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, July 04, 2007

Gangsta Wrap, Fortune Budgies

GANGSTA WRAP... yeah on the so-called "perfect present" ... I turned up late for my drug clinic appointment today as I wasn't at all in the mindset to go; but had to turn up; did turn up ~ and all the reasons I did not want to go confronted me there.

The people. The talk. The general seedy vibe.

This one woman. A grown thirty-something year-old woman was reagaling all who would listen (i.e. one acquaintance at a time at the top of her voice while the rest of the room earwigged on) about her latest arrest. And what particular kind of handcuffs were put on her. And how she was caged in. And her mobile phone kept ringing showing a picture of something she whispered about doing with her boyfriend and the police got a cheap thrill eleven times because that's how frequently he called back. And her listeners sympathized "I hate it when they do that" (ie twist your hands backwards in the cuffs or whatever it was they did) and as for the police "that was their loss" (how? When her private moment was repeatedly flashed back on screen was this their shame and not hers?)

But this is a drug clinic and hardly the place you'd come to hear sense of any kind. I have spent so very much time with fellow degenerates I sometimes forget just how far below ordinary people's standards and experience we've fallen, until, like today, I check myself and remind myself that I want to go up now and not down. One "client" kept returning with a hacksaw almost falling out of his weatherbeaten backpack... having forgotten various minor carpentry items along the way .... and presumably forgotten his antipsychotics as well.

Also I know this woman and she is quite middle-class. What some disparagingly call a "coconut" ~ ie brown on the outside but white on the inside. She was putting on this silly cockney accent that is just not her. How vulgar. (She never "talks black" though so maybe there's some truth in the "coconut" jibe after all. O maybe not I'm not at all comfortable on this topic, truth be told... so to continue ...

Then another friend of this woman's came in, so she told the tale again. And yet another. And she so told the tale outside. (Where a whole other background audience could hear of her wisecracking supposed answers to the custody seargeant and who said what and how great was her injustice and so on.) Seeing me smoking my rollie her third friend demanded a smoke off me and then had the temerity to look aghast when I told him no I didn't have a smoke for him. When a good half hour later he saw me lighting up on leaving he yelled out, "Got a smoke now, haven't you?!?" while his girfriend grabbed his arm and pulled him on. I said nothing. But I cannot comprehend the cheek of someone who reckons I practically owe him something :: when he wouldn't trouble to urinate on me if I were on fire ... But then again there's too many folks like that in this world ~ people who expect favours and indulgences they would never return ~ among the junkified as well as the straight.

Ho-hum... so that was my experience down the methadone clinic.

Also I discovered that someone I used to know quite well and hung about with and shared a bed with (but not in that way) has been spreading genital warts all over the local manor. Ukk!

THE OTHER THING I wanted to tell you was the fortune telling budgies I saw up the high road the other day. Gypsy lady with a perch upon which two extraordinarily tame (wing-clipped, of course) budgies went cheerily chirping and pecking at their seeds. When a paying customer came along she offered the tray of cards to the birds, the yellow one grabbed one at random with its beak and threw it on her lap. This she handed to the customer. His fortune was written thereupon.... (I'd have loved to have heard some such "fortunes" but the two customers I witnessed kept them to themselves. Maybe they were too embarrassing. Or near the knuckle. Or bland! This wasn't tarot cards or anything like it; the "fortunes" were individually written out on coloured folded paper-card in fortune-cookie style. For one pound and a performing budgie, I don't expect you can hope for the detailed tape recorded reading plus portfolio print-out some of the £80 an hour merchants promise. But hey! Those performing birds were fun!!

They were so entertaining, in fact, I wish I could've filmed and youtubed them. They'd get zillions of hits there.


***

HEY~~ BLAST FROM THE (1992(?)) PAST ~::~ ...
PS AM I ALONE in not considering "Erotica"
"erotic"?
Click here, see for yourself and add your critique.
We can make this Slag Off Madonna Day!

13 comments:

Liz Hinds said...

It sounds like an altogether seedier version of a piece Victoria Wood does about waiting at hospital outpatients. Perhaps you should try writing it up as a funny monologue, with different voices. It would be an interesting writing exercise and might make your next visit more entertaining too!

Gledwood said...

hmmmm seedier is the operative word!

Nicole said...

The clinic sounds horrid. Even more reason to clean up.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for stopping by my blog and wishing me a happy blogiversary. I wish you all the best.

Punkin

Rex Venom said...

Hmmmm!
Good stuff! I want to go back and read it all! And it is enlightening; in ways I didn’t know I wanted to see thru the blinds.
Rock on!

Anonymous said...

It's always very interesting to see your point of view and to follow your experiences. You have such an accute perception of life...

Puss-in-Boots said...

That woman is an attention seeker, isn't she...and that guy who demanded a smoke off you...one of the ones that think the world owes them.

I think Liz's idea is a good one, it could put a whole new slant on your next clinic visit...relatively speaking.

Take care.

The one said...

Hello Gledwood

The clinic sounds pretty bad. I assume that you are on methadone? I have zero knowledge are you replacing some of your heroin with this? Sounds like a good move. If you kick the stuff you can get away from the riff raff.

ttfn
sadgirl x

Music Video - Rach and Gemma said...

hiya oh heck clinic dnt sound 2 gd at all, hope u sort yaself out like, the blog we have done is for my Alevel media course work, quite interesting that you came accross it, our basic idea is that we had 2 analise a few music videos and do some research on music cultures to help give us our own ideas for our own music videos. thanks for the interest. Rach x

Deb said...

Sounds like a circus there gled...as nicole said - even more reason to get clean up and get out of that place.

I remember before my brother was resistance to any help and we'd have to encounter his "group" - he'd hit the lowest of the low and it was like a freak show. The day we got him out of a crack house was the worst...I blogged about it.

Madonna was riding on the concept of sex sells and I just thought she was slutty. She's never been one of my favorites...she's a little too high on herself for my liking.

Deb said...

*should read before WHEN my brother was resistance

Merle said...

Hi Gled ~~ Sounds like a crazy place
It would be great bot to have to go there if you could just beat this thing. Saying some prayers for you my friend. Take great care, Best wishes, Merle,

Welshcakes Limoncello said...

The guy who wanted a smoke is a bundle of joy, isn't he? I dunno, Gleds - I've met some pretty weird people myself, in all sorts of places where you wouldn't expect it [such as school staff rooms]. But you tell a great tale and well done for going there, even if you were late! Oh, if only you could have filmed the fortune budgies!

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