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!

Sunday, February 04, 2007

Veins... Before Sunday Lunch

(HAVE I not done another post called that? Oh well. The computer can get itself confused as it likes over that one ...) No it won't. I added the word "veins" ...

OKAY! 1st: bird flu. The nation is not in a state of panic. In fact it is rapidly shifting down the news agenda. This says to me that bird flu armageddon is near. Sorry to be so negative but that's my honest view.

2nd: Other things. O wot am I meant to talk about my boring life ...? I HAVE DONE NOTHING at all for about 3 days. Good example: last night, went to bed before 10pm (far as I remember) ... slept till around 5am ... awake for 2 hours ... slept till 1pm ... bad dreams include one of a dishwasher that wouldn't start and another induced by sleeping with radio gabbling in corner (not bird flu dreams, thankfully).

I am being very good today and only taking methadone. And can report so far that it is keeping me okay. I've had some horrible squeamworthy moments of sticking a thin needle into the ridge of my foot along from my big toe - where (well, YOU try it) ... it hurts. More to the point, however, the word that describes my internal reaction is "squeam" ... it squeams me so badly that any "pleasure" or "fun" I get from feeling the (always weak) opiate buzz is nearly oblitterated. When I wrote about this the other day I meant what I said ... digging in your feet genuinely hurts, you have to ever so carefully swab them (because feet are so dirty (most especially mine)) ... as my Safer Injecting Guide advised me many moons ago, "you should only do this [in the feet] if you don't like wearing shoes because after a while you won't be able to" ...

And without going into any more lumps and bumps and abscesses and hotspots and bruises and pains and infections and acheing details, I shall leave it there.

Suffice it to say I have one friend currently in hospital after years of leg-injecting with an open ulcer. This guy already has lost one leg. His other smells so bad even the police won't arrest him for begging, he stinks out their van so awfully. (When I first met him I assumed he'd had an "accident" being on crutches and unable to run to the loo - so bear that in mind.)

As for me I have no veins anywhere on my body that I can easily get now. And this is only six years of (intense) injecting habit. I don't know what else to say really, without verging into childish and petulant territory ....

Well, let it go, let it go. As long as you have muscles, lungs and a nose you can administer heroin to yourself (inject in the muscles, snort up the nose, breathe vapours into the lungs ...) but IV is the only way that felt like it "sorted me out" ... that is so typical of me. I appear so mild in so many ways ... but even this street girl who doesn't really know me said to me "you're an all-or-nothing kind of guy". I have no idea how she could tell this... Up until quite recently I was injecting cocaine mixed (in small amounts) with the heroin every time I possibly could because I "couldn't feel" the "gear" ...

All this rambling is hopeless, I realize that. But who is going to save me? NO-ONE, of course. Life lays nothing out on a silver plate for any of us. So it's down to me. And that, to be quite frank, is why I feel it will never happen ...

Anyhow, on a lighter note, I'm off to have Sunday lunch at Mother Hubbard's. She will score and pretend she's not scoring. Or subterfuge of some type shall occur. But I shall rise above it and think to myself: ah, the things that scummy addicts do ...!

18 comments:

RUTH said...

Sometimes wish I could wave a magic wand and get you out of this....I'll rephrase that I ALWAYS wish I had magic wand.
Re; Elsie it's her recipe blog I'm having the problem with not her gifts one.
Enjoy your dinner
Rx

RUTH said...

Sorry here's the url
http://ezi-edible-gifts.blogspot.com/
I need to know if you can see anything before 30th January....she had 3 or 4 posts before that which I can't see now.
Rx

Anonymous said...

BIRD FLU. Hmmmm..... Wrong post to answer this in but as you have now seen MY blog you will understand how this happens......

If it was not for the construction of this imaginary threat, we would have to concentrate on real threats like wot greedy Cherie is doing with her ill-gotten ackers and who's faces she is treading on and what laws she breaks to achieve that goal. THEN again there IS Big Brother!

"250,000 chickens on a Norfolk farm had to be destroyed today due to an outbreak of Jade Goody and according to government experts the infection looks like it could even spread to housebricks"

RUTH said...

Thanks for checking that out. You're a star! Now I know the problems at Elsies end and not me!!!

Anonymous said...

I like that ... an east angular infection ...

Anonymous said...

o & Ruth: that's fine... I don't know what Elsie's done, let's hope she can get back what she (seems to have) lost ...

Women on the Verge said...

You're most welcome for the tips... hold steady!!

Anonymous said...

thanks! hope I won't need to ..!..

Deb said...

"But who is going to save me? NO-ONE, of course. Life lays nothing out on a silver plate for any of us. So it's down to me. And that, to be quite frank, is why I feel it will never happen ..."

This really pains me...you just sound like someone who could do it so keep that in mind. I'm going to keep telling you that you're too creative, funny & intelligent to wither away. Nag over. ;)

Anonymous said...

okay!!

junky said...

In for a penny in for a pound, a man after my own heart.
Yeah at the end of the day it is up to you. and sense you are an all or nothing guy, once you finally kick, you probably will never look back.

god speed my son

Whitenoise said...

Dude, do yourself a favour and go to an NA meeting. Just hang around with those people for an hour, no other committments. Yak to someone who's been where you're at. Take some inspiration and hope from someone who's beaten your scourge. You've said that you've got nothing else to do- what are you waiting for -go kill an hour with some good people. Do it.

Gledwood said...

Whitenoise I've been to loads of those meetings ... not lately admittedly. I started to feel I was taking the pee-pee, though they kept saying "keep coming back" ...

One of these days I'm going to post something about my NA experiences. As I've said, it does "work if you work it"

(because you're worth it) ..

watch this space ...

Whitenoise said...

Great, then keep going. Someday it will click. Your alternative is misery, poverty then painful death. I've witnessed that first hand.

I went to a meeting in London once. It was in the basement of some old church somewhere around Siddons Lane. We went out to a pizza restaurant with some of the participants afterwards (think it was on Baker St., but memory's getting a little foggy.)

Anyway, GOOD people. Interesting, artistic types, great conversation. I could even dig up some email addys for you.

Do it, friend, even if only for the social aspect.

I'll be waiting here for a full report. ;-)

Whitenoise said...

Great, then keep going. Someday it will click. Your alternative is misery, poverty then painful death. I've witnessed that first hand.

I went to a meeting in London once. It was in the basement of some old church somewhere around Siddons Lane. We went out to a pizza restaurant with some of the participants afterwards (think it was on Baker St., but memory's getting a little foggy.)

Anyway, GOOD people. Interesting, artistic types, great conversation. I could even dig up some email addys for you.

Do it, friend, even if only for the social aspect.

I'll be waiting here for a full report. ;-)

Whitenoise said...

(I don't know why that posted twice. I only pushed the button once. Must be a sign from above that my advice is twice-as-good. ;-) )

Gledwood said...

You're right you do get the most interesting ppl at NA. It's actually the only place you get a room full of junkies talking about what it's actually like being a junkie ... which is quite something.

Then again you do get the odd boring tosser talking about how overjoyed he is to be getting his fridge repaired. I can't stand people who do those boring 'I'm so happy to be domesticated' shares ...

Anonymous said...

You will become who you really are after your clean awhile.Remember don't kill yourself tell you have five years clean,or you will be killing a stranger.I have kicked dope numerous times,and have been clean for ten years.They wrote me off. Said I couldn't make it, but here I I'm.I'm the guy at the meetings when I'm done talking everybody else says, I hope I'm never that bad! Getting off the dope is like waking from being dead.I linked to you from
http://curmudgeonlyskeptical.blogspot.com/ I post as BOAZO but not often,Rodger is a curmudgeon!

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

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