Jim Has Been Stabbed

There really is no easy way to say any of this stuff. Right now, all that I know is that in less than a minute, your whole life can change. This all resulted while we were simply doing our job. All that we were doing was responding to a routine noise complaint from another tenant on an otherwise quiet Monday afternoon. Although I was glad that Jim didn't have to go through all of this alone, if I could get these horrible images out of my head right now, I would. I witnessed the entire beating. I wish I could have helped more but there was too many of them. They were half our age and obviously bigger and stronger . I will explain more later. I came home for a bit to have a shower, to change and to check on the girls. I am about to return to the hospital. When I left an hour and a half ago, there was no change. He hasn't woken up yet and he is still on a machine to help him breathe - they punctured both his liver and a lung and the doctors had to cut open his chest during the second surgery. He's strong and right now I have to believe he'll come out of this OK. Peace to all.

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Three arrests in stabbing

Tue, May 13, 2008

Three persons have been arrested in relation to a stabbing at 951 Wonderland Rd., London city police said today.

A 41-year-old man was taken to hospital yesterday with life-threatening injuries by ambulance after police responded to a call at the apartment building near the Westmount mall at about 5:45 p.m.

No names have been released yet, but the major crime unit of London Police Services is questioning suspects today and continuing their investigation.
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Man, 41, in hospital with life-threatening injuries

Tue, May 13, 2008

A 41-year-old man was taken to hospital with life-threatening injuries after an apparent stabbing in London's southwest end late yesterday.

The victim, whose name wasn't released, was taken by ambulance to London Health Science Centre's Victoria Hospital, paramedics said.

Three people were arrested, police said in a brief news release. No names were released, and there was no indication charges had been laid.

The incident took place at 951 Wonderland Rd. South, near the Westmount Shopping Centre, around 5:30 p.m. The area is home to many high-rise apartment buildings.

One caller to The Free Press had earlier reported a large number of emergency vehicles, including police cars, gathered at the scene.

It's uncertain whether the injured man lived at the address where police found him.

"The investigation is unfolding rapidly," London police Staff Sgt. Tom Gaffney said last night.

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Policy of Truth

OK, so from now on, no more cheating from me - at least until I have stopped to take the time to give you all a proper update! I know that I am long overdue in writing a real and proper post, and by real and proper, I mean one that is rooted in the present, the today, the here and now. Recently, I have kind of been cheating with my posts! I've been using posts that I had written for my previous site, Why Do Anything When You Can Forget Everything?, rather than taking the time to sit down and write something new. Technically, these posts are new as they've never actually appeared on this site but still...

As I have still not figured out how to actually get my old site uploaded again to the internet I thought that there was no harm in sharing something from my archives. A little copying and pasting later and voila! Also, so far any of the archived entries that I've chosen were from the period in my life when I was still actively using. I was hoping with these entries that you would be able to get a more complete picture of who I am and how I managed to get to where I am. Of course, then again, for all I know, you could care less.

Moving right along...I dropped my dose of methadone by 5ml twelve days ago. I went from 70ml down to my current dose of 65ml. This was the first time that I actually noticed the decrease in my dose. For the first four or five days, my body was noticeably stiffer and would remain like this until I got my dose for that particular day. Depending on how long it was between doses, I would also get a dull headache as well as a bit of a runny nose. Again, these too would disappear within about forty five minutes of dosing. By the end of the first week, my body most definitely had adjusted so for the past week, I have been fine on my current dose. Think that I will stay at this amount through May and probably the first part of June.

While I am in no huge rush to taper down completely, I was finding that at the higher doses, my mind was definitely very much on the cloudy side. I also found I seemed way tired most of the time, and the moment that I stopped moving around, I could literally fall asleep instantly - didn't matter if I was lying down or merely sitting down either. Was none too fond of this little side affect I must admit. My mind is no where near as cloudy nor am I as tired as I had been, so for these two things alone, I am eager to see what further results I will get with further reductions.

THEY SAY ITS YOUR BIRTHDAY!

Well, I am hoping to be able to sit down for a moment or two although I doubt very much that I'll really get to as there is just so much going on right now. Today is my daughter Sara's birthday. She is now eighteen years old, an adult it would seem. Two decades have near passed since she was born, a score if my memory is correct, almost half my life ago. It seems as if I merely blinked and all of this time simply raced on by.

As we speak, she and about a dozen of her closest friends are partying the night away in one of the apartment building's empty units. Well, better the mess there, than here in my incredibly small apt!

GONE, BUT HAVE NOW RETURNED. THE CHILDREN ARE ON THEIR OWN - OR AT LEAST UNTIL I GET A NOISE COMPLAINT FROM ONE OF THE OTHER TENANTS!

Her party was a complete surprise to her which made Katie extremely happy as she was afraid that someone would end up letting the cat out of the bag, accidentally, of course. It's a wonder that the party ended up going off without a hitch as they had to wait patiently while Sara sat at the hairdressers getting her hair done for close to three hours! She does look marvelous now though, all grown up and sophisticated!

Much more to write later on as I've just now decided that what I really should be doing is sitting down in front of the tv that I rarely ever get to watch and put my throbbing feet up and then soak in the otherwise peaceful, quiet home.

FROM THE ARCHIVES 2005 07 13

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED JULY 13, 2005

Well, I guess it is about time that I told you a bit about myself and my current evils. My weakness is and always has been anything that is part of the opiod family. Up until that first hit, I had been somewhat indifferent towards drugs but the moment that first dilaudid entered my system, I knew that it was pretty much all over for me. I had found my Achilles heal although at that time, I had no idea what a rollercoaster ride I was about to begin.

I actually never even tried drugs until I was almost twenty-one. Through high school, I was more of a drinker. My brother who is a couple of years younger than I am began experimenting at the ripe age of 12 and I watched in absolute terror what he was doing and did to his young body. I also did not want to add to the anguish that my parents endured as my brother navigated thru his teen years. I just couldn''t added to that so I kind of made a casual commitment to myself that I could wait to try plus in all honesty, it didn''t look like a whole lot of fun watching my brother puke, stagger, dripple down his clothes, pass out, you name it. I can''t remember how many times my boyfriend or myself or both rescued my brother from mess after mess after mess. Believe me nothing about his behaviour was remotely attractive and as a result I never felt as if I missed out on anything. Now in hindsight I am kind of glad that I never used anything as a teenager because my brain cells were pretty much left untouched during their crucial growth period.

For my first year of university there were no situations that I found myself in to have a chance to try anything other than liquer. Again never felt as if I was missing anything. Finally in my second year, I decided that I wasn''t going to lifeguard. Instead, I wanted to give waitressing a try because I felt I had a greater chance of making much more money while working less hours. I found a place to hire me as a cocktail server and this place just happened to be the place to go every Thursday, Friday and Saturday way back then. I made money hand over fist and I started meeting some very interesting and experienced people - both fellow staff members and customers. Lord when I think back to my second year, I was so utterly out of my depth and so very green. I started going to the parties after the bars closed and finally I was standing around with a group when someone passed a joint around. I carefully watched everyone and when it was my turn, I believe that I carried it off like a pro. Once people had seen me take some form, any form, they became much more open and inviting with me.

The next party I find myself being invited into one of the three bedrooms with a couple of other people. When I get in there, there are about a dozen lines of this white powder lined up in a row and a guy sitting behind the table. He says help yourself to us with the qualification that it will cost us $10 a line. I had never seen cocaine until that moment and to be honest, I didn''t really have any idea what it actually was and what it would do...Drum roll...Of course, I ponied up my money and waited my turn. Again I paid close attention to what the others before me did and when it was my turn, I flipped my hair over my shoulder so that it fell down my back out of the way of this precious powder. Inhale and away I went. It was the coolest. Oh my goodness, I felt amazing. I was amazing. I was no longer little shy me from no name town population 1500. I had arrived and what an arrival it was!!!

My second year at university was coming to an end and I was getting ready to spend the summer in the British Isles with my best friend. About a month before we were to leave, I got involved with one of the bouncers at work. He was a very bad boy and I found him so utterly exciting. He just oozed danger and I was ripe for the picking...

TO BE CONTINUED...MUSHROOMS, ACID AND THE RINGING IN MY EARS

FROM THE ARCHIVES

FROM THE METHADONE PRETTY ARCHIVES: MY FIRST ENTRY FROM MY OLD SITE WRITTEN 2005 07 12

I started methadone August of 1999. By then I was a solid year and a half into a pretty heavy opiate addiction. It had started with dilaudid but as soon as we were able we had moved on to heroin. We live in a funny city. While it is reasonably large with close to half a million, it is near impossible to find heroin here. Except for a time in the 1970''s - so I have been told - it is one drug that does not seem welcome. Very white collar town so there is lots of pot and cocaine. Crack has had some effect as has speed but not like those other two. Because this is also very much a university and college town, there is also lots of ecstacy and its ilk. By the time I had even given a dilaudid a try, I was about two years deep into a large coke and speed habit. Funny can''t even remember what that was like but I know that we were using every day and had been for a long time. Then along came a little yellow pill and it was as if nothing else existed. It was wonderous and it didn''t take long to develop a tolerance for it. Thank heavens we knew someone that could get us heroin. He was out of town three out of the seven days and he happened to be working in a place that was literaly drowning in it so every Thursday night right after getting off his bus, he would drop by our place with our weekly package. Sunday night we would wave him goodbye as his bus left town, our money in his pocket. This went on for over a year.

It started to get quite expensive as all habits tend to but this one also felt different. Where before, I may have been a bit of a bitch if I couldn''t get blow or speed, I could get by at least but not this time. When I was without I hurt, I felt sick, I was in servere pain. I couldn''t or wouldn''t want to go to work and I had always prided myself on never letting any of my vices interfere with work and to be honest, life in general. Suddenly I had become single minded, nothing else mattered but not feeling sick anymore. I had to have a hit no matter what. Came close to bankrupting us. Sad but at least we had a house to sell to get us out of debt. And selling this one, our favourite, meant that we still had two others left although they were nowhere near as nice and they were in a much rougher part of town but that didn''t seem to concern us so much anymore. We moved. We had to. We had someone else very important in our life now that very much needed to be accomodated. I had never lied before but suddenly I found myself doing just that. When my family doctor confronted me I couldn''t admit it at first. I was every which way of denial until I couldn''t take it anymore. This drug eventually wears you down, strips you of every vestige of dignity and self respect. I fessed up and when he started talking about getting us into a methadone program, I pretty much said yes just to humour him plus he said that as soon as we were on the list, he would be able to help us out and get us from having to buy our dope on the street at ridiculous prices.

I had never actually intended to follow thru with the methadone. The moment we were accepted our doctor wrote us each a prescription for 30 dilaudid a week. It was as if we had hit the jackpot. Between us we had 60 pills that would normally have cost us almost $20 each - quite a savings. He said that he could keep us supplied until we reached a high enough methadone dose that could sustain us on its own. I figured that we would ride this out as long as we could. Looked like it would be at least eight weeks that we could get our prescription and I figured that was long enough for us to get our finances back in order. We would in theory save a lot by not having to buy opiods for a two month period. As it was we were spending about $700/week and that was barely keeping us from getting sick so I knew that we were living on borrowed time if we continued spending at that rate. We were long overdue for a financial break.

But a funny thing happened while we going to methadone. It started working. I stopped grieving for any of the others. I went a day without a hit, then two and then a week. A week turned into a month and then two and three and we were still going. Suddenly two years had passed and I no longer did anything except for my methadone. I didn''t even drink anymore. I forgot about heroin and dilaudid and morphine - oxys had yet to make their appearance but that was only a matter of time. The methadone made me so very tired though even if it did seem to work a small miracle. I would start to nod off at the worst possible time something I rarely did while addicted to the others. I needed to stay awake. So before we knew it we were back doing speed but this time we vowed that we would keep our spending under control and we did for a long time. Speed wasn''t the same anyway now that we were on meth. Yes, you could kind of feel it but you never felt as if you were way out there. Oh well, it was still better than nothing. And we were spending about half of what we used to spend on the other.

Suddenly twenty seven months had passed. We were starting to get tired of the daily grind of having to grab our methadone. Yes, for the most part normalcy had returned to our lives. We fell into our own little routine. Gone were the hours upon hours dedicated to finding that one hit that would take away the pain. I could go back to work full time, we both could. Methadone gave our life structure once again. My credit card debts were now paid off. We had sold the other two houses and purchased a three story apartment building. Our self confidence and esteem had returned. We didn''t want or need methadone any more. It was time to say goodbye. I had two weeks vacation at Christmas 2001 but a week before my vacation started I got a terrible flu. I was down to about 20mg of methadone a day. I felt so sick that I just didn''t feel like grabbing my methadone one day and the next and the day after that. I just stopped going and when my flu ended, any withdrawal that I may have been going thru had also ended. It was hard to tell one from the other so I kept telling myself that there was no withdrawal just crappy flu symptoms.

Fast forward three and a half years. I am once again severly dependent on that little yellow pill. Well now it is the little white pill. No more #4s for us, we now need #8s. We are back spending ridiculous amounts of money and are consumed by abject fear whenever we find that we have run out or that none of our dealers is holding. It is no longer pleasant. But what of the intervening three years you ask? Well that is obviously a story for another day...TO BE CONTINUED

Don't Know What To Do...

Well, it looks as if I was wrong all along about getting my old writings back from my previous site. I did actually have them returned to me which has made me outrageously happy. Don't get me wrong, I am thrilled to bits to have them back all safe and sound. There is just one tiny, tiny problem. The type of file that was emailed to me is one that I am not remotely familiar with, so I have no idea now what to do with this file!

I somehow was able to view the file through one of the programs that I've got installed on my computer that I use as a substitute to Windows Explorer but after confirming that all of my writing was there, I've no idea how tro proceed. If anyone is able to help, please let me know. The type of file extension that I got is .sql

Thanks to anyone that is able to give me a hand.