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!

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Translations, Curry, Cheese and Desperate Housewives

OKAY I PROMISE TO TONE DOWN the translations after this one. This is a genuine comment I wrote to Johnny Padilla in Chile, only to translate it back to English:

Hi I am using babelfish to put this to you in Spanish. Thanks much for its commentary. Master obtaining in tact internationally. When I at random press that following button of blog and something comes for above in Spanish, Chinese Portuguese or (those are to a great extent the more popular foreign languages of blogosphere) and I are in right humor, I say hello. But for above until this moment I have had always ashamedly to do it in English. Now it barks "I speak" those languages same! I know that the translations are wonky because I put Shakespeare inside and outside Chinese and I fixed the results for above to blog of today! Easy Tómelo, Gleds

His profile came out rather well from the translator:

My name is Rodrigo. Student of Journalism. I consider myself "special", perhaps different from the rest, or at least nonencounter much people similar to me. This is a reflection of my distorted existence.

You can have fun yourself the Babelfish way! My friend Ruth told me about it. I had dimly heard about some internet translating service but had assumed you'd have to pay for it. Their url is http://babelfish.altavista.com/.

I went to the clinic today as I got ejected yesterday for being too late. Not being in the mood to wear my usual short-sighted goggles (& I don't count myself as a glasses-wearer, as have been on contact lenses for years. Just wanted to give my eyes a break for the past 3 months and have not been round to getting more.) My one and only pair of glasses is broken. So I wander the streets of London resembling a walking percentage sign. I took these glasses off during the appointment. The Worker looked at me with enormous concern and said, "You look really tired." (I look like I've got two black eyes.) I said "yes I am," and have now scored a doctor's appointment for being run-down.

Later on I saw my pal Valium Marilyn, who gave me three beautiful pieces of curried chicken. I did wonder why she was giving this away. Bought boil-in-bag rice from Sainsbury's. Dished up reheated curry with this... She did say, "do you like hot curry". Readers, if you put silver coins on top of this chicken, the spices alone would have melted them to solder. I wiped them off in the gummy overcooked (despite religiously following the instructions) rice. And ate them exceedingly enthusiastically.

Desperate Housewives was on when I logged in tonight. I used to think I liked it. Maybe it's the strain of trying to follow it all on a 2.3 inch TV but something has gone ...

Other news: I ate about 25p worth of Double Gloucester cheese and felt guilty as I only ever by cheese for grating purposes. Usually if I want to eat some I force self to cook a meal and grate it over it, thus precluding eating any more cheese than absolutely necessary. I am very strict with myself on these matters.

Yes in other words practically nothing happened today. But hey it could be worse. I could be yabbering on about how tired I feel ... or dissecting the literary heritage of Danielle Steel!

7 comments:

Deb said...

It's good to see you so enthusiastic about the translations though...please, don't "tone down" anything done with passion and excitement.

Curried chicken...I make that. My son likes it really spicy - me, not so much. I'm glad you have friends that look out for you...that's nice.

Good thing to see the doc too...I have two appts. booked in two weeks. Getting a tune up.

Wayward Son said...

You know Gled, Ms. Steele is a neighbor of mine here in San Francisco. I can view her neighborhood from my window. Amazingly, I cannot see her home and it occupies a entire city block she shares with no one. This, I think, is very telling especially given the pickle she found herself in a few years back where she was caught buying parking permits from her neighbors and passing them out to guests so they would have a place on her block to park their cars while in attendance to one of her huge and ever so posh sit down dinners.

She has a reputation here for being a very, very hard task master as a hostess, an icon and a writer of sorts.

Some other time I will tell you the story about an overly imbibed, aging (ergo eccentric) local socialite who missed the ash tray and put her cigarette out on Ms. Steele's brand new über expensive table cloth (for a table that seats fifty or so). If one were to believe there truly are no accidents then what is one to believe of this?

The entitled must surly be strong to endure the relish with which they are unfairly (or not) attributed such urban legends.

It all reminds me of what Yoko Ono once said to Malcom X in a bistro in Rome. "The food is horrible but the waiter's hilarious!"

—Buddy Cole, Kids in the Hall


Hope your spirits are high if nothing else.

WS

Women on the Verge said...

Danielle Steele's "literary heritage"???? Gledwood, you must promise me to stop rooting about in the rubbish bins... ;-)

Thanks for the babel fish tip... I'll trade an author tip for it. Have you ever read any Wilkie Collins?


E

CK said...

Gledwood, thanks for the comment at the Kay Blog, I will put you on as a link hookup.

Keshi said...

hey u ate so much cheese? :)

Happy V-day to ya!

Keshi.

Anonymous said...

Hey, I'm back! This entry is making me hungry. Can't wait to get to the UK next week; I'm sure my mates will take me out for a curry while I'm there. Best of luck with the doctor's appointment -- make sure he listens to you. (I've npoticed that doctors seem rushed and rarely listen well ...)

Anonymous said...

OK, not a Babelfish translation but a true cock up made by a German tourist in London whilst waiting for a bus. What he wanted to say was
"excuse me. I don't know what the custom here in England is, must I wait in a que?"
WHAT came out was "Excuse you, I know me not here out, must I stand here snake?"

Not suprising realy as the german for this phrase goes "entshuldigung sie, (excuse you) ich weiss mir nicht hieraus, ( I know me not here out) muss ich heir schlange stehen?" (must I stand here snake?)

Footnote:
In germany one stands in a "snake" not a que!

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