Gledwood Vol 2 (Main blog)

DIARY OF A SLOWLY RECOVERING HEROIN ADDICT

I used to take heroin at every opportunity, for over 10 years, now I just take methadone which supposedly "stabilizes" me though I feel more destabilized than ever before despite having been relatively well behaved since late November/early December 2010... and VERY ANGRY about this when I let it get to me so I try not to.

I was told by a mental health nurse that my heroin addiction was "self medication" for a mood disorder that has recently become severe enough to cause psychotic episodes. As well as methadone I take antipsychotics daily. Despite my problems I consider myself a very sane person. My priority is to attain stability. I go to Narcotics Anonymous because I "want what they have" ~ Serenity.

My old blog used to say "candid confessions of a heroin and crack cocaine addict" how come that one comes up when I google "heroin blog" and not this one. THIS IS MY BLOG. I don't flatter myself that every reader knows everything about me and follows closely every single word every day which is why I repeat myself. Most of that is for your benefit not mine.

This is my own private diary, my journal. It is aimed at impressing no-one. It is kept for my own benefit to show where I have been and hopefully to put off somebody somewhere from ever getting into the awful mess I did and still cannot crawl out of. Despite no drugs. I still drink, I'm currently working on reducing my alcohol intake to zero.

If you have something to say you are welcome to comment. Frankness I can handle. Timewasters should try their own suggestions on themselves before wasting time thinking of ME.

PS After years of waxing and waning "mental" symptoms that made me think I had depression and possibly mild bipolar I now have found out I'm schizoaffective. My mood has been constantly "cycling" since December 2010. Mostly towards mania (an excited non-druggy "high"). For me, schizoaffective means bipolar with (sometimes severe) mania and flashes of depression (occasionally severe) with bits of schizophrenia chucked on top. You could see it as bipolar manic-depression with sparkly knobs on ... I'm on antipsychotic pills but currently no mood stabilizer. I quite enjoy being a bit manic it gives the feelings of confidence and excitement people say they use cocaine for. But this is natural and it's free, so I don't see my "illness" as a downer. It does, however, make life exceedingly hard to engage with...

PPS The "elevated mood" is long gone. Now I'm depressed. Forget any ideas of "happiness" I have given up heroin and want OFF methadone as quick as humanly possible. I'm fed up of being a drug addict. Sick to death of it. I wanna be CLEAN!!!

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

1. A BIG THANK YOU TO ALL who took part in the Sponsored Comments. Ruth has made 107 at the time of writing and so asked me to say she DOESN'T NEED ANY MORE. The £50 is winging its way to charity...

2. My doctor's appointment is now rescheduled for Friday so I can forget it then... (See the post below.)

3. Does anyone know how I get my photo identity on my comments? I've found a picture I like on the internet but blogger ask me for a "photo url" what on earth does that mean??

4. Am I supposed to post something grisly like last week, or dull like I normally do here? All I did today was miss my appointment and hibernate. I didn't want to go out anyway and was so put-out when I realized what I had done (see below). I did write a huge posting on neurotransmitters (why??) but that's on paper. I have a project up my sleeve that is fermenting (but no it is not home-made wine...)

5. OK that's me done for today. I quite like Tuesdays. EastEnders is on as I speak and I do not miss it anymore. It is quite nice not to feel attached to things either. EastEnders is the one TV prog I used to be well aware if I misssed, and I'm hardly alone in that. Try and score drugs while it is on if you don't believe me. I guarantee they will not be delivered until after the closing creds have rolled!!!

6. Righty-ho I'm off to get cod-in-parsley-sauce and grating cheese...

18 comments:

Mallow said...: you have the ability to edit your profile out here. in the profile area is a place where one can place a photograph. I don't recall the size, but you can find that info in "blogger help" .

re: photo url... maybe they wanted to see a specific photograph you had taken? If this is the case then each post we place out here has it's own page- outside of the "main" blog page one comes to. You need to select this feature in the blogger preferences.. what I mean is, select the feature that enables each one of your posts to have its own separate page to display on. Does that make sense?
Hope this helps.

Thanks for the visit and comments. I hope you will visit again sometime. Did you blog hop from Raymi to her mom, then me? Just curious.
bye for now.
Mallow; 20 February 2007 at 20:47
Gledwood said...: U guessed it:

From Raymi; 20 February 2007 at 21:00
Tai said...: Sadly, I can't answer your question about the picture, I had a friend do it for me!
But I'm glad you storpped by my blog!
(It must have been Lone Grey Squirrel from whence you came! He's great!); 20 February 2007 at 21:39
Anonymous said...: Yeah I put him on my linxx; 20 February 2007 at 21:46
Anonymous said...: First you need to sign up for a free site that hosts photos like, photobucket.com, shutterfly.com or any other similar site.

Once you have your picture save there, then you can come back to blogger, login, go to "Profile" and add the url for the picture from the other site.

Blogger didn't have to make this so difficult, but you'll notice that they have an offer to sign up with some other company to post your profile pic. So they probably get paid each time a blogger signs up with that free service they suggested.

Hope it works out for you.

-P; 20 February 2007 at 21:51
Tommy Chronic said...: ...hey...glad you enjoyed the blog...not sure on rush limbaugh?...he's a far-right wing radio show host, infamous for racist remarks and the undying loyalty of the conservative politicos here in america...i guess in the UK he'd be pete doherty, famous for no other reason than being an utter wank, lol...; 20 February 2007 at 22:00
RUTH said...: Hi Gleds; proxima has it spot on. I use photobucket for things that I need urls for. Of course you'll need to save the photo to a folder on your computer in order to get it onto photobucket I think.
Rx; 20 February 2007 at 23:07
alphawoman said...: You're right! Your blog is quite different from mine!lol! That is the wonderful thing about the blogoshpere, a little bit of everything in every shape and size imaginable. Thanks for leaving a comment on my jnl. Your has a great comfortable feel to it! Join the group called "the best blog of all time"! It is a great idea with a lot of terrific people participating.; 21 February 2007 at 00:25
Anonymous said...: Thanks a ton doll face, I rather like your diary blog you've got here. I tried that and well...I don't keep diaries very loyally, I get off hand- which is why I use my blog for the most random of things. I hope you do keep reading, and I'll be sure to check in on you as well. =]
x.; 21 February 2007 at 00:28
Lone Grey Squirrel said...: Hi,
thanks for coming by and linking with my humble site. You're right about how different our sites are, but yours is clearly more honest and real. I am pleased to make your acquaintance and am sorry you are suffering from this addiction.

Regards your question on photo url, Proxima, is absolutely correct. Cheers.; 21 February 2007 at 01:19
jomiel said...: Thanks for comments and the blog link :D It's always great to hear someone enjoyed my writing, besides just me writing for myself.

Again, chiming in that Proxima is correct about the photo. You have to have an image hosted on the web first, and submit that url to Blogger. Blogger will display the image, but does not directly host it. Paradoxically, they will save post images in their blog database...; 21 February 2007 at 02:22
Nicole said...: The Blogger ID photo is easy. Every photo on the internet has a URL, the path to the place it's stored. Every photo I upload for example has a URL. For example the first photo from yesterday is to be seen on my blog, but if you click on it, it comes up on a page by itself. That page has the address (URL):
http://bp2.blogger.com/_Azh8rPxL1k8/
RdtGW0DOmgI/AAAAAAAAB3Y/29Br-gVWBGg/
s1600-h/DSC07328.jpg

It's a bit long, but that's okay.

The easiest way for you to get a photo up is to save the photo you like to your computer desktop and then upload it to a post on your blog.

Once you've posted the photo on your blog, click on it and it will come up in a window on its own. Copy the URL that shows up and that's the "Photo URL" that blogger is talking about.

If you have your own server space you can upload the photo to there and then use that address. Or if you have a Flicker account or Yahoo Photos or something like that. Pictures can be uploaded there and then you give Blogger the path (URL) where the picture is stored.

I think posting it to your blog in a post, clicking on it to open in a seperate window, and copying the URL from there is the easiest.

Hope this helps!

Nicole; 21 February 2007 at 09:58
daubmir said...: OK, I'll stick some Hebrew on Ruth's blog... but she must translate it!

It's good you stop by from time to time -- I myself I'm pretty busy travelling, working, travelling for work, working for ravelling. But I relax oin the evening by reading a good book and/or writing some imbecilic piece on one of my multilingual blogs.

Ciao Gled, and keep the aspidistra flying!

~Daubmir
aka ~Kinkazzo
aka -your friend; 21 February 2007 at 12:07
daubmir said...: ooops, too late then for Ruth's...

לְהִתְרָאוֹת

le׳hitra׳ot (bye!)

~K; 21 February 2007 at 12:14
Anonymous said...: Our blogs aren't that different. We both write down our thoughts and the small events in our everyday lives. I like your blog.

You're so lucky to live in London! =| I only visited it once... but I hope to go there many times in the future.

It is a small world... we have Dan and Jomiel in common.; 21 February 2007 at 13:48
Gledwood said...: Yes I feel privileged to live in London because at the time I moved there it was THEE place to be in the entire world for what I was into which was an alternative clubby hippy trancey ecstasy chai-flavoured pixie partiness ... the vibe was there and I was there ... I felt privileged to live my moments with Australians many of whom were on a 2-year working holiday visa and had to make that time a nonstop celebration so it was pretty intense. Paris, New York, Berlin also tempt me but in my present condition I'm not going anywhere ...; 21 February 2007 at 17:34
Gledwood said...: THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO GAVE FOTO ADVICE. I HAVE MY FOTO ON A WEBSITE IT EVEN SAYS ANYONE CAN COPY IT. JUST WANT TO MAKE IT PART OF MY IDENTITY...

WHEN I'M FOCUSED I WILL SIT DOWN AND TRY TO DO WHAT YOU ALL SAID.

THANXX AGAIN.

GLEDSXX; 21 February 2007 at 17:35
Elsie said...: Hey, will try to explain tomorrow night, have one glass of wine too many now and it is late here in South Africa, but it is actually quite easy to do it- just have to get all my brain cells working together.

You do not even have to make use of other photo websites, good old blogger can host your pic and there you are, for all to see.

Be good

Lcxxx; 25 February 2007 at 23:23

Christiane F

"Wir, Kinder vom Bahnhoff Zoo" by "Christiane F", memoir of a teenage heroin addict and prostitute, was a massive bestseller in Europe and is now a set text in German schools. Bahnhoff Zoo was, until recently, Berlin's central railway station. A kind of equivalent (in more ways than one) to London's King's Cross... Of course my local library doesn't have it. So I'm going to have to order it through a bookshop and plough through the text in German. I asked my druggieworker Maple Syrup, who is Italiana how she learned English and she said reading books is the best way. CHRISTIANE F: TRAILER You can watch the entire 120-min movie in 12 parts at my Random blog. Every section EXCEPT part one is subtitled in English (sorry: but if you skip past you still get the gist) ~ to watch it all click HERE.

Drugs Videos

Most of these come from my Random blog, which is an electronic scrapbook of stuff I thought I might like to view at some time or other. For those who want to view stuff on drugs I've collected the very best links here. Unless otherwise stated these are full-length features, usually an hour or more.

If you have a slow connexion and are unused to viewing multiscreen films on Youtube here's what to do: click the first one and play on mute, stopping and starting as it does. Then, when it's done, click on Repeat Play and you get the full entertainment without interruption. While you watch screen one, do the same to screens 2, 3 and so on. So as each bit finishes, the next part's ready and waiting.

Mexican Black Tar Heroin: "Dark End"

Khun Sa, whose name meant Prince Prosperous, had been, before his death in the mid 2000s, the world's biggest dealer in China White Heroin: "Lord of the Golden Triangle"

In-depth portrait of the Afghan heroin trade at its very height. Includes heroin-lab bust. "Afghanistan's Fateful Harvest"

Classic miniseries whose title became a catchphrase for the misery of life in East Asian prison. Nicole Kidman plays a privileged middle-class girl set up to mule heroin through Thai customs with the inevitable consequences. This is so long it had to be posted in two parts. "Bangkok Hilton 1" (first 2 hours or so); "Bangkok Hilton 2" (last couple of hours).

Short film: from tapwater-clear H4 in the USA to murky black Afghan brown in Norway: "Heroin Addicts Speak"

Before his untimely death this guy kept a video diary. Here's the hour-long highlights as broadcast on BBC TV: "Ben: Diary of a Heroin Addict". Thanks to Noah for the original link.

Some of the most entertaining scenes from Britain's top soap (as much for the poor research as anything else). Not even Phil Mitchell would go from nought to multi-hundred pound binges this fast: "Phil Mitchell on Crack" (just over 5 minutes).

Scientist lady shows us how to cook up gear: "How Much Citric?" Lucky cow: her brown is 70% purity! Oddly we never see her actually do her hit... maybe she got camera shy...

And lastly:

German documentary following a life from teenage addiction to untimely death before the age of 30. The decline in this girl's appearance is truly shocking. "Süchtig: Protokoll einer Hilflosigkeit". Sorry no subtitles; this is here for anyone learning German who's after practice material a little more gripping than Lindenstraße!