Thursday 27 March 2008

Diary

DIARY: I am now on Aropax which I have been on twice before. It seemed to work the first time but it I was drinking heavily at the time and I just went into a stupor. The second time was when I was on 110 ml of methadone and it did nothing. This time though, it seems to have kicked in straight away. After the first tablet, I was dizzy on and off all day with some flashes of something unusual ... like happiness or excitement but different somehow. I had some trouble sleeping also. I have a huge day today with work as I recently won a large contact and two more in the pipeline. I mentioned the other day, this will see me through for a while with some nice dollars. I am going to do up my office with a new PC and a Mac and I also might be dropping my cable service for ADSL2 so I can run my business more efficiently. Cable was great in it's day but Optarse are certainly a company on the slide with their service. I'm getting a new chair as well. I worked out along time ago that if you sit in front of a PC all day, you must have a good keyboard, mouse and chair. The feedback from the Tim Blair incident is still going on. I am still getting emails giving me their support which is flattering. I even got a few emails from some people I would consider on the other side of the political fence. One in particular was truly amazing. He is a regular on some of the more hard core right wing sites that I don't like at all but he is a far from the extremists that usually haunt these places. If anything it has encouraged me to go back and reread his comments more carefully.
Dear Terry, I just thought I'd drop a line and express my support for you after some of the recent attacks and so forth. The attacks on you have been quite stupid and unfair, and I have felt a little disgusted at some people's childishness and moral grandstanding. For what it's worth, I think your blog is a unique contribution to the blogosphere, and think that you should keep going. I may not agree with everything you say, but I certainly believe that harm minimisation is something that ought to be looked at more, rather than the self-righteous "war on drugs". I must admit the cruel attacks on you have disturbed me. When I read about the story of your wife and how you became an addict, I feel a little sorry for you. I really can't fathom why they would instead feel anger and a need to express hatred towards you. Perhaps you and your blog makes them feel challenged, and they need to re-assert their "moral superiority" in order to feel better about themselves. -Leon Bertrand
This shows that opinions can differ but basic humanity remains the same. It also shows the really nasty fuckers who made degrading comments on Tim Blair's blog would do so regardless of their politics.

4 comments:

Scott said...

This shows that opinions can differ but basic humanity remains the same.

That's a really good point to make, Terry. The left/right labels -- as simplistic as they are -- still just describe personal political leanings and don't have anything to do with the kind of "person" one is. It's important to remember that the most hardcore RWDB is almost always as compassionate as the most hardcore latte lefty. (Having said that, both can be heartless bastards as well.)

Terry Wright said...

Thanks Ed.

The person in question really moved me with his email. It made me question some of my tactics at grouping all evil right wing bastards together. Now I know there are evil right wing bastards, evil fuckin' right wing bastards and evil fuckin' fuckin, right wing bastards

Anonymous said...

Terry, this is a general comment about your site more so than about this topic as such.
Specifically about the information in your sidebar actually.
Also I say this as someone who has grappled with a number of addictions so, please understand my comments are not intended to be judgemental.

Mate, it seems to me, that your experience is possibly somewhat atypical, your claim (and I have no reason to believe you are being dishonest) to be living a more or less "normal" (don't like the word myself, conventional might be a better substitute)life but-for-being-a-heroin-addict seems to me to be a kind of attempt to normalise your addiction.
I know I kept drinking and using drugs for many years on the illusion of managability, I believed my addiction was manageable, so I kept using.
I had to -like it says in the first step- admit that i was powerless and that my life had become unmanageable.

While you continue on with the belief that your life is manageable while you continue to use, you will relapse.

Obviously this isn't something I usually discuss in a public forum so you can email me if you'd like to respond, obviously you can choose to ignore or take on board what I have to say, it's entirely up to you.

For the record I have been completely drug and alcohol free for five years now and I was a daily, round-the-clock abuser of a number of substances. There was a time in my life when I couldn't even imagine going a day without some kind of mind altering chemical.

Anonymous said...

ghah, forgot to add my email addy, it's farrer2007@hotmail.com if you want to write back.