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, October 19, 2007

The Migraine's Gone Away

THE MIGRAINE (yesterday) eventually went away. Got barely the tiniest hint of a headache, though I felt mighty nauseated for ages and ages and couldn't see straight for a long time. (I only managed to tap in yesterday's post bc I touch-type. Otherwise it would have been impossible!) If you have "classical" migraine and try e.g. to read a book, half the text will seem to disappear as the visual field is full of blind spots and zigzags. If you're wondering what on earth I'm talking about "migraine" without severe headache - as I said yesterday my dr. said I'm just lucky. Every time it has happened in the last 12 years or more I've escaped the headache. It's called "subclinical migraine".

I did a fair bit of writing once I felt better. I am on to the time I was at university in 1991/1992. The course I chose was called "comparative literature" - this gave me the widest possible choice of "modules" so after 2 terms of "prelims" were done with I jumped straight into "The World of (Icelandic) Sagas" and "Creative Writing: The Novel". My teacher for the latter was a lovely bubbly lady called Michele Roberts. Unlike the authors of those gerzillions of "how to write a 20 million copy bestseller" - type books you'll find in the "creative writing" sections of bookshops... and yet none of their works (except the how-to) are even in print! Let alone selling 20 million copies- this lady has been Booker shortlisted, been a Booker Prize judge... and is now a Professor of Creative Writing ... yes! Back at UEA where I was a student (many many MANY moons ago). She is a really good teacher, full of pizzazz and zest (and she loves knocking back the red wine if I recall correctly (!))

My robos have been hiding in lavatory tubes for the past three days. At one point I seriously thought they'd all escaped. Then I leaned over their domain and cooed "come out you great big fat gremlins!" and three pink noses, six beady eyes appear from the tubes. Spherical is most ambivalent to this point, as she doesn't really like me, and yet if something exciting seems to be going on with the other two (who do like me) she doesn't want to be missing out. Which results in lots of scurrying around in a confused kind of way.

The weather is gorgeous. At last! The trees are going gold, the air is cold. Autumn proper is here. At such very long last. (It means the magic mushrooms will be out in profusion after the next rains, except living in a metropolis I know nowhere to pick them... ho-hum anyway dem trippy fungoids are a thing of my past. Now I can FEEL the beautiful autumn I feel cleaner today than I have in a very long time. It's such a good feeling.

Right and on that note: I'm off!

15 comments:

CrystalChick said...

My sister used to get migraines that sent her to bed with meds...

Glad you are feeling better. :)

Santa Baby is sooo cool. That's a must have around holiday time. I'm not ready for the seasonal stuff just yet but went I start getting into the mood LOOKOUT!

Nicole said...

Hi Gled. Someone left a message for you via my blog. It was from an entry ages ago about a visitor from Myanmar. Here is the link, scroll down to the last two comments:

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?
blogID=13262912&postID=
4345636221300271202

You'll have to copy and paste that link together in the browser.

toby said...

Don't know how you found Princess Tanya's... but so glad you did! This place is amazing!!! I'm guessing you never sleep.

Sympathy for the migraine. I lose left lower quadrant of visual field a few hours before my head explodes. Occasionally, I lose more. Dealing blackjack is a nightmare because the "shoe" (containing cards) is on the left, which means I sometimes have to turn my whole head like a weird android croupier thingy with tunnel vision. (Unless you're a casino junkie, that might be over your head :)

Thanks for the link in your writers section! (Ooh, does that mean I'm a writer?!)

Vi said...

Plenty of fields with cow patties perfect for mushies near where I live! (Not that I've ever gone picking them.)

Hải Thạch said...

Thanks for your comment you left in my blog. We have no Vietnamese keybord, but we cope with complicated diacritics and ligatures by some softwares, like Unikey or Vietkey. For example, when you type "aa", Unikey will change these letter to "â"; when you type "v[x", you will receive the word "vỡ". It's not too difficult for us to remember these rule.
Do you want to learn Vietnamese?

Anonymous said...

I remember that story too about baby Jessica, where have all the years gone?

raffi said...

sorry about the migraine, glad to hear it's now gone. baby jessica... wow, what a distant memory

Janice Seagraves said...

Hi Glen,

I'm glad your migrain is better, I had those a few years ago when I was on the B-pill, and also found out that that particular one also caused brain tumors--uck.

I was looking for your self-portrait you mention on my blog, but couldn't find it in any of your blogs.

I guess you haven't posted it yet?

Janice~

Amazing Gracie said...

Well, this should make you feel better: I'm odder than you are!

Your personality type is dreamy, romantic, elegant, and expressive.
Only about 5% of all people have your personality, including 6% of all women and 4% of all men
You are Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, and Perceiving.

I've never heard of migraines with just the aura. It drove me nuts to be at work and have my vision bail on me right in the middle of typing a large report! I had hoped they would disappear when I hit a "certain age..." but to no avail. Drat!

I'm so glad you're having such a marvelous day, feeling clean and refreshed!!! Enjoy and peace.
~~~Blessings~~~

Akelamalu said...

Glad the migraine's gone honey. I have great hopes for your book.

The weather's gorgeous here too!

Jodi said...

Okay, how the heck do you leave comments on this blog? Half of the posts don't have "comments"! Arrgh.

I'm glad your migraine went away. Thanks for stopping by my blog.
Why am I not in your list of USA blogs?

J.

Gledwood said...

Thanks for the comments everyone. No migraine but very under the weather. Must be the miserable time of year!!

zennist said...

I suffer from migraines, too. You have my deepest sympathies, Gleds. But unsalted peanuts (later post)? Very odd!

Anonymous said...

Although official road signs throughout Wales are bilingual, the wording on money is English only (apart from the legend on Welsh pound coins: "pleidol wyf i'm wlad"). And although many shops employ bilingual signage, Welsh only very rarely appears on product packaging or instructions.

Anonymous said...

Ancient Chinese rack pic:

http://bp0.blogger.com/_xWkd0WxD_x8/RyC3thPcH-I/AAAAAAAAAuY/Y3eHTLpMSBA/s1600-h/Punishment+of+the+Rack.jpg

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