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, October 23, 2007

Polish Mushroom Soup

TWO "COMMUNITY SUPPORT OFFICERS" (do clickonit for a hilariously unrepresentative image) are harrassing the local cashpoint beggar. I pinged in here to avoid them...

For 35p just now I purchased "Knorr Goracy Kubek Zupa Pieczarkova z grzankami... Bez konserwantow..." As manufactured by "Unilever Polska S.A. ul. Domaniewska 41, 02-672 Warszawa" It looks pretty tasty compared to the CUCUMBER flavour (again Polish) cup-a-soup it was next to...

I will let you know how I get on with it.

There were even Polish people swearing chattering away "tak tak tak! Proszę!" on the bus and swearing "kórwa! kórwa!" when it refused to stop at the stop that says in English "bus stop closed" all over it. We now have a million Poles in this country. They are our newest immigrant invasion, and in my opinion the most inoffensive. (Ooo! Am I racist for implying immigrants can be offensive?!? Well a goodly lot of them DO take the flagrant pee-pee out of our system and somehow end up with free houses etc that the English people can't get hold of. So...)

Anyway if it weren't for Central European immigrants (as they like to be called) we wouldn't have a decent bakers for miles around. The Hungarian bakery on the high road sells NORMAL SHAPED sliceable bread covered in seeds of various types... before they came along the ONLY bread you could get round here (except for at the hypermarket) were flatbreads ("pides") of various Turkish types...

Well I'm off to get sundried tomato bread now I've remembered ... something to go with Goracy Kubek Pieczarkowa!

***

And of course my mind strays... to "Polish Heroin", the so-called "Kompot" (kompot is a dessert made of stewed apple or other fruit puree - like pie-filling), but the Polish "heroin kompot" was a product extracted from poppy straw and "uniquely dangerous to inject" in the Soviet days when addicts in the Eastern Bloc must have lived in utter outer darkness...

Here are the links
1. Wikipedia Polish "heroin" Kompot
2. Danish Drug Users' Union info Polish Kompot Heroin...


***

Videos
And I advise you watch them in this oder:
1. Cancer Research Ad: Fields of Gold
2. Eva Cassidy - Fields of Gold
3. X-factor's Penelope Somewhere Over the Rainbow + Fields of Gold audition...

***

AND LAST AND CERTAINLY NOT LEAST, Olive, the Aussie lady, who takes the prizewinning crown as World's Oldest Blogger is 108 years old!

Click for her birthday message to the world... (plus a link to her blog...)

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News feature of the day:
"Boy, 3, comes unstuck playing Harry Potter with road cone" ...

***

Clickhere for beautiful cheap Belgian farmhouses priced in Euros (only E160,000 each!! that's barely $200,000 for a detached HOUSE!!)

18 comments:

Vi said...

Geez, that's a mouthful! Just a warning though, Knorr products are full of MSG. Enjoy the bread! We only have english bakeries in our town.

Merle said...

Hi Gleds ~~ Sorry you had a few crook days and hope you are doing well now, no more coughing and spluttering. And
I hope you have been doing some writing. Thanks for your comments.
Glad you enjoyed the jokes. I cannot
even imagine being 108 years old and don't think I want to be, unless I am as bright as Olive is. Take care of
yourself, Regards, Merle.

Anonymous said...

I'm particularly fond of a certain noodley yellow soup that Knorr markets in Germany. In the US it's a chicken soup, but the German version doesn't seem to be (is it pork perhaps?). But alas! it's quite salty. Not that that stops me from having some every now and again.

That shameless photo from Kent PD smacks of authoritarian propaganda. Smiles everywhere! Although the little girl seems to have some proper fear in her (unlike her mother, who is no doubt being paid well for her role in the photo opportunity). "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you." Yeah, right.

I'm learning these days about all the dangerous stuff in our American drug supply, but that kompot takes the cake. A nasty one, that was. I've got a week left in treatment and I seem to be doing well. No relapses for over a week now, going on two. Wish me luck.

Liz Hinds said...

It's probably hot cucumber soup in Polish.

We don't have many poles here. Or we might have and I don't know. Really, why did I bother writing that sentence?

Gledwood said...

V V! You must live well far out! The nearest proper English bakery to me (far as I know) is over 3 miles away!!!!

Merle: Coughing and spluttering's hopefully coming to an end!!

Marty: BEST OF LUCK!! So they let you use internet in the recovery facility? That's big of them...
& I'll say it again:::
BEST OF LUCK MARTY!!!

Liz: You might not even notice the Poles... for one thing they work & so don't hang out unemployed or doing dodginess all day... another thing: unless they open their mouths & speak you wouldn't even KNOW they were foreign they look totally the same as us... though having said that they ARE a little fairer overall than the Welsh...

Alexys Fairfield said...

Hey Gleds,
A fine choice today of Eva Cassidy. She is off the hook! I think she should sing all of Sting's catalog.

I would definitely buy it.

Good luck with your bread eating.

molson said...

They have some real nice looking houses there in Belgium. Not at all expensive. I wonder what the taxes are like.

Bimbimbie said...

What a giggle that Penelope's audition was. And little Charlie Thomas .... it was the t-shirt that made him put that wizard's hat on It got it's wish *!*

.... my dear old dad was letting off steam over the phone about the latest wave of immigrant invasion - same sentiments as you and how too easy going the English are .... unlike the Swiss who have now decided to stop fence sitting and jump to the right *!*

Squamer said...

while you are having a craving for delicatessan bread, im having a craaving for french fries. However, i dont have my drivers license and my parents wont go out and get me some. Its alright though, i wouldnt want to go out at nine o clock at night to buy my child french fries either.

CrystalChick said...

I hope that family continued to play Harry Potter or some other fun game while waiting the 45 mins. for Devon fire fighters to come. I guess they were sure his little brain wasn't starting to swell from the pressure of the attached cone or they might have hurried the rescue up a bit.

Nice that you left Olive a little birthday greeting. Hmm... 108...I guess if you're happy and healthy enough it could be interesting to live that long but I seriously doubt I can go 65 more years. Not even close.

Around here.... seems that every Donut business, atleast Dunkin' is Indian owned or operated and many gas stations too, and alot of Greeks run the diners. I'm not racist, I just wonder why that is.

Whitenoise said...

Immigrants do breath new life into a city. Hopefully, they bring the best parts of their culture with them and leave old conflicts behind.

Doing any NA these days, Gled?

RubyShooZ said...

Just dropped by to say hello and thanks for stoppping by my blog from time to time. Hoping all is well with you.

Peace today, ~ RS ~

Unknown said...

Poland and Hungary have been allies in the history a lot times. A Polish girl told me a proverb once that there are no better friends than Hungarians at drinking and pub fighting.

Gledwood said...

Alexys Hang on! I thought Sting was singing out of Eva Cassidy's catalogue... hey but... O I dunno. I only know the song from the Cancer Research Ad really...

Molson: yes that is a realy good point. where property is cheap property taxes tend to be high!

Bimbimbie: I don't blame him it's bc so many of the incomers are blatantly taking the pee!!

Squamer: Burger King used to do these really complicated spicy fries... they were quite nice actually... surely they had 'em by you as well?

Tho I'm not sure why they stopped doing them

I've eaten so many fries in my life I'm pretty much all fried out...

Gledwood said...

Crytal: there was a band here called Cornershop bc they were Indian... I can tell you why so many Indians run grocery stores. BC in their caste system one caste is a shopowning caste and that's ALL they're meant to do so when they emigrate elsewhere they keep up the tradition...

Whitenoise: I haven't been NA for ages I'm afraid...

Rubyshooz: That's good, take it easy...

Ropinator: Never heard that one b4!!

Welshcakes Limoncello said...

Well, what a lot I've learnt about Poles in Britain! I left just before this benign invasion, Gleds.

Gledwood said...

They're not bad, seriously.

1. they CAN'T claim DSS until they've been here WORKING for 2 years and pay is so brilliant compared to Poland they don't WANT to scrounge dole

2. I know I didn't really go into this in my post but we really do feel here like we're being inundated by people from halfway across the world, from places with which we had NO prior relationship who are just sponging and scrounging off us...
I'm talking about places like ALBANIA, ROMANIA... FRENCH AFRICA. What connexion have these countries with us that we should let in a slew of them to claim OUR dole?!?
I never used to feel so vehement but when you realize that some of them (not all, fair enough) are so blatantly taking advantage it just makes you MAD!! ;->...

Anonymous said...

Don't forget people that Poles coming to your country to work are the poorest in polish society. If you do not like the fact feel free to write letter to EU, otherwise don't think all Poles are poor waiting for your mercy. Ewww.
Anyway I've seen this attitude in Ireland where usually people think -Oh bc you're polish it's impossible you have US citizenship. They've been nasty at the airport wherever I went and beside my perception of Europe as small and stinky place after 10 years from my last being here I was having vomit response to how I was treated. So I was like "this is my last trip to Ireland". But then again somebody told me GB is more fun then Ireland. LOL

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

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Gledwood Volume 2: A Heroin Addict's Blog

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