DRUGS

Drugs are like women - can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em. It's one o'clock in the morning here and my chest is wheezing like an asthmatic that's just run the Marathon. Who knows how many kilos of gunk are accumulating in my lungs right now?The brief pleasure that comes with ejecting clumps of it is scant consolation for the pain it's causing me. Combined with sleep deprivation, it's any wonder I feel like an enfeebled geriatric.

And so, like any sane individual, I've been consuming vast quantities of paracetamol, sudafed, anything I can get my hands on. It doesn't seem to have helped much. But then I have no idea how much shittier I'd be feeling if I wasn't taking anything at all.

My get-out-of-jail-free card is my doctor's prescription for penicillin. I think I'll cash it in later today. I have an important interview on Tuesday and I don't think my spluttering over the interviewer would go down well.

If I get this job..Ah. How wonderful it would be. Away from the daily shit of friends that never phone, a job that saps your will to live and feeling of slow, unstoppable decline.

When I was away last time I made the mistake of actually missing this place. But distance has a way of deluding you into thinking that because you might not be happy where you are, you'd be happier somewhere else.

Maybe I'm falling into this trap again? But at least when you're thousands of miles from home you have a readily available reason for feeling lonely. What's my excuse here? Everyone has their own lives; people move on? It's all bollocks.