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, August 07, 2007

CD Player!

YES! I AM SO EXCITED!! WEEEE-HEEE! YES! I BOUGHT A CD PLAYER FOR £11.99 FROM ARGOS. Wow! So now I can listen to Kate Bush: The Whole Story, Beauty and the Beast (Original London Cast Recording), Judy Garland: Best of and Gnat King Coal: Best Of.

I cannot actually remember where Beauty and the Beast came from. I think it was lying on the street or something where I picked it up. Having tried to play it, the entire thing comes out so quiet ... maybe the disc is faded?

Judy Garland and Gnat King Coal I bought for £1.99 each in anticipation of buying a CD player about two years ago ...

Kate Bush: an old junkie friend gave it to me. I quite like Kate Bush although in some of her younger recordings she does sound like a witch ...

Then I decided to buy a CD. Which entailed queueing up at the post office for an inordinately longlongLONG time ... Surely at least 20 minutes. Usually I am heartened as I progress down the line and 20 or so people more miserable-looking than myself pile in behind me. Not today. Although I was amused to see an 80 year old woman, who looked like a retired prostitute complete with blonde Dolly Parton wig and a lower-class version of The Queen's clothing take up flirting with two big black men about fifteen places behind me (the line curled round so they were only standing a couple of feet away - hence I heard everything). She stared pointedly at the biggest of these men's crotch and repeatedly looked him up and down before launching into a rant: "Be careful because they'll steal your money you know!" "Who?" said one of the men, probably thinking, as I was, that she meant the kind of robbers who rolled Valium Marilyn in the self-same place only two weeks ago. But no! She was talking about the post office staff... At this moment I switched off and wished I had something to bang my head into... only to be perked up by the arrival of an attitude-ridden young black single mother who fractiously said "Excuse me!" to anyone who dared come within a two-foot radius. She was pushing a young boy who looked to me to be at least 14 years old in a toddler's push chair! Seriously! Some people do coddle their kids...

Thank you everyone for proving you are more crackers than me.

Bloody personality tests. I did do one that seemed especially interesting (and potentially enlightening) two weeks ago... only upon finishing and giving my email address I was informed I must send $20 to some paypal site thing ... oh no. So my mystery character-flattering 50 page report must bite the dust now ... (I mean, let's be honest. No-one does these tests except to hear back self-validating gobbledygookridden personal flattery: do they? This one did ask some quite pertinent questions about how you ran with an idea and developed a project (even if you don't work in the kind of job where you have heavy responsibility the questions would still tease the same info out of you. Shame they were so stingy. And I never got the complimentary "free" email report promised ...

O yeah I got my CD it was a 1970s extravaganza of Barbra Streisand easy listening! Wahey!! Think what you like about my dodgy taste but you don't have to listen to it ... (or Beauty and the Beast Original London Cast Recording ...!) Barbra Streisand has certain connotations with me of pre-drug-using days (and remember I said I was buying these things to help come off drugs? ... THAT is the connexion, if you really want to know. So there.

DOES EVERYBODY LIKE my new fixture of Tune of the Day? I.e. you can clickonit and have shiny happy sounds drifting throughout my blog.

Seeing as I was yesterday informed I'm an obsessional paranoid schizophrenic I've chosen as Tune of the Day Rockwell's Somebody's Watching Me ... (Vocal by Michael Jackson) ...

Also I've taken to posting up an ENTERTAINMENT CLIP of the day ... which will be under the tune ... The one I'm thinking of putting up today has been in my Animal Crackers Blog for a couple of days ... but I don't think many people bothered with it. It is called Black and White. Not much happens: but it's very cute to watch ...

7 comments:

Edyta said...

I LOVED the video & surelyyy congrats on the player!
The player is an awesome thingie! u can listen to it wherever, whenever. everrrrr!
haha.
good to hear positive news from u.

Sharon Brumfield said...

Thinking of you today.

Alexys Fairfield said...

Hi Gleds,
I loooove Argos! Enjoy your CD's.
Be well

tanukiSs said...

i just wanna say hello ... i watch your blog ... enjoy your music, see ya

CTK said...

Hey there Gled!

I haven't stopped by in quite awhile, my sincerest apologies. Let me give you an across-the-pond thumbs-up on Kate Bush. Once upon a time I had a thing for her...about as inexplicable as many others I've had, perhaps, but it was there nonetheless.

Hope this message finds you in good spirits.

CTK

Lee said...

I much prefer the little bunny to Michael Jackson whom I think is a bunny! ;)

Great price on your CD player...good on you!

Amazon have some really great deals on CDs whenever you're going on a search for them.

Welshcakes Limoncello said...

Hi, Gleds. Yes, I like your time and day thingie. Love the take of the post office! You should try the post office here - it took me an hour to pay a bill yesterday!

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