Day 61: I've been getting away with it all my life

Spun out this afternoon. It's like the workings of the city and my mind have been exposed and it makes even less sense that when they were concealed. Layers of complexity multiply and I can't hang on. I cycle around the roundabout under Canary Wharf where there are trade entrances to glossy office blocks above and waiters from the Chinese restaurant smoke and I breathe in trapped traffic fumes and plastic bags. Through Hackney Wick, where on one side of the road a storage facility is packed with Rubiks Cubes of people's possessions and on the other side a newly built, empty apartment block is ready for them to move it all into.

I'm sometimes scared about what this treatment programme is turning me into. Endlessly self-absorbed and self-doubting, I'm shocked to find myself speaking platitudes that used to make my brain recoil. Is my moral compass wonky? We listen to people share about terrible behaviour and crimes they did under the influence, and praise them for being "honest". I hang out all day with jailbirds, junkies and crackheads and nod when one tells me proudly that his family is so well connected in Bangladesh that his brother literally got away with murder. I just lied when my landlord asked me if I had lost my job.

My thoughts won't stop today and I just want to escape myself. I want to eat my own teeth, crunched down with Coca Cola until I'm sick. I want to be put into a medically induced coma. I want the future now. I want to care for other people and not live on my own anymore. I want nothing more than to stay sober but I want a fucking drink.

But although I'm half-crazy right now some things are good. I found out yesterday that I neither had any of the Hepatitises nor any of the STDs. I hadn't thought I was worried about it until I burst into tears of relief when the nurse showed me the blood test results. This afternoon in the acupuncture session my ears kept spitting out the needles which made me laugh. And I love my bike.

My time's running out in the internet cafe. Bye x



INFINITE JEST: Pages 633-666