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!

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Furry Boiled Egg ...

POOR OLD BABY ITCHY has been "furry boiled egging" galore. Rambling through her ultra narrow magic wand tube. You blow through the front. She panicks inside and scoots out quick in reverse, thereby pushing up all her fur, in "boiled egg with eyes" fashion. Poor Baby Itchy.

My stew came out all the more wonderful for its lack of nonEuropean ingredients. Okra, I've really discovered, just denigrates into a seed-filled slop at the bottom. Nasty business. Why they sell it as "suitable for stews and casseroles" in Sainsbury's I'll never know...

I did add (not in place of courgettes/zucchini but because it was languishing in my fridge and would only have gone off) a cucumber. It actually went very well in the soup. Like the onions, it just turns into background "thickener" and only little bits of peel were left over. It was still rather pleasant though.

I followed Ruth's advice and preboiled my potatoes first (they're always sliced small so the size wasn't stopping them from cooking).... Also I had no option but to do dumplings made iwth marge and not Atora. But they still came out pretty good.

And here's my message to my Japanese fans:

良い一日をすべての日本のファンのブログにします。なぜこんなに多くの人が東京から他の地域とここで私を介してきたさまよえるまるで見当がつかないが、楽しんで読んでくれるといいけど私のハムスターやヘロイン"印" !

Now Debs has tagged me for "7 bizarre things of myself". I'm sure this is a turnaround of the 5- and 6 weird things tags that have been doing the rounds all this year. As I myself did the five weird things about six months ago!

Well anyway here we go:

1. I've been on heroin for 7 years now.

2. The 1st drug I ever took was caffeine in a cup of tea. Cannabis aside: I am living proof that supping tea (especially with sugar!) can and does lead to heroin addiction so all you tea-drinkers BE WARNED!!

3. Part of the long, long process of my addiction involved finding a mysteriously lost or flung out stash of 10g of heroin on the street! (That was about 7 and a half years ago.)

4. When I was 8 years old I once sneaked downstairs in the dead of night in rising panick as an evil burglar vehemently chiselled away at our front door!

It wasn't a burglar at all. Just my bored first hamster (imaginatively named "Hammy") vigorously gnawing at the bars because he was bored out of his head and we didn't realize hamsters need exercise wheels to stop them going stir-crazy!

5. I think the pop singer with the best voice is Barbra Streisand. But some of the material she's chosen to sing is execrable!

6. I have longed to speak (and read and write) Japanese since I was 16 or younger. And yet nearly 20 years later I have still not learned the language that far beyond "konichi-wa"! (My stately Japanese messages have to come courtesy of Google Translate, I'm afraid.)

7. I have never really wanted to be anything in this life but a writer. Hence those painful memoirs!

And I had a horrible nightmare last night about being trapped on a haunted damp-&-derelict runaway train full of baggage thieves. Nasty business!

And I tag:

Merle
Evil Spock
Jim D
Ivy
Bimbimbie
Molson
Vi Vi Voom
Nicole
Puss-in-Boots
Jeanette
Welshcakes Limoncello
Liz
Audrey
Akelamalu
M-filer
Wat
Marty ...
(ooer ~ this is turning into such a comprehensive list I'm starting to quiver and quake lest I leave someone out. I'm expert at doing things like that. So basically I tag everyone ~ har har har!!


Video of the Day:
Ebony Funky Dancer


***

Wonderful pike etc photos from bottom of a French lake...
http://waterproof68.blogspot.com


Amazing Canadian Sketches
http://sixforfive.blogspot.com

20 comments:

Guilty Secret said...

Ha ha I had to laugh at the bit about drinking tea!

lime said...

sending you a trasnatlantic kiss in gratitude for you not tagging me. i have done this meme more times than i can remember and i might have gone berserk if you'd tagged me.

tea you say? well i guess i will have to stick to chocolate then....

Vi said...

I've done this one before, so I'll sit it out.

Okra is lovely, but not overcooked, throw it in the end. Now I've never thought about throwing cucumber into a stew!

molson said...

Seven weird things. I'm not sure how to define weird for this but here goes...

1) I'm half French in ancestry, but I can't drink wine. It's the only alcoholic beverage that makes me ill. Beer is my poison of choice and I do like it.

2) I once loved everything to do with flying. I even sold a really nice car to buy a very old airplane. I flew the plane for a couple of years and then sold it. I haven't flown a plane since and for some strange reason I don't miss it.

3) I have never experience physical discomfort as much as when I hike up a really big mountain. There have been times I thought I'd just drop over dead. No matter how tough the mountain, I always want to go back.

4) In this day of jet travel, I have never left the North American continent. I even worked for a large multi-national company. Arizona was as far away as I got.

5) I went to Death Valley for a summer ride trip (automotive testing). It was 132 deg F. (56 deg. C). I loved it. I want to go back and spend some time exploring more of the valley.

6) Like you Gledwood, I find modern Japanese culture fascinating but I can't exactly explain why.

7) I could care less about a career. OK. Maybe that one is not so weird, but I was a career man for damn near 20 years. Maybe I just burnt out. Give me big mountains on which to punish myself on and I will be happy unless I grow bored with that as well.

Maybe nothing I listed is that weird. Can I help it if I'm boring?

Nicole said...

1) I'm left-handed, but when playing cricket or soft-ball, will bat right-handed.

2) I am almost phobic about touching birds. I like seeing them but panic if they get too close.

3) I can write cursive backwards in mirrored writing, like Leonardo Da Vinci used to do.

4) I like grilled cheese sandwiches with creamed corn and Vegemite.

5) I dislike shopping for shoes and clothing but love bags.

6) I hate people, but I love humanity.

7) I can't stand the Beatles.

Tea said...

Hi Gleds :)

Enjoyed reading your "7 bizarre things of myself". Tea eh. Love tea. Nah....always prefered o natural.
Haven`t been getting around the bloggy world much lately and miss visiting and reading your blog.

tea
xo

Deb said...

I always wanted to be a writer too....poetry. I've written poems since I was young - not very good though.

For some reason I thought you'd been on heroin for much longer....don't know why I thought that. You'll be free of it one day, I know it.

Those pesky hamsters hey? I wondered why they gnaw on their bars...now I know!

Anonymous said...

Crazy time machines. A long time ago you saw a comment I made to Ingsoc and left a note on my abandoned bloggerblog (I prefer wordpress) and now all these hours later I come and see Bimbimie on your blog roll. I thought the bplace was bigger than that. Carzy damn time machines.

Jeanette said...

Hi Gleds, Hahaha to the tea statement, I drink at least 5 cups a tea a day more if i have visitors and have done so for 50 odd years....We learn a lot about people doing memes , I did one a while back and might try this again a little later down the track a bit.. take good care,,

Merle said...

Hi Gleds ~~ I have done this one before, but might do it again when I have some spare time. (Don't hold your breath.) Glad your stew was nice
I have never tried Okra, so I must.
Have you been doing any writing?
Look after youself Gleds. Warm regards,erle.

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Gledwood said...

Guilty:... well think about it. It's 100% true! And totally underpublicized. (Or not publicized at ALL!:) Because those EVIL teabag manufacturers want to HOOK our KIDS on HEROIN!!!

Lime: re the tag no worries... my intuition served me right then. Chocolate I always prefer to drink rather than eat if ya know whatteye mean...

Vi Vi: cuccumber in stew~::~ not your 1st choice of ingredient but it does add to the background mush and leave little green tokens of rind where it's been and it's far better than throwing flagging cucumber in the bin... know whatteye mean??

Molson: thanxx 4 answering all that... yes Japan rules! Maybe it's bc it's the ONLY nonWestern country (apart from maybe HongKong and Singapore) to have the money to develop as far as we've done and we can see the fascinating differences?

Gledwood said...

Nicole: hate people but LOVE humanity..?? That is I think the opposite of any way I think I've heard that one put before... I think... how very odd!! (well I did ask for odd things...)

Margaritas: aww! thank you! take care! ;->...

Debs: no only 7 years fully addicted. Been taking it probably for 10 though it started off really cautiously... I had been taking drugs for 6 years longer than that though... it is a complicated story... hence my need to write it in memoirs to adequately explain!!

Gledwood said...

Pauls: what's the "bplace"~??

Jeanette: I would be fascinated to know where the "meme" has gone... it would be like tracing gonorrhoea back through student dorms almost... (oo how rude of me hahar!! ;->...)

Merle: Okra is meant to be v good for stews/curry etc but it DOES leave a pretty sloppy mess with seeds. Maybe if you just top and tail and don't slice up it's better. Doesn't probably need slicing as small as I've tended to do ... many thanxx for the msg Merle good luck with that new PM!!

Gledwood said...

That was me just deleting my Japanese haikus things b4 that was all

Stefania said...

Yeeees!!!
That is the true, authentic, spiritual, poetical and mysterious Romanian language I'm writing in :)
thank you

WAT said...

Oh Lord. Seven odd things about meeself?! I'll have to think of this a bit, since I dunno how odd I am. I'm weird, don't get me wrong, but I don't realize how weird sometimes.

Japanese seems hard to learn. Go for another major language that is easier. Oh, can I invite you to learn some Spanish matey?

Anonymous said...

Okra is sometimes used as a thickening agent in some Southern American cooking. I'm not sure how it ended up at the bottom. Maybe we use a different variety of okra.

Cheers, Gleds.

Welshcakes Limoncello said...

Here we go, a bit late - sorry, Gleds!
1. I always leave everything til the last minute - or the minute after that!
2. I spend more on make-up than on clothes.
3. I am nearly always cold.
4. I watch very little TV.
5. Prefer my dog to most people.
6. Hate mornings.
7. Don't drink wine - prefer g and t.

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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