as well as if I want to update the pass-number to keep it in line with the one I currently remember, for the computer and other things), otherwise it may become never again openable.

03/08/07 06:53

Using the PB just now (to get on the internet to download some software) the only flaws I can see are the usual slowness in starting up (usual from the outset from the time of purchase with the PB system), and then a failure to refresh the My Documents window automatically on the screen. When I make alterations to the files and folders in My Documents on the Amilo Pro, although they are not always immediately shown on the screen (eg files not immediately sorted into order) nonetheless they do show up at an early opportunity - presumably when Windows has spare resources to refresh the My Documents view. On the PB the view is never refreshed, even after restarting the system time and time again over a number of weeks.

(I notice too now that the names of USB devices attached - eg a memory device I am now using to transfer details from the PB - appear in capitals, unlike on the Amilo Pro.)

I would point out that while even under the influence of ASM I notice details of that sort (capitalisation or otherwise) - certainly unless the dosage is very high - under the influence I do not so confidently marshal so many facts as crop up in my awareness. At present (free of ASM I’m sure) I have no unconfidence or feeling confused or feeling I may be missing something. Therefore (for the first time, really) I have no paranoia about - in particular - the PB system. It may have flaws. It may even have flaws caused by the Authorities. But I do not find the seeming flaws such a confusion as to make me feel I might not be able to cope, which would be a basis for paranoid suspicion I am being taken advantage of.

03/08/07 07:08

Another thing is the partition corresponding to D: does not show up in My Computer on the PB. Correspondingly plugging in an auxiliary hard drive it will not show up (even though memory cards and other devices such as printers plugged into USB ports do show up).

Let me explain by sort of introspection here - thinking it may further people’s understanding of schizophrenia - that even though I have only now mentioned this failure of hard discs to show up, I am not dismayed at the fact that I have not mentioned it (above, say, when mentioning other defects in the PB system). Under other circumstances - ASM-ed, to be specific - I would probably feel that overlooking such a matter was cause for regret and for supposing I cannot hope to cope (eg with the defective PB system). The fact that I do not feel that now - I still feel I have no cause to suppose I may not cope - is something to do with my inward knowledge that even though I failed to mention the hard disc problem I was aware of it in my mind. This in turn is related to the absence of a hiatus - a hiatus related to saccadicity or I suppose what some writers have called ‘splitting’ - between the past when I had that awareness of the hard disc problem and now when it has only just occurred to me to mention it. Thinking to mention the hard disc problem is not re-discovering it: it comes as no surprise - for example hallucinatory voices must come as a surprise, certainly in that the sufferer had no preceding expectation of what the voices would say, this related to his failure to think of them as himself speaking to himself - as the memory of the hard disc problem ‘was there all along’ and has simply become more prominent again.

I have tried to explain that as best I can, how a hiatus between what is now in the mind and what was a minute or two ago in the mind constitutes an experience which schizophrenics have and which I have had when ASM-ed, and which leads to difficulty related to unpreparedness.

03/08/07 07:49

I have been unable to open the safe I was talking about, possibly because superglue has got into the mechanism.

03/08/07 08:20

Trying to use force in the shape of a monkey wrench to turn the knob on the safe, the knob has broken and turns freely but without effect. Unless the knob can be taken off and the spindle turned with something like a wrench - more difficult than had the knob been firmly attached to the spindle to provide leverage - the safe is U/S. I believe it contained only water I believed at the time to be undrugged, plus possibly other drinks likewise.

I managed to open the other safe - no banknote involved - but unfortunately in changing the batteries the electrical connection to the batteries has become uncertain. A catalogue of errors then based on cheapo safes. I am reluctant to lock this safe when the electrical connection failing may mean it cannot be opened again. Its contents included the backup media for the Amilo Pro - still intact in their envelope with the superglued banknote (of which I have verified the serial number) - mementos of my parents, backup media for another computer probably the PB - sealed in another envelope so I haven’t verified the sealing banknote - plus backed up documents made early in June 2007 from the computers in use then. As well as drinks most of which I believed were undrugged, apart from a fruit crush drink from Asda Brierley Hill which I remember reporting to police as containing amphetamine.

03/08/07 08:37

We have just had breakfast including for me crackers bought some while ago at M + S (in Worcester I believe) with Lurpak bought more recently (possibly at B-- Co-op).

The computer recovery media are sealed with banknotes so are in danger - to the extent there is any danger remaining - of theft or destruction not substitution. The idea of putting the mementos of my parents in a safe with supposedly undrugged drinks was to deter theft of the entire safe. Thinking of what would be lost should the safe not be able to be opened, the drinks are of less significance - certainly if other secure reserves are also kept - because they should given time be easy to replace. The mementos could not be replaced. The recovery media could be replaced - at the cost perhaps of buying a new computer - but on the other hand are multiply replicated in various locations.

03/08/07 09:12

We are rushing rather because as I said Dawn wants to get off as early as possible. The two safes still in use here at the bungalow with changeable combinations now have the most recent pass-number as their combination. One (other) safe as I said is probably now scrap, and the fourth safe here has an unalterable combination (plus a key which I cannot locate). In one of the safes in use (as I’ll call them) I have locked a few supposedly undrugged drinks bought towards the end of June 2007, plus the mementos of my parents plus the computer system backups. In the other safe in use I have locked drinks less certainly undrugged (including the Asda fruit crush most probably drugged). The document backups from the computers towards the start of June 2007 remain unlocked-away.

That all started from thinking to change the combinations on the safes. This is now achieved, and the batteries checked or replaced, at the cost of one safe scrapped (probably due to careless use of superglue) plus a possible future fault in another safe due to cheapo design (and made more significant by the fact that I have put out of use the backup key method of opening). (This paragraph is the natural way introspection - or review of causal sequences if you like, as opposed to current overview - is useful to enhance learning from experience.)

11:02. Before we left the bungalow I was doing stuff in the multiplexed style natural to me - which when it comes down to it means interrupting one activity in favour of another but not losing track (or overall control including overview) of what you were about. As a continuation from this now we are on our journey I am very relaxed about travelling - for example I did not feel any inclination (such inclination possibly based on previous comparable occasions in ‘hypnotic’ words voiced to me the night before) to stop off anywhere to ensure I stocked up with drinks or energy-giving foods like chocolate for the journey. Apart from the possible involvement sometimes in the past of ‘hypnosis’ a major factor in causing me this time to take things more as they come is familiarity. Because we have done this sort of thing before - in fact, recently, this exact same journey - I know better what to expect, and the entire enterprise takes less of my processing resources so I need to think less in advance (using the seriatim) and can daydream about other things (at the risk of paying insufficient attention - for example we did not get off the first bus at the right stop so had a bit of extra walking to do - and with the risk that people cleverer or more attentive - who are also sufficiently interested - could take advantage of me for example by unexpectedly drugging my sources of water in public toilets). Not having a mind to be paranoid at present - but feeling I know more or less how the world works, including the Authorities - I can regard the errors I make by being abstracted from the physical universe - such as missing the bus stop - as learning opportunities, in that instance yielding up information as we walked past on the building work to be done on the site of Wordsley Hospital.

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04/08/07 04:11 [Saturday] In north Nottinghamshire

I have woken up feeling annoyed, eg that the bed here at the park home is relatively small and that waking up I have aches and pains and general stiffness, which I rather associate with the bed here. After we went to bed - about 10 pm I think - Dawn became very angry (much more angry than she had been in the hour previous, say: and most of the time yesterday she was sweet-tempered) the anger centring on the usual that is the way Social Workers over the years - and myself in more recent times, concurring if not colluding with the Social Workers, she thought - have deprived her of the company of her son. It seems likely that immediately prior to going to bed - and the last thing we took by mouth were hot cross buns with M + S butter the latter having been left here unattended the few days we were away - we took in drugs including a large proportion of stimulant (but from the fact that I myself fell asleep readily, also containing a sedative, the stimulant however certainly in the first instance affecting Dawn more powerfully).

Dawn has now got up but immediately lain down on the settee in the living room.

Thinking back and noting stimulant effects I myself seemed to suffer on the bus back from Asda Doncaster last night, it may be the drugs were contained in Coca Cola with Orange of which I bought two bottles at the check-out, on an impulse as it were. At the time the drugs were affecting me - I’d say - I expressed a desire to Dawn to visit her sister whom we see less often (having spoken to the sister’s son briefly on the internet, which brought the possibility to my mind on mentioning the IM to Dawn) and then teased her my speech then somewhat excitable about her reluctance. This is a typical effect on me which I suffer frequently coming to north Nottinghamshire of stimulant drugs in combination as far as I can see with ASM. The effect is to turn me away from the calm pleasure of inward cogitation I enjoy so much in favour of attending to the external which includes requiring the stimulation of talking to other people. This has the effect of causing me to want to go out visiting more than ordinarily I would - much the same actually as when I was in Retford in 2004 and walked about meeting people in the street mostly with the aim more or less vague of getting to Zoë’s to meet people there (and sometimes it was similar when I was in Bristol, walking round as I have said speaking to people ranging from vagrants in the porch to the Bishop and Cathedral staff and also people more or less strange in the library) - and either enjoying exposing my wit to them - this again reminds me of 2004 when I visited London on at least one occasion and managed to break the dourness of people on the tube who I presumed at the time and possibly correctly were stooges for the Authorities - or quizzing them - this latter more a behaviour I engage in ‘at home’ that is in the park home, and mostly from my recollection involving Dawn and her son and his girlfriend (eg the occasion I quizzed Dawn on what she thought of the character Max in EastEnders).

The stimulant effect is clear to see now in causing me to produce a lot of words at a rate - my readers cannot see the speed at which I am setting this down - but with reasonable organisation it seems to me (this implying there is in fact little if any ASM involved: it may be that as I used to believe stimulants of this type on their own turn my attention from inward processing to the external more) involving switching from one thread to another - the markworthy ‘frontal interrupts’ and similar, represented in my text by parenthetic insertions - but without losing sight of the overview scheme (in my thinking and in my sentence production) and control based on it.

04/08/07 04:45

Dawn having offered now to make coffee with milk I recollect she drank a glassful of milk immediately before going to bed, that is after we had eaten the hot cross buns and that was after we had drunk some of the Coke with Orange (neither of us liked the Coke with Orange and while I drank something like 150ml Dawn drank less than 100ml - possibly much less, amounting to two or three mouthfuls only).

As I implied, we are now able to get on the internet here by dial-up using the BT line. I believe I mentioned the idea of bringing the PB computer and we have: in fact we have brought both laptops, the PB and the Amilo Pro.

Reflecting on the effect on Dawn of the stimulants last night, presumably it is the case that her anger was so vehement because there was no ASM included, whereas in myself - not last night but on other occasions - an admixture of ASM has caused me frustration often expressed as anger or bitterness. I admit I was annoyed in waking up this morning but the nature and focus of the annoyance - which indeed is better called annoyance than anger - that is focus on immediate physical discomfort and not on past wrongs done to me (this contrasting strongly with the focus last night of Dawn’s anger, now I think) cause me to suppose no ASM was admixed. My general belief has been that amphetamine in stimulating the frontal brain and therefore making more effective its downward control links, when combined with ASM in the right relative dosage to subdue exaggerated effects in the middle brain (and possibly the lower brain) is a help to Dawn. If I am given amphetamine (genuine amphetamine, I mean) except at higher dosages it seems to have little effect (possibly making my thinking in a way more efficient for carrying on in the real world, and somewhat different an effect when I was younger - in the early 1980s, although then I would think the dosages were higher and combined with a barbiturate confusing my memory if nothing else - when I was made more daydreamy but without any ultimate purpose to the dreaming which caused me to waste the summer of 1980 exchanging ideas with the radio) but combined with ASM causes frustration and (with more ASM, or as the drugs are wearing off: I haven’t exactly worked this out) bitter remembrance of the past. The frustration is easy to understand in that the amphetamine motivates me to want to get stuff done - eg stuff to do with long-term interests such as character recognition, or clever computer programming more generally - and the ASM interferes with my ability to get it done (by reducing resolution in my cogitation).

04/08/07 05:07

Having drunk her coffee some minutes ago - while I have just finished mine, not starting on it I think till after Dawn had finished hers - Dawn is evidently stimulated - she is doing the washing-up with enthusiasm verging on vigour - but there is no sign as yet of anger. It is a possibility ASM is included but had not yet got into her system last night and what I observed in the anger was the initial unalloyed effect of stimulant.

I seem to be immediately more tired having drunk the milky coffee, and may need to retire back to bed.

It strikes me that Dawn was sleeping much more than I over the period she was taking Risperdal tablets. The effect on me of Risperdal injections seemed to be to make me sleepy early but to wake early. I can’t be sure of this as I can’t be sure what dosage the injections were at various times. There is some evidence that I began to wake early on a regular basis - certainly that I used to set down my ideas better on waking up - from the time in the Spring of 2006 when the dosage in the injections began to be reduced (evidenced by my newly re-found ability to write computer programs).

04/08/07 06:30

I have been back to bed - and Dawn joined me having reached a suitable point in her work, but I think she was not at all sleepy and has been somewhat active rather than static in bed (for example thinking about stuff) - and have (myself) dozed for perhaps half an hour of the period in bed. Coming-to, I found on getting up that my eyes were what I shall call tired, which I convince myself thinking in the terms I came up with the other day is a combination of sore due to stimulant and bleary due to the sedative effect of ASM. The effect on my bowels this morning also convinces me - as indeed does the effect on Dawn - the drugs affecting me - and from the similarity of the sleep-making effect this morning with that last night I conclude the drugs in the milk from Asda (used this morning for the coffee) are the same as in the Coke and Orange from Asda (they were both - the milk and the Coke - bought last night at Asda Doncaster) - are not unalloyed stimulant but include an ASM component. I further wonder if because of the relative failure of the ASM component to reduce my activity level - and Dawn’s not at all - and possibly even it increases my wordiness - although my words are better organised than in the Spring of 2006 they were without the stimulant admixed - the ASM is risperidone or a similar modern drug which does not so much as the older drugs reduce the activity level.

Introspectively checking over that paragraph what I note is repetitious use of words where if my concept clouds were not restricted by ASM - in other words this antischizophrenic drug while maintaining the level of activity and not interfering too much in seriatim organisation does restrict the extent of the concept clouds that is restrict dopamine transmission in the middle brain - I should easily find alternative ways of expressing myself.

Regarding activity level I cannot as yet explain the sleep-making effect of this antischizophrenic drug on me (even though I have also taken in stimulant) whereas in Dawn there is no sleep-making effect although on risperidone previously without stimulant admixed her sleeptime was considerably increased. One must conclude I suppose that modern antischizophrenic drugs such as this do have a sleep-making effect but it is easily countered in Dawn by stimulants of sufficient degree.

04/08/07 13:42

We went into B-- this morning but before we went out Dawn phoned - amongst others - her daughter to see if we might see her today. The point I would make is that in answer to the daughter’s query what we were doing today Dawn mentioned specific short-term objectives or expectations such as that I was going to have a bath and that we were waiting for a phone call from an estate agent. This indicates to me - especially as I noticed the effect also in myself (see above) that Dawn’s ‘concept clouds’ were being restricted by the ASM in her system without much benefit in the direction of capacity to summarise from amphetamine. This was probably most noticeable then because yesterday’s amphetamine had worn off more than yesterday’s ASM had, and she had taken in little of the drug mixture as yet today (at that time this morning).

In general then amphetamine must strengthen the contribution from the control links downward from the frontal brain, with the benefit even though resolution cannot be significantly improved that the frontal brain plays a bigger role in its natural function of summarisation and looking ahead further or considering matters in the abstract outside of time considerations. Giving ASM without amphetamine restricts the ‘concept clouds’ no doubt and thereby reduces the processing requirement, but in doing so limits the outlook of the one treated to more immediate more mundane considerations, that is (as I said) specific details without a very far-ranging overview. Giving amphetamine as well probably would allow less ASM to be needed, on the basis that an improved contribution from the frontal brain would enable coping with more details by virtue of improving the capacity to summarise (‘taxonomise’). This in addition to the benefit of maintaining motivation without - if the dosages are right - significantly increasing frustration.

A problematic side-effect for Dawn - who otherwise as far as I can see is benefiting greatly from the present relative dosages in the drugs given - has been urinary urgency and some looseness of the bowels (the latter affecting me somewhat too, although as in most respects the effect on Dawn of a given dosage of stimulant in this respect is much greater than on me). As I said the greater part of the effect on me of the present combination of drugs - when I do not manage to avoid them - is sleep disturbance from the ASM component. Having said that, both Dawn and I showed too great an effect last night from the stimulant (presumably because the stimulant effects kicked in before the ASM effects could, the latter building up and wearing off more gradually). And again as I have previously established, drugs taken orally affect me quicker than they do Dawn.

We didn’t get a lot done in B-- this morning as the visit was disrupted by Dawn’s toilet needs and her mild agitation based on the unavailability of a public toilet exacerbated no doubt - the psychological reaction based on frustration that is - by the stimulant component in the drug mixture (but only to the mildest degree). We went to the library and I updated my website (to the end of July) and we went to the butchers we established contact with yesterday. We also went to the Tea Rooms where in 2004 we went for our one and only date.

04/08/07 15:48

I cannot say if Dawn has taken any tapwater at all today - I think she has been using a 2l bottle of Co-op water bought some while back and which at the time I came to suspect - but the drugs have substantially worn off in both of us. An effect I feel in reaction is queasy hunger, but Dawn seems not to feel this - in fact one of the primary effects on her of this recent drug mixture (surprisingly, given the fact that mainly it was stimulant effects I observed in her) was elevated appetite, coming on quite early as the drugs took hold. I know the drugs have substantially worn off in myself because I feel almost no urge to go out visiting; instead I anticipate pleasure from continuing my programming and the restructuring of my website (and of course further updating it) and am happy to stay at home with the intention of doing that. Dawn is less given now to stating her own desires: in fact the way I look at it she has less desire for anything in the physical universe, but rather is working things out with the possibility she may find something to desire (but this working-out I’m sure is a pleasure to her, so much so that she is not all that concerned not to have the company of her son - having phoned him and found he is not available - and is not requiring me to talk to her and stimulate her mind). Of course a consequence of the absence of goals in physical reality is she has no basis to be frustrated. Indeed she and I are very similar, but that I do stuff not only in my mind but on the computer (still not having any cause for frustration so long as there are not unnatural bugs to be overcome). A problem for someone like Dawn - like myself in my younger days, although less so now - is that if it is necessary for them to participate (undrugged) in physical reality they might well feel stressed and/or frustrated, because of having to process against more entropy than is present in her mind (than is in fantasy if you like) and possibly trying to achieve goals against odds which she would find difficult in the physical universe (this latter I mean possibly a basis for frustration).

I must say I feel happier to be calmer as I am now, instead of rushing out to visit people. I’m not entirely clear why this is so, as when I am under the influence mainly of stimulants which drive me to go out and about I do experience pleasure - fundamentally the type of pleasure available to almost anyone taking stimulants related to amphetamine - but somehow it is not such good pleasure. I have a feeling it is something to do with it being pleasure of the moment and dependent on events in the real world, that is specifically the possibility of visiting people (which Dawn isn’t always happy to do and sometimes the people to be visited are absent anyway, eg on holiday or remote if we are in Kingswinford). It isn’t just that the pleasure of thinking about my computer programs is under my own control, but also by forevisioning the pleasure of what is to come - what is certainly to come, because indeed depending only on myself (except for interference such as drugging or some physical catastrophe such as destruction of my home) - I experience the pleasure more than once over.

04/08/07 19:09

We have been to Dawn’s daughter’s and whereas the thing I am most used to is being woken up that is stimulated by being with other people especially when visiting their homes, today - and presumably related to the effects of drugs on me or absence of effect or possibly due to after-effects - I have found the opposite, viz that while there I was drowsy and out of things rather - that is neither attending much to what was going on around me nor thinking much within my own mind - but having returned now to the park home my thoughts are striking up again. I found this somewhat on the train journey up here yesterday: on starting out I was quick and alert - due to the alerting effect of change from home to the journey and in particular the train - but having settled somewhat into the journey I ceased to be connected much to the surroundings but on the other hand I was not following much daydreaming of my own. I related it at the time to tiredness: I was tired and therefore not able to cogitate much except when alerted as I say by change. This thesis was somewhat supported by the fact that on sitting down where earlier on the Virgin we had had to stand - or at least a bit after the change from standing to sitting in a seat - I did start to cogitate to some extent. Presumably even though tired there were free processing resources then which had previously been required to cope with the ‘stress’ of having to stand. Likewise this evening I suppose being at someone else’s house took more processing effort - or would have, although being tired I simply gave up the effort (unlike an overactivated schizophrenic who would not have been able to ‘relax’ and might have risked thereby the confusion apparent in over-processing or might have achieved not relaxation but withdrawal into a catatonia) - whereas at home - returned home afterwards, in particular - less processing was required for the external and my mind has become free to roam rather more.

04/08/07 20:58

I have been trying to get into the character recognition prog I was simplifying the other day. After attending to its detail for a while trying to get to grips with which parts of it could further be deleted, I became inattentive and vague - more like yawnative than blanking as the latter seemed to involve (in the early mornings in the months before Christmas) actually nodding off into a state in which semi-waking dreams arose - yet turning away from attempted concentration on the details of the prog was difficult because when I did so I lost track in such a way that I knew I would have difficulty returning to where I had been in it (which is related in an obvious way to failure of an overview). Nonetheless when I did turn away from the details to look at the sky (for example) or anything more sweepingly dimensioned the feeling of effortful desire to counter the vagueness and inattention immediately dissipated, because indeed there was nothing requiring attention or the opposite of vagueness. What I mean is this early ‘tiredness’ - that is coming on after only a short period of concentration (and different from what I would regard as natural difficulty I might have concentrating, after a period of effort, which would involve headache and in association with that motivator to give up an ability to tie up loose ends before giving up for the nonce) - must have been caused by ASM effects from drugs taken in in the milk in the morning, presumably, after the stimulant component had worn off.

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05/08/07 06:23 [Sunday]

I got up about ten minutes ago and am feeling distinctly bleary and under the weather with an effect like alcoholic hangover. I have a post-stimulant sore throat and nasal congestion with dryness resulting it seems to me from a combination of ASM (causing the nasal congestion) and stimulant (causing some dehydration - I think I got up to pass water twice in the night). During the night Dawn was showing powerful effects of a stimulant (except she did get off to sleep easily - too easily, indicating the admixture of a specifically sleep-inducing sedative) including elevated libido and a desire for achievement emotion through directing me what to do (not entirely wrongly: for example to fetch her two Pepto-Bismol tablets as another symptom she had was bad tummy pain, and I think she had to get up earlier to empty her bowels: I can’t be certain as I was more or less asleep at the time). Anger however was not part of it, and knowing now how different drugs related to schizophrenia affect Dawn it seems clear the reason was ASM continuing in her system.

Giving somebody amphetamine interests them in achieving goals, and often they are goals in the ‘real world’ that is shorter-range goals than might otherwise be natural to them (in my case goals like getting to certain places at certain times, and almost always related to interaction with other people, which in my natural self I do not regard as of such significance as my interest in and goals I might achieve in the field of pattern recognition taken from the stance of emulating - notably on a computer - the way neural processes perform pattern recognition). Giving a person with no schizo traits at all amphetamine interests them in very low-level physical goals for example those involved in ‘dancing to the beat’ and I must say it was more so with myself in the 1980s, presumably before my seriatim frontal brain had developed to its full capacity (this also explaining my greater degree then of natural ‘schizoism’) which includes not only development of neurons and links between them but development founded in experience and presumably embodied in ‘firmware’ changes at synapses (firmware being mid-way between hardware and software). This is something of a paradox in that I say this effect of amphetamine is found in those less schizo yet it was found in myself when I seemed more schizo (in the 1980s, and before, I was very socially aversive for example: schizoid in fact). The resolution of the paradox I feel lies in the supposition that my middle brain now is just as schizo - or more so - than in the 1980s, but with the development of my frontal brain I make better use of the schizo middle brain and cope better despite the schizo middle brain with (to be specific) interaction with other people. More simply put in terms of physical mechanisms, amphetamine now has more effect on signals from my frontal brain and this counters somewhat better its effect on my middle brain.

What I was trying to say, anyway, is that people with negative schizophrenic symptoms may appear to be goalless - they may genuinely be goalless in what is called simple schizophrenia, or in other types their goals may be unconnected in any ‘normal’ way with the real world - and people given unalloyed ASM are certainly - more so at higher dosages, and depending on individual response - goalless. Giving amphetamine to such people therefore can be expected to be a benefit - but of course at the risk of overactivating their middle and lower brain so that concurrent use of ASM will usually be requisite. Giving people such as myself amphetamine - with a mild dosage of ASM - turns their goals as I say from the ethereal to the more mundane and I myself would not want to be so all the time (although I am happy to help expose the mechanisms for the sake of helping sufferers from schizophrenia, and thinking out an explanation of the mechanisms when freer of more mundane interests I do find something of an ethereal interest).

My mind turns now to the specific matter of effects I get in my legs with certain combinations of these drugs. Last night I had such an effect very mildly and which abated when I ceased to try to concentrate. I feel the sensations I get must be related to restless legs syndrome, and that I believe has been found to be related to lowered levels of dopamine occurring more usually when the sufferer is relaxed (eg watching TV) and usually later in the day. In other words in conventional RLS, increasing concentration on some mental puzzle - corresponding to elevating the level of dopamine - causes the problematic sensation to cease. My guess as regards effects in the legs like akathisia or RLS has been that they are based in the brain as it was in childhood at the time of learning to walk, when attention - conscious attention - must be drawn by a natural brain mechanism to the legs so that learning associated with moving the legs can specifically take place then. And when high-level - more frontal-brain - dopamine levels fall as they may under ASM or as they may naturally in some people especially those predisposed to Parkinsonism my guess would be that correspondingly levels of dopamine relating to the legs when they were learning to walk rise, or at least some inhibition of focus on the legs which was needed (focus on the legs) at the time of learning to walk is reduced.

The paradox here is that last night when I ‘relaxed’ the problematic sensation in my legs abated. Before I did ‘relax’ - to gaze at the sky instead, and similar - I was striving to concentrate that is puzzle things out using my more frontal-brain processes, but this was blocked by the ASM giving rise to a failure to concentrate - the ‘vagueness and inattention’ - which was different from the natural difficulty I might have had concentrating. Instead of warnings includin