HAMSTERS & HEROIN: Not all junkies are purse-snatching grandmother-killing psychos. I'm keeping this blog to bear witness to that fact.

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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!!!

Attack of the Furry Entertainers!

Attack of the Furry Entertainers!

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

The Seductive Process of Addiction

LIVING A DREAM HALF AWAKE: my favourite sort of day. When I can sit alone and, not having slept so well at night, and having drugged up I drowse and wake and drift between wakefulness and dreaming. It's in these states that I wonder whether dreams or wakefulness are really the more real... Not that I even needed drugs ever to drift out, disengage, dissociate. I do that so easily anyway... I question why heroin ever needed to come into the picture.

But drug-taking doesn't necessarily have the deep, dark roots that people so frequently ascribe to it. ("You must have been dreadfully hurt to be taking such hard, hard drugs")... isn't necessarily true at all. As the one perceptive psychiatrist I have ever met once told me: people take drugs because they make them feel good>> simple as. And I'm inclined to agree-- but only on one level. On another: many addicts do have all manner of pain and darkness and horrific things in their pasts. Some do. But there are as many reasons for using as there are people who use. In fact there are many many MORE reasons. Nobody does anything for just one reason, not in normality. Everything in life is multifaceted. Drug addiction, dull, depressing and overridingly BORING as it is in actuality, is no different.

How I got hooked on heroin is a long, long tale of caution intermittently thrown to the winds, of sadness, U-turns, resolutions broken and bad friendships. I willfully went out looking for heroin. I was very depressed and knowing the stuff might kill me the first time I took it only heightened its glamour. For two or three years I managed to keep my using to a one weekend a month type of basis (my tolerance was so small that in the beginning and when the drugs were good, I could get high four times by smoking £10 worth). Even so, there were times, looking back, having used the stuff every day for over a week that I was putting on layers of clothes, taking them off, never able quite to get the temperature right... I now know, with bitter hindsight that I was suffering very light withdrawal and not even knowing it. I'm glad I didn't know either, for that would have pushed me towards using. Another thing that put me off was the unpleasantness of scoring. Right from the beginning I was getting introductions directly to the dealers themselves, not going through a "middleman" junkie friend the way I subsequently found out (years too late!) that most casual users did. No, I had to do it different. And how I hated dealing with these people. The bad vibes I felt emanating from them like radiant shadows. (Contradiction, but I once saw that in an hallucination. A shadow-man walked towards me when I was alone, at night, in a huge industrial squat. Nobody to hear me scream. A shadow man effulging a light that literally engulfed me crept up to the cupboard where I was sleeping, opened the door, flooded me with light and bzzzz-PING! He vanished again. Leaving me in pitch darkness... In my early heroin days I knew somebody who would sell me small bits of methadone. Now for all the complaints junkies will make about methadone (mostly because it takes so very long to take effect, often two hours or more, when you really need it to). If you are nontolerant, methadone can make you pretty high. Only it takes, as I say, at least two hours to do this. Which I do not advise. For it is even MORE dangerous in overdose (being longer-acting) than heroin. So do not mess with the meth. OK? Anyhow, I gradually got into the habit of recreationally drinking this stuff until I was knocking back a small bottle every other day... Went away to stay with a friend out of town only to be hit by a mystery virus that made me hot and cold and sweaty and restless, gave me diarrhoea and had me waking absolutely drenched in sweat in the middle of the night ... I knew some naughty friends. They told me I was "sick" (ie in withdrawal). I didn't believe them but was more than willing to go along with an excuse to use heroin. Strangely, every dose of heroin I took mysteriously relieved this strange condition. It was only nearly two years later with much contemplation and hindsight that I looked back and realized: yes the seeds of my addiction were sown all the way back then. That was the first time in my life that someone gave me a "chill pill" (chloral betaine -- a kind of tranquillizer or sleeping pill) that I felt the "mellow" effects of, but it singularly failed to hit the right spot. That spot being the opiate spot. Only methadone and heroin hit that.

The sloping down of my addiction was a long and gradual and drawn-out process, so gradual in fact that to this day I cannot isolate a specific time or line I crossed from not being an addict to suddenly becoming one. So many little events occurred. From me willfully going out and scoring, experimenting in secret (I never had a bunch of heroin friends in the beginning. I knew the local junkies, but I used alone. And I kept the heroin part of my life very strictly separate from the rest of it.) I got more and more used to the drug. I tore myself repeatedly away. One afternoon having been in great internal conflict, meandering down the street I picked up what I had at first assumed to be a bag of sweets. This was no sweets. It was several grams of bagged up heroin. Enough to keep me high every afternoon for five weeks. That got me round my dislike of scoring and broke down a hugely important barrier: that of using every day. Of course I got a little habit. Came off it with strictly reducing methadone. That summer, the official version was that I was clean. I was not clean. I was using about once a week. What really did it for me was striking up a relationship with someone who had a ten year habit. She wanted to use at every opportunity that arose. How I loved that ride! ...

And so it went on.

And here I am now. Just remember this: how slowly or how gradually something happens means nothing in the end. Because -- whether you get there slowly or quick -- the destination is exactly the same.

Do not use heroin!

I'm knackered now, it is a quarter to two a.m. and I'm going to have to sign out. Will tell more tomorrow ...

14 comments:

Sabrina said...

Com certeza um blog secreto com verdades, que as vezes temos medo de dizer ou encarar.
Gosto de acompanhar "diários", me fazem pensar, questionar é como conhecer alguém..rs
Tens histórias e tantos por aqui não.
Gsoto muito de escrever, mas para o blog ainda me sinto timída para me expor, por mais que meus trabalhos falem por si mesmo.
Obrigada pela visita e pelo carinho, vou passar mais por aqui...beijos e uma ótima semana Sabrina

rowan said...

Interesting
Mine happened fast very fast sort of like my passions, my personality, the way I dive into other people with a dirty speed most people find frightening. (this is true.) I did the same with opiates. I dont understand how people are able to keep getting high past a year...
Unless they take 10 grams of pure heroin a day.
Another reason opposite to yous- my friends used to comment on how I had this ability to step into filth and like a tiny aton in a petri dish (this is how my friend said it) come out like nothing had happened. I think I never felt that corrupted by the awful things people did in the drug world. Of course I didnt see death or shootings but did deal with awful rotten mean just plain old MEAN people. I did understand that feeling of not being able to clean yourself clean enough but.. the next daya new day. I dontknow.

rowan said...

Wish you were here to speak some french. Now send me your picture already... TAG!

rowan said...

Your writing is so loose sometimes I have a hard time understanding where you are at now. Chronology. years. conceptual frameworks. I want FACTS in neat categories!!! You are slippery gledwood.

Kev said...

Love this post... very well done. I can't relate but I certainly feel...

In regards to my blog, it is where I actually post the essays that I turn in for Film Studies class. Then, I use what I write to prepare for the test. So, you basically had it... lol. And am I up to what?

barbi bharadwaj said...

Hi,
first time visitor here. dope n drigs? i think those are dangerous and you are aware of them too.

ohhh.

thaks for stopping by..

barbi forever!

Anonymous said...

Ici mon nouveau commentaire des problemes sociaux du drogue en francais:

(Je l'ai envoye a un homme politique francais, a 10 h 40 ce matin!!)

Si vous vous interesse au politique il vous faut ouvrir les yeux aux problemes sociaux comme le drogue. Moi je fais un blogue de l'ultra-verite. J'est mon journal intime de mon junkie-vie. Je sais veritablement que vous l'aimeras. Mon url est gledwood2.blogspot.com. Pourquoi ne pas le visiter au jour'd'hui. Je vous attend!!

Alors, a bientot.

Amites, Gledwood.

Anonymous said...

Sabrina: Many thanxx for your comment. Here's my Portuguese reply:---

Meus cumprimentos muito especiais a meu amigo falador portuguese Sabrina! Muitos agradecimentos para seu comentário encantador que eu li esta manhã. Cheered realmente me acima. Eu estou contente você gostei de meu blog. Eu espero que este lhe venha claramente no português apropriado.

Todo o mais melhor de

Gledwood.

Anonymous said...

ca blogue francais s'apelle: http://ps-auber.typepad.fr/elus/

Anonymous said...

I think lots of addictions begin with a long, slow slide. You don't know until you're already gone.

rowan said...

(house= nostoppingplace)

Chris Hiebert said...

Gledwood, I love your authenticity.

Your world is quite unkown to me and so I'll keep reading to know more of you and your world.

Anonymous said...

Hello Gledwood!I liked the way how you told your story. I had a friend who suffered from heroin addiction but is already on his way to recovery. Heroin may have destroyed a part of his life but I told him maybe this is a test. I can somehow remember his pain when I read your blog. Keep it up. -dina

Anonymous said...

Hi Gledwood! I find your post extra interesting and a big help. I have heard a lot about heroin but I think this is the first time I have ever come across a detailed testimony from a direct user. I just wonder why despite of its great potential for illegal use, there are there still many who have an easy access to it. What's the government doing?

--georgia

I WANT OFF METHADONE AS QUICK AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE!

METHADONE ~ A FATE WORSE THAN DEATH







Heroin Shortage: News

If you are looking for the British Heroin Drought post, click here; the latest word is in the comments.







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.

To See Gledwood's Entire Blog...

DID you find my blog via a Google or other search? Are you stuck on a post dated some time ago? Do you want to read Gledwood Volume 2 right from "the top" ~ ie from today?
If so click here and you'll get to the most recent post immediately!

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!































Nosey Quiz! Have you ever heard voices when you weren't high on drugs?

Manic Magic

Manic Magic

Gledwood Volume 2: A Heroin Addict's Blog

Copyright 2011 by Gledwood