I'm also sort of still dating Ari, the S&M guy. We don't have sex, but we beat each other up, and I love it. We have a lot of fun together, and I really enjoy being with him. But I love Dexter more, and I've started to feel pretty guilty about it, even though Dexter knows and approves. It's not about what he thinks, it's about how I feel. And I haven't been feeling like it's the right thing to do. But I haven't made a decision yet, because Ari basically told me that if I stopped being physical with him, he didn't really want to be friends. Which makes me want to stop even more. Because that's a shitty position to put me in.

I was feeling suicidal last night, thinking about moving and about my love life. I don't know what to do. I'm panicking and having a difficult time making decisions. I'm having panic attacks more frequently the last few weeks, coinciding with insomnia and lowered Valium dose. I thought pretty seriously last night about what my plans are about methadone. I've been on it for eight months, and I've been clean for six. I feel great about cleaning up my act, but I have no plans to get off the methadone, maybe ever. I will continue to get a prescription and avoid clinics, because I have a chronic pain condition, and my doctor is cool about it. And I don't see any reason why I should stop. It keeps me from using, knowing how futile it would be to try. It makes me feel better, I'm never sick save for a few mornings before I take it. And it doesn't fuck me up. It just keeps me straight, sober. I feel good about it, but I also know that it does have side effects. I couldn't just run off and live in nature. I'd need to get my prescription. I can't travel for too long, because right now I'm only getting a months worth at a time. Though I imagine that if I had travel plans, my doc would give me enough to last. But I think this stuff is worth it. I wish there was heroin maintanence in the U.S. I don't know if I would do it, but it seems likely that I would if I lived in a place where it was available. But then again, I'm doing great off it. The U.S. is so fucked up and backwards in drug policy. We spend billions every year and come nowhere close to stopping the drug problems. Many of which are caused by the drug war, not the drugs themselves. People are placed with a bias, a stigma attached to them if they use. And we are looked down upon by the government, by society, refused help from doctors, shrinks, people we need to rely on, need help from. And for what? For people wanting to make themselves feel good? What's so wrong with that? In India, if you are over 40 you can buy opium legally. In the U.K. a small number of addicts get heroin maintanence and live relatively normal lives. Here you need to be a junkie and a criminal to do something that makes you feel so perfect, so safe, so warm and cozy, so alive and dead at the same time. I miss heroin, but I won't go back, not unless it is made legal in some form. And that will never happen, because we live in this stupid, fucked up place called America. Whatever.

I want to die so badly sometimes, it takes a struggle to keep me sane.