Gledwood Vol 2 (Main blog): My Dreamtime Wednesday

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!!!

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

My Dreamtime Wednesday

DREAMING, RECOVERING , WAKING, REDREAMING, REAWAKENING ... what is when when this is now?

After a seemingly incredibly long night during which my loud thinking repeatedly awakened me I sit here at close to 6pm wondering what to make of it all. Famous faces, vacuous spaces all spinning through my mind. What can I give voice to in the darkness? It is sunset now. The sun is vanishing and all of us here must survive throughout the long night.

Thank God for electric lighting!!

Laundretta did a little more tantrum-giving. One time when I opened the front door to her when she had lost Matran's key for the zillionth time she (& why on earth did she do this?!?) "offered me out" for a fight!! Something to do with her drunken gurglings ... she thought I somehow took issue with her ... or cared about her sozzled brain's shortcircuited connexions. I stepped over her and told her not to mistake me for someone who gave a sh--.

Mother Hubbard was going ape this morning because she couldn't score. Pascal saved the day, offering to purchase a weighed amount with her money. So I came with him to a vulgar house. Crackhouse might be the word the newspapers would use for it. Three black early twentysomethings sitting round a breakfast table having their breakfast. Only food did not come into it. Breakfast for them came in white smokey form: crack cocaine. And one of them, perhaps the biggest one in there, with particularly rampant afro hair outgrowings and the pastiest pallid face turned out upon our leaving actually to be a woman!!

I'm glad I brought a newspaper with me to that place. Not only did it kill the boredom of sitting in someone else's "crack"house nonrentpaid virtual squat (and I'm sure that's what it was, somewhere the landlord was being strung out for as long as he possibly could be for no rent at all...) but avoided my making eyecontact with any of these people who thought they were so ... well, not cool but so whatever they thought they were ... and basically gave me a mental teleport outta that situation. I'm getting old now. Too old for situations like that.

At long last, nearly an hour later, Pascal's friend's friend eventually showed up with this heroin and we made good our escape. I couldn't help but wonder, as we walked out, who those young people were, how they made their money, what they thought they were doing and where they were all going in life. Sometimes it's so much easier to focus those questions on somebody else.

Am I making any sense in an otherwise nonsensical day? O what am I saying? The day has gone past. Evening is come. Tomorrow shall arise as predicted.

I have nothing to latch on to. Nothing IS as predicted. Does that make any sense to you. Does that make any sense?

I want to lie down. And then unconsciousness takes away the time. And dreams knit together what remains of reality into fables. Simple as. Simple.

If only life was that straightforward!

8 comments:

Anonymous said...: Hey GW, After reading your blog for a while I have a few questions. I hope you don't mind me asking and in no way am I expecting you to answer any of them. Some people think I'm very blunt, which I probably am...

1) I'm guessing your place isn't like that crackhouse you described. What kind of housing do you live in?
2) How do you earn/get the money to live from and are you able to save some *at all* ?
3) In your blog you sound intelligent, funny, honest, clear and to the point. Basically as a nice person. Yet it seems you only go out to score. Is there anything else you do? See other people socially, ie not drug-related?; 28 February 2007 at 19:42
rowan said...: PS. how do you get comments with your name in them erased, especially if they are really inflamatory and in somebody's blog and anybody who might want to hire you can type your name into google and find the AWFUL comments? How do you get them erased when the owner wont erase them and you no longer can sign into the blogger site you owned and erase them yourself? How do you get the "blogger administtater" to erase them? I'll email you the links I'm talking about if you need to see them. Anyway I'm putting you on overload now I'll go. XOXOXOX Ivs; 28 February 2007 at 19:50
Anonymous said...: Gleds, just seen your coment "this is a bad post"
(that's my test blog, by the way, where I first try out any changes I want to make to the rants and raves so that I know any particular change will not spoil the main blog template.)

It should be as simple to post pictures as writing text. When one types into the text field on blogger, you should also see a row of icons just above that text field. The second from last icon, a small blue square picture is the "insert image" facility. Click on that and you should be able to browse around your hard drive for any image you want to include. Select your image, click "upload image" and you will find that image placed into position on your post. Just follow the directions. I usually start by uploading the picture and then typing the text(if any!) around that. There are fine settings to alter such as picture position, size, etc. but that is the basic procedure. If you need any more help, just ask!; 28 February 2007 at 21:10
RUTH said...: Gleds your posts are getting more and more poetical. Stop faffing about and get that poetry blog sorted out.
Rx; 28 February 2007 at 21:58
Anonymous said...: You asked where they were going in life, but where ever it is, it probably isn't very far.

You can't help people who aren't willing to help themselves. Sometimes it's all you can do to hold your own head out of the water.
-P; 28 February 2007 at 22:02
Gledwood said...: Ivy the blogger administrator is you: surely?

You know how to erase your own comments when you're logged in as self and comment on someone ele's blog you just use that trashcan but that isn't what you're asking is it ...

I don't know that there is a way but let me ask someone I know who really does know his IT then I can get back to you with a better answer.; 28 February 2007 at 22:04
Gledwood said...: Duh. The blogger administrator is the person who "owns" or runs the blog. So on YOUR blog it is you. On John's blog it is john ...

Let me TRY and find out more...; 28 February 2007 at 22:05
Anonymous said...: Well, this is just a comment from a middle-aged white American woman, but didn't you feel even slightly unsafe in that house? Because I'm nervous for you.; 1 March 2007 at 16:30

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!