tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9193316819499446317.post6397053387753830954..comments2024-03-28T11:19:25.795+01:00Comments on - Memoires of a Heroinhead -: The Oedipus FixMemoirs of a Heroinheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17401281805284793756noreply@blogger.comBlogger20125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9193316819499446317.post-37025452287142272142015-05-09T01:18:24.897+02:002015-05-09T01:18:24.897+02:00" I was young and had not yet learnt that adu..." I was young and had not yet learnt that adulthood does not make one responsible, and even if it did, there are certain events which occur in life which make your own survival a matter of the greatest importance. And sometimes, to survive, it is necessary not to exist for a while, to block out the trauma and subdue the body to the point of being anaesthetized. In time I would learn that for myself. It would be the point where I understood my mother and where all blame and hatred began to disappear."<br /><br />This describes, exactly, the realization that I came to about my own mother. And when I stopped blaming and hating her as well.<br /><br />It's what I need a few very important people in my life to realize.Carrion Dollhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08878115476778209949noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9193316819499446317.post-74612341710650345032015-04-13T02:10:30.630+02:002015-04-13T02:10:30.630+02:00I didn't recognize that line at all - but it d...I didn't recognize that line at all - but it does sound like the sort of pragmatic (dark? cynical?) thing I'd say!<br /><br />I think that's why I don't bat an eye when you say that the five years of drug addiction were the best ever.<br /><br />Now that you say this was for a magazine it does seem more 'factual' than other stuff. I did sense a different tone.<br /><br />I didn't recognize any lines from previous stuff, just the actual story. <br /><br />They should force all football goers to swap their alcohol for dope before during and after football matches.<br /><br />Funny you talk about dieting a lot - you always seem skinny to me!JoeMhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03821025539339799036noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9193316819499446317.post-57718774294788889052015-04-13T00:00:44.521+02:002015-04-13T00:00:44.521+02:00Hey Joe... Oh, I wanted you to pick out the openin...Hey Joe... Oh, I wanted you to pick out the opening line... because you wrote it! A comment you made years ago. You suggested it as a Shaneique first line and i squirrelled it away and finally used it! So you wrote that line... I'll try and find the original comment later.<br /><br />I think my mother would have probably still had a drink problem, but I don't think it would have been so destructive as it was because of what happened. After the murder she was drinking to rid her mind of the horrendous details... and there was also that guilt where she told him to "never come back!" Because she lived almost a year sure he was dead anyway and she didn't go off the rails. It hadn't been confirmed but she knew something was terribly wrong when he never contacted her. So I think she would have still drunk to excess but would not have drunk to oblivion, would not have become suicidal... would not have gone looking for my father in a thousand different men. She was always a drinker. My first ever memory at about age 4, was accidentally knocking over a glass of her Martini... in the afternoon. <br /><br />this text is actually a paid article for an Australian magazine. I posted it here as well to give everyone something to read. There are a few paragraphs i lifted from old texts, and a couple of lines from the Void Ratio book. But 90% is original stuff.<br /><br />Yes, alcohol is a terrible drug. I've never seen such a destructive influence on people... no other drug has that effect. It's why prisons are lenient towards most drugs but are extremely severe on the inmates brewing hooch. Everyone knows alcohol often has terrible effects, and with the wrong person, like my mother, it turns them into different people. My mother drunk i do not even regard as the same person. It's probably another reason as to why i can forgive her so easily.<br /><br />Yes, food is just as strong an addiction as drugs and alcohol. I've been trying to diet now for the last few years and it is harder to resist my favourite food and sweets than it is to resist heroin. Especially once you have got into a routine of eating and watching evening TV... or eating and relaxing... it becomes your evening and you feel like you've missed something if your belly isn't as full as it wants to be. Even today I've been pushing myself to start a new diet and lose weight for summer... but it's just so tremendously difficult. XShane Levenehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03863320007737754609noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9193316819499446317.post-31298914777128236052015-04-12T23:27:01.312+02:002015-04-12T23:27:01.312+02:00I think I knew just about everything in this from ...I think I knew just about everything in this from previous posts but I don't think you've put it down so matter-of-factly and powerfully – in its lack of excess emotion.<br /><br />Have you ever asked your mother if she thinks she would have gone off the rails so dramatically if she'd just never heard any more of your father? Or heard that he OD'd? It seems to me that she already had a propensity to drink/drug. But then I've never heard that a lover was murdered - nor murdered so gruesomely. <br /><br />Of course we'll never know:<br /><br /><i>Nothing will ever happen yesterday.</i><br /><br />And:<br /><br /><i>She had replaced alcohol with heroin. Yet on heroin she was as stable as when she was sober. </i><br /><br />Ironic of course that the most demonised drug brought you together – that Heroin is illegal and alcohol – which caused you both all the worst problems – is legally available 10 times a street. In supermarkets just down from the childrens' sweets. <br /><br />It's amazing that she's managed to get clean of both alcohol AND Heroin. Quite something.<br /><br />I've always thought that extreme junkies/alkies/fat people are never the 'weak lazy useless losers' that others see. I see a huge strength of will – which is what it takes to maintain these addictions. So many addicts of whatever variety are incredibly productive – during and after addiction. As you yourself prove...JoeMhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03821025539339799036noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9193316819499446317.post-67144114394155543832015-04-11T17:17:17.192+02:002015-04-11T17:17:17.192+02:00This comment has been removed by the author.Just Mehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10948661669767842419noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9193316819499446317.post-10012540093382093262015-04-11T17:17:16.130+02:002015-04-11T17:17:16.130+02:00This comment has been removed by the author.Just Mehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10948661669767842419noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9193316819499446317.post-71583434157815076662015-04-11T17:10:07.802+02:002015-04-11T17:10:07.802+02:00I'm really glad to see an article on what I...I'm really glad to see an article on what I've tried to tell one other woman at the Methadone clinic that we go to. She was a functioning addict that never lost her kids,was able to hold a job. She thinks she had just as bad a time as I did..only different. She thinks there is NO difference in herself and people like me who were on heroin 18+ years. I have listened to her talk shit to my face about women who loose their kids over drugs. Because she raised hers in the SAME apt. building from toddlers until late teens.Yet, she thinks there is no need for groups/meetings at the clinic for those who were deeply involved in drugs and lost everything. She thinks we are all the same because we were addicted to heroin. This wokna doesn't even have tracks and said she's "heard of" abcesses. But never had one. I'm so tired of this that I actually was looking for written proof of the differences in addicts. THANK YOU!!Just Mehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10948661669767842419noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9193316819499446317.post-85786495071156778092015-04-11T08:04:46.507+02:002015-04-11T08:04:46.507+02:00But people like Geoff, who only feel better once t...But people like Geoff, who only feel better once they have taken control and inflicted the same on someone else, they feel better because they don't view themselves as sadistic or mean and so finally in their heads they can not only process the suffering they went through but also relate to the person who abused them. Now they are the abuser themselves they no longer see a demon in that person. Only then can they reconcile what happened and finally accept it by passing it on to someone else.<br /><br />So blame and resentment aren't part of my vocabulary. That kind of thinking never ends and leads nowhere. It becomes illogical. Everyone can, in their own mind, justifiably blame someone else. That blame admonishes them of any guilt. Let's imagine for certain faults or problems in my life that I blamed them on my mother's alcoholism. She would then not accept it was her fault, that her drinking was the manifestation of a trauma she suffered. She would point me to Dennis Nilsen, who in turn would say that he has complexes and lay the blame for himself at the feet of someone else. That person will do the same. They are all justified if we believe in blame. We can't only believe that our blame is the only truly justified one, which then gives us a license to make the abuser suffer what we did. That turns us into the abuser. It's like the correlation between the abused child later becoming the abuser (as so often happens). To come to terms with his powerlessness he needs to be the equal of that in an inverse way... almost to equal out what happened. but for me that is eternal suffering. When the trauma becomes a fantasy you are then forever condemned to exist in the shadow of your abuser... you become him/her. I don't need to make anyone else suffer for any pain I felt or any consequences that someones behaviours may have had on my life. I accept it as life and always see reasons as to why someone did what they did. I doin't believe in evil or anything supernatural. I believe in cause and effect and my mother never drank or did what she did to hurt me. it did hurt me, but that wasn't even a part of her motivation. She did that because she was hurting herself. I always see it as not much difference anyway. My mother had to drink to survive... to continue living. let's imagine her feelings of maternal responsibility overrode any desire to go off the rails and self-medicate. She would still been a useless mother, even sober, as life had traumatised her to the point where she didn't want to live... and what kind of a mother could she have been, even sober, in that state? So once she had experienced what she had, she could not have been a good parent no matter what she would have done. Shock and trauma go past intelligent thought processes. They affect us in ways we have no say or control over. For me, Nilsen's sexual and murderous fantasies also fall into that category. He didn't kill my father to hurt me or my mother. He didn't even kill my father to hurt my father. There was a much more profound need driving the killings... needs that took all intelligent logic out off his hands. <br /><br />I think also people can sometimes find status and attention from being the abused and promoting themselves as fucked-up. They define themselves through that and become somebody through that.I define myself through my art and my life... they are the means with which I forge out my identity and any respect I may get. I've often said that maybe without the artistic nature I have that maybe I would be bitter and hateful. because what art did was turn all these events into blessings. They gave me unique eyes, a poetry that no-one else can ever have. So they all worked well for me... even the most traumatic events serve me well because of that creative tendency I have. Without that, I'm not sure how I would process and evaluate the things which have happened. I like to think nothing would change... but maybe that's more wishful thinking than the truth. XShane Levenehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03863320007737754609noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9193316819499446317.post-23276152132128906052015-04-11T08:04:11.139+02:002015-04-11T08:04:11.139+02:00Hey Esmé...thanks as ever for your thoughts. I'...Hey Esmé...thanks as ever for your thoughts. I'll tell you a little anecdote, concerning Geoff (who is in this post) which highlights the two different ways we can process life and experiences.<br /><br />I was 20, and Geoff had employed me as a hod-carrier (supplying him with bricks and cement) on a large private job he had gotten. I had done a lot of general building work before, but never hod carrying (which has a reputation for its toughness). Geoff worked me like a horse, purposely making me redo stuff and commanding more bricks than he could ever need just to make sure he exhausted me and left me not even a moment for a cigarette. By mid afternoon I was out on my feet. Geoff watched me arriving with another hod load of bricks, up two ladders and scaffolding to where he was working.<br /><br />"Tough aint it?" he asked, with a suspicious touch of empathy. <br />"yeah," I said, blowing and taking a rest. Geoff's eyes lit up. "Well if ya think this is tough wait until tomorrow!" i could see the sadistic pleasure in him, knowing that i couldn't imagine a harder day and surely content knowing that he had now made the prospect of the next workday a living nightmare, something that would stay with me in the evening as the hours passed and I dreaded each minute closer to getting on site the next morning. And true to his word the next day was tougher.He made sure of it. He enjoyed seeing someone suffer just as much, more, as he had done during his young apprenticeship which had been hell.<br /><br />That's how he dealt with his trauma: by having others suffer the same.it seems that people like that can only come to terms with their own suffering by imposing the same cruelty on others. <br /><br />But not everyone is like that. Me, if I've ever suffered, my response is to automatically ensure (if i can help it) that no-one else will ever have to experience that as well. It would never make me feel better knowing someone else had suffered the same... It would make me feel worse. I have an true empathy with the human condition and I feel close events viscerally. If I ever made someone feel like they didn't want to come into work then I would also suffer the same, laying awake through the night traumatised by how i'd imagine they were feeling. I guess that's a part of what allows me to write as I do, because memories and seasons and smells, etc affect me viscerally too... they remind me of the effect they once had on a former me. <br /><br />(cont'd --->Shane Levenehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03863320007737754609noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9193316819499446317.post-33245331269293026382015-04-11T03:10:00.952+02:002015-04-11T03:10:00.952+02:00Brilliant, as always x
DianeBrilliant, as always x<br /><br />DianeAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9193316819499446317.post-25656239251104779162015-04-11T00:48:37.106+02:002015-04-11T00:48:37.106+02:00So fucking good it hurts...every last word. <3
...So fucking good it hurts...every last word. <3<br /><br />XXX<br />StacyStacyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02731385456944016340noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9193316819499446317.post-90981638940053093822015-04-10T20:27:33.760+02:002015-04-10T20:27:33.760+02:00I love this Shane Levene. The sense of detail is o...I love this Shane Levene. The sense of detail is outstanding.<br /><br />TraceyTracey Heltonhttp://traceyh415.blogspot.fr/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9193316819499446317.post-41630109299825163422015-04-10T20:24:47.786+02:002015-04-10T20:24:47.786+02:00sharing the fuck out of this. beautiful and true.
...sharing the fuck out of this. beautiful and true.<br /><br />PSY AndrewPSY ANDREWSnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9193316819499446317.post-38112862913349797352015-04-10T20:23:10.816+02:002015-04-10T20:23:10.816+02:00A magic eye picture indeed, always tried so hard t...A magic eye picture indeed, always tried so hard to see them when I was younger! seems like all I can see now! Brilliant as ever Shane! x<br /><br />samSam Nnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9193316819499446317.post-70907177731143320942015-04-10T16:33:53.025+02:002015-04-10T16:33:53.025+02:00 indeed the curse of and the cure to modern life indeed the curse of and the cure to modern life Mohammednoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9193316819499446317.post-23615594708307882442015-04-10T16:32:59.250+02:002015-04-10T16:32:59.250+02:00This is all so very perfect. I hope that soon I ca...This is all so very perfect. I hope that soon I can sit to a proper read!<br /><br />DDDusty Deenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9193316819499446317.post-56364856971906989552015-04-10T16:31:16.460+02:002015-04-10T16:31:16.460+02:00" It passed from the father to the son and no..." It passed from the father to the son and now was in the mother too. The holy trinity of the nuclear family. Silver spoons and citric acid and 1ml insulin syringes. Filtering life and shooting away the ghosts of the past, heads bowed between the knees, supple spines and dribble hanging from the mouth. And just like that she came, Our Lady of the Flowers, heroin – brought home to exaltation: the cure to modern life."Russellnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9193316819499446317.post-85587847319270767642015-04-10T16:30:21.508+02:002015-04-10T16:30:21.508+02:00 Beautiful . I read this as the heat in this count... Beautiful . I read this as the heat in this country is sensing everyone mad and was transported to those days.<br /><br />Nathannathannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9193316819499446317.post-72744706410409807232015-04-10T16:28:30.030+02:002015-04-10T16:28:30.030+02:00beautiful. I had never imagined this angle of a mo...beautiful. I had never imagined this angle of a mother-son relationship.Ruhinoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9193316819499446317.post-42800459759963398732015-04-10T15:48:24.291+02:002015-04-10T15:48:24.291+02:00This was particularly poignant and interesting. I&...This was particularly poignant and interesting. I'm somewhat in awe of the compassion you've expressed repeatedly for various individuals in your life, and even for your father's murderer. I think you said of Dennis Nilsen in the newspaper interview you have posted somewhere that you "wish him well" (or something to that effect, sorry if I've misquoted). Also, though you've never described your mother through rose tinted glasses, you have been gentle where most would be bombastically hostile in their disappointment, in their sense that they did not have a "proper" mother. Your lack of entitlement is really something. There's a world of scorn and even hatred that few would begrudge you. One of the most fascinating aspects of reading your work is that you seem devoid of hatred and the blame game in many instances where I'd most expect it. It's my experience that people are usually thrilled to get angry at those closest to them for letting them down. There is, after all, much more to lose. Perhaps it's the brutality of honesty that keeps you from being angry at some people? Doling out the truth is perhaps quite enough. Anyway, thank you as always for your writing.<br /><br />~EsmeAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com