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, May 09, 2007

Blasting the Past

I WAS REALLY DEFLATED ALL WEEKEND. The methadone miseries.

In a way I shouldn't really complain as the alternative to a methadone script would be a life of unimaginable chaos (not to mention insecurity) ...

Methadone holds you - whether you're on the verge of sickness but not quite there, or you're OK, or even slightly stoned. It holds you and does so persistently once you've achieved a level in your body. But the upshot of methadone very often is -- and I'll hardly be the first one to say this -- you live a flat existence of a life. Monochrome and uninspiring. As if someone's turned down the colour and brightness on your TV. Everything comes through. What can you complain about. No one specific thing is wrong. And you certainly don't deserve to complain. But it's there. All the time. This consistent, persistent, sunken feeling ...

My video blog has really cheered me. Firstly all the musical stuff there (apart from some of the foreign rave trailer type things -- but all the stuff by vocalists and bands) I trawled specifically for. I've departed upon a magickal mystery tour of my past musical loves. You will notice I value the female voice far above the male (can't explain why: always have done). And my tastes in a lot of things (especially as I've got older) are very middle of the road and I don't apologize for this. Two tunes have been whirling round my head.

Eurythmics' "Angel" which got into my subconscious a few years back when I fell asleep to a Eurythmics concert on telly, waking up from tangled dreams with this playing out. The video's pretty dreamlike, too, which is why I went for that over the live version ...

And secondly that Tammy Wynette + KLF track ... For a brief while in the early 90s the KLF were slapping out dancey pop tunes of the highest calibre and what they lacked in "credibility" they cannily made up for in "ironical" value amongst the critics of the day. If you listed the elements of a really catchy pop production on a piece of paper - the KLF's stuff would tick all boxes. They sold shedfuls of albums, then went quiet for a while, appearing only intermittently in bizarre media stunts done in the name of "The K Foundation". The last of these (and the money was real) was to withdraw the £1,000,000 cash they'd made out of their music out of their bank in £50 notes. This they piled in a great heap. Journalists of all persuasions and all manner of publications were invited to the mass burning. And that's exactly what they did. In the name of art they doused paraffin over this money, set fire to it and burnt the lot. £1,000,000 cash.

There's a proverb that in so many words says the following:

Making a million is one thing. Keeping hold of a million: now that really takes some doing.


About a year later one of the K-Foundation "bandmembers" appeared on TV looking sheepish and regretful. He admitted to questioning the wisdom of his actions on that day when his entire life savings went up deliberately in smoke ... all in the name of ... I don't know what. I wonder, does he?

You can see a brief history of their music and madness by clicking here ...

20 comments:

RUTH said...

I've been enjoying your video blog too. Now you are inspired by the past how about some more poetry?
Rx

Sweden said...

i read your blog about your childhood and very much enjoyed your story about looking for posion mushrooms, i myself am a bit obsessed with posionious plants and flowers, i started this thing called "kill yourself with"
thus far because i am lazy and got sidetracked with other things only wrote about hemlock, but yes the mushrooms will come as well.

i confiscated percs the other day but what bullshit there was only 2 pills, besides oxy is much better , cause with perc you get all that acetominiphem crap. totally useless. sorry my typos but im a bit frazzled right now.

Wendy said...

I am new here. Are you on methadone for pain or for other reasons? I know much about Methadone (never taken it) as my Aunt is on it for pain and as a child my Mother took it to get off heroine.

Wendy said...

Sorry, I just found my answer. I just needed to spend time and read the archives! Very good luck to you!

Wendy said...

hey, haven't we met before? Through Raymi's site?

Sweden said...

my x used to take methadone and shoot up oxycontin, god i loved that man....

Gledwood said...

Katarina: my friend Nutnut's sister's exhusband was a nightclub bouncer. One night the entire family plus a massive group of friends went out raving and stayed high into the next morning on the confiscated ecstasy he had accumulated over the weeks ...

Gledwood said...

(true story)

Wendy: met thru Raymi's site?

Sounds v plausible ...

Nicole said...

I am looking forward to the weekend, when I too, can enjoy your video blog! I simply have not had the time to give it a proper whirl. I get home, I do my blog, I'm tired and I spend all day on the computer at work so I'm less inspired to spend my evening on one as well. I'm also working hard to finish a cross-stitch wedding sampler that I'm creating for a friends' wedding on June 1st, so I'm stitching most evenings.

Apart from that I also love both songs you just mentioned! The Eurythmics one and the KLM one! I must download them for my iPod!

eisen said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

I stumbled on your blog via Katarina's (I am her ex-roomate that she talks about)and I must say that it is very intriguing. Your candidness took me by surprise as I would be hesitant to put it all out there balls first as you have done. I don't have a blog myself, however, I am a grade A internet lurker...must be the voyeur in me.

I wish you the best of luck with whateva it is you're taking on...

-Eileen dans le Canada

eisen said...

A warm cool(!) "Hallo" to you and the other friends!


Thank you for your message left for me. This is the first message I have received in my blog yet!

I tried to edit my profile. I am really cheerful of being familiar with you. Look forward to hearing from you more and more!
Thanks again

rowan said...

just type this into your browser!

http://www.
aqualandpetsplus.com/Bug,%20T24.jpg

rowan said...

try to see the good side of methadone. If you are busy and working a lot then you wont feel so depressed.. I promise!

rowan said...

How much are YOU on anyway??

Anonymous said...

100mg

Gledwood said...

BTW hi Eileen Canada ...

Eisen! At last I found it sorry I got confused by the names Eileen/Eisen... one above the other v similar... It's really easy to alter the profile just finding the way into that function I've always found hard (couldn't explain how to do it for you)...

You ought to post more stuff on your blog Eisen seriously!!

Gledwood said...

Katarina - did you hear... well I expect you wouldn't have... one of our posh English Duchesses has (with special dispensation from the Home Office, though I don't see why you should need permission to grow natural PLANTS) opened a (high security) poison garden. Much of the stuff is electrically cordened off. Or growing behind wires. So you can't take cuttings. Loads of belladonna, henbane, mandrake, deadly nightshade, digitalis (foxgloves) etc. I've no idea whether there's deathcaps, destroying angels and panthers there ... (don't know that she did fungus, also maybe it's hard to cultivate. Deathcaps are meant to grow around the roots of oak trees ....) This poison garden's been on TV loads of times and is extremely popular, making her aristocrattedness a fortune I expect to pay for the leaky stately roofs ... I'm with your fascination with the plants, totally ....

CG said...

I was interested in what you say about methadone and how it feels. Thanks for being so honest and frank...

rowan said...

how long have you been on it? And you obviously still use heroin on the side sometimes, right?

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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