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, July 10, 2007

Drug Clinic Blues...

JUST COME OUT OF THAT CLINIC. I was only 13 minutes late today. Had been procrastinating after the bad-trip carnival of a crowd I had to put up with last week (schizophrenic guy with saw protruding from backpack who believes his old next door neighbour is his brother ~ still after five years after this guy (another junkie) went to rehab and cleaned up his life by the seaside (most rehabs (and I've no idea why) in this country tend to be by the sea. Which explains why the English south coast is so rife with hard drugs. The market is there ~ made up originally of lapsed addicts who moved there via rehab ...

My feet are horrible so I've smothered them in this German or Austrian "FuBbalsam" ~ foot cream ~ containing "Alpenkraeuter" ~ Alpine herbs. It smells a bit of Tiger Balm or Vicks. A mentholated smell. I wonder if that kills off athelete's foot? Nutnut originally gave it to me (the cream, not the athelete's foot) and she knows about hand and foot stuff. So I'm suspecting it's more effective than the more "pharmaceutical" Glaxo-SmithKlein-Beecham version...

In the clinic I saw the nurse. Who was very kind. She wrote out a list of motivational things for me to do (like cleaning up, sending various letters off; little things...) I didn't want to tell her my ambitions. As I said here, ambitions are to be done. But she did say (and this is what I found depressing) that I'm in no state to go to rehab now because my methadone dose is too high and "we'd have to look at lowering that before they would consider you. Otherwise you wouldn't get the funding. And even if you did go, on a 2-week detox you'd be in torment" oh thanks a lot! Shouldn't shoot the messanger, I know. Actually I'm glad someone told me this stuff straight. She did say I ought to stop worrying so much about what I plan or want or think I ought to do in the future and concentrate more on today. OK I get her point, but I've always been one to set goals. If you never set goals you never score them!

And that's my thought for the day.

Or to put it in the words of an old (possibly Chinese (?)) proverb:

If you reach for the stars you might just catch the moon ...

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MY OFFICIAL BLOG RECOMMENDATION OF THE DAY:

Kim in Kenya http://kiminkenya.blogspot.com/


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WILL ANYONE ADMIT TO LIKING the following song?

T'pau's China in Your Hand ..?!? I won't. But if you clickonit you can see the music vid nonetheless ...

12 comments:

WAT said...

Well, I must say your French is quite good! You seem to have a better command of writing it than I do, yet I understood everything you wrote! Thanks again for visiting!

As for your bout with addiction, I am very proud of you for taking the right steps in order to clean yourself up. I don't know much about your ordeal, only to say that we all have our weaknesses and hardships in this life, the greatest thing for us is to never give up. I have battled for years with terrible anxiety and a dependence on a prescribed drug, but am slowly working on moving forward.

Baby steps my friend. Il est difficile, mais pas impossible.

rowan said...

sometimes i too feel very reluctant to tell everything to therapists, the very people you are supposed to feel wont betray you.
please stop by my latest entry, i am very upset about my boyfriend ruby.

Liz Hinds said...

On the other hand, if you aim for the moon, you can easily get a star a day.

Yes, have your ambition, but work at it star by star, day by day. You can do both I think.

raffi said...

i think the therapist is trying to say 'stay in the moment'. but, there lies a balance between the present and the actions we take on a daily basis to get where we want to go. all we can do is aim and reach for that moon, and put in the honest work to get there.

Chef Jules said...

Hello, Gled -- just touching base. You are going to transcend this, as you have the "right stuff", not the least of which is your intellect working for you.I always say that evolutionary change,sustained over time, and internalized, is far superior to evolutionary changes.

My Best,

Jules

rowan said...

PS> Gled, I just noted that from a PC the computer puts the sidebar at/near the bottom.

Audrey said...

Our ambitions and dreams will keep us looking in the right direction Gledwood, but its those many small steps that get us to where we eventually want to be.

Im a terrible procastinator at times..lol I too have to set myself daily goals at times to get me back on track, but I always include doing something good for me in there..

Hope theres something good for you on that list even if its just spoiling yourself with your favourite meal tommorrow or something like that

Crazed Nitwit said...

I personally like the up front approach. I think the nurse has a point. You do not need to give up on any goals just spend a bit of time on the here and now.

Whatever way you choose to be, I am here. I am glad we have met. You have opened my eyes to a totally new perspective. :)

The Discovering Alcoholic said...

Gled, this reminds me of a John Lee Hooker quote:

"I have heartaches, I have blues. No matter what you got, the blues is there. 'Cause that's all I know - the blues. And I can sing the blues so deep until you can have this room full of money and I can give you the blues."

Really no escaping the blues in addiction- its a damned if you do damned if you dont kind of thing.

I am still betting on you though- in recovery we only listen to the blues as a tool to remind us of the past.

Puss-in-Boots said...

You know, Gleds, I think you coped with your disappointment about not going into rehab yet pretty well. As you say, the nurse was upfront...after the initial bummer, you cope with it, don't you? Better than giving you false hope.

Reach for the moon...then reach beyond.

Crushed said...

China in Your hand is beautiful.
She was quite cute as well.

Wayward Son said...

Thanks for the nice words. This blue will blow over. I haven't been writing on my own blog because of it. I just hate writing about having a bad time of it.

Speaking of... I had to quit reading mid way through Chapter ten. Very take-you-there writing my friend—it took me back to a place I didn't want to go. It was the first trigger I have had in quite a while. No worries though, it was easily managed. I only mention it as a testament to your descriptive abilities. And I ran speed. Not even heroin! (I know it's back assward, but it IS meant as a compliment)

I think it's a good sign whenever you get a medical professional to tell you like it is. Especially when your looking at addiction treatment. It's evil for someone to be wasting one's time with misinformation when people trying to quit can least deal with that sort of thing. At least you can manage your expectations better and work on the issue holistically—so you can be where you need to be when you take the next step. Totally do-able Gleds. Totally.

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