On Wed, 07 Jan 2009 22:44:31 GMT, "Cactus Jammies"
<cactusjammies@retinalcircus.orb>, in message ID
<jfa9l.3644$PH1.1199@edtnps82>, in the newsgroup
alt.support.hepatitis-c wrote:

I found that site a major source of support too.  I have actually met
some of the people (the ones in the UK anyway).  We last met up about
a year ago on a bitterly cold night for a meal on the south coast
(yeah I know you Merkins don't have one but us Brits do so live with
it  :-)  )  .  Although I never met most of the people on there in
real life, those bits of text on the screen became my friends.  Some
were nuts, some were working at being nuts, some were trying not to be
nuts.
I fired up the chat window while I did my first shot because I was
scared.  It felt weird when nothing terrible instantly happened.  I
suppose that deep down I was expecting the instant gratification that
I had got from fixing many years before.  I shared laughs with them
like the night I attempted to eat a steamed sponge pudding and binned
the lot within a minute because I was just too dry to manage it.  Even
the first mouthful went in the bin.  Don't think I actually got around
to swallowing any.  How we laughed at that.  Doesn't sound
particularly funny now but at the time, anything vaguely humorous was
a welcome respite.
Although I got some early respite from the ravages that tx can bring,
as the weeks rolled into double digits and teens, the long, grinding,
relentless reality of tx started to dawn.  I actually went to buy some
new underwear because I just couldn't be arsed to sort out the washing
machine.  There was nothing wrong with the machine - just a bit of
powder and press a few buttons.  But such mental excercise was
exhausting.  On the day I took my last riba pill, there were bags of
unwashed clothes all around my flat (that's an apartment to you
Merkins) and many of the unwashed clothes didn't even get as far as a
bag.
There were whole weeks when I shut the curtains, the windows too (it
was Summer) and sat there wishing time away.  I no longer calculated
time by the calendar.  It was done by counting how many little white
boxes were left.
The really crazy thing about this is that I BELIEVED I WAS ALRIGHT.
For much of the last couple of months of tx, I lived my life through a
computer screen.
I finished off two vans while on tx.  One developed a major fault and
was old so beyond economical repair.  I had to get it together to find
a replacement.  I crashed that - nearly wrote it off.  The insurer
repaired it though.
Then that day came that I took the last pill.  I wanted to feel better
the next morning.  Tx isn't like that though.  It took a little while
to start climbing out of the hole.  My anger management left a fair
bit to be desired for a few months too.
I had real life friends too.  Many of them.  But I needed to isolate
for periods.  Many of them had done tx.  Some were yet to do it and
one (since deceased) was actually doing it at the same time as me.
I used drugs addictively for quite a few years in my misspent youth
but even that wasn't as bizarre as tx.