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, September 04, 2007

Sundry Musical Tuesday

LONG LONG SLEEPYTIME YESTERDAY.. what was WRONG with me I went to bed at two p.m. had to get up at 4.30, back to bed at 6pm didn't get up till PAST MIDDAY what is WRONG with me...

... surely not just a couple of drinks early yesterday morn..??

Sly and the Family Stone's There's a Riot Going On was playing round and round and round all last night...

The story about that album is Sly Stone whiskey and cokeing (not the fizzy variety) in a Winebago mobile home that was set up as a recording studio... the musicologists will have you believe it drove through the desert in a cloud of dust, mastertapes clogged with priceless once-only jamming sessions trailing in its wake...

... the OTHER story goes that he had ONE mastertape for the entire album and rerecorded and erased so much that on CD especially you can hear the demagnetized wooliness... in fact it kind of gives some masterful quality so that the plucking of guitar strings and the sinking voices seem actually to have risen from the tape itself... you can hear this on Family Affair if you care to click. So I think the second story's true. Also bonus track 13, the single version of Runnin' Away (click to see the famously dreadful Pan's People perform in a central London shoe department) is suddenly crystal clear which implies a totally different tape from the rest of the sessions... musos don't half talk a lot of *******s.

My piano playing career is coming along in leaps and bounds. Not only have I made progress in Moonlight Sonata (glockenspiel setting: right hand only!) I even had a good stab (stab being the operative word) at Pachabel's Canon this morning in a brief waking "window" before sleep reclaimed me... Tomorrow I tackle Mozart's Clarinet Concerto in A Minor... sorry Major (what is the difference?). Wish me luck bc I don't even know the tune.

Do you like today's videos.
Elgar's Nimrod.
Nimrod is to me the most "English" of musical pieces. I imagine if they played that in a 2nd world war concentration camp it would have reduced grown men to tears... which just begs the question WHY did he name the piece after an ancient middle Eastern dictator - semimythical founder of Babylon - whose mother Semiramis (Sammu-Ramat), so the story goes, proclaimed herself Queen of Heaven?!? THAT's not very English IS it?

The second choice if You Had a Vineyard is from Sinead's Theology album... it took a long time to grow on me. What do you think?

Thirdly Bananarama's Venus. This was recently used on a TV ad for ladies' razors... it's also default tune, rather weirdly on my Yamaha synth... don't ask me why ask them...

Strangely as I watched the making of the video vid... a strong smell of bubblegum seemed to rise up and accost me from all around ...

Right I gotta go I might well be missing an appointment at the drugs clinic...


Byee


***

Videos str84wRdly listed:
Elgar's Enigma Variations: Nimrod (Chicago Symphony Orchestra)
Sinead O'Connor: If You Had A Vineyard
Bananarama: Venus
Bananarama: Venus (Making Of)

4 comments:

Liz Hinds said...

Playing a clarinet concerto on the piano will be really impressive, Gleds. Major or minor will dim into ... I think I've been taking some of your drugs ... I can't remember words ah got it! insignificance. But well done on the Moonlight Sonata.

You're right about nimrod - although watching the video i keep thinking the conductor's going to burst into, 'Oh we do love to be beside the seaside' at any moment.

Anonymous said...

haha! see!!

Anonymous said...

ah... but... i kind of failed to mention my version of moonlight sonata also "harmonizes" with ... as well as plays spot-on to the main piano-plunked CD tune...

... if u know what i mean ...

Gledwood said...

no liz NO! I just read back that comment... I'm not playing the concerto ON the clarinet... just clarinet SETTING on that yamaha synth

i've always thought clarinet sounds better than the sax... why didn't they make saxophones out of wood with just the funky trumpet end attached... if I were a sax player, that's what I'd ask for from the instrument manufacturers... i'd get one specially made! a one off amalgam instrument!

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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