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, October 10, 2007

Telling a Tale and Gremlins

HI! It's the early hours of the morning. The BBC World Service is still playing so I know it's before 5:30 (after which time we get Radio 4 again).

I just picked up my robotube and two furry faces appear double-decker - it's always Bashful on top, Itchy underneath. Bashful grooms Itchy's fur to near-extinction, she has a wet centre-parting nearly all the time thanks to Bashful's sisterly attentions... They are so funny and I have to strive not to laugh or they will get frightened. Even when I husked, "Come out you furry gremlins!" they sprang back two inches and woke up Spherical at the other end. Only to re-emerge this time like a two-headed beast, the heads side-by-side and equally curious.

I ned to get my hands on a video mobile phone so I can film Baby Itchy's magic wand trick. The "wand" as I described the other day, is a tube about 2cm or 2/3" wide and 6" or 15cm long. You can't force her in (you can't force them to do anything; they're almost as contrary as cats in that respect) but if you hold her and it at approximately the right angles she will shoot down it to bunnyhopper out the other end a couple of secs later. Also, if you turn it horizontal while she's inside, she pops out the end eyes bright (well, as bright as jet black eyes can possibly be), ears perked, looking utterly astonished. Which is something hamsters of all species do particularly well.

Poor Baby Itchy. I think she really is a pygmy dwarf hamster - showing absolutely no signs of growing.

When all three do "hamster Kentucky Derby" - running the wheel all at once - unless Baby Itchy's in front (which she does well cos she's fastest) she ends up clinging on for dear life doing constant loop-the-loops - seven, eight, nine of them - as the others ramble mercilessly forward. Also Itchy's something of a marvel because, despite what the experts claim: "you can't tame a Roborovski" she will not only let me handle her, but even sits still on my hands and will pause to wash/etc. For a roborovski this is quite something. They rarely stay still when they are conscious.

Because I fell asleep so early last night I'd hardly got any writing done. I've written all of my memoirs so far basically by recalling and recanting as I go... I don't even use notes now. Having said that I've only done 2.5 chapters so far. Though they are 5000 word chapters, which is longlonglong for me...

This must sound rather thick, but until I'd really embarked on writing them (the first chapter, being a retelling of my childhood I feel I've gone over so much now it's almost a set piece and doesn't really count) ... I hadn't realized how very vividly the process of telling would bring my memories back to life... in some of the obscurest details.

I'm currently on my travels from Wales to Spain (from where I went on to Marrakech in Morocco) - I went all the way by train plus one boat-ride Dover-Calais. (The Channel Tunnel had been dug but was yet to open...)

I'm calling my book "memoirs" rather than autobiography because it's not supposed to be a retelling of my entire life. Rather it focuses on my relationship with drugs. I don't know a single other book that I feel has done this well and that - rather than any sense that my own story is more important than anyone else's - is what's spurring me forward...

I have an extract I want to post up to see what people think of it. But I can't post it now because it's midday (as of keying this in rather than scrawling it out by pen) and I've gotta ping up Mother Hubbs's "yard"...

Righto, take it easy!!

G
x
;->...
x

7 comments:

Jeanette said...

Hi Gleds, thanks for all you tips about my computer.its still at the computer shop trying to save as much as they can to a new portable hard drive ive purchaced and ive got to learn to back up all my work.in future.. take care ill be back as soon as i can

Anonymous said...

Bloody hell, what's gone WRONG with it? Did it get a worm inside it or something like that? Surely...

Liz Hinds said...

Poor little Itchy, bless her. You paint such a vivid picture of her on the wheel.

Anonymous said...

Liz: she is so very entertaining as well!

(If anything ever happened to her I would be so gutted, seriously...)

Gledwood said...

Note to self:

to use later.

My pro-anti American language rant:~

Hey did you know Elizabeth I used American spellings, too.

Aparently they originated after Dr Johnson compiled the 1st English dictionary over here. He used the predominant spellings colour, flavour, centre etc though color, flavor, center were perfectly acceptable.

When Noah Webster wrote his AMERICAN dictionary some couple of decades later (if I'm not wrong I'm not sure of the dates but it was within a lifetime of Dr Johnson's book appearing in England)... he deliberately selected the alternative spellings as a way of underlining the differences between the "old" UK and the "new" USA.

So when Liz I put pen to paper before America even existed, it was no big deal to her to speak of "rumors" about her "honor" ... & so on...

I've seen the facsimile letter in Hatfield House... made me reconsider my attitude to the American spellings, after all blogs and personal correspondence aside, there's something a little bit political in spelling the American way (or not) or using the American voice even... I couldn't help but note that Al Jezeera TV in English scrupulously avoids having ANYONE who sounds remotely American in front of the camera. So much so that my friend Pascal who IS 1/2 American believed the Al Jezeera was a British only news channel (when actually it's the world English stream of the infamous Arabic TV news service...)

Nicole said...

You know sometimes I envy how you just wake up whenever and times of day don't matter, you sleep when you're tired. You don't have any obligations do daily be somewhere at a certain time because of work.

Gledwood said...

No you're quite right. I used to work and was so knackered and depressed... in the end I was more at home there than I ever was at "home"

That's basically why I decided this book has to be done while I still have time as I want to be normal again and EARN A LIVING and NOT BE ON DRUGS ...

Of course I pay for it by having to live off state welfare which isn't that much though I don't pay rent which does save a lot in London I suppose...

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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