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!

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Warm Wind Summer Cold

I LOGGED ON THE COMPUTER AROUND SIX O'CLOCK TONIGHT and was still online three hours later. There are so many people I'm endeavouring to catch up with. People I used to talk to but haven't been in touch with for quite a while ... Sometimes, btw, I would dearly love to say hello but fall foul of the dreaded popups blocker. This drives me crazy and there seems to be no way round it. In those cases all I can do is wait till the same time tomorrow.

The warm weather is coming and making me sweat. Mother Hubbard said to me, "I bet you loved the hot weather until you got a habit". Yes, Mother H, bang on. Before I was idiot enough to make myself opiate-dependent I simply did not sweat heavily at all (unless I was ill).

Nutnut, for all her numerous madnesses could be very perceptive concerning my habit. I remember one day, during a time that I was meant to be clean but was (of course) secretly using I returned home to her house sweating. It was midwinter. She took one look at me and knew. I remember one occasion the temperature was minus one or colder. A harsh wind was blowing. Having risen early (fortunately with money in my pocket) I'd had to brave a three mile walk to the only dealer who was on at 9am. This can be the worst time to score as the nighttime people have either gone to bed or simply flaked out too knackered to answer their phone -- while the daytime crew haven't finished taking their children to school, driven to run errands... etc (drug dealers are highly domesticated. They simply mix up the sale of heroin and crack into this domesticity ...) Also, at 9am, many of these people simply have not bothered to get out of bed at all. So I brace myself for this long walk, fairly well but not ridiculously wrapped up and go from feeling cold to increasingly close and warm and sweating under my coat. Perspiration runs in rivulets down the middle of my back. And then I turn the corner, totally exposed to it and the icy wind blasts me full on in all my copious sweat... I screamed in junkie agony.

I'm not in agony today. I thought I was coming down with hayfever... but it was a very mild common cold. This has stayed with me and now I'm feeling run-down and ill. Which is unusual for me, because I tend to think of a common cold as a bodily purge, driving out accumulated toxins. There is, apparently, some scientific fact behind this. The virus boosts your interferon levels. Interferon fights hepatitis C, among other things. It also protects against cancer. But while my interferon levels may have been enhanced I feel rather un-boosted in nearly all respects ...

I'm sure there was something else to say but it escapes me. Of course, the minute I log out, it shall return!

Re my PPS of yesterday night I found out:
A spinal block is not the same as an epidural. But it is, apparently, a procedure used as an alternative and more popular in America than here. Anyone looking for a really good labour pains site (including spinal blocks, etc), click here.

9 comments:

Jason said...

I too am sick. Get well

country mouse said...

Hey Gledwood! I don't know the protocol--I hope it's okay that I'm responding to you here : )

Actually--I have visited your blog before (must have linked through Whitenoise.) You are unflinchingly revealing. I admire that. (Forgive me if that's a seriously bourgeois thing to say : )

Oh--and here's why I refer to myself as CountryMouse

Thanks for visiting : )

Micas said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Micas said...

Interesting blog you have here. I like it and I'll be back.

Gledwood said...

Get well too, J.

I always assume the protocol is to reply to comments underneath them, only if it's important or urgent or you have other cause to get in touch, highlight+copy the comment and leave it on theirs; that's what I always do. And no, you don't sound bourgeois, K!

Gledwood said...

CM: Duh! That is so typical of me. Was I roaring drunk last night when I left the comment? You know the word "Mouse" pricks up my ears bc I have had pet hammies, mice, furry rodents of all descriptions for years and love them to bits ....

Gledwood said...

AND BY THE WAY::--!!

Who deleted a comment??!? I shouldn't ask that; I'm sure it will only make the "culprit" feel more paranoid. I get paranoid leaving comments sometimes. "Cold print" can be mercilessly unrevealing when you long to breathe your own speaking voice into your words ...

& FINALLY, IN RESPONSE TO "M": Thanks you. And I shall do vice-versa ...

LiPi said...

xDD jaja, good blog. I don't know where to answer you what you asked in a comment in my blog (http://lipiz.blogspot.com), so here you have:

#################
I'm writing in a variant of Catalan (Catalunya, spain),Ciutadellenc. It's a dialect from Ciutadella de Menorca, a balear island of spain. In the same island there are about three or four slightly different dialects, and the island has only 45Km long!. The ours is the hardest to understand jeje. Check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minorca and you will see where is it exactly. I think it would like you jejeje.

I will visit your blog, don't worry!! ;)

thanks for commenting!
###########

Gledwood said...

Thanks for answering, L. I looked at what you'd written. I could sort of semi-understand it (bc I supposedly speak French). And yet it was not French. And certainly was not Spanish. How odd! I'd heard about a mysterious "tongue" spoken in the Balearics, but never knew what it was called so thanxx for enlightening me!

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