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. January 2007 .
01/01/07 01:24 [Monday]
We are at Dawn’s daughter’s where last night we were babysitting while she and her partner went out for New Year’s Eve. It was jokingly said that I might be up this morning before they got back in, and actually it has turned out almost so. Unless I have been back to sleep for a while and my sense of time is distorted, they can only have got back within the past half-hour. When they did get back and went into the kitchen for food, because we are sleeping on a blow-up mattress in the living room I was partly wakened, and I remember thinking I was pleased not to have been ‘hypnotised’. Because Dawn and I were so sleepy yesterday my suspicion was that we had been given a hypnotic drug - which means one to induce sleep but I felt also it might make what I call ‘hypnosis’ easier - with a view to taking advantage of us here away from home. After all if we are semi-profoundly asleep here it is rather more likely that matters will be discussed with us in a truth-drugged type condition than at the park home where I have my nighttime security. As I say, I felt pleased that this had not happened. But I now realise it could have happened - I fell asleep promptly (say 9.15 pm) and remember nothing till as I say Dawn’s daughter and her partner returned say 1 am. The nature of the drug yesterday was not ASM but also not a benzodiazepine, and it might have been a drug related to opium which earlier nighttime advice alerted me was the type of drug used for ‘hypnosis’ of what I used to think of as the truth-drugged type (causing me to recall having read the book The Moonstone).
I have come into the kitchen and set up my computer - just through the door from Dawn and far enough away not to disturb her (although she is as usual sleeping soundly) - and am drinking a cup of coffee. I didn’t need to get up at all ‘in the night’ to go to the toilet: this could possibly be an effect of the presumed opium. I could do with something to eat and may see if I can make some toast.
01/01/07 01:56
Dawn had diarrhoea yesterday starting from when she got up, and nausea later on - feeling that she was very close to vomiting. She felt cold to the bone and generally under the weather, as if she had ’flu but without symptoms such as a runny nose, coughing or sneezing. We both had tummy upset including internal wind - painful trapped wind in Dawn’s case - and I have wind now. I’m wondering if these were effects of the presumed opium taken the night before last and Dawn more sensitive to it than I.
Dawn’s son spent two hours or more with us yesterday afternoon - more than he usually does, and seemingly quite happy about it, not wanting to rush back home (his girlfriend came with him). He might have done the ’van wheel - in fact was entirely prepared and willing - but because the tools we had did not fit, and besides the weather was adverse, it didn’t get done. As I say, he seems very willing though which I am pleased about. We are going to buy a trolley jack to make it easier, and either buy a spanner of the right size or borrow one from his Dad.
01/01/07 02:45
I have been on Dawn’s daughter’s broadband to check out emails from Easily - confirming in fact the registration of barrass-brough.info which I effected yesterday, and the associated Website Creator package. I followed the instructions in the second email and associated the Website Creator with the domain name. Evidently no change occurs for up to an hour, and certainly I find Website Creator is not yet available to me for creation of the new website.
It is quite amusing to look back on what I said yesterday about the queer sensations in my digestive system. Evidently I did not notice the (presumed) opium as a mind altering drug - certainly not at that time in the morning around nine o’clock (having I conjecture ingested the drug in the first instance the night before).
01/01/07 03:10
If I had been stopping at someone’s house thirty or thirty-five years ago - as my parents and I stopped with my aunt when my cousin got married in about 1972 - I would have felt tense and out of place in a way I do not nowadays. Part of it is that I am accompanied by Dawn - and I suspect she finds the same the other way about, being accompanied by me - who provides a kind of familiar, safe and secure backdrop, but it’s not only that: in 2003 and 2004 when I was unpartnered I felt quite at ease visiting people whose homes I had not been to before, and indeed on occasion stopping overnight. The change is due to maturation - I wouldn’t like to say the extent to which an increase in the number of synapses is more significant or an increase in accumulated experience - but unfortunately has been masked by the medication I have been given in the intervening years.
Thirty or thirty-five years ago - for example visiting a friend at uni in his room - I would have been hyper-alert, all the time thinking about what was expected of me (not least in the matter of when I should leave) and trying to foresee what would eventuate over the ensuing minutes and hours. I must say I have observed people in this condition when I have been in hospital - patients I mean - and I have no doubt whatsoever I am right to think in terms of processing to cope with eventualities. The human brain - the human part of it - is for foreseeing the future as best can be, in order to be prepared to meet eventualities (of all sorts, from threats of death to taking an examination or giving a presentation, to mention three eventualities which many people would find required high levels of processing). The schizo brain (I have no doubt) has too high a demand for processing (of course it would be interesting to sort out by what mechanism the demand arises) compared to the resources available. We have pretty well established that antischizophrenic drugs work by reducing the processing demand (and as I say I haven’t worked out the exact mechanism) but in my case reduce processing resources more and hence have the opposite effect to the usual, making me more not less schizo.
If one takes it that a low need for sleep indicates a high level of processing resources compared to the demand, it is possible to predict that giving ASM to people who sleep little and do not suffer for it - that is who sleep little for the same reasons as I - would increase not decrease the appearance of schizophrenia. I think this is most likely correct.
01/01/07 03:30
Dawn has a high need for sleep, and on the argument above ASM would be a benefit to her and would increase her activity level not - as in my case - knock her out with lassitude and tiredness. I think this may well be the truth, as she has been suspecting herself recently. On the other hand minor sedatives do knock her out, things like benzodiazepines making her very sleepy.
01/01/07 04:42
When my processing capacity is reduced with ASM - and it seems clear when I think of it in these terms that I am then in a somewhat schizophrenic state - I tend to presume I am not free, that other people are taking decisions for me and even that I am acting under hypnotic guidance. Thus when ASM-ed I presume I am going to be directed where to live - say in Bassetlaw not Kingswinford - and that the whole evolution of what is happening involving other people - eg The Experiment - is such that nothing different from what has been planned for me is possible. Of course at the time I do not explain to myself precisely how I am going to be forced to fall into line - although I do think in terms of having been sectioned in the past - but I go along with the plan as I take it to be without thinking whether in fact I am forced. This is the same thing as schizoid compliance: the schizoid gives way to other people’s demands or needs as he takes them to be (although of course sometimes he is mistaken and while thinking he is doing what the other person wants in fact riles the other by doing the wrong thing).
I have in the past sought to explain this phenomenon as very close and real-seeming modelling of the Other. In other words the schizo so closely models the Other - although he may do it in a mistaken way - that losing sight of his own desires and needs he takes on those of the Other. One would wish to explain this however not as a high level of processing capacity - indeed it is not necessarily, because as I say the modelling may be inaccurate - but as an insufficient level. One would say that the schizo modeller loses sight of the overall context and is restricted to the easier task of modelling the desires and needs of basically one other person - the person most close at hand at the time (or in my case ‘the Authorities’). The failure - when processing capacity is limited - to model himself is a failure in the schizo of introspection or as they say ‘insight’.
01/01/07 05:20
We have returned to the park home - Dawn still feels unwell (and in fact still has diarrhoea) and we can have a cooked breakfast here. However, I find that being back here is somewhat depressing. The reason is the activity of my mind recovered this early morning at Dawn’s daughter’s so that I was happy to be thinking interesting thoughts, whereas I associate the park home with mental closing-in and feeling hampered (for example wishing to get out and about but feeling unable) and consequent frustration in a manner of speaking, and repetitiously going over the same things time and time again in my mind. It remains to be seen whether foods I consume here this morning revert me to such a state: the effects are so pervasive I am tempted to suppose many of the foods here at the park home are switched soon after purchase or are drugged when purchased. The foods at Dawn’s daughter’s were innocuous.
What I would wish to do is make a determination to run away to Kingswinford should the foods here this morning turn out to be drugged, but I know it doesn’t work like that and having taken drugged foods I should lose any determination.
In fact now I think of it it is suspicious that Dawn so readily agreed to return here. She may have been ‘hypnotised’ to get us back to drugged foods at an early opportunity.
I suppose it is just possible that the sameness of the park home and its uncomplexity are insufficiently stimulating. I say this because even now I am feeling slightly yawnative and I put it down not to drugs but to boredom, not to put too fine a point on it. Dawn’s daughter’s home was a bit of change in itself and had more complexity being bigger and in a busier location. The sameness and uncomplexity of the park home suit Dawn well. It may be - it may well be - that my original thinking of this morning was prompted simply because the activity of my brain was stimulated - not in the particular subject matter - by the novelty of our night at Dawn’s daughter’s.
Restricted to the hospital ward last year (in 2005 I mean) I had a similar effect - again complicating the action of any drugs I was given. I got fed up with the same four walls after a while and would have welcomed even being allowed - sooner than I was - into the garden.
01/01/07 06:05
There is a difference between lethargy caused by antischizophrenic drugs and lassitude caused by lack of stimulation. The former may well have obtained in me in recent weeks but not today. The difference is fidgeting: this morning finding myself understimulated by a return to the park home with its connotations of sameness, uncomplexity and hampered underactivity my mind has activated itself to think that one solution would be to return to the bungalow in Kingswinford - not today because I am due for an injection tomorrow, but tomorrow after the injection. To envisage taking steps so soon brings a high ‘coefficient of reality’ to the envisagement and as a result I have in the past say ten minutes become more interested in things. We had planned to go to Kingswinford in mid January and stay for two weeks as we have a dental appointment in Stourbridge on Monday 29 January. We would expect to return here for our appointments with Dr E on Wednesday 31 January, although Dawn has been pursuing the subject of writing a letter to Dr Kurian saying that for one reason or another we expect to be in Kingswinford more than we thought and would like to be under a psychiatrist in Dudley.
If I were under the influence of a stimulant drug I would be off with little forethought, possibly even without Dawn especially if - as when I ran away in September - I felt aggrieved and wished to express it (and furthermore could find practical reasons why doing such a thing might bring benefit). As it is I feel responsible enough to give the possibilities some consideration including a consideration of the cost in money terms. This in itself provides activation to my brain (although it depends on the possibilities under consideration being realistic possibilities: in other words the idea of going back to Kingswinford tomorrow is not a mere fantasy). (Actually travelling - in this case to Kingswinford - provides activation to the brain too. If we dispensed with the bungalow we would have less excuse to travel.)
The decision agreed with Dawn was to spend about a fortnight in Kingswinford and a fortnight in north Nottinghamshire alternately. If we went to Kingswinford tomorrow we should get back here for the injection due about 16 January and stop here till after the following one (30 January) and possibly till after seeing Dr E on 31 January. This means the dental appointment for 29 January would need to be rescheduled.
I mention introspectively that planning in terms of dates and times - appointments rather than to-do’s here - is another seriatim function. In fact a lot of seriatim functions are covered by Filofax and by MS Outlook. Ones which are not are fitting things together in 2-D (or even 3-D) space - eg designing arrangements of furniture - and the equivalent for the dimension of time - that is timetabling, which is not quite the same thing as scheduling.
01/01/07 06:35
I must take it that in recent weeks - possibly while I have not been avoiding the tapwater - here at the park home I have been affected by ASM. Feelings of restlessness have given rise to planning for the possibility of stepping out of the park home in the early morning, or going for a walk or going visiting in the daytime. The present fidgeting takes a broad view of the weeks ahead and plans involve a bigger scale of change - that is a change of 100 miles rather than a few yards or just a mile.
01/01/07 06:57
Now I reflect, Dawn’s daughter and her family are coming to tea today, so that’s another reason not to go to Kingswinford till tomorrow.
I’m getting a bit sleepy as so often at this time I do. It’s something to do with the relationship between the amount of processing done and the consequent filling-up of medium-term memory and the hours of daylight. In the summer I would not find myself tired again at this time after having woken early, because by now it would be light. (I did also consume a small amount of tapwater yesterday, used in making gravy after the bottled water gave out.)
Thinking about seriatim planning: leaders such as the Prime Minister make decisions having effect many years into the future and over a wide geographical area, and the American President has even more personal power than the British Prime Minister. Really you want in such positions people who are capable of taking in an enormously broad view but with highly resolved detail - someone like Mrs Thatcher in fact. Failing that you just have to hope the governmental institutions will broaden the scope of the otherwise limited Presidential comprehension.
01/01/07 07:26
I should mention that since getting back to the park home this morning I have drunk a Red Bull. I cannot remember whether I have mentioned the fact, which argues that the resolution of my memory is less good than it should be. And I am suffering marked blanking now. The way it’s come on it is practically certain there are drugs in the Red Bull. I was right to fear that very many of the foods here at the park home may be drugged. I think it likely this Red Bull contained drugs when bought. It must be the case that we are induced to take drugged foods, because of the evident opium effects yesterday.
I did earlier raise the possibility of running away to Kingswinford should I encounter drugged foods at the park home this morning. If we are to stay here really we need some fairly sure means of avoiding drugged foods. I think it’s no good relying on foods mainly bought at the One Stop Shop (where a lot of stuff was specially reduced in price two nights ago so probably something bought then contained the opium - possibly the milk - and we had been induced to pay a visit through ‘hypnosis’).
I mention for future reference that since drinking the Red Bull I have had wind - especially coming up out of my mouth - and my bowels have been loosened. The reason I suspected the drug over the weekend could have been opium was that I presumed we were to be taken advantage of at Dawn’s daughter’s by being interviewed in a truth-drugged type way. I was wondering if some such drug - different from the usually presumed ASM-plus-amphetamine - could have been being given over a number of weeks. After all, a lot of the time I have been clear-headed enough to do programming. We have both been tired but not exactly demotivated.
The question is, why did I feel so much better waking up this morning early, is there a danger of something interfering with such happiness and what can I do to recapture it or ensure it continues? If the drugs currently being given do not hamper my thinking and my mood in the way ASM does - and I feel no effect of ASM at the moment, only blanking which might be opium-related sleepiness - my earlier analysis in terms of the novelty of the surroundings stopping the night at Dawn’s daughter’s could have been right and the solution as regards protracting the happiness of going to Kingswinford sooner rather than later might be reasonable.
01/01/07 07:56
It might have been ‘hypnotically’ suggested to me to ‘run away to Kingswinford’ and my interpretation is this: to go tomorrow with Dawn, not today without her. I have been dwelling in my mind on the advantages of ‘running away’ in various interpretations and why in the past - say in September 2006 - I ‘ran away’. The Authorities may be interested in the mental processes involved in what I have been known to call fleeing behaviour, or to put it another way what was so bad in September that I needed to run away.
If my processing capacity is reduced - nowadays by ASM - it is a further hindrance if I am in company, in particular with Dawn practically all the time. I cannot then manage to think out what I wish to think out. If my processing capacity is not reduced I can think whether in company or not in company - and this is proved by my keeping my head and thinking of stuff to say when in face-to-face communication, a thing difficult for the schizo and difficult for me in my teens when I was to use this word schizoid. Therefore in September given ASM likely reserpine, I was encouraged to flee from Dawn - and from everyone - because then I would be able to think better. Furthermore I was angry at being given it and wanted to express the anger.
Today I am not going to flee because on the contrary the prospect of Dawn’s daughter’s family coming to tea I find a stimulating prospect: they will not cause me to think less well but will (probably) give me stuff to think about (as did spending last night away from home). Furthermore I have consideration for Dawn, for example in the matter of the injection tomorrow which she will not want me to miss (as well as not abandoning her today especially as she is ill possibly from drug effects).
But I think going to Kingswinford tomorrow or sometime soon with Dawn is a good idea, to keep the pot of stimulation bubbling.
01/01/07 08:29
I regret to say Dawn does not feel fit to have company for tea or to cook.
01/01/07 11:10
Dawn’s daughter’s partner made coffee for Dawn and myself last night. The fact that the cups we had were distinguishable (often they are both the same) could indicate the coffees contained different ‘substances’. I think more likely both coffees contained drugs the same - likely something related to opium - and Dawn’s reaction is more severe than mine. She has slept and slept this morning, and has had diarrhoea and a general malaise. When I mixed up some Andrews salts for her earlier I used tapwater, which might not have been the best idea because now she has gone into another seemingly deep sleep. I am interested to know if the tapwater really is drugged - I may sample some myself, I am so avid to find out - because if it is, in a sense it is good as a signal the injections may not be genuine. I am most concerned to avoid ASM whose effects endure inescapably for weeks. The days following the last injection I was evidently suffering ASM effects, but whether they derived from the injection or alternatively from the tapwater I may have been ‘hypnotically’ induced not to find too suspect at the time I cannot say.
01/01/07 12:21
I have drunk another Red Bull to try to determine if they are drugged. I was too suspicious that the tapwater could contain ASM to be willing to risk that. If the blanking this morning wasn’t due to the Red Bull it was due to susceptibility to tiredness based on drugs possibly ASM taken the night before or the day before, possibly in the tapwater (either that or in the coffee Dawn’s daughter’s partner gave us).
I think the reason I am so wary of ASM is that was what I was compelled to have, it was given in a form lasting inescapably for weeks and having extremely unpleasant effects. Since then I have feared being under the influence inescapably for weeks or rather months or years, if not by compulsion then by trickery. And also I have an inevitable suspicion that psychiatrists are convinced it must be good for me and are willing or intent on prescribing it. From the first injection of Depixol I had (I can’t say whether prior to that I had surreptitiously been given reserpine, but I suspect so) I could not believe doctors could recommend medication with such horrific effects. And then I was amazed when my comments on the medication were set aside, presumably because I was being treated as mentally incompetent.
01/01/07 12:50
Yes, I can certainly feel the effect of that Red Bull. Dawn has now got up and become more active. I am not clear enough in the head to explain it in proper terms but what I suspect is that when we have previously been given opium we have also both of us been given ASM - which means it has been in something taken by mouth rather than in my injection - with its antiemetic properties. Without the ASM the opium makes Dawn nauseous and gives her diarrhoea, but with it she becomes less tired even with the opium. And quite possibly the tapwater I gave her this morning contained ASM.
01/01/07 18:07
I seem to recall I was quite happy earlier - for example when I updated the website around 12.30 pm and was pleased to see the hitcount. At tea-time - say five o’clock - I was briefly very nauseous, but have since ceased to be and I have become unhappy and pessimistic about being drugged with ASM - that is I feel I may be drugged with it possibly in the injections and every time it is loss to me, that is loss of a positive and well-resolved experience of life - and further my legs are now aching up and down from the knee particularly the left. The thought though that these are themselves symptoms of ASM, which therefore I have taken in something eaten or drunk and not via the injection, somewhat counters the unhappy feeling. I would much rather be drugged orally with ASM than by long-lasting injection - because then I imagine the loss to me as less permanent a thing.
The question is, what has the drug been in that I have eaten or drunk? These symptoms have come on since tea-time, but Dawn assures me she used only bottled water. The more likely source I feel has been the Red Bull this morning, but it is a strange thing if the effects do take so long to come on. On the other hand there have been symptoms which I have taken as effects of opium - and they may have been, concealing the initial effects of the ASM possibly also in the Red Bull.
I was certainly happy last night overnight - I remember saying so in what I wrote, and I was thinking interesting and original thoughts which I was very happy about - and I also remember saying if I started suffering ASM effects from foods in the park home, avoided while we were stopping away from home last night, I should consider running away. My life would certainly be happier and richer if I could somehow - eg by persuading those drugging me not to - avoid ASM.
I also remember drinking a second Red Bull having in mind to determine if there were any drug effects particularly ASM effects, and as there have been I should I suppose mainly suspect the Red Bull. And I do, but without conviction in my heart that I am not making a mistake as to the source of the ASM. The initial presumed opium effects in presumably masking ASM effects are an unhelpful feature. Again without conviction in my heart I note that there is considerable evidence - eg in the price reductions - that we are invited to shop at One Stop and allow ourselves to be drugged. Thinking that slightly cheers me, in that it is almost a Contract in which I know what I am getting myself into, making the unpleasant ASM effects seem a thing limited in duration and which I can steel myself to put up with for a brief while for as it were payment.
I note that my words are flowing with little overall plan - accruing to the sentences as they crop up in my mind - and I suspect risperidone. I further note that in say March 2006 the same effect occurred up to a day after ingesting the presumed source of the risperidone taken in oral form, and this tends to corroborate my suspicions of the Red Bull. Mixing opium with ASM in the Red Bull seems as if it might be an alternative for investigative purposes to mixing stimulant with ASM.
I note I have not pursued the matter of character recognition since yesterday. This corroborates my almost certainty now, that I am affected by ASM. I further remark that the ASM may have worn off in recent days contemporaneously with - and in fact as a result of - no longer drinking coffee bought at the One Stop Shop (today I am drinking coffee bought at the Co-op and in recent days it has been coffee bought at the Heron).
01/01/07 18:44
If so much stuff bought at One Stop is drugged (with ASM) at the point of sale, it casts a different probability on the idea that tapwater is or can be drugged.
01/01/07 18:55
What I can allow myself to hope against hope is that the opium has made the major period of action of the ASM bearable - while replacing the ASM unpleasure with opium problems - and that this period now is a brief overhang of action of the ASM. The legs problem seems to have been of brief duration anyway, unlike last winter (when however the dosages involved - then I conjecture of stimulant mixed with ASM - were much higher).
02/01/07 02:29 [Tuesday]
We went to bed about a quarter to eight - I was very sleepy, almost certainly from drugs in the two Red Bulls yesterday morning including ASM - so I have had six and a half hours of sleep. The explanation I would put forward is that the ASM was mixed with not stimulant this time but something like opium. I have woken with cramp in my right calf muscle. I used to get cramp a lot over the years I was living with my parents. It may be exacerbated by cold: they never had full central heating and for many years the central heating pump (for the partial central heating) wasn’t working.
02/01/07 05:06
I have spent (it seems) about two and a half hours creating barrass-brough.info using Easily’s Website Creator. I am still on the scarp face of the learning curve, but I have to say there are flaws in the software: not everyone can afford the trouble Microsoft takes (from what I saw on a TV programme) to test things to make sure they work. Most of what I have done has been to create the layout of the new site: as yet there is very little content, either freshly written or copied across.
The hitcounter for the existing site colinbrough.co.uk is going up about 4 per day, which is an acceleration on previously. I’m not sure how to explain it. If people discover it who find it of interest I suppose they will re-visit, and if they ‘tell their friends’ the growth in numbers might be exponential rather than incremental. Actually I would think in terms of a science of demography - the way trends grow (but later slow down, change or fade completely), for example voting trends as when Mrs Thatcher swept to power but ten or twelve years later (whatever it was) crashed out of favour. Or trends in racism - sometimes entirely accepted for example in Nazi Germany, but at other times in other places completely eschewed. I used to think about this sort of thing in terms of ‘fashion’: certain trends - in politics, mores or indeed fashion for example - come and then go. As I have mentioned before, it used to be acceptable in Britain to hang people for stealing sheep, but no longer. Public execution is accepted in some Moslem countries but not in the West. What I can never get my head round is a lot of people used to one way of doing things take the view that that way is unarguably the right way. In the Middle Ages it was unarguably right to execute the bodies of witches to save their souls. Well, was that in fact right or was it wrong? (The way I have of accepting different ways of doing things with a laissez faire attitude I know is related to my weak ego. But I congratulate myself on not consigning people to torment because they are or appear to be schizophrenic, or psychiatrists, or soldiers, or Christians, or anything really. In other words I congratulate myself on my weak ego.)
Oh wow, 5.30 in the morning on the second day of 2007 and I feel happy. I remember happy: it was 1978 I think.
02/01/07 05:40
Pulling myself together, I note that this happy feeling is what I used to blame - but then it was exaggerated - on amphetamine. What I conclude is that on amphetamine I am over-the-top on this happiness, but that such euphoria is not created in everyone by amphetamine. In some people it merely ‘speeds things up’. It’s a strange thing this happiness: it isn’t mania - I’m not going to go out and waste thousands of pounds (not unless given amphetamine anyway) - but I can’t see that it’s schizophrenia. However, I would think it is unusual, and I would think - for the sake of a comparison - Aleister Crowley experienced a similar thing.
02/01/07 08:43
Apparently since breakfast twenty minutes ago - starting immediately after - I have been feeling uncomfortable. My mind has de-focused - seemingly because of distraction by the discomfort, in the way pain would be distractive. The physical basis of the discomfort seems to me to lie in flaccidity of the muscles, especially of my left leg and of my throat. These effects may only seem related to the breakfast: they may in fact be related to the coffee I have been drinking all morning, made with bottled water. The effects are certainly not natural effects - they are either drug effects or just possibly effects resulting from ‘hypnotic’ suggestion. I should make clear - as I have from the words uncomfortable and discomfort - that they are most unpleasant effects.
When you go to a doctor and present some syndrome, how does he know to do anything about it? What he does is determine from experience if the symptoms presented reveal the existence of some illness, and if so whether the illness is significant and how severe a case it is. Merely unpleasant symptoms - or even symptoms difficult to tolerate - do not necessarily give rise to treatment, especially if the patient tends to understate his suffering. Thus Armond related my complaints of effects from the antischizophrenic drugs to what he knew from experience and reading of the effects of the drugs, and came to the conclusion what I was suffering was in line with common ‘side-effects’. In fact the effects I get from antischizophrenic drugs are very severe and presumably more severe than in almost every other patient (otherwise surely the aggregate communication from patients about the effects must have produced some change, and besides most patients come to accept the treatment which I never have - although it’s true I was going along with it under Kurian, I was so under-the-thumb from Armond).
However if I were free - eg of being injected with the back-up of threats, or of being tricked into taking drugs - I would avoid without a question anything causing me the discomfort of this morning, last night and anytime recently. There are a few drugs I know have a beneficial effect on me - for example when appropriate Paracetamol, and when I was depressed antidepressants. Apart from that I have little experience of drugs other than antischizophrenic drugs and they have always been a considerable disbenefit with no beneficial effects at all. It may be that I have surreptitiously been given other drugs - eg opium, and pretty certainly stimulants - but none of them have had a good effect and most times I seem to be affected by drugs the effects have been bad or terrible.
At present I am impatient and ill-tempered in supposing that I have been given drugs.
02/01/07 09:46
I have acid in my stomach, and I did last night too. The legs effect - if you can call it that - has been as brief this morning as last night. We can trace no common material between breakfast this morning and the evening meal last night, but of course I have regularly yesterday and today been drinking coffee - Co-op coffee made with Co-op bottled water.
02/01/07 09:59
I am toying with the hypothesis that nighttime advisory voices have tried to psyche me up to reject the injections. The point is there is considerable doubt in my mind whether the problem effects I have are in fact due to the injections and therefore if they would be cured by ceasing the injections. The problem effects are mild and short-lived each time certainly compared to what I have suffered in the past. I agree however mild they are I should not have to suffer them for no compensating benefit, and the fact that I do not kick up more of a fuss is an expression of weak ego. But I have tried to discuss the matter rationally with supposedly rational men - that is medical men - and the result is they have insufficiently weak egos. If I were like them I would not have the relationship and understanding with Dawn I have: that is I would not have a natural empathy for others with weak egos. Who would want to be like Armond?
Seriously, given total freedom one would have nothing to do with people like Armond. I know most people don’t have total freedom and have to associate with unpleasant types for work reasons for example. But even that isn’t vital given the Welfare State. People have a choice: go to work and obtain more money, or live at home with less money if they can’t put up with other people. (My presumption is that for most schizos the choice is not so clear-cut, that is that they crave company but don’t get on with it. I regret that it is so difficult for schizos in general to find a happy mean, but I don’t know what the answer is. The internet perhaps.)
02/01/07 15:07
We have just returned from the GP surgery where I saw the nurse Dawn thinks is more professional, for my injection. The nurse had drawn the injection up earlier, saying other staff were interested in the procedure for this Consta. She was very quick - that is efficient - in administering the injection and Dawn was pleased she did not obscure Dawn’s view of what was going on by drawing the curtain. It may be the injection was drawn up early in order to make the procedure quicker for us. It may be it was drawn up early for reasons to do with the substance injected - perhaps not from the usual pack I mean. (The novelty in the procedure causes me activation so that I am motivated to seek the causal antecedents, that is it gives me pause and makes me consider what the true reason might have been.) I cannot say I feel either optimistic the injection is placebo or pessimistic that it may be something unpleasant to motivate me to complain more. The former seems slightly more likely.
We are going back to Kingswinford today for less than a fortnight: Dawn made the appointment for the next injection for two weeks yesterday, possibly on ‘hypnotic’ suggestion. I certainly get the impression the Authorities are very concerned that we should be in Bassetlaw rather than Kingswinford, but I think they accept that we need breaks. The reason we should be in Bassetlaw - and under a doctor here - is not clear to me but I am suspicious it may not be a good reason for us. The only good reasons might be (1) the doctors here are felt to be better; (2) the doctors here are primed to give us more attention (possibly even writing reports for The Experiment, which is not a reason good necessarily for us). If we presume that in the past (before I was married) the Authorities were trying to do good by me, we are required to suppose they honestly felt being held in hospital and forcibly treated was good for me. It is possible psychiatrists - thought of as advising The Experiment - are so deluded. After all, Armond was I suppose genuine in saying he felt I would eventually thank him for what he had done. Then again, the truth should have been learnt from the fact I did not thank him but on the contrary continued and continue to feel very bitter about my treatment. It is possible the Experimenters are not attentive - or certainly were not in the days before my website when all they had were possibly imaginary bugging devices and possibly expensive agents suivants (and occasional truth-drugged interviews).
03/01/07 02:17 [Wednesday] In Kingswinford
I got up about twenty minutes ago here at the bungalow in Kingswinford, where we arrived at 8.20 pm last night. We had left the park home after tea - say just after 5 pm. After the injection earlier in the afternoon Dawn spent the time ‘tidying up’ at the park home and then as I say we decided to have tea before leaving: it turned out well as we hit rush hour traffic only as we left Worksop, much preferable to being in the rush hour round Birmingham. We stopped once on the journey - at Tamworth where we bought bread and bananas at the M + S. I was quite tired on the journey - and fell asleep promptly on going to bed about 9 pm - but it seemed to me a natural rather than a drug-related tiredness. I remember thinking that I was not as alert as when I was first driving in my late teens and early twenties, and my sensor and motor performance not as well-resolved (a situation reversible by taking stimulant drugs), but the reason is connected with absence now of hyper-awareness of my surroundings which I used to have under certain circumstances - in fact when not in the wholly unvarying or familiar context of home where I lived a life of complete routine. As I say taking stimulant drugs the neural structures now ordinarily used for inward processing get switched to connection with the external and I revert to hyper-awareness of the external with the consequence that I am able - as I was in 2004 - to drive at speed even at night.
My lack of tense connection to the external - together with a lack of need to process much for the day-to-day stuff I have to deal with in my life now - probably explains why I fall asleep early nowadays. As I have said, the way my processing needs would have varied over the years - eg in altering my sleeping habits - has unfortunately been masked by the medication I have been given so constantly.
03/01/07 04:54
Another two and a half hours spent this morning on barrass-brough.info, this time copying-in the character recognition page (which has to be done paragraph by paragraph). Apart from the fact that the link back to colinbrough.co.uk’s Character recognition page wouldn’t work I am pleased with the result. The hitcount for colinbrough.co.uk had gone up to 853 again an advance of about 4 or 5 on yesterday. The hitcount of barrass-brough.info is still at 1, but it may be re-set every time I amend and re-publish the site. Unfortunately I didn’t check it before doing so.
I have had to take Paracetamol for headache, the headache no doubt related to concentrating on the computer work given the small font size Easily set for you.
03/01/07 10:46
I still have a bad headache and have taken more Paracetamol. I went back to bed and slept for three hours from about 5.25 am. I think the headache may be a withdrawal effect of ASM. My working hypothesis is that the ASM effects I have suffered over the months have been mainly from the injections - even though the effects have varied confusingly from hour to hour and from day to day, presumably due to the presence of other drugs that is drugs taken orally somehow - and that the dosage has been reduced gradually - although possibly increased again from time to time for investigative purposes - but that the injection yesterday was placebo, possibly after recent eloquence which has been possible from me because of the low dosage, the communicative effect of which in convincing the Experimenters of the horrors of ASM for me has been good: as I say better than when my communication was interfered with by ASM sometimes in combination with other drugs. The effect of ASM - on muscles and blood pressure say - is loosening, so a reaction on withdrawal of tightening, producing results such as headache and in the past nosebleeds, seems believable. If the original ideas behind The Experiment included investigating drug treatments for schizophrenia the results have been complicated by the fact that my response to the drugs is not that of a standard schizo - in fact in many ways it is the opposite, and I am made more not less schizo by antischizophrenic drugs.
We have still not received the quote we were promised in writing for the guttering work here at the bungalow. Before Christmas I phoned the company presuming that despite my request they had sent the quote to the bungalow address itself. So it may be the quote is now on its way to the park home as I requested. My less schizo reaction now than at one time is revealed in my presumption very many things do go wrong naturally in life and do not require the Authorities to cause them to go wrong. BT payphones are a case in point. Also the postal service: all sorts of things have not been delivered, sent from and to me. It appears a letter I sent my cousin about a year ago never got through: at least it appears so from the note in her Christmas card to us. Dawn is happier than before with emails and I am going to email this cousin.
03/01/07 16:26
I think I am under the influence of ASM and my presumption is that it derives from the injection, presumably being risperidone. I note this effect of the ASM: there are things which occur to me to do, some being important to be done. Timetabling these is something I am not doing as I once would have - because I can’t, almost certainly because of the ASM. This I find distressing, although as the effect is very mild - so mild in fact that I can explain exactly what is going on - I am not very distressed.
By timetabling I mean envisaging the things to be done - the to-do’s if you like, but including considerations also of the likely time each will take - fitting together into a sequence stretching out over future time. Furthermore the envisagement ideally should have a high ‘coefficient of reality’, that is it should seem so likely to be put into effect - once the sequence has settled into a plan - that it guides one’s activity now, including mental activity. That is one acts, thinks and constructs further plans on the presumption that the sequence with the high coefficient of reality will genuinely come to be. It is sort of ‘counting one’s chickens’ but in a context where it is a reasonable thing to do. The timetabling involves fitting together to-do’s which have a duration in time in an efficient way, similar to efficient packing of luggage. Both efficient use of time and efficient packing in space - and also the real-seeming internal envisagement itself - are things which give me pleasure, a pleasure ASM - particularly ASM in quantity - deprives me of. As an example which perhaps conventional psychology is unaware of, timetabling my TV viewing by fitting together programmes out of the Radio Times into an efficient sequence - one with no overlapping and with few gaps, given other demands on my time - used to be something which in itself - disregarding actually watching the programmes - gave me great pleasure (thirty years ago).
To summarise: under ASM I am deprived of the pleasure of planning. If things are vital to be done then likely they will get done - although the threshold of what is vital is raised so that less seems vital and less gets done (which is underactivity due to ASM) - but they will get done ad hoc without any proper plan. I point out that on higher dosages of ASM I cannot - that is I have not been able to - plan (or introspect) enough to explain this matter so well before. I further remark that it seems to me possible that most patients taking ASM are affected the other way, that is that their planning is improved by taking ASM. I regret psychiatry has not properly understood these effects, as occurring differentially between persons given ASM.
I mention too that earlier this afternoon I suffered some further flaccidity in my legs - although briefly - which could have been due to ASM in yesterday’s injection.
03/01/07 17:32
Dawn - who has been very active all day and has achieved a lot - is becoming tired and mentions acid in her throat. I too am slightly sleepy and have acid coming up into my throat from my stomach. This argues the source of the symptoms - probably a drug, the way things are - is the same for us both, likely water bought at the Spar earlier this afternoon (or perhaps the coffee granules were switched while we were out at the Spar: we have each had a cup of coffee made with these granules - which have previously seemed innocent - and the water bought at the Spar). I have had a slightly elevated rate of production of urine this afternoon - possibly since drinking that coffee. The ASM effects I noted above I believe came on after drinking that coffee.
03/01/07 19:08
After I wrote the above we had our evening meal including gravy made with the Spar bottled water. Since then - probably starting actually before then - Dawn renewed her activity and I also have achieved a task which was more or less set by her - although I had no reluctance and joined in ‘loading’ it (rather than I mean performing it grudgingly, which was somewhat my attitude when she was active setting the bungalow to rights last Spring) - that is to fix the curtain pole above the kitchen window. So now we have curtains to the kitchen window and when I get up early in the morning no agents of the Authorities can with benefit train their binoculars from the trees to our rear or the school buildings to our rear (should such behaviour on behalf of the Authorities be in the least conceivable).
As we are retaining the bungalow for the foreseeable future we expect to have the company of Dawn’s grandsons from High Wycombe next Summer, but we think we will decline the full five or six weeks equivalent to last year.
Thinking about language as is my wont: usually I would not capitalise summer: I have done so above in parallel to Spring which always I would capitalise.
03/01/07 19:24
Dawn is pleased with the curtains - very pleased in a way which tells me her experience of achievement emotion is good and possibly enhanced from her normal - but at the same time mentions her tiredness and the aches in her body (without exactly feeling a satisfied exhaustion). I conjecture in something likely the water both tap- and bottled there is a sleep-inducing agent. Whether there may also be ASM - causing me problems as I remarked in the 16:26 entry (the problems have not persisted so may not be due to the injection) but assisting Dawn in her endeavours I can’t be sure.
03/01/07 20:26
We watched Coronation Street then discovered we are only receiving a very limited number of TV channels on Telewest. My presumption is that because they reckoned we had not paid our bill - because we haven’t paid the disconnection fee which should have been refunded - they restricted our services and have not derestricted them. The letter they wrote us about the supposedly unpaid bill said they might restrict our phone to incoming calls only, but they don’t seem to have done this. It seems to be only the TV affected. (Of course it is possible there is some sort of general failure of services this evening, as there is on Telewest much more often than one would wish for.)
03/01/07 20:32
I note Dawn’s level of ticklishness is reduced, so she may be under the influence of ASM, which produces a dull sensorium I once read.
03/01/07 23:09
After about two hours in bed - at 10.50 pm - during which I had been well asleep, Dawn said she couldn’t sleep and in saying it woke me up. My conclusion is the drugs affecting us - probably in the water - made me sleepy but not Dawn; they may even have made her more wakeful. I suppose an alternative theory is that yesterday’s injection has made me sleepy - although not very sleepy, from which the conclusion is the dosage was lower even than recently - but that Dawn has no significant dosage of any drug in her, that is no dosage affecting her significantly. Whether she is always so wakeful as I sleep, but this time because I am less sleepy I have woken up to become aware of it, I can’t say.
I note that Dawn’s ticklishness has returned the conclusion from which may be that she was under the influence of ASM - from the water, because before going to bed say 9 pm she took a risperidone tablet which has not dulled her ticklishness - but it was a very low dosage which has now worn off (as it has in me, but the effect on sleep in me has been different).
03/01/07 23:40
I am a bit subject to distraction - eg from the TV as I was writing the above (we have now turned the TV off) - and it may be - especially given my energy in fixing that curtain pole - that the bottled water contains stimulant plus ASM, the effects still enduring in me from earlier. Dawn is now drinking black coffee (made with the bottled water) while I am drinking coffee made with milk entirely. She comments that she is now starting to get tired.
Ticklishness is sort of a jumpy that is saccadic response to stimulation. Whether it would be exacerbated by stimulant in combination with ASM would probably depend on the relative effectiveness in the individual of the given dosages, but one can with certainty say stimulant-plus-ASM will reduce the resolution of neural processing on all fronts: input, output, seriatim and language. The trade-off in improving schizophrenia - and I suppose I must conclude ASM does in some sense correct schizophrenia - is that by dulling neural functioning on the input and in particular the seriatim side, inappropriate neural functioning on the output side is also dulled that is ‘corrected’.
03/01/07 23:53
Dawn says she is ready for bed.
04/01/07 01:16 [Thursday]
I have woken up after a further two and a half hours of sleep with a word in my mind which seems to be a good expression of what ASM deprives me of, and to explain a lot of what I have suffered over the years both under treatment and when I have been said to be ill, for example in (I think) 1983. The word is purpose. I have a faint supposition that nighttime advisers may have put this word to me, and I take it that represents a very mild form of the illness caused me by mixing stimulant with ASM, and that I have ingested such a mixture - in the mildest dosage - yesterday in the water.
A few months ago there were advertising posters to be seen at railway stations containing descriptions of abuse done to railway staff, the descriptions written with the letters of the words jumbled, and ending up, ‘It doesn’t make sense.’ What was meant was that abuse done to railway staff - such as being kicked or spat at - seemed inexplicable to them, pointless and (to use another word) gratuitous. This meaninglessness was represented by the almost-meaninglessness of the words of the poster with their jumbled letters. Up to now I have never properly appreciated that the poster had much meaning, because I was unable to note properly the connection between meaninglessness of the jumbled letters and meaninglessness of the abuse. The connection - if I may put it this way - seemed to have little meaning, the mere fact of juxtaposing two meaninglessnesses seeming little basis for an advertising poster. What in fact I presumed was that the posters had been designed in collaboration with the Authorities as a reference - as well as being advertising posters for the purpose they pretended to have - to the meaninglessness of my suffering over the years. As so often over the years I was unable to comprehend how people could point up the fact of my suffering in that way, how they could countenance such a thing being done.
In I think 1983 I saw an edition of Blue Peter which at the time I felt was absurd (the word I would have used at the time) - so absurd in fact that it could not have been thought by other viewers to be an acceptable broadcast, the conclusion from this being that it was transmitted specially - on a special frequency - for me. I can’t remember the details of what the supposed absurdity consisted in - although it involved the presenters eating absurd combinations of foods (the sorts of things pregnant women are said to favour, perhaps) - but until tonight, really, I have not known whether to believe it was a genuine broadcast. My almost certainty now is that it was a genuine broadcast, and the best way of expressing what I saw as the absurdity of it would be to say I did not understand the purpose in what was being presented - it seemed pointless or meaningless.
I have gone on before about concatenations of circumstances seeming consciously motivated if they have a combination of seemingly an end goal and complexity, and I have sought to explain my understanding of the way both goal-directedness and analysis of complexity (through ‘taxonomisation’) are functions of the seriatim frontal brain. My exposition would probably have been clearer had I thought then of this word purpose, which provides a useful abbreviation for what I was on about which will bring the understanding I felt I arrived at more clearly to a wider audience. The fact that I did not find such an appropriate word is a failure of communication I blame squarely on the ASM I was being given, and I would relate this failure to failure by most schizophrenics in the absence of ASM. I reiterate my conviction that ASM has the opposite effect on me to the normal, and would blame my treatment over the years on this anomaly. I am still convinced I was given ASM surreptitiously before I was officially treated - the effects I remember in 1979 were not schizophrenia but effects of ASM likely reserpine - and I would put forward the notion that it was this unofficial treatment - especially when something like amphetamine was brought in, as I am convinced it was in 1980 - which caused me first to present with symptoms thought by Armond to be symptoms of schizophrenia.
The failure of communication - in the case of schizophrenics as well as in my case under ASM - doesn’t mean that what we have to say is wrong or meaningless. What it means is a high demand is placed on the interpreter, that is the person communicated to has to be extra clever (as most psychiatrists and specifically Armond are not) to understand. The alleviation in treatment I have been blessed with since 2004 I feel sure has come about because the internet has made what I have to say available to cleverer people than Armond - and than those who read my communications to William Street.
I can give a specific example (which I may have given before). When I was in hospital last time, a nurse handed a tablet to a schizophrenic patient and a minute later told him to take it. ‘I have taken it,’ he said. - ‘No you haven’t: it’s still in your hand.’ What he meant was that he had taken it from the hand of the nurse, but unfortunately she did not understand this possible interpretation and simply criticised what he said for being wrong (or even a lie).
Purpose implies what I said: an ultimate goal with a complex arrangement of subgoals in a plan that is not just a sequence but includes sub-plans for contingencies, that is how to alter the plan according to what in the execution eventuates. Planning in this purposeful sense is a seriatim function which we can see a network of neurons would be a very suitable vehicle for. Goals are much the same as causal sequences: do one thing and another thing follows, but not with 100% certainty: rather with a probability which (failing analysing the step from antecedent to consequent with more detail, that is with higher resolution inserting as it were more synaptic links in a network in between) can be represented by the strength of neurotransmission from the neuron representing the antecedent to the neuron representing the consequent. And neurons in a network - which is like a linked list (in computing terms) but in more than one dimension - are eminently suited to representing complex planning for contingencies - and also for inserting better resolved sub-plans into plans already outlined (think LISP).
So in summary what ASM deprives me of is an understanding of purpose, part of which (the terrible part) is a failure to find any reason to do anything in my own life.
04/01/07 02:24
It’s something like this then. When I was at uni - starting possibly as soon as I arrived, or possibly not till my third year - the original Authorities were trying to ‘cure’ my schizoid personality. To do this initially they gave me reserpine, and later (possibly after interviewing me under a truth drug and finding out about the depression I had suffered in my first year) stimulant drugs. My diary of 1977 reveals the action of the stimulant and also occasionally the tenor of the then ‘nighttime advice’.
In 1978 I was quite happy, living on my own a mile or so from my parents - having as I have said experiences similar to thought derailment which I found very pleasurable and writing philosophical stuff in my diary - but in 1979 the Authorities caught up with me presumably having by then recruited my parents into the scheme. They followed the same route they had followed when I was at Cambridge - first antischizophrenic drugs surreptitiously administered (probably reserpine again), then later stimulant drugs (probably amphetamine). The result was a psychosis in me which Armond - whether or not prompted by the Authorities - diagnosed as schizophrenia. Thereafter the same mixture of antischizophrenic drugs with stimulant has been pursued, apparently as a trial treatment in the presumption I was genuinely schizophrenic (whereas I myself have until recently presumed the idea was deliberately to induce and perpetuate a psychosis with the drugs). I imagine what happened in 2004 with me being asked by stooges in effect if I was willing to be part of an Experiment was in preparation for the new Mental Health Bill. I was involved in this Experiment already and the powers-that-be thought it was an opportunity to test out the principles on which the Bill was founded.
Recent events - based on my making available my better-communicated thoughts through my website to a wider audience including cleverer people - must have completely revolutionised the thinking of the Authorities, as it has completely revolutionised my understanding of The Experiment.
04/01/07 05:00
Prompted by the fact that the colinbrough.co.uk hitcount seems to be going up by exactly 4 every twenty-four hours (apart from when I myself log on) which makes me think only an agent of the Authorities logs on and is deputed to do so say every three hours of the working day, I have been trying to erect a better model for myself than heretofore of The Experiment. First of all, even given that there was an Experiment in the past - say related to the Mental Health Bill - how do I know one is still going on? The answer is I know I take in drugs by mouth - because even if the ASM effects are down to the injection, stimulants must be administered orally - and hence something I take by mouth is surreptitiously drugged, and I don’t take prescribed tablets. Furthermore on occasions occurring in clusters I see statistically unusual numbers of reversing and U-turning vehicles. Less clear-cut evidence is provided by Dawn’s son behaving in a markedly different way from his previous character.
The conclusion I thought I had come to about the extent to which readers understand what I put on my website is fluctuating. It seemed to me that they had very little understanding of it - notably failing to understand the negative effect of ASM on me, with no positive effect. But this seems to be changing - in fact it seems for some months to have been changing, as I must conclude the dosage in my injection has been much less than last winter when it was presumably the dosage it was stated to be - and lately the dosage in the injection may have been zero (considering especially the clarity the past day or two of my understanding). (Anyone would realise that a sedative-related drug would blunt not sharpen one’s wit, having its supposedly desirable effect by moderating aspects of output activity.)
What I tend to presume though is that the views of the psychiatrists who actually - occasionally - examine me are taken into account, and all those I have known have been less than fully competent to understand the schizo and related mind. So the Authorities - to go against the advice of these examining psychiatrists while not I suppose understanding or accepting my ideas presented through my website (as they have not been officially published and vetted by competent referees) - are going out on a limb in reducing and perhaps now zeroing the dosage of the drugs I am given, closely watching (no doubt) to see if the symptoms of my supposed illness worsen (not imagining I suppose that they will lessen, which is what it is now clear to me will happen). Now I reflect, it may be that as the dosage of the antischizophrenic drugs I am given has been reduced so very much it is no longer possible to give them by injection. It may be that what seemed to be the fluctuating effect over hours and days of the more recent injections was blameable on the very low dosage.
I point out that my response to antischizophrenic drugs is anomalous, so while much may be learnt (I hope) from my introspective comments, observing from an external point of view the results of decreasing or zeroing the dosage will not help much in assessing the effect on most patients.
04/01/07 05:48
It occurs to me to mention that in the past hour I have drunk a cup of coffee made with milk, but prior to that I was drinking the milk neat. (I have also eaten some cheese and biscuits with Flora marg.) Now I am vague and inattentive - faintly like being drunk, if I must put it in conventional terms - and my eyes are streaming with water. This symptom of eyes streaming with water I may not have mentioned previously as an effect associated with yawnative or something like yawnative.
04/01/07 05:56
It is by virtue of drugs such as these now being given by mouth in small dosages that I notice the effects coming on and wearing off and am able to delimit what the drugs must have been in. Allow me to mention in case there is any failure of understanding that I am finding these effects now unpleasant and bothersome.
04/01/07 06:18
The effects of these drugs include fairly marked blanking - which incidentally I used to suspect involved me being hypnotised in the interlude I was less conscious - and I would explain the variation in effect from time to time by slight variation in the quantity getting into me - such a small quantity anyway having effect - plus the varying time by the diurnal and the daylight cycle. My presumption is that the coffee was switched while we were out yesterday afternoon.
04/01/07 06:42
I have just been lying down in bed for twenty minutes and the realisation came to me that the way I was fading into something like sleep and then coming-to again was very reminiscent of the effects of the first injection of Depixol I had. I originally mentioned that first test-dose in reminiscence in May or June 2006 when visiting Dawn’s son in hospital with his appendix when I was rendered very sleepy for a short while from time to time. My presumption must be that that was when I was first tried - in recent months - on oral ASM instead of the Risperdal injection. While the Authorities must have - or have had - some sort of belief I was schizophrenic to be willing to administer ASM to me at all, nevertheless they were not giving it to me primarily for the sake of my health because there would be no need to switch medications or to switch between injections and the oral form.
04/01/07 06:59
Perhaps the likeliest explanation is that there are drugs - ASM - in a lot of coffee when bought in Harworth and Bircotes, but the drugs are distributed unevenly through each jar. The dosage is such that no one, really, is going to be hurt, but because of my sensitivity I notice effects when they occur although they are very short-lived.
I am going to try to find my diary entry corresponding to that first test-dose of Depixol in 1980 when I can get to my diary volumes (when Dawn wakes up).
04/01/07 07:30
The date on which I mentioned Depixol last year was Friday 16 June 2006. I have been looking through my diary from early May 2006 and from about the start of that month of May I was no longer being drugged so much - probably by then the injections had ceased to be genuine. I was beginning to do more sensible stuff on my computers and I was beginning to do sensible budgeting. No one surely could have been mistaken as to the benefits to me of being without - or without much, or without permanently - ASM, from which I conclude ASM given since - by mouth - has been given for investigative purposes, and has involved for investigative purposes a number of different oral medications.
It may be that the genuine injections were authorised for a period of six months from November 2005, to discover if they did good or ill. Now with drugs being put in foods someone I suppose has to authorise it each time - or as a prescription for a course - although as the dosages are so low I suppose less care and forethought goes into the prescribing. (On the other hand I may be right to suppose drugged foods are sometimes bought by innocent shoppers chiefly in Harworth and Bircotes, so some consideration has to be given.)
04/01/07 07:42
I remember around May 2006 as we were in the process of selling the house in Kingswinford we sold, a note was put through the door (from BT I think) saying access was wanted - to test something - but was not essential. I took this referentially to mean I was requested to discontinue my security arrangements, and the implication of that is that the Authorities wanted to be able to drug foods. I think I am right to conclude that since about then - May 2006 - foods or drinks have been drugged one way or another. It may have been about then that I bought the alarm for the bungalow we are now in which I have long suspected of not working properly.
04/01/07 07:54
In the course of last May I made various interesting comments in my website diary on the psychology of the schizo mind and the effects of antischizophrenic drugs. These comments were based on the subjects of schizophrenia and treatment for schizophrenia being uppermost in my mind because of recent events (and not character recognition, for example).
I was also in a happy frame of mind similar to the other day - at least from time to time - and was interested in rejecting the injections - again like recently.
04/01/07 08:16
05:06 16/05/2006 [Tuesday]
Dawn asked me last night why I am not able to pursue what I would be doing but for the fact of the Experiment, which would be writing computer programs to simulate aspects of the human mind. The reason is distraction and fear of distraction. When I am given mind-altering drugs I am prevented from thinking in the way that would be necessary to write such programs, and in the aftermath - possibly for weeks - I am distracted by a fear or presumption more drugs will one way or another get into my system. Furthermore while the Experiment is going on - while I continue to be aware of reversing vehicles for example and see one way or another evidence that the Experiment is still going on, eg by a subliminal awareness voices have spoken to me in my sleep - my mind is occupied by the Experiment, and writing remarks such as these explaining myself on the presumption the Experimenters will read them. When I hear words of thanks and presume they are aimed at me for my co-operation in the Experiment it distracts me from what I would be doing into co-operating with the Experimenters: thinking about arrangements for my injections, thinking and writing about the effects of drugs, etc. The fear and presumption I shall be detained from time to time also distracts me from thinking freely.
04/01/07 08:20
On Tuesday 16 May 2006 I suffered attacks of vomiting. My presumption must be that these were a withdrawal effect of recent drugs.
04/01/07 08:24
On Wednesday 17 May 2006 I started thinking about writing a computer prog to do with the HTML for my website. This followed my comments of complaint of a few days previously, saying I couldn’t think properly when distracted by The Experiment to write interesting computer programs.
04/01/07 08:29
On Thursday 18 May 2006 I gave a list of to-do’s including a reference to security at the bungalow in a form I have never put into effect. My presumption is this was read and acted on - by giving me bad nighttime advice to buy an alarm which probably has never worked properly - by the Authorities. On the same date I noted effects of a drug which ‘clouds memory and awareness’, apparently in the gravy. Almost certainly the water supply (here at the bungalow in Kingswinford) was being interfered with.
There is a division in the website diary between Early May 2006 (up to 18th inclusive) and the rest of May.
04/01/07 08:38
Friday 19 May 2006 was the date I acquired Paragon Hard Disk Manager free with a computer mag and initially suspect (although lately it seems to have given good service on computers other than the Vaio).
18:16 20/05/2006
We went to Merry Hill on the bus this morning, and on our return the latch on the front door here at the bungalow was open, although the lower locks were locked (we have two lower locks as well as the Yale-type lock on which the latch was open, since police advice to ‘change the locks’). Dawn is not absolutely convinced she may not remissly have opened the latch in opening the door when we exited this morning.
While at Merry Hill we went to Maplins and I bought - amongst other things - an alarm activated by a magnetic switch. I have connected this up to the front door (here at the bungalow) but have not tested it as I have no AAA batteries to hand. I have also been investigating the remote connection socket on my expensive digital camera, and find the camera can be wakened from a power-down state to take a photograph. I conclude it could be left power-down for a week or more while we are in Worksop, and still be capable of taking a timestamped photograph if the front door opens. I have more work to do to connect up such a system though.
04/01/07 08:59
Around Thursday 25 May 2006 I started on OCR programming, and on Saturday 27 May 2006 - after evidently working hard on the Friday and as a result making only one brief entry in the diary for the website - I put into the website page for May 2006 a first version of the first prog - Scan document for OCR.
04/01/07 09:23
20:00 29/05/2006
I am in some distress now with aching legs, sleepy eyes and mental unclarity due to the same drug I was given over the winter (I imagine) presumably risperidone. I find it difficult to understand how authorisation for these drugs can be given, particularly for surreptitious administration to someone such as myself who has a severely adverse sensitivity reaction to them. Unfortunately I have not been carrying my coffee about with me when I go out, and must presume the bungalow has been entered when the alarm has not been active.
04/01/07 11:02
I am tiring now - noticeable mainly in heaviness of my eyes - and my guess is that it is due to stimulant taken in this morning’s coffee with the ASM wearing off leaving a very weak residual ASM effect. Dawn and I have been through the contents of the garage and sorted out what’s to be skipped and tidied things up generally.
14:43. We are at Merry Hill and while Dawn looks at the ladies’ stuff in M + S I am sitting on a seat intended for those trying on shoes.
15:05. Dawn came back and we went downstairs. I was trying to say that after she drank some of the old coffee - we bought new at the Spar - she seemed enlivened, and when we had left the house to come to Merry Hill she said she was pleased to be out of the house: indoors she felt ‘stressed’ by having made such little progress tidying up.
I am still feeling tired, that is my eyes are heavy-lidded. Being out and about is not having a significantly energising effect on me.
05/01/07 02:27 [Friday]
We went to bed at ten to nine and I have had five and a half hours’ sleep. I couldn’t keep my eyes open at the time we went to bed: this must surely have been due to drugs in the bottled water bought at the Spar recently. Of course if it’s true that we are insistently given soporific drugs distinct from ASM there must be some reason. The only reason I can imagine is so that we can be spoken to by nighttime advisory voices. I certainly don’t like being given the soporifics: again it’s because of failure to tailor the dosage and time of taking them appropriately. Taking sleeping tablets at night as some people do might be all right, but being given drugged water or drugged coffee which make me sleepy a lot of the time - sometimes in the morning a few hours after I’ve got up, even - is not the same thing at all. This being sleepy a lot of the time - or at least, at unpredictable times and quite frequently - goes back at least to last June, as I found on reading through some of my diary from last year.
05/01/07 02:41
Yesterday afternoon we went to Merry Hill on the bus. I got some stuff from Maplins for use in my security arrangements, and then we looked for Rosebys for curtains, but it seems to have closed down. We had a coffee in one of the cafés then bought a mobile phone from T-mobile. We went to Marks and Spencer’s (where I made brief remarks on the handheld device) then walking back towards the bus station came upon a place which unlocks mobile phones. Our problem is Easymobile have gone out of business and we needed something to replace our Easymobile phone. What we did - a bit foolishly as we have now ended up with two mobiles - is have the Easymobile phone unlocked so that we can use an O2 SIM card in it given us by Dawn’s sister. In fact it makes me wonder if Dawn was ‘hypnotised’ to suggest the unlocking of the old phone even after we had bought the T-mobile phone, to ensure we use that SIM card. It may be special in some way: the number may be bugged or something. I suppose if you’re going to tap someone’s mobile phone you at least need to know the number.
I can barely appreciate the things that go on and the reasons. Dr G made remarks about phone tapping when we were living in Worksop, and I’m sure he was hinting our BT phone was tapped: we certainly got a lot of strange calls even after we changed the number supposedly to one no one knew. Surely it cannot be that our phones are tapped - which implies someone goes to the trouble of listening to our calls - merely for research into mental illness? And to drug us so that we are sleepy a lot of the time is so unpleasant there must be some very strong motivation for doing it. But why are these things done? Sorry to say I revert to wondering about research for the military, but in what way is any of it of use to the military? Recently I have been thinking along the lines that in 2004 the investigation was into mental illness and treated mental illness - for example Caroline assaulting me and trying in other ways to make me loony - in connection with the new Mental Health Bill. In 2005 the investigation was into my mental processes - from the time we were taken to Nottingham QMC (I think it’s called: my memory is flawed, that is it is in doubt) I’m sure for the purpose of investigation, and similarly when I was hospitalised that year by compulsion and wholly unreasonably at Bassetlaw - and if attempts were not being made to split Dawn and myself up at the least our marriage was being tested. When I was released from being held in Bassetlaw the methodology seems to have changed, and Dr G for example was requesting me to do things rather than directing me, and did not take me back in for one night as had been planned originally. My presumption is the Authorities decided information obtained from me by the forceful method of a truth-drugged interview was of less value than stuff I knowingly conveyed eg via my website. Since then They have treated me more with kid gloves, for example when I ran away to Kingswinford in September 2006 the police who came round to see me - and the ambulance crew when I went to Russells Hall Hospital too - were very conciliatory in their comments. It is possible to regard this as cynical - in other words after abusing me in 2004 and 2005 (ignoring earlier years when the nature of the Experiment was different) They discovered trying to be nice produced more of value.
Since Dawn and I could not be separated it appears to me members of Dawn’s family have been recruited into The Experiment, from at least a time in 2006 when we went to Dawn’s sister’s and another sister turned up behaving as if nervous (and when Dawn’s son started to play his part - which I think may have been in 2005 - initially he was nervous in it too). Recently I seem to detect in my memory - deriving I presume from nighttime voices - that the Authorities want us in Bassetlaw but want it to be a free decision of our own, that is They find that compulsion is counterproductive.
I suppose the Authorities can’t pay us generously with money because there’s no telling what I might use it for if I had a lot. For example publicising my case through advertising or setting up unbreachable security (etc) might bring The Experiment to a sorry end.
Anyway, adopting the tack this morning that an awful lot of trouble is put in (for example listening in on our phonecalls) I conclude with happiness that the readers of my website will do their best to understand what I mean (in all sorts of connections, including character recognition) and likely will have some success. If nobody is really interested in what I write, or troubles to try to understand, there’s no point in writing. But as I say, even if the only people who read it are agents of the Authorities at least they are following what I’m saying.
05/01/07 08:44
I have been fiddling about with parameters used in the calculation of similarity. However, it has been more productive than it sounds, and more productive than had I been affected by ASM, in that ideas have arisen first of all clarifying my taxonomic overview (if I may put it like that) of the way the calcsimilarity procedure operates now and secondly allowing me therefore to generalise, creating as I say ideas for the way forward. To be specific: two parameters I have been fiddling with are distanceparam1 and scale1, related to the subtractive contribution from local mismatches (as against distanceparam itself, which is related to the overall shape of the characters being compared). The generalisation is founded in observing from the results of my fiddling that in effect distanceparam and distanceparam1 (the latter scaled by scale1) give two different grainsizes. And by using other terms of addition or subtraction in the final calculation of calcsimilarity, corresponding to different grainsizes again, the effect of features of different proportionate sizes (compared to the whole character) either matching between characters under comparison or mismatching could play a useful role.
05/01/07 11:08
Dawn - who is drinking coffee bought before yesterday made with water bought at the Spar two days ago - is very active including active of mind in a way which makes the plans she lays quite effective. (I have been drinking coffee bought yesterday at Merry Hill made with milk.) Dawn’s proposals for today seem very optimistic to me - finishing off our bedroom floor I agree we are likely to achieve, and probably bringing stuff out of the other bedroom into ours so as to tidy both up. We should also get the king-size mattress out of the ’van into the little bedroom. However, Dawn’s other plans for tidying up the lounge, further sorting out the garage and making a lot of progress with spring-cleaning the ’van seem very ambitious.
Of course according to my theoretical perspective, because she is taking risperidone (likely in the coffee or the water) she is not over-thinking in dopamine terms. But her serotonin level - whether elevated by the risperidone I am unsure - is leading her to form these ambitious plans. What is required in life (if I may say) is a balance between serotonin driving one on and dopamine enabling performance in line with plans. Myself I feel Dawn is driving herself (and me if I’m not careful) too hard and - depending on her intake of drugs at the time - may suffer disappointment.
I remark for my own case that if we don’t achieve everything we hoped to - as we didn’t the day or two previous to today - I do not - in the absence I take it of ASM - get demoralised. I patiently re-schedule what remains. This is how I was in my younger days.
05/01/07 12:04
Dawn’s optimism in estimating what we could achieve is explained by it now being apparent the coffee (or water) contains (the old old story) stimulant drugs as well as ASM. Having had another cup she has renewed her efforts having been flagging. Unfortunately the combination of ASM with the stimulant brings on the effects of overindulgence and hangover after stimulant abuse. Instead of feeling stimulated for a good while and only then - and possibly gradually - winding down, the ASM brings on tiredness quite suddenly - leading me in the past to take more of the substance containing the drugs, for the effect of the stimulant countering the tiredness - and such experience as feeling the need to sleep while yet being unable. I further mention that the effect of the laxative and possible diuretic included in the mixture is different on Dawn from me: her dosage requirements are different (which I guess is why she suffered diarrhoea last summer and has it now slightly). Goodness knows what the people providing these drugs in foods - to me in the past and to us now - have in mind. It is conceivable a properly monitored mixture of stimulant with ASM might be effective, but The Experiment cannot be simply trialling such a combination. It must include the possibility at least of causing me in the past and us now a psychotic reaction. Dawn has certainly at times been quite agitated (in late 2005 for instance getting very heated).
05/01/07 12:59
I am experiencing very slight blanking in that I shut my eyes and drift off - sitting here since lunch - but as soon as I open my eyes I recollect myself immediately with seemingly no interruption in my memory stream, for example. I drank a Red Bull from the park home this morning, from the foursome I thought might be drugged with opium. If it were opium it could be that it is very little effective in the daytime if one is not lacking sleep. When I was thinking about opium I was thinking in terms of it partially deactivating the seriatim process so that more waking-up was needed to get the seriatim process going - more activating circumstances, that is. Thus in the dark early morning especially if I had not had much sleep I might be noticeably affected, but not now under these circumstances. (The drugs could have involved ASM and stimulant with little stimulant, rather than opium I suppose.) I must say at the park home drug effects seemed to involve deactivation - having little in one’s mind and wishing life were more stimulating - whereas here at the bungalow the drugs seem - and seemed last time we were here - overactivating to the point at least in Dawn of frustration (making her dirigiste towards me and towards herself).
05/01/07 15:39
Dawn has slowed down somewhat, presumably as the ASM begins to have its longer-term effect than the stimulant whose effect comes on sooner and (I believe) does not last as long (if the drug-taking is not repeated, I mean). These are results I can confirm looking back on my own experience over the years of ASM and stimulant in combination. She still feels motivated to try to continue tidying up, but is taking more breaks and taking more rest in those breaks. She is no longer what I would call dirigiste. In fact she is puffing and panting at times. (Also - another effect I know, for example from about the year 2000 - she has acid indigestion.)
I myself am a little sleepy as the drugs in the Red Bull (a different mix I believe) evolve their effects. I am cataloguing some of the books in my collection as we sort stuff out.
I have had an ‘inspiration’ to do with character recognition (following on from what I said before) which is keeping my mood elevated (either that or something in my bloodstream is). I shall explain my thoughts when I get a minute.
05/01/07 16:47
I have developed loose stuffiness of the nose. This I conjecture is the effect of at least this particular ASM - possibly requiring combination with stimulant - at a low dosage. I think my conclusion that I am exceptionally sensitive to ASM - based on the belief that Dawn’s daughter’s family took some in the tapwater at the park home - may be overstated. It isn’t so much that I am sensitive and therefore detect small quantities - that’s because I have been made so wary by events - it is that the effects I get even from relatively mild dosages are very unpleasant effects (including feeling paranoid - got at - not simply because of the unpleasantness but through a direct effect on my brain in effect emulating paranoid schizophrenia).
The firm we hope will do the guttering are coming tomorrow - or rather one self-employed member is - to give another quote. They can’t trace any previous quote.
05/01/07 17:02
Dawn has settled - seemingly quite happy - into something more routine than we have been doing, that is into washing and cooking. She seems untroubled at present - unlike this morning - by niggles caused by the junking up of our lounge here at the bungalow. She is furthermore counting our achievements and saying things are easier than she had expected. I conjecture that in her case - unlike mine - ASM enhances her experience of achievement emotion (I presume mainly ASM is affecting her now). Stimulants cause her to attempt too much - with an over-optimistic initial estimate of possibilities - with usually frustration and disappointment to follow.
05/01/07 19:12
I am getting sleepy. We are going to have supper then go to bed.
05/01/07 22:33
After two and a half hours in bed Dawn being wakeful and I having woken we have got up. My guess tonight is that the sleep disturbance I suffer - irremediably falling asleep very early and correspondingly getting up very early, or as will probably be the case tonight my sleep broken in the middle - is not due to soporifics given for any purpose like making us susceptible to ‘hypnotic’ voices at night but to the effect on my sensitivity of the ASM given for purposes unclear but related to investigation of schizophrenia.
It must be that at the start in the 1970s - in either my first or my third year as a Cambridge student - ASM in the form of reserpine was given in the hope of curing what was seen as my schizophrenia of the time - which was in fact schizoid personality which would not have persisted much beyond adolescence. Presumably the purpose then was partly investigative - to see if the ‘problem’ could be cured and in particular to try out stimulant drugs in combination with ASM. I have no doubt - eg from the evidence in my diary of 1977 - that I was given stimulant drugs, but they were not at a dosage likely to cause a psychotic reaction.
Regrettably the reserpine - and I am guessing it was given from early in my Cambridge career - caused me severe problems which because the Experimenters had made inadequate provision for assessing the effects and did not anticipate such a sensitive reaction as mine (but on the other hand putting drugs in foods the dosage taken cannot be predicted with any accuracy so they were especially negligent) were not picked up. It is clear from my diary of 1977 that I was then being spoken to in my sleep - and my guess is this started early in my Cambridge career - and my presumption is that certainly from time to time a response from me was obtained under the influence of a truth drug which misled the Experimenters into supposing I was suffering no particular ill effect.
This scenario was repeated from about 1979 on when the Experimenters caught up with me after I had left university and they had presumably recruited the consent and assistance of my parents. Again the reserpine caused me severe problems - my performance at work suffered and I personally suffered depression and emptiness of mind leading to difficulty in my friendships - and when a stimulant drug likely amphetamine was put in my foods in 1980 I suffered a psychosis which led to my compulsory hospitalisation. If the psychiatrist Armond was not a part of the Experiment but was simply mistaken in diagnosing schizophrenia instead of a reaction to drugs he was negligent.
In 1980-1981 I was being treated with more modern antischizophrenic drugs than reserpine, officially at first although after the official medication stopped sometime in 1981 - presumably from the time I was discharged from my 6-month section which would have been May 1981 - the awful side-effects - including akathisia and impotence - went on for some months and it is now clear more modern antischizophrenic drugs were then being put in my foods. After my hospitalisation of November 1980-February 1981 I returned to work briefly I think around August 1981 but due to the drugs I was being given I was unable to attend properly and certainly not effectively to the work and I resigned as from a date early in 1982 (I think a date in March 1982 in fact).
It utterly astonishes me that the people involved in my care at that time - including my parents - and the Experimenters too failed all of them to observe the true effect of the drugs I was being given. I find it very difficult to account for this and must presume effects of the drugs were taken to be symptoms of a burgeoning illness. My presumption at the time - insofar as I had any with the emptiness of mind I was suffering - was that I was deliberately being caused problems for some such reason as to induce a paranoid reaction.
05/01/07 23:32
I have to hand my Diary Volume 7 which starts at Friday 18 June 1982. On that day I took a trip to London by train, on my own. It is brought back to my mind that through 1981 because of the emptiness caused by the antischizophrenic drugs I was being given I spent literally no money. My parents paid for my upkeep but as regards leisure spending as I say I spent nothing. This came to an end on a date in 1981 or early 1982 which might be traceable in my diary - although possibly not as there was a break of several months in my diary as part of the emptiness of mind (I had nothing to say) - when I bought two Peanuts books. I had earlier - probably starting before I went to university - been collecting these Peanuts cartoon paperbacks as they were published.
05/01/07 23:52
On Saturday 19 June 1982 I said in my diary ‘Pause to take the remaining 2 mg. of Valium’ which recalls to me that Armond had prescribed Valium and I had been taking it - some months after I had obtained it I think - with the idea in mind of getting rid of it. Evidently on this day I took the last tablet and ‘That’s 10 mg. I have taken to-day. What shall I start on next? The Kemadrin?’ so I conclude I had some supposed Kemadrin (which is procyclidine) left over and had not been taking it for a while. It is a possibility these supposed Kemadrin tablets were what contained the antischizophrenic drugs I was being given surreptitiously, especially as my mother was insistent I take them even though I felt no benefit from them (because I still had the ‘side-effects’ such as akathisia). It is possible in fact that the drugs I was given up to say the Millennium other than by injection were always - except in the instances in 1980 and 1983 and I suppose 1987 when I was given a substance related to amphetamine in food presumably (my view fluctuates) to precipitate a psychosis - given in the tablets I was taking, that is usually if not always the anti-side-effect tablets. There’s no wonder I was reluctant recently to start on a course of beta-blockers.
06/01/07 00:04
Around this time I had resumed reading a fair amount, including the parts of the New Testament I had not previously read.
On Tuesday 6 July 1982 I said ‘Last night I wrote to Kate Bush and posted it this morning. I must be getting better.’ I also mentioned a Radio 3 programme about neuroscience.
On Thursday 8 July 1982: ‘Last night guess who was on the phone to David Jensen. None other than Ms K. Bush. She said “holiday”, “breathing”, “feedback”, and something else I forget [all key words from my letter]. This may all be fortuitous.’ If as I suppose Kate Bush was part of the Experiment I suppose it’s clear from her flippant comments when she appeared on the radio during my hospitalisation - around Christmas 1981 - that the Experimenters had no clue what a horror I was going through. This quite astonishes me, and all I can imagine is the truth-drugged interviews I almost certainly suffered at the time gave them no clue to my true mood. But as I have mentioned before, when a year or two later I was lying on my bed eighteen hours a day or more, surely the truth drug could reveal that - a simple fact. In that case - as again I have said before - I must presume the Experimenters of the time thought in terms of my laziness rather than incapacity.
06/01/07 00:20
Monday 19 July 1982 (excerpt): ‘Last night I finished the 2nd chapter of “The Survival Handbook” and started on a computer program to calculate interest. This morning I listened to Tchaikovsky 5 and gave up the computer program because of difficulty with leap years.’
Friday 23 July 1982 (excerpt): ‘Last night I worked on the computer [my TRS-80] until about 22h30. ... Today I have been working on the computer. I fixed Level I within Level II. The errors were mostly I had forgotten to change some addresses. I have been disassembling the Level II BASIC monitor. I have found some useful subroutines.’
Wednesday 28 July 1982 (excerpt): ‘I went to see Chaudhary [a side-kick of Armond’s]. I got in to see him at 11h05 for a 10h30 appointment. He asked what I did and I said I played with my computer. I disassembled the Level II monitor. He asked what did I monitor?’
Through August 1982 I note that I was writing an assembler and an editor for the TRS-80, and ‘recordings’ kept failing (which I take to be a reference to backups on cassette and which I find suspicious given the problems I have occasionally these days with peripheral memory devices such as my optical drives).
Thursday 23 September 1982 (excerpt): ‘Last night I taped the results of the D. Jensen K. Bush competition [won by a girl called Clair Brough amongst other winners]. The probability that someone named Brough would be a winner (not being myself) was less than 0.005. The probability that someone named Brough other than myself would enter with the right answer was of the order of 0.4.’ In September I commented once or twice that I had been thinking about what I called correlation, by which I meant a measure of similarity between patterns as in for example character recognition.
Friday 8 October 1982 (excerpt): ‘K. Bush now says she was born on 17 July’ [in 1980 it had been said that her birthday was the same as Emily Brontë’s, 30 July, I believed as a reference to my saying Kate Bush was as it were a reincarnation of Emily Brontë].
06/01/07 01:19
I have discovered Form 3A (which I have mentioned before: a Medical Recommendation form for admission under the 1959 Mental Health Act).
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What I read into this is that Dr Skilbeck convinced himself that I would benefit from treatment - including hospitalisation - for schizophrenia and was therefore willing to sign the form. However in most cases - especially as the patient expressed reluctance - he would not have signed the form. I expect his way of looking at it was that he was doing an unusual thing for my good.
However the true reason for my detention - in all cases, except perhaps 1987 when I think it was to truth-drug me to find out about my plan to buy a house in Keighley to run away to - was for investigation, possibly - in all cases, that is the early 1980s and 2004-05 - to do with the new Mental Health Bill of the time.
That would believably explain my detentions. And then one would suppose the psychiatric treatment was continued because (1) in Britain psychiatric treatment always amounts to ‘keep taking the tablets’; and (2) the effects of the medication seemed symptomatic of schizophrenia, that is as we now know antischizophrenic drugs have the anomalous effect of making me more schizophrenic.
When my parents were alive the case was not unusual, I mean the case of family tricking the patient into taking medication. And the medication was not - from the point of view of professional psychiatrists who after all are only professional - unreasonable. Except it’s true stimulant drugs cannot be a usual part of treatment for schizophrenia. It is not all that unusual to put drugs in tablets other than what they are said to contain, as part of double-blind trials.
Since my parents died the case has become unusual, in that drugs have been put in my foods not by my family but by illicit entrants or in cafés or in foods sold in shops (or even in tapwater). Presumably authorisation was originally granted by my family - perhaps by the cousin who took the role of nearest relative in 2004. What the situation is now that Dawn is unarguably my nearest relative - although removed in 2005 surely that removal cannot have continuing effect - I can’t say. Besides which Dawn herself is drugged surreptitiously as part of it. I must conclude we are in effect wards of some guardian committee overseen by a Court, and they I trust take cognisance of what I say on my website.
06/01/07 01:45
I’d need to look back to see what started me on the course of looking through my 1982 diary, and hence to these conclusions. Basically I think it must be rebound from yesterday’s drugs has left me - as usual - interested in unravelling the past.
06/01/07 02:02
I’m not sure whether to put together an update of the website now or sleep first. I think the drugs have worn off (the last throes being my sleep of earlier this night) and now I am sleepy - slightly sleepy - in the natural way. I must say, what I have to say in the website update - the understanding I have come to why things have been done including my detentions - seems very significant, but then again my latest thoughts always seem particularly significant (and this edge effect is exaggerated by stimulant drugs when I am given them). I can think of various good stuff in my mind (this is what I mean by saying I can elevate my mood by turning my attention to problem-solving or hypothesis-generation, when undrugged): in particular the next phase in improving my formula for the estimation of similarity between characters.
06/01/07 02:13
I’ll go to bed and think on that topic: it is as it used to be before university, and again in 1978: I always have good things in mind, and can think about them - as well as at other times - in bed as I am getting off to sleep.
06/01/07 06:08 [Saturday]
I’ve had almost four hours’ more sleep. I’m just coming to terms with the facts in my current understanding of The Experiment, for example that nighttime voices do not speak every night by any means: only occasionally do we suffer truth-drugged or opiate interviews - for example I did in the summer of 2004, leading to suspicions I had of being hypnotised throughout the rest of that year and indeed since.
When I ran away to the house in Keighley in the late 1980s, I was incompetent to manage without my parents. They wrote to me suggesting I should come home and I did. However when I ran away from Kingswinford in 2003 I was much more competent, as I have been since. How can this be explained? The difference as far as I can see is that in the 1980s I was being given reserpine which lowered my mood especially if I didn’t have the ‘moral support’ of my parents, whereas in 2003 I was being given a more modern agent - presumably the Clopixol it was claimed I was being given - and with it, stimulants which had a mood-boosting effect and made me slightly more active as regards looking after myself instead of dozing without engaging in much activity most of the day. Furthermore I didn’t have the emotional ties I had had with my parents. It’s true I did return to Barbara’s fold in 2003 but only temporarily, ending up semi-permanently in Retford.
I am coming to terms too with the fact that it is inaccurate to blame the Authorities - in most cases - for things going wrong or on the other hand think they are looking after me when things go right - for example in 2004 when my gambling ‘system’ showed a profit for a long time. On the other hand to some extent I am sure They do try to help us. Dawn’s family - some of them particularly - bend over backwards to be of assistance, for example with advice as well as practical assistance. I daresay there are people who do like helping others - indeed Dawn and I do - but some members of Dawn’s family seem to go well beyond the call of duty. As regards blaming the Authorities for things going wrong, the DVD-reading problems have been so consistent a feature - cropping up time and time again on my various computers - that I feel fairly confident they have been deliberately engendered. The alternative would be that they are a known problem in Windows computers, or a favourite effect produced by spoiling software in viruses and the like. Furthermore I find it difficult to believe Hewlett Packard printer software is known for producing the problems it has produced for me.
06/01/07 09:44
The hitcount for colinbrough.co.uk is 867 but on the other hand no one other than me is logging on to barrass-brough.info. Thinking (despite what I said about nighttime advisory voices being relatively infrequent) that my idea of the other week that I should make my website more easily read by the agents of the Authorities (by separating out the character recognition and other technical stuff, which was partly what prompted me to start barrass-brough.info) might be in the nature of a request from them, I conjecture only agents of the Authorities log on to my site(s) and they are only interested - as I said, professionally - in certain aspects. This is in a sense a shame - that I am not reaching also an audience interested in pattern recognition - but I suppose it is as if the Authorities weren’t in my life: I’d be doing my stuff on character recognition and if I wanted to get it known more widely I’d probably need to do more than passively put it up on a website. Still, it isn’t vital that it be known more widely: that isn’t my main motivation.
Dawn is still asleep, affected I conjecture by the sedative component - ASM I suppose - of the drugs in her yesterday’s coffee. When I opened the kitchen curtains - the newly hung kitchen curtains - and saw the greenery of our privately fenced and beautifully peaceful garden I felt great happiness and a feeling of being free. I should think these feelings were exaggerated by withdrawal of drugs I have suffered recently. I point out they did depend on it being daylight even if not on precisely the lighting effect this morning.
06/01/07 11:28
When one is unpressured - and does not for any reason pressure oneself - one has leisure to appreciate the fruits of what labour one does do, and one has time to come to terms - through a process related to habituation - with what otherwise might be seen as clutter and mess. Dawn is unpressured this morning - from which I conjecture wherever the drugs were which affected both of us they have all been consumed - and is more inclined - as indeed she was last night, whether then (or now) much affected by ASM I can’t say - to find what clutter and mess remains here at the bungalow nonetheless tolerable and even acceptable. She is without drive - or pressure at least - to tidy up vigorously (and in a manner risking disappointment and frustration possibly angry frustration). I too am reverting to more like the state of mind of my pre-Cambridge days in taking my time and savouring what achievement - mentally and in the physical universe - comes my way.
The gutterer - or rather roofer - has been and says he will phone through a quote this afternoon. He may be able - if we accept - to do the work this coming week.
06/01/07 13:17
I have been re-forming the pages of my website for the new year, including putting pages into the form of macros which previously were not (which will expedite any future changes I make, eg when the next new year starts twelve months from now).
My legs are aching slightly, in particular the upper legs. What it is, I am able to tell you, is the low temperature, and this may be the explanation why occasionally I have woken up - in the winter period - with aching legs. The cold doubtless also explains the cramps I sometimes get in my legs on waking up. Anyway, I have turned the central heating on now.
06/01/07 14:02
Although I thought I could account for the aching legs, I now find I am having an exper