This Space Intentionally Left Blank

Hey there. Been a while, eh? Where you been? What do you mean, you’ve been here the whole time and it was me that was absent?? I’ve been here the whole time too! I just… err… didn’t… write… anything…

Okay, so here’s the deal. It would appear I’ve been under the influence of some kind of depression lately. Doing anything is too much hassle. I have repeatedly failed to find the motivation to even play computer games or read my book, let alone write a detailed and entertaining post on OpenDiary. I’ve spent most of the time since my last entry lying in bed watching old Full House reruns. I sleep about 15 hours a day, and lay in bed watching TV for the rest of my days. On weekends, my best friend drags me out of the house for a bit, but we rarely do anything more exciting than chain smoke and listen to music at his place. My business has gone down the crapper. At the risk of sounding like an emo, my life is rather… empty.

However, thanks to the benefits of copious amounts of pharmaceuticals, things seem to be turning around a little. My life’s overall merit still isn’t much higher, but I have a trickle of motivation back. Enough to play a game once in a while, check in on my websites, and write this entry, at least.

So, let me fill you in on the larger details of my existence since my last entry. Maybe it will help you get a better idea of why I’ve been absent, and why I’m back now.

First and foremost:-

OXYCODONE – Well, after over a year on this deliciously addictive painkiller, I finally got clean for good. I did it the hard – but only truly effective – way in the end: I kept taking them until I ran out and couldn’t get any more, and then just sweated out the withdrawal like the morphine junkie I was. It wasn’t fun, but hell, it’s practically impossible to give up any other way. Well, short of flushing your stash, but I hate wasting things. =)

CIGARETTES – I am unquestionably a smoker again. I smoke about half a pack a day, and over a pack a day on weekends. I’m already thinking about quitting again, simply because of the cost. A pack of 25 smokes costs up to AUD$13.00 here (around twelve bucks American), so at fifty cents a smoke it becomes a pretty costly habit. My problem is I love it too much. Every weekday, when I ration myself to half a pack, it’s never enough and I end up pestering my housemate for some of hers. On the weekends though, when I let myself smoke freely, I end up chain smoking like a maniac.

ALCOHOL – I don’t recall if I ever mentioned this here before, but I went off drinking for a few years when I started to find that I couldn’t get drunk, or even a little tipsy, without getting violently nauseous first. I was a big drinker in my teens and early twenties, but all of a sudden the smallest amount of booze would make me feel wretchedly ill. I assumed it was some kind of medical problem (as most things are for me) and stopped drinking, since there was no point drinking liquor if you can’t get drunk – may as well save my money and drink soft drinks instead. But lately I’ve been getting back on the sauce, and the repercussions I experienced earlier this decade seem to be long gone. I haven’t been shitfaced yet, but a couple of times with some light drinking I’ve got my buzz on, which is a good sign for me. I don’t care what anybody says, being drunk is a good feeling, so long as you’re not too drunk!

MARIJUANA – Yes, it’s true. I smoke weed. Much like the drinking, I had a few bad experiences with dope early in the 21st century, which put me off smoking very seriously. I’d never been a big toker, usually just a smoke at parties or with smoking friends, but I began to find that like the liquor, every time I’d so much as have a small toke on a joint, I’d get chronically sick. So I quit the pot outright, and declared myself an ex-pot smoker, much to the disappointment of my smoking buddies. However just in the last few weeks, I’ve experimented with the wacky tobaccy again, and everything’s been coming up aces. I’ve even been pleasantly stoned a couple of times, much to my delight (and the amusement of my friends). I don’t see myself actually buying my own stash or equipment or becoming a solo smoker, but as a social doper, I’m enjoying the life.

RELATIONSHIPS/SEX – This month marks my four year anniversary as a single and celibate man. On the 11th of February four years ago I dumped my last cheating whore of a girlfriend, and then shortly after that I stopped having sex with my other girlfriend when I moved back home from interstate. Since then, I haven’t so much as kissed a girl on the mouth. In fact, my sex drive has dried up completely. I have no desire for sex, in fact I find the very idea of getting laid holds no interest for me. I rarely even jack off anymore, to be honest. Porn holds little fascination for me, and I rarely think about sex or dating at all. When I do think about it, it’s in a negative light. I don’t see myself getting back into a relationship any time at all soon, or even think such a thing would be possible even if my desire came back. Quite frankly, I’m content being celibate and if the chance for some easy sex came along, I’d turn it down. Moreover, I have turned it down a couple of times over the past four years. I feel like sex is something from my past, a bad habit that I’ve kicked, like the oxycodone. I do sometimes miss female companionship, but I almost suspect that if the chance for a serious relationship came around, I’d take it super slowly and put a bit more thought and heart into it than I used to as a younger man. No more letting my penis get me into trouble!

SLEEP – I’ve been sleeping better than ever before. I’ve been a chronic insomniac most of my life, and pretty much every kind of sleep disorder you can imagine has been par for my course – trouble getting to sleep, waking up too early, poor quality of sleep, intermittent waking, nocturnalism, oversleeping, you name it. But since I’ve come off the oxy, my sleep has been long, solid, reliable, and restful. I start getting ready for bed around 10-11PM or so, and I’m usually asleep by midnight. I wake up anywhere between noon and 3PM, feeling great. I know that’s a lot of sleep for most people, but I’m thriving on it. Maybe my body is just catching up on the last decade of never getting a good night’s sleep, but I ain’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Sleeping is the one luxury I can afford, so I’m going to enjoy every minute of it while I can.

GAMING – Yes, I’ll admit it right now – I play World of Warcraft. My brother got me into it, he’s a hardcore WoW addict who plays every day, usually for many hours at a stretch. Luckily, my attention span is piss poor by comparison, so I can’t get into it that badly. It’s addictive, though. Utterly repetitive, largely monotonous, and full of low IQ children who say "lolz omg rofl dats so funny omg lol!!!!!!!!1" a lot, but addictive nonetheless. I played for about 9 months when my brother finally talked me into trying it. Eventually I got so fed up with the sheer pointlessness of it all, I quit, deleted my characters and canceled my account. But in my slump recently, I realized that something mindlessly addictive is what I need right now. If I can burn a couple of hours a day and pay fifty cents a day for it, it’s worth the cost. Any time that I’m spending doing anything more involving than laying on my bed staring at the cobwebs, is time spent well enough, lately. Which brings me to my last point…

ANTI-DEPRESSANTS – For a drugs bunny like me, you’d think I’ve popped every kind of pill known to man after a while. The list of medications I’ve tried is impressive already, but one thing I’d never given much thought to in my life is whether or not I could be suffering from depression. I’ve always taken my life pretty much for granted, never giving much thought to whether or not I’m happy. I’m never happy, happy is for people with love and money, I have neither. But my doctor recently reminded me that depression is not always about being depressed all the time. Listlessness, apathy, and emotional flat-lining are all symptoms of depression. I don’t get depressed, but I don’t get happy either. On a scale of -10 to +10 where -10 is suicide risk and +10 is Mr. Rogers, I just run at zero in the middle, all the time. Nothing perks me up, nothing gets me down. But when this most recent turn of sheer I-can’t-even-be-fucked-getting-out-of-bed syndrome occurred, I began to realize maybe there’s some merit to the idea. So I’ve started taking fluvoxamine (or Luvox), which is your basic generic entry-level anti-depressant, with no sugar on top. So far, I have no strong opinion of the drug. I’ve experienced no side-effects yet, but nor have I seen any noticeable improvement either. Although, even though I don’t feel any different at all, looking at my behavior it would indicate that I am improving – I’m doing little things, playing WoW for an hour, reading a chapter of my book, posting in my extremely ignored OpenDiary, things I just couldn’t bring myself to bother doing over the past few months. So maybe it’s subtly at work there already. Believe me, life doesn’t get much more pathetic than when you just lay in bed watching TV or napping.

So there you have it folks. I’m a single white heterosexual male, ex-painkiller junkie, heavy smoker, social drinker and partaker of the pot, completely celibate and not seeking sex, who sleeps for 15 hours a day, plays MMORPGs online, and takes happy pills to get by. What a catch, eh?

And you wondered why I was so single… =)