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!

Friday, September 14, 2007

Autobiographical Challenge

YESTERDAY I WENT OUT AND BOUGHT three new black pens for my memoir-scribbling. When I wrote that novel I mentioned - it was only about 200 pages (or would be if printed in volume form - ie about 80,000 words) and yet I used something like twenty Mitsubishi rollerballs just to write the first draft. In other words I spent £40 (EIGHTY DOLLARS U.S.) just in INK!!

I don't know what took me so long to get round to buying proper pens. I had been trying to write the thing out in free ones meant for betting slips. Even though I purloined five or ten at a time, these can only write out one page tops... so they're useless for writing a book unless you were absolutely desperate!

Someone left me a comment saying words to the effect of "if you're going to write a book, start with decent paper. I love lovely paper." I get your point: only I'd already invested in an A4 bound notebook. Bound is essential for me. Means NO sheet of manuscript can ever go missing! Many years ago when I was in the midnight blues of depression I insisted on writing anything "creative" in permanent certified lightfast/waterfast carbon ink on 100% acid free cartridge paper... so determined was I to leave the most permanent mark on the world that I possibly could. Now, though I still like the permanent black ink (waterfast is essential to me as I drink so much!) I just use any old paper. I'm writing for ME not the museums and it frightens me even the remote thought that I could ever become famous and my every shopping list/etc preserved. To me this is intellectual parasitism. My old university was full of it. In fact that's what lecturers/professors/whatever they call themselves of anything connected with languages and literature tend to be... they are basically "novelists manque" who, because they cannot or will not create their own works, obsess instead on every obscurest aspect of the life and works of novelists long dead. I found this faintly sickening.

I don't know why but I've found this memoir-writing so painfully slow! I use the word "memoirs" advisedly because this is NOT an autobiography. It IS just a memoir of how I became a drug addict. I've read a couple of other drugs memoirs but no-one has explained even to my satisfaction what it is that can draw an otherwise intelligent and promising young person into the grip of drug addiction. I believe this is a question the general public WANT answering and I believe I can answer it for them. At least I can explain how it happened to me.

And I don't really need to fear anyone else coming up with the same book faster - because junkies, so I've found, are famously bad at explaining their thoughts, feelings, conditions of life even to people in the same boat as them, let alone to the "straight" majority.

I remember asking around "what is rehab like". The answers I got were SO EXTREMELY unhelpful.

Instead of saying: A rehab is usually a large detached house with seven or eight bedrooms. Male accommodation is in a separate house usually from female or at least confined to separate floors. You spend about three weeks detoxing. They achieve this by daily reducing a dose of methadone for about ten days though there are detoxification programs that can take you off higher doeses over a month or so.

After three weeks the rehab proper begins. This is a bit like being at school with a timetable. The "subjects" have names like "life story", "consequences" ....

And blah blah blah.

I thought you were thrown into a hospital-like enclosure and forced to sweat it out cold turkey! Nobody gave me even the faintest picture of what, for example, a day at rehab was like. Junkies are useless at storytelling. They're only good at LYING.

Well I'd better go, stop babbling and write a bit more. It's difficult because I don't know what to include. Streamlining one's own life from a wealth of memories (and blurs where memories used to be (in my case!!)) is not easy. Not at ALL easy.

I'm trying to tell my early childhood but only as it relates to setting me up to take drugs later. Really I wish I had a publisher/editor/etc but there's no point indulging in such excuses not to get to work. I just have GOT to get this finished by Christmas otherwise it's slishy throat for me!!

Inertia! I feel as inert as an inertia reel seatbelt.... right I'm off!

***

Did no-one like my Mika vid yesterday? I thought it was rather funky. Or did it get lost under so much of Somewhere!?!

Here's today's:~
Mika: Grace Kelly
Dawn Penn: You Don't Love Me (No No NO!!) This was covered by a singer called Rhianna. Who I've heard of, but she's not really known this side of the "Pond"...
Mika: Relax Take it Easy

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is my comment for amis95.blogspot when they let me send it

¡Buos días a usted ms Lopez! Oí todos sobre usted en la demostración de la radio de la "perspectiva" del BBC que su blog es fascinador... sin embargo yo debe decirle que sepa de un más viejo blogger. ¡Su nombre es verde oliva, ella es de Australia y ella es 107 años de viejo! ¡Si usted quisiera visitar su blog, la dirección es el practicar surf feliz de http://www.allaboutolive.com.au...! El Oh y mi blog es http://gledwood2.blogspot.com que usted puede leer todos sobre mi apego de la heroína y mis hámsteres. Porciones del cuidado de la toma de amor, Gledwood

jim dandy said...

I'm lovin the Mika. As I said earlier, you prompted me to buy the CD. I find it fresh and bouncy. Energetic and catchy. Not a big fan of pop music, this is my secret fix.

Anonymous said...

Hey did you know Mika was half-Lebanese half-American?!?

Marisolirais said...

I'm returning the visit!!
1- I love Mika also!!!
2- The red structure is a painting from Remedios Varo, a very good surrealist painter.

Gledwood said...

oh no WONDER I was wondering who would BUILD something like that?

i would have a staircase like that in my ideal home

wouldn't you??

Akelamalu said...

I'm more interested in your writing Gleds than Mika (who's Mika?).

You write so eloquently I find it so hard to believe that you have wasted such a talent by becoming hooked on drugs. I want so much for you to come off them and be what you were obviously mean to be - a writer!

Anonymous said...

This is how my comment to Ms Lopez http://amis95.blogspot.com translated out...

Buos days to you ms Lopez! I heard all on you in the demonstration of the radio of the "perspective" of the BBC that his blog is fascinador... nevertheless I must say to him that it knows of older blogger. Its name is green olive, it is of Australia and it is 107 years as an older person! If you wanted to visit his blog, the direction is happy to practice surf of http://www.allaboutolive.com.au...! The Oh and my blog is http://gledwood2.blogspot.com that you can read all on my attachment of the heroin and my hámsteres. Portions of the care of the love taking, Gledwood

Puss-in-Boots said...

I don't know how you feel about it, Gleds, but I do all my writings on the 'puter. Probably because I can type much faster than I write and I can also read the typed word much easier than I can my written words. In other words, my handwriting sucks.

But...there you go, each to his own. I'm sure your memoir writing will all fall into place and I, for one, would be very interested in reading what you have to say.

Take care and don't drink too much (I think I already have tonight...sigh).

Calista*Was*Here said...

Addiction is a terrible thing.
Can I talk you out of it?

With love!

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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