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 21, 2007

Two People Disturb Me

A VOICE WAS CALLING me this afternoon. A posh (male) voice that I did not recognize. Calling me by my Christian name. (Maybe I had schizophrenia.) At some point this character got into my house and came upstairs to knock on my door. Assuming he was hiding there, I gathered keys, money, valuables together and shoved them in my pockets, opened the door: nobody there.

Venturing downstairs, nobody to be seen or heard. I did not open the front door, though. For all I knew this could be bailiffs or anything. Bailiffs will try and trick you by calling your first name in a familiar name to trick you into opening doors. They know all the cons and people don't admit it to their mates but of course they fall for them. Bailiffs wouldn't try these techniques on otherwise!

Ten minutes passed and again a soft knocking at my door. I demanded to know who it was and a wellknown shoplifter (he is about as famous, in a Dick Turpin kinda way, as any petty criminal gets to be in local circles) answered me. Very reluctantly I let him and his public school accomplice in. It was the accomplice, who is a nice lad from a posh background (and I bet his family give him absolutely f-all money or support) who had been calling me. That's why I couldn't place the voice. Unfamiliar because he's not someone I normally see except rapidly passing on (his) way back from expeditions and to or from liberating the financial value of purloined goods. They sat on my bed talking about prisons, nerve damage, hitting arteries and fights with women. It was mostly Da Man who talked while accomplice stayed quiet. Da Man I know from a decade ago when he was dealing. I gave my first or second ten pounds to a heroin dealer to him. So I remember this guy through dirt-tinted spectacles as the onset of my scuzzy habit. What else can I say??

Today all is upon me, all is stress, all too slow or else too fast, not there when it should be and intolerable when it is. It's one of those days. And these two characters were the last addition I welcomed. So I didn't make them feel welcome but they gave me a bit of free drugs and though accomplice was a little bothered, Da Man doesn't care what anyone thinks as long as his own needs are sorted, which they were in my presence. He got somewhere quiet to smoke his drugs. I hardly need mention what drugs they were but to put anyone who's wondering out of their contemplation he smoked crack and then some heroin. He has to smoke the heroin now because he's been on it for so very many years (at 55 years old) that inhaling vapours from tinfoil is the only way his body will tolerate taking heroin in. Why is everything about heroin so multiple-ly addictive? Rituals, routines, manoevres all become part of the brain-dulling day-in-day-out reality that is heroin addiction. A life minus excitement for the most part as it is minus pain. You take a drug that quashes both and life performs its own little rebound for you. The effects always speak for themselves far louder than anybody's testimony, if you get me.

I've decided to testify the details no-one else gives. Though it humiliates me often to do so, I think the unspoken aspects of the junkie life need speaking by someone.

And hence my blog ...

19 comments:

Smalltown RN said...

Thank you for visiting my blog. Yes your blog is truly different than mine. But then you are you and I am me. First...how did you find me? Was it just a random click? or did you see my on someone elses blog? I am always just curious as to how we end up at blogs?

Now I take it you are an addict? Heorine is your drug of choice? I am not...but my brother was/is I once an addict always...you just have to keep keep the demons at bay....he has lived a very hard life and many stories I could share with you. I wish you well....the bird by the way is a Stellar Jay...it is our Provincial Bird.

Drop by my blog again some day....cheers!

Anonymous said...

I found you via a comment you left... cannot remember exactly whose it was on... but not randomly. I do hop at random but I remember seeing your name and thinking 2that looks like an interesting person"...

Heroin is my drug of choice, yes. Also alcohol & (now & then) cocaine (well, crack).

O I thought that was some sort of crow-type bird. Are Stellar Jays very shy? Our jays that we get here are very shy indeed.

Thanxx for dropping by & all the best

Gleds

Anonymous said...

Sorry I HAVE to leave this message here because it WILL NOT let me into your comments despite OBVIOUSLY having done so earlier... gives a message along the bottom something about "... pop-up true ..." whatever that means. it has been doing this a lot 2nite in all my friends'. Why it should start picking on me now I have no idea.

sapollium said...

You've tied me up, fellow! Could you untie that knot-comment?!

Thanks for visiting my blog. Sapollium.

Anonymous said...

OK SAPOLLIUM; THIS WAS THE ORIGINAL COMMENT:

Um blog intelectual no português!

Por que é assim muitos deles aparece em sua língua quando eu pressiono a tecla seguinte aleatória? Blogging parece ultra popular em Portugual & em Brasil.

Alguém disse-me uma vez que os brasileiros (e americanos sul no general) não gostam realmente de ler livros - assim que lêem blogs preferivelmente? Há certamente uns muitos deles para fora lá.

O poço I faz um blog demasiado: é gledwood2.blogspot.com e você é a maioria de boa vinda a deixar cair perto se você gostar. Diga-me o que você pensa.

Ciao agora e todo o mais melhor a você.

Gledwood

Anonymous said...

& THIS IS HOW BABELFISH TRANSLATED IT BACK TO ENGLISH AGAIN ...

One blog intellectual in the Portuguese!

Why he is thus many of them appears in its language when I I pressure the random following keyboard key? Blogging seems extreme popular in Portugual & Brazil.

Somebody said me a time that the Brazilians (and Americans south in the general) really do not like to read books thus - that they read blogs preferivelmente? It has certainly one many of them for it are there.

Well I makes one too much blog: he is gledwood2.blogspot.com and you it is the majority of boa.vinda to leave to fall close if you to like. It says me what you think.

Ciao now and all more better you.

Gledwood

ALWAYS GOOD 4 A LAUGH, INNIT?

Anonymous said...

Che cosa è quella cosa sinister dell'uccello? Sembra horrible.

SIMON said...

TA FOR THE SPANISH COMMENT AND THANKS FOR VISITING MY BLOG.
I LIKE YOUR BLOG AND SOME OF THE LINKS.
POP BY AGAIN AND I WILL DO SO TO YOURS

TAKE CARE

junky said...

the ritual, I think most addicts suffer from OCD, the ritual usually becomes more important than the dope, just like people that have to switch a light on 12 times before they enter a room.

Deb said...

I think the very fact that you feel the way you do and aren't really welcoming to it means you're on your way.

But, on some level, I can relate. I gave up a lifestyle that meant disassociating with all that I knew. It was tough and I was alone (still am) but, in the end, it's for the best.

I'm going to keep telling you how fascinating your writing is...I can't put it down. Broken record?

Durrell said...

One day at a time :-)
Best wishes!
Keep blogging,

Durrell

Anonymous said...

I agree; you do seem to be just about the only one who goes into complete, painstaking detail of the life of a junky, right down to missing veins and such. To me, it is both frightening and intriguing. It is definitely helping me.

rowan said...

You sound sad today but those details arent unwarrented. I know what you meant the complex comment about life rebounding after you try to squash or control components...Not sure I fully understand but Like what you are getting at. Wish I had your phone number and could that you lived in my neighborhood.

rowan said...

ps. I dont know how you got the blog administrator to do that thing but it was well done bravo you are well up there in the internet chain must be powerful in internet lala land

dalene said...

It is essential to speak the unspoken. Thanks for following my toes to my blog and leaving a comment so I could stumble upon yours.

Now if you'll excuse me, I feel the need to read your other blog...

dalene said...

p.s. The toes are in the Gulf of Finland during the trip of a lifetime.

Anonymous said...

What interesting info about the need to smoke heroin. I've known a couple of heroin addicts in my life--one is dead now and one is clean after a long prison sentence. They didn't talk much about their addiction, though. You're a very courageous person to speak so frankly. Bravo!

Deb said...

honestly, I grew up in a community of heroin addicts and, out of say 20, I can rattle off 8 that are dead right off the top of my head. Probably more. And all between 18 - 35 when they died...which is why I'm so pulling for you to listen to that inner voice. You'll do it one day, I can feel it.

Off to work now. Take care.

Gledwood said...

I know countless people who have died. Strangely I never shed a tear over a single one of them. I've been lucky that no-one has died in front of me or anything like that. I knew a long time ago that the only way I will die "from drugs" will be if I do it by my own deliberate hand ... it's not going to happen any other way. And in other words (actually Marianne Faithfull's words) I'm just going to have to make it.

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