Gledwood Vol 2 (Main blog): Manic Mouse

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 06, 2007

Manic Mouse

MOUSEY, MY CHINESE HAMSTER misbehaved severely last night. I call him Mousey because he does resemble a mouse but with no proper tail to speak of and a black stripe down the back (it's a go-faster stripe, and it works!) and he does have cheek pouches, although he barely ever seems to use them. So technically he is a hamster. And he comes from China. And he has balls the size of brazil nuts. Mother Hubbard says no wonder the little mite spends such long hours sleeping; it's surely the fatigue of having to drag them everywhere he scuttles ...

Mousey is very tame. When I poke him out of whichever one of five nests he's dozing in at that moment he pulls a dishevelled "oh please don't torment me by making me play," face. Introduced to my cuff he crawls gratefully up my sleeve where he settles down for yet more sleep.

So Mouse is asleep. It is three a.m. Before very long, I am asleep. Then Mousey picks his moment to wake up. Then I wake up and catch elongated Mouse about to drop from sleeve. Mouse, to the best of his formidable acting powers pretends not to be gutted at being thwarted. Bides his time. Eventually does catch me truly unconscious and runs away ...

I wake up and gaah! The swine has escaped. Not to worry; this has happened a million times. Usually I just wait ten minutes and catch him darting about my Axminster-stylee hearthrug playing Furry Scalectrix. Not last night, though. The swine was nowhere to be found. After an hour I was despairing. I kept hearing faint mouse-type of noises, though I could never pin them down... And when I did eventually find him, guess where he was? Sleeping, he'd burrowed between the mountains of my multitudinous pillows and hollowed out an Arabian Nights-style mouse-nest there. The kind of nest a mouse must squeak: "Open sesame!" to get into. When I picked him out and bunged him back in his drab old cotton wool fishtank nest he was absolutely gutted. That is where he is going to have to stay from now on: I can't stand the stress of wild Chinese animals running free any more ...

8 comments:

cia said...: you are incredibly hillarious! I hope you kick ur drugging ways! can't be fun being "trapped" as you put it. You made a comment on my Fashion Fever Blog.
You furry friend sounds really.....cute.; 6 February 2007 at 11:41
RUTH said...: I love the idea of Mousey being a WILD animal....conjours up images of him prowling the African Plains. Pity you can't post some pictures......have looked at the hamster links but would be nice to see yours in the "flesh" so to speak.
Rx; 6 February 2007 at 11:44
Gledwood said...: I'm (slowly, gradually) working on that ...

& Cia U R welcome ...; 6 February 2007 at 12:01
Nicole said...: Classic! Who'd have thought that Hamsters have such personality. I owned a few black and white mice once when I was about 10, but that's about all the experience I have with small furry animals.; 6 February 2007 at 13:09
Unknown said...: Thanks for the comment. :) I can't wait for my boys to be old enough for hamsters.; 6 February 2007 at 14:56
S said...: so cute! love the arabian night imagery! We have a new guinea pig and although he's not a squirrel (my true love!) he's pretty cute too. We saw him yawn yesterday for the first time and it was pretty scary looking!; 6 February 2007 at 15:39
Travis Cody said...: Oh that's funny!

Thanks for stopping by my blog today.; 7 February 2007 at 01:43
Annelisa said...: That's so funny - my daughter had two of these little critters herself, and one day one of them escaped, and we did a wide and fast search... all coming to zilch. Then my daughter crawled into bed, and the next morning, the escapee had cuddled in under the blankets with her!; 8 February 2007 at 00:17

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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!