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, September 12, 2007

Itchy Blood Leg Pouring

A GYNORMOUS BABY ITCHY came trotting past in the street earlier. He was so furry and sweet I wanted to pick him up and squeeze him... no! I just remembered "he" is a "she". Yes! Baby Itchy is an all-scrabbling pink petalled-eared Big Baby GIRL! She will never father baby robbies for me. Whatever "bits" I presumed to have seen previously can only have been leftover umbilical cord.. or visions of my mind's own invention (what's new?). Itchy looks just like a sand-coloured pompom from a wooly hat crossed with a furry baby gremlin with miniaturized pink rose petals as ears. You can see the light through them. They are awfully cute.

Seeing as people said they DON'T mind my lurid drug tales, let me tell you about my lumpy blotch-ridden legs. I've an abscess on the left hand side. When the pus-bag's filled up the whole gruesome apparition's relatively numb. It even goes slightly itchy, probably from dead skin, rubbing against dead pus. I can push the pus from side to side like leg egg yolk. And I've resisted all temptations to slice open and squeeeeze as I don't want the staph (or whatever it's called) grossing all over the place.

And these veins that are going down so badly I'm reduced to pushing half of 1ml insulin syringes into these remaining broken threads and hoping that they'll bare up to the onslaught. The blood in the legs is famously slow. For example, standing still for long periods results in a pooling of blood in the lower legs. That's why the statuesque bearskinned soldier e.g. at Windsor Castle is apt to faint if he doesn't flex his toes frequently enough on guard duty. That's why when the WWII PoWs in the Burmese jungle got tropical ulcers they afflicted more often than not the legs. The blood simply does not flow quickly enough to rid them of all toxins. That's why the drug service advise against IV injecting in the legs, labelling it a "high risk" occupation. Of course, I'd already made a frequent habit of this activity by the time I received this advice. And I had precious few alternative "sites" to prong with my trusty needles by then anyhow...

One dusty morning as I woke up in the squat I used to reside in thankfully alone (what a luxury to be away from all other druggies!) and being as my arms, after years of hammering, appeared not to be playing ball that morning, I found a welcoming raised vein in my foot. So literally a minute after waking and without so much as stretching my legs I pushed the entire acidified brown "hit" into it and thought no better of it until a couple of minutes later rather than experiencing a pleasant dizzying sensation a nasty burning pain took to stabbing me in the ankle which on inspection had gone bright red with a gross archepelago of raised white bumps emanating all around. i tried running about to get things moving but it was too late. The entire hit had burned its way into the tissues of my ankle, effectively turning an IV "hit" into a "skin pop".

I nowadays have learnt to point my feet at the ceiling after such procedures, thereby "pouring" the drugs quite literally down my legs and closer to my heart. Once they do reach there, they are pumped quite vigorously to the brain through the far more effective arterial system. (Arteries have a pulse (and should never be injected into for they take blood away from the heart to the body's extremities) veins have no pulse and their blood is darker, deoxygenated.)

And there goes the anatomy lecture of the day. What relevance that really has to anything or anyone I've no idea but there you go.

I found a Sarah Vaughan CD in the Post Office bargain rack this afternoon and hence her two starring videos:
#2 Send in the Clowns
#3 Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Plus #1 by Amy Winehouse, who's always credited Sarah Vaughan a major influence on her vocal style.
#1 Love is a Losing Game (Mercury Awards 2007 live performance).

TV Licensing are after us as per usual. More of their presumptuously threatening epistles come pouring daily through our front door:

"Extra Enforcement Visits are underway... shceduled to... your address... any day now... you can still cancel your visit," - woo! - and, "if you do not need a TV Licence, please call blah;... a TV Licence currently costs £135.50 for colour and £45.50 for black and white.

Even if I do write and tell them (truthfully) that I don't need a Licence they STILL insist on visiting - so what's the point in writing?

11 comments:

Liz Hinds said...

It's very educational reading your blog, gleds. It's hard for me a non-drug-addict (almost) to comprehend how totally life-sapping a habit is. Saying you injected as soon as you woke, hardly knowing what you were doing, is very revealing. How desperate a situation. Keep battling, lovely boy.

In our circuit training class, our trainer always makes sure we slow down slowly or get up slowly to avoid all the blood staying in our feet and us making a rapid and unwished-for return to the floor.

Our church (where I work) used to have a TV licence but we don't use the tv any more for watching television, but try convincing the authorities of that. We keep sending back the slips saying so but they keep on asking.

Gledwood said...

TV Licensing are modern day fascists!

It's right what you say about feet! As I wrote I really didn't appreciate the feet/blood circulation issue until I did that stupid injection 1st thing that morning

i often forget how life-sapping the habit is... that's why i want to stop so life can come back!

rowan said...

Wow. yes, I never shot up... Michael, who did, I've always noticed, feels cold..like the circulation in his skin isnt all there. I learned recently that he shoots up his methadone intermuscularly.. I was disappointed to find this out. Agg.... I dont know why. Why should we be disappointed by other users?I am just so tired of hearing about the ways he doesnt take care of himself... wears his fake leg for ten hours running around and then is surprised when he has an infection.. how many times can I tell him to be disciplined, one minute, then two miutes, wear the leg, then increase, ect... And the same this morning when I spent hours working out these really delicately passages about Ruby and then they got deleted because i unplugged the computer instead of shutting it down.

i wrote a new short story though.. i hope you come leave comments..i'm really looking for feedback in this particular one. If you can, please tell people to stop by if you can..I want to re-write it but I'm not sure where to start.

hope you are well.. how do you know this baby?why does liz say it is desperate?

how often are you using methadone vs shooting up

rowan said...

link them here.. if you can..please.thank you
very much if you do.

http://nostoppingplace.blogspot.com/
2007/09/
translation-from-one-language-to.html

Anonymous said...

Hi there Gledwood, thanks for posting on my blog. I have come here as suggested by yourself and am a little bemused.

First of all I need to get my head around your blog(s)and try to decide what is going on. Not being mean just need to fathom out what is going on and what you are trying to say if anything.

I can't relate to your drugs habit although I have dabbled in a fashion and in comparison to your habit I would be like the hair on a large dogs back amongst all the other other hairs. In other words lost like a needle in a haystack.

I find you very open and I think honest but can you explain if you are proud or revel in your state or have I not read enough and you would like to get off the train and be an onlooker not a passenger.

Does this make sense, let me know, after all I have been on a few vodkas tonight and some beer and some malibu, I hope it's not addictive.

Bye for now

molson said...

TV license? We don't need no stinking TV license. And will someone please tell the BBC to stop sending shows to the States. We have enough crappy television here already. Now Telemundo. That can stay.

RUTH said...

You really need to get that abscess seen to Gleds; but I guess you know that. What will happen to your Hamsters if you end up with bloodpoisoning or worse!!!!
Rx

Anonymous said...

i switch blogspot, visit if u like.http://wasthatyourreflection.blogspot.com/

Gledwood said...

Liz hey I thought i had replied to this FAR earlier typical me not to...
saying you injected as soon as you woke, hardly knowing what you were doing is very revealing...
yep i spose it reveals just how much of an entrenched habit it is...

Ivy the baby is my smallest roborovski hamster... the only one of the three i bought that live together that is tame and will walk on my hand etc

Oh Liz I DID reply to you ... see i thought i had ... what a blur i live in

Gledwood said...

skinpopping methadone... surely that is very bad and likely to lead to abscess... all that sugary gloop!

unless it is proper methadone amps? there used to be ones specified 50mg methadone in 1ml water that you could get from private doctors they were very popular with longterm addicts ... the govt didn't like them v much though!!

Peter: anything can be addictive, even sugar in tea! I think lots of people have the same reaction to my blog as you though they just don't tell me!

Gledwood said...

Molson: what are these BBC progs that are invading you?? And what is Telemundo??

Ruth I would kill myself if the hamster got an abscess off me....
It is going down now so I don't think I will have to get antibiotics... I've been very lucky like that with abscesses

Anonymous: I had a look, can't remember if I left a comment though, BC I've never been there b4 I didn't know who you were talking about!

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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