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!

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Good Day Sunshine

IT WAS SUCH A GORGEOUS SUMMER DAY today :: I walked everywhere wishing I had a camera to capture its ever-gleaming sparkliness for my blog. A Royal blue sky, a transcendently gleaming sun. Everywhere they touched was pristine and resplendent. But underneath it all, London lurked, dirty, coiled, a tired old man of a city who's finally had his twice-yearly bath. The gold never quite met the muck. But how the rooftops gleamed!

Finally having got fed up of washing myself with a section of soap the size of a 50p (remember those pick-outable fruits of the forest blobs I mentioned) I got proactive and purchased an immaculate bar that was so noncoloured, nonperfumed, not even namestamped, that it seemed to glow surreally from within like a mogul's jewel. So on washing my "pits" I placed hand to face expecting at least some manner of soapy smell to come back: instead, tendrils of vulgarity assailed my nose - a kind of rancid onions compost heap mingling with untreated sewerage. O! That was just the whiff of my own body! No worries there...

Seriously though, all these opiates bung up your olfactory pathways. On detoxing to various degrees various times I was horrified how much I thought I'd been clean but in fact wasn't. And to think, in years gone by I was so obsessively clean I used guiltily to ask whether I could borrow people's shower just because it had been a sweaty day. I wish I had a shower now. The negative ions on a heavy day can actually get you a high from the spray. But don't even think of experiencing this if you're on hard drugs. These dull the mind to all but the most primarycoloured of experiences - hence two diametrical character traits of addicts: a seeking after hyperstimulation at the one extreme and a perceived need to be coccooned from all life's sensations, good and bad, at the other ...

***

STOP PRESS: I'LL BE GABBLING on the Gabbly at midnight tonight, London time, to anyone who wants to "meet" me ...

***

STOP PRESS AGAIN: I've just had Gabblly disaster! Paterfamilias I was there albeit a couple minutes late (but no more than that) due to eejut other people's wallclock grrr. (I got superstitious about logging on too early which with hindsight was a waste of superstition as some broadband gremlin's really been earning his keep tonight. I'm sorry i WAS here but it kept saying you had just "left" in grey (even though you weren't listed to the right ..(?)) then, when you did talk you didn't seem to get my reply ... this has never happened b4: did you have a bad connexion? We must try another time. Cannot let gremlins get the better of us. Don't give up ::we shall overcome!

3 comments:

RUTH said...

You really are one hell of a writer Gleds! Absolute poetry.
Rx

Anonymous said...

Okay, that was weird. First, I was typing stuff, and it was showing up, but I don't think you were there. Then I saw your note on TINA saying you were on. I went back and saw you there, just in time for my internet to go down. Like you said, we'll try again another time.

Anonymous said...

Yep definitley. I knew your connexion was going down bc it kept saying "Paterfamilias has left" in grey, when your name had never appeared in the righthand list of names ... o well. We shall overcome ...

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