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 17, 2007

Topsy Turvy...

I FAILED A BREATHYLYSER test just 49 minutes ago...

My score, aparently, ought to be 50 to be respectable. It was 65.

Oh but I had such fun drag-racing until the police stopped me. (And if you believe that you'll believe anything.)

My robos are hidden from Dr Evilstein my landlord beneath a stack of cardboard boxes in a far corner of my "garret". Bear in mind that as burrow-dwelling nocturnal rodents they don't exactly appreciate a "view" and are actually MORE active when stashed away than when self-consciously presented pride of place in the middle of the room!

I am very worried about Yingyang the Chinese hamster. Living in the robo-gite as he does I can now SEE him. And can confirm he is now suffering from severe depression. Spends all day in bed, eyes open, looking forlorn (even a mouse-like hamster can look forlorn...) I don't know what to do with him. He will be handled, but doesn't particularly like it any more. If he thinks I'm going to trouble him he hides in the nibbled out old toothpaste tube in the corner...

I am very depressed about this. I hate keeping animals in misery. What am I supposed to do? Short of dissolving Prozac in his water and hoping my miscalculation of the dose doesn't kill him..?

***

On another note, I am ploughing through Teach Yourself Japanese yet again.

From a "Martian perspective" it's no harder to learn the spoken language than French or German... in fact I'd say it's probably easier as there's hardly any irregular verbs or dodgy tables of "declensions" or owt like that. What is complicated, of course is the fiendishly complexicated system of writing. Having attempted to tackle kana (the syllableries) and kanji (Chinese characters) before though I can confirm they are much more fun to write than the boring old Roman alphabet we're stuck with... the act of writing turns into something far more akin to doodling. So I'm not surprised the Japanese lead the world in sales of fancy paper, novelty pens, glowing and sparkly inks and all that... plus unlike Chinese with its 5000 basic characters you need "only" learn just under 2000 in Japanese. Unfortunately, however, the characters do not correspond to syllables, as they do in Chinese, so unless you really know them there's very little help at hand... also I'd love to see a full-on Japanese to Japanese dictionary... characters are categorized by the number of brushstrokes it takes to doodle them and are further broken down into subtypes, e.g. ones with house-shaped rooves come under one category, ones that look like an explosion of matchsticks (ie about half of them, in my opinion) come under another... Well I won't bore you with any more... Gotta go eat some fried chicken.

(The breathalizer wasn't done by the police btw; it was some jobsworth at the drugs service who insisted on testing me...)

***

Video of the day:
Baby Jessica McClure: 20 years later...


***

Here are some really funny robo-pictures...

They look far more like my robos than a lot of the other shots I've seen out there (no idea why)... the "blue" hammy is a Campbell's "condensed" dwarf...

16 comments:

Crushed said...

'Your personality type is dominant, driven, poised, and self-aware.

Only about 5% of all people have your personality, including 3% of all women and 6% of all men
You are Extroverted, Sensing, Thinking, and Perceiving.'

I guess that fits.

Liz Hinds said...

Well, I'm glad it wasn't the police!

A depressed hamster. Oh dear. What to do? A mate? A bit of Leonard Cohen?

Chocolate always helps me but it might be bad for hammies.

Squamer said...

Im very sorry about your hamster. I too dislike it when animals are sad.

On a lighter note though, it is always good to learn japanese.

the squamer is officially back!!

Gledwood said...

Ingsoc: Everybody on earth has a rare personality then!

Liz: The more stuffy "authorities" prohibit the feeding of chocolate to pet rodents (even though wild ones eat not only chocolate but candle wax and even soap when they get hold of it)... rodents' teeth grow constantly which means that they cannot get tooth decay because their teeth will just grow out. They can only eat about 1g of chocolate a day though if that - poor hammies ;->...

Gledwood said...

Hang on Squamer how did you manage to post that while I ... didn't know anyone else was online and didn't see it... hang on I shall come chez vous maintenant

Regine said...

Hello agian.
Yes, I liked your picture.
very cute=)

The last post at my blogpage, was an msn conversation between me and a friend. This is mostly norwegian slang.

Regine

Gledwood said...

no wonder I didn't understand a word (o! if you'd only written in dictionary Norwegian I'd have followed every word. Not ;->...)

Stephanie D said...

Thanks for stopping by my blog and leaving your congratulations!

Vi said...

I gather you didn't drive to said 'jobsworth' then? I would have had higher than that if I got pulled over by the cops driving the mile home this evening. *shame on you vi!*

Icarus said...

And getting rarer by the hour! The account of the news points to you having had one hell of a day. And the first steps to Japanese orthography has me wondering how it will look 20 years on, hoping that you'll have mastered it.
I've just answered you at "The Flames of Eden" blogspot etc.

Puss-in-Boots said...

Hmmm, glad it wasn't the coppers, but you had me going there for a bit.

Liked the self portrait, but you're hairier than I imagined...

I've nearly finished catching up on everyone's posts. It's been a marathon session after a week of missing them.

Talk soon.

MightyMom said...

well, hello there, glad to have dropped in on you here. I came across you at Scraps.

greetings from across the pond.

And yes, I remember Baby Jessica very well, when the whole world learned more than they ever wanted to know about our topography!

cute hamsters!

Gledwood said...

Stephanie: ;->...

Vi vi Voom: u gotta be careful with that... attitudes have changed. I remember in my youth being in a car with drunk (otherwise respectable) driver weaving all over wrong side of road...

Icarus: how what will look 20 years on?

Gledwood said...

Puss in Boots: o no it was just some silly person at the drugs clinic who thought I had drunk too much; and aparently I had ...

Mighty Mom: I never heard about her at the time, but found out the other day reading on a blog...

M- Filer said...

I have a very skiddish kitty who is afraid of everything--including me sometimes--and I hate it. I hate that I can not provide her with a more secure feeling but every now and then she does get really comfy and rub up against me and acts as if she is at peace at last. Then I will re-arrange the furniture or have a friend in and she will freak out again and revert back to her psychotic state. Sad.

My other kitty is very normal and not at all complicated.

Gledwood said...

Eh! That's where that expression comes from "Scaredy Cat"!!

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