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!

Monday, May 21, 2007

Sound Sleep

AT LAST OUR FRONT DOOR IS FIXED! (Let's see how long it lasts this time.)

GOOD SLEEP is with me at last. My rhythms and patterns finally have consolidated into something resembling "normal". I can go to bed at 2am and sleep through till 8 or 9. Which is amazing for me. Hidden under my blankets, undisturbed. Blissful calm. Fantastic! Absolutely amazing.

Have a click on my today's links: the birds blog "I Need Orange" is really good. As were yesterday's ugly faces. And this, I Googled for Sickgirl, who has been off work with a horrifically bad arm. It's a dictation package for people who cannot (or just don't want to) type. Get well soon, Sickgirl.

Found this at mgnet's blog:

JOKE:

Funeral Procession

A woman was leaving a convenience store with her morning coffee when she noticed a most unusual funeral procession approaching the nearby cemetery. A long black hearse was followed by a second long black hearse about 50 feet behind the first one. Behind the second hearse was a solitary woman walking a pitbull on a leash. Behind her, a short distance back, were about 200 women walking single file.

The woman couldn't stand her curiosity. She respectfully approached the woman walking the dog and said, "I am so sorry for your loss, and I know now is a bad time to disturb you, but I've never seen a funeral like this.

Whose funeral is it?"

"My husband's."

"What happened to him?"

The woman replied, "My dog attacked and savaged him to death."

She inquired further, "Well, who is in the second hearse?"

The woman answered, "My mother-in-law. She was trying to help my husband when the dog turned and tore her to shreds."

A poignant and thoughtful moment of silence passed between the two women.

"Can I borrow the dog?"

"Get in line."


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Click here (INeedOrange) for some fantastic bird photos!

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Does anyone know, or know where I can find out, the average purity levels of British "street" heroin? It's not like I've not looked at least five times on Google and others and come only to the hackneyed old 1980s/early 90s figure of 40% diamorphine which I find somehow hard to credit. Another figure I came across more recently said 35% which still sounds too high. My own calculations - using the relative strength of 30mg diamorphine ampules (knew someone who'd managed to keep a 1970s heroin script until about three years ago when he finally pushed the clinic far enough to cut him off ...) and how much methadone can hold you relative to how much "gear" you're used to taking daily. These came out at 20-25% pure. Which I find much easier to believe. Bearing in mind that a gram can be purchased for £30-£40. The purity must surely be pretty low. And the strengh versus effect of all opiates (once you get any kind of tolerance and habituation) is pretty much relative. Meaning if you take 1g a day your body will "need" that 1g a day. If you take half that, that again is your habit. But half a gram or a gram, to the addict, will feel essentially the same. Because the body accepts whatever you give as its daily opiate "food"... I hope yous all understand this because I don't see how I can explain any better ...

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SUICIDE-SURVIVORS: this blog's written for you - http://sosblog53.blogspot.com/

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Dictation packages at Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Talk-Type-2-Deluxe-PC/dp/B000EVY2A4

http://gledwoodvideo.blogspot.com/2007/05/panda-sneeze-3.html

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STOP PRESS! I'VE FOUND SOME FANTASTIC NEW PANDA CLIPS FOR MY "RANDOM" BLOG

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HORNET ALERT! GIANT ASIAN HORNETS COLONIZE FRANCE: BRITAIN IS NEXT!
Enormous Asian vespa velutina hornets (click for picture) are turning France into a toxic aerodrome.
Like the monster Japanese horror-hornet, these blighters adore attacking honeybees. The insect plague is poised to hit Britain in relentless air-raids over the coming months ... Click here to read the full horrifying news!

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FuzzyVision - best NYC pictures

How can dereliction look so glamorous?

See how graffitti suits the tip (I'm not a giant fan)

They found their visual niche. Same the world over.

Echoing sunlight

Life is a cabaret, old chum

After the party ... colourfall

The root of all potatoes


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Come to Artmakers for fantastic pictures ...

12 comments:

Gledwood said...

"Desperate-to-be-cool urbanites. Same the world over."

I'm wondering, does this subtitle suit the Goths more than "they found their visual niche: same the world over" -...??

Nicole said...

Desperate-to-be-pale-and-never-eat-a-piece-of-fruit.

Gledwood said...

Right on!!

Did you see the photo I was talking about? Five up from this comments box (unless I add more stuff) but it's one of FuzzyVision's pictures ...

Wayward Son said...

That's not dereliction. It's not even urban squalor. It's the American Upper Middle Classes. have you priced living in New York lately?

WS

Gledwood said...

haha!

New York's ALMOST as expensive as London, so I hear...

(Madonna was moaning on and on about the price of upmarket real estate here ...)

Wayward Son said...

Hiya. Google Analytics is pretty cool. My favorite report is this map that shows allthe cities of the world where people are hitting up your blog from. It's free. You just need to sign up and paste the tracking code in your blog html. If you already have a Google account, it's all the easier to do. http://www.google.com/analytics/

Edyta said...

wooooohooo!
Now thats loads of links & info. btw, i've watched this grusome poetic kinda video. hmmmzzz... creeped me out, huh? :D but i love such things. i like contemporary art. not many ppl do, i guess.
gonna check the suiciders-survivors site. very curious.
wish me luck luck luck tomorrow! MY 2ND EXAM: LITHUANIAN. hell difficult. may i survive this awfully fatal day. lol.

Gledwood said...

Yeah but I bet you do a hell of a lot better in Lithuanian than I WOULD - haha!! Don't worry about it man. Seriously.

The suicide survivors site (maybe I should have explained) is for the families of people who have committed suicide and gone. It is a coping resource really for people in some awful situations ...

Anonymous said...

oh, regarding your question, here is a bit more about me

http://www.blogger.com/profile/09398863015381853838

carmen4d said...

hello!
I don't see your blog, because is in English and I understand little english, but when I will have a traslator I'll write about you write here.
Thanks for go my blog.

Gledwood said...

¡Hola!
¡Usted puede leer mi blog en español!
Encuentre simplemente la muestra de Babelfish y chasque la bandera española debajo.
¡Esto traducirá mi blog entero inmediatamente a español!
Recuerdos - Gledwood

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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