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, June 17, 2007

Amsterdam/Donner und Blitzen! ... & Relationship Wisdom ...

I HAD A VERY VIVID DREAM that I was living in Amsterdam and learning what I called (in the dream) my "Gibberish" (Dutch) with gusto so I could "do" the supermarket like a local ...

Ever since I was in Norwich, Norfolk, literally across the water and similarly flat with bikes everywhere and countryside full of windmills) I've had the yen to escape to Holland. Also as a child I spent a week there on family holiday. We saw plenty of the Dutch countryside. Dykes and ditches. So I have an accurate view, from experience, of what Holland is about. To me it's like England with a magic wand waved over it. I've always wanted to escape there.

Years studying German - a language so similar it is practically a dialect - mean Dutch is far from "gibberish" to me. I should still have coursebooks and tapes (somewhere) from my first "wanna be in Amsterdam" days. And I heartily disagreed with (and still do) everyone who proclaims the commonly held view that there's no point bothering with the language because "they all speak English" ...

My answer is: the newspaper and TV don't translate themselves, do they? And people only speak English when they're addressing you directly. Which means you'll get left out all the time with people talking over your head. Which I hate. But native English speakers are so used to abroad, I don't think many of them even notice it. My plan was to pretend to be Swedish with a poor command of English. That way they would have to speak to me in Dutch ...

Anyway all that was back in the days of dark depression. I was due to go to Berlin for a year as part of my uni course. Berlin! One city I've always wanted to go more than anywhere except for perhaps New York City (and Amsterdam, but Amsterdam kind of came along later ...) But I was in no fit state to go there. So why should Holland be any different?

Anyway, that was my dream. I somehow managed to sleep from about 9 at night till midday today. 15 hours. Now that is sleep!

***

IT'S WARM AND MUGGY today. Yesterday we had thunderstorms. Which I got stuck in. I had that strange feeling you get when lightning's in the air (if you are about to get struck, so I hear, you really feel it - your hair literally does stand on end). Monsoon-style rain beat the pavements and when the lightning came it was only a second away from us - a real tree-feller of a strike.

Unfortunately we don't get American or African-style storms where the lightning lights up the entire horizon like trees. Ours comes more in horror-film craggy forks.

Once, not long ago, a tree got struck about two roads from me. The thunder literally tore the air open and the lightning at the same time flickered in a bright streak through my closed eyelids and through closed curtains. The air, split in two, took ages to rumblingly roll back together amid grand electrical buzzings.

The best thunderstorm of my life I remember from Hatfield. We were in a modern townhouse with panoramic views of town from our first-floor livingroom. My Mum had left us by this time and I stayed up with my Dad watching this storm all night. One particular strike seemed to light up the entire sky in three sections then came down like the biggest stack of bricks you could ever imagine. Another one I actually saw hit the lightning conductor on an office block across the way. The entire horizon was flickering as if someone upstairs was trying to turn on a failed fluorescent tube.

Then it started hailing in golfball-sized lumps. The hail was even harder than my dumplings ... just kidding....

But it was one hell of a performance by the "Powers that Be" ...

***

Blog of the Day Awards say I have won! Wow!!

***

A WOMAN WILL TRY AND DOMINATE A MAN. She will try and get away with it. But realy, inside herself, she wants to be dominated. She wants the man to take her. If he does lean on her, everything goes slightly off key, like a bad chord. She hopes it will pass, that the guy will come through. When he doesn't she begins to needle him. If nothing happens she goes on needling - until he stops listening. At that moment she becomes bitter and he goes deaf. Finally there is no more dialogue, they have no rapport.

- Elizabeth Taylor

11 comments:

Audrey said...

Congratulations Gledwood a well deserved award..Its years since I last saw lightning, but your post brought back memories of when I was a child growing up in the country, no artificial lighting so the storms were very impressive in the dark skies.As you say one hell of a performance by the powers that be..something I love to watch

Enjoy your award Gledwood :)

Anonymous said...

Gratz on the award dude, that's pretty neat :-)

Lightning? We had a recordbreaking amount of lightning here last friday or the one before with 80000 registered charges of which 10% (8000) hit the ground. This was in ONE day...

Neo said...

Ciao amico mio!
Scusa se sono scomparsa, sono stata nel deserto (e sono ancora lì)

Mi farò sentire presto,
Un bacio!

Puss-in-Boots said...

Congratulations on your win, Gleds. I'm not surprised, you have a great blog.

I love thunderstorms and we get some beauties here in Australia. The sound and light show from Above is very entertaining, hellishly scary to some. Not surprising really, because there is often a lot of destruction... floods, cars damaged with huge hailstones, roofs off, trees uprooted and people inconvenienced in general.

My grandson goes to live in Holland in August. His fiancee lives there and they'll be living 45 mins out of Amsterdam. Gotta save up for a wedding outfit now, plus the airfare.

Have a good day and once again, you deserve to win.

Wayward Son said...

I remember summer nights in late August at the beach in Northern Florida (The Gulf of Mexico) where the sky would light like a disco with heat lightening. Not a drop of rain in sight, though the humidity was so thick one could cut it with a knife.

Deb said...

I'm terrified of lightning. The stuff that lights up the sky is sheet lightning and it scares me the most, although it doesn't pose a threat to us here on the ground. It just makes you feel very small and powerless.

I remember a few years back, we were sitting around in the living room when lightning struck the transformer outside...it honestly sounded like a bomb and we all hit the ground, terrified.

The one said...

Hi Gledwood

Well done for winning the Blog award! Yeh!

We had a terrifying storm the other day. It was horrendous. I felt very afraid. Its grey dark and rainy today just the right weather for depression or singing along to the Smiths.

cheerio
sadgirl x

Anonymous said...

Congrats Gled!

Elizabeth Taylor is an idiot. She was an extraordinarily beautiful woman, but an idiot when it came to men.

My dad got hit by lightening twice. Isn't that bizarre? Didn't die either time.

German. Not a particularly mellifluous language. I took French and Hebrew in college. Yes, they've been infinitely useful, since I live near the Mexican border, not Israel or France.

Anonymous said...

thanks everyone...

that elizabeth taylor biog that i trawled the quote out of i found in our local public library

it's by j randy taraborelli - a noted biographer by now

the cover showed ridiculously over-tinted purple eyes (her eyes are "violet" I've never heard such poppycock in my life they are plain old BLUE

the book is obviously the work of a fan
ie no bloated modern pixx
and v little critical reprimanding of her life or films

interestingly it does say she is worth about $600 million
with approx $100 million in bank a/cs in cash
and another
$240 million in unliquidated shares
she earns approx $12 million p.a. from her perfume business

the rest of the money is tied up in properties (she has 6 "residences" (the author really gets into this B.S. language as well) including a chelsea townhouse, gstaad challet (not like the ones i've stayed in in butlins i bet) & so on & so on ...

elizabeth taylor i'm bored of already

Gledwood said...

Audrey: I know isn't it fantastic

Vincent: how do you KNOW these stats?

Istanbul: gracias/ciao/etc (!!)

Puss:do you get the "tree lightning" I was talking about?

Wayward: wow! I'd love to see that

Debs: sheet lightning we get a lotta. but our fork lightning's not as impressive probably as the Canadian lightning. like I said, no sky-filling "trees" just gnarled old horror-film "forks" (but the sound's way more impressive than that awful cat sound-effect they put in horrour-films) ...

Sadgirl: doesn't thunder and lightning and deluge ever make you feel "high"? Even just a little bit? The ions go nuts at times like this. Far as I'm aware "negative" ions make us feel positive (ie uplifted). Dunno what if anything "positive" ions do ..?...

Anonymous said...

If you like thunderstorms, then the Southwestern US is where you need to be (during our "monsoon season" - July-September). We have some truly amazing shows!

Thanks for stopping by my blog. And congratulations on your awards. I like your writing!

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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