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!

Monday, December 03, 2007

Window Refugee

YES I'M DEPORTED FROM MY ROOM WHILE a Jamaican and a Polish workman rip out my old windy window (felt like it was open on cold days even when was shut; that's how insulating it was!)... and I've removed everything from within five feet of said about-to-be-gaping-hole-in-wall! I'm hoping that by midafternoon it shall all be done and wondrous uPVC framed double glazed glass windows shall be mine... (I hope they are glass and not those dreadful plastic windows but beggars can't be choosers... ahem!)

Mother Hubbard told me it probably is happening as the result of a special council grant for a less carbon emissions house. Which perfectly makes sense. A sudden streak of generosity on Butterstein (the uber-evil uberlandlord)'s part does not...

I wish I hadn't gone quite so OTT yesterday saying I felt covered in diarrhoea in that restaurant. It sounds really ungrateful. I did have a nice time, but as I say really did feel out of place, especially in the beginning. I felt obligated to take my hat off for one thing... freeing still-damp recently shampoo'd hair. I felt wrong wrong wrong and would have gone to the loo to paranoidly stare into the mirror trying to fix it if that hadn't entailed having to walk past the maitre D who would intensely scrutinize me on my way back in .... ooer.

I never explained the significance of those two Queen of the Night arias I posted up... bit of a private joke. When I was in my teens we used to have the famously dreadful Florence Foster Jenkins version of that song on record. My brothers did not seem to realize the joke was the singer could not sing... Anyway when I did get to go to the opera many moons ago I selected The Magic flute to hear it properly sung. It's quite a famous song as it has the highest note (an F6) in all the standard repertoire of opera...

Well I must go as I'm hungry. My robos are stashed next to the sink, wrapped in a laundry bag and piled up with about 100 records on their roof to prevent nosey pokers poking them out. They pinged around all over the place when they realized something was up and they were moving. Highly entertaining beady-eyed furballs that they are. Even Yangyang came out when I dropped in birdseed and broccoli this morning. His eyes are enormous and poppy. Dark, inky hemispheres. And boy is he long! ... Like a furry freight train trundling out of his nest ... a furry eel more like ... or whatever.

I'll let you know how the windows turn out. Hopefully they don't fix them in with paper glue. O sorry I forgot it's not Evilstein and his personal dolts installing these but professional window guys. You get so used to hundredth best sometimes it's all you ever expect ...

New video of the Day:
Florence Foster Jenkins tribute (including her own famous hahahahahahahahahaargh bits of the Mozart aria) Queen of the Night!!


***

Do you know beautyberries? Clickonthis and tell me whether you knew what they were before... or whether you merely thought they were just blackberries airbrushed to glamourize. Or fully Apple Macked!!!

***

Nearly 2pm and ...
Man! Still windows not done!
I sneaked upstairs and found Laundretta reading a book whilst smoking a fag on her bed (only respectable thing SHE ever does on a bed... har-har... sorry I should not be vulgar...)... my room the ripping sound of tape....
I snuck downstairs and had a look of my window out the bathroom window and saw I have indeed got a luxury new bright white plastic frame!...
... unfortunately no glass in it just yet! How on earth they slide in the glass after the frame's fitted is quite beyond me ... but hey..!

***

Man! I can't believe this. 3pm and windows still glassless. At least Matran and Laundretta's is too so I hope they're shivering. Man all I want to do is go home slam door have whacking great hit and fall asleep with face in chicken curry egg fly lice what's wrong with that and these dolty pompom plonkas are preventing me from crashing out I've been up since about midnight. (Was so exhausted from art gallery exploits I spent literally most of the weekend from then on sleeping. Been feeling very run down lately.) ... They'd better not be interfering with my hamsters either. Else I hope Bashful bites them. O come on man! It's cold! Even in this cybercaffe. And I just wanna go home. How long does it take to slide glass into a doubleglazing frame? There's nothing IN it yet so surely nothing's waiting to dry... come on come on come on!!

I'm too tired to deal with any of this. Just ventured up road. Saw Polish one puffing on fake Marlboro by front door. He had a desperate look on his face. What has gone wrong? This is not good ...

*

While I wait I'm going to have a look at Japanorama from my Nippon blog ...

***

Ten minutes to four.
Just walked up road. Irritatedly craned neck to Laundretta's window. Wow! Viridescence reflecting from the sky! Upon closer look it was indeed a PVCu window but not as bad as the worst I've seen (you know, windows so bowed out and warped they're like the window version of the fairground hall-of-freaky-mirrirs...
I crept upstairs as silently as Itchy when she's escaped... a workman was there. So I hid in the toilet and craned my neck out. Wow! A brand new teletubby window was in place of my drafty old one. It looks so tiny and small and cute! Then one of the men started coming downstairs so I bolted out the front door.
Q: Are you a man or a mouse?
A: A hamster!

Not in the mood for making bright workman chat today, know what I mean. Anyway I'm sure Laundretta's "accidentally" falling open dressing gown's kept them more than "amused"...

***

6:20pm I wasn't in too much of a good mood earlier. Very tired. I've been sleeping excessively; exhausted excessively. Don't know quite why ...

Anyway a while after four I went back to the house and spoke to the Polish fitter: "have you finished?" I said. "O yeah; have a look." I did and it's wonderful. NOT PVCu - I take that back! These are real glass and I get such a good view. (Probably the old view was so bad because those old windows were so exceedingly dirty!!) I did eat chicken curry egg fried rice. Sat in the shop looking up "chicken" and "curry" and "egg" and "fry/fried" and "rice" in my Japanese dictionary. Some fantastic characters came up. Egg was particularly entertaining - 卵 - because you can see two ovular things in it ... you need an overactive imagination for Chinese-derived characters but you get to learn the little motifs that make them up! An oblong, for example, represents a mouth (口) and so appears in language (言語), talk (を話す), word (単語), shouting (を叫ぶ) etc ... (in shouting the mouth goes sideways: 叫, see). What an entertaining language the Japanese have.

***

10:21pm and I've just had a massive fix!... of Her Majesty the Queen!! In the latest instalment of the BBC1 docu Monarchy: The Royal Family At Work... (Same programme I was ranting on about this time last week although it was a disappointing half hour shorter this week...) Buckingham Palace looks lovely from the inside... like a particularly plush hotel. Though I'd have to say if I lived there I wouldn't go running around those long corridors like everybody else. I'd go about on scooters or rollerskates. Ma'am seemed particularly irritable at times this week. Perhaps the BBC consider it more fittingly "modern" to have an exasperated Queen with a bit of attitude. Maybe she was really getting rather miffed at having all those cameras following her about every day for nearly a year!

I'm still enchanted by my marvellous new window. I've been gazing out of it and opening and closing it. It even has a lock with a key. How posh is that. I bet Her Majesty the Queen doesn't have double glazing at Buck House!

In a minute I have to go out and disinterr my robos (poor man's corgis (the Queen's favourite dogs)) - they do have a couple of things in common with corgis 1. they're all very mischievious and 2. all being a light sandy colour with identical markings they're exactly the "same" in appearance. I can only tell the three apart by degrees of tubbiness. And Spherical might have a slightly lighter coat than Bashful... They're hidden behind a chest of drawers, layers of bedsheets, and a tartan washing bag under a stack of 100 oldfashioned huge vinyl records!

Well I had better say goodnight now.

***{And I'm giving a little royal wave...}***

***

PS:
The BBC World Service have been doing a radioplaywriting competition for people from all over the world, open to all ... they've been playing the six or ten best ones ... anyway a play came on the other night ... I was asleep when it first came on so it kind of melded into my dreams at first, then I came to clear consciousness and realized how fantastically good this piece of drama really was. Surely a new talent of world standing had been discovered. They'd even persuaded Clive Swift (best known as Hyacinth Bucket's longsuffering husband in Keeping Up Appearances) and Prunella Scales (best known as Basil Fawlty's longsuffering/tormenting wife in Fawlty Towers but likely seen nowadays playing posh old widows in Jane Austenny costume drama... to take starring roles. Something I'm sure they'd not have done for any old bit of tripe ...
Well anyway, turns out the play is called The Rocking Horse and it's NOT by some young struggling playwrite but by Arnold Wesker who's 75 and along with Harrold Pinter a leading light of modern British drama. And it's brand new and was specially written for radio. If you're lacking some entertainment do clickonit and you can play it through the computer. I guarantee you won't be disappointed.

***

Great pictures from Slavonic Central Europe!
http://trunko.blogspot.com

34 comments:

Audrey said...

You know Gleds I reckon you'd get a best seller out of publishing your blog in book form...love your tongue in cheek humour, Im sure many appreciate it and you certainly make me smile and laugh out loud with the way you express some things.........lol Never explain, never apologies its too good for that.....Hope your pleased with the new window and you feel the benefit heatwise in your room...Keep on keeping on xxxx Auds

Unknown said...

I haven't been to Bukarest.

Welshcakes Limoncello said...

Glad it all ended happily, Gleds!

Zen Wizard said...

That kid would have made a great von Trapp.

Gledwood said...

Auds: not everyone realizes I'm being tongue in cheek they think I'm serious. One guy came on to rebuke me for blithering "ever since I was little I always wanted to grow up into a smoker of cigarettes"... yeah right as if that was my only ambition in life..!

Ropi: if you go, tell us what it's like! (Well I've never been either.)

Welshcakes: ;->...

Zen Wizard: yeah! Notice he doesn't strain at the high notes like the others. Just opens the mouth wider!!!

Angie said...

Hi Gleds,
Have to agree with Audrey,your blog is an excellent read. If you ever do get round to doing it in book form,I would definitely buy a copy.I'd want it signed by the author, of course.

Gledwood said...

Haha! Do you really think people would buy it?
If I thought I was going to publish it I'd go all selfconscious and it would lose all its magic. That's the way things go. Typical!

Bimbimbie said...

Hope you managed to get some shut eye and didn't stay waving royally out of your new window all night ... waving back to you *!*

Anonymous said...

What a day! I least, you now have windows. Congrats!

Chinese is the same as the Japanese kanji, for example rice is 米 to symbolize the four grains of rice.

Lone Grey Squirrel said...

Great to hear about the new window. Things are looking up. Take care, buddy.

Whitenoise said...

interesting vid, congrats on the window. (Maybe this is a start- new door, walls, flooring...?) ;-)

Vi said...

Well, glad to hear the windows got put in before the day was out! Amazing how much more heat double glazing holds in the house!

Jeanette said...

Hi Gleds,Pleased you got your new window in before nightfall and tucked up in a warm bed sleeping soundly....

Merle said...

Hi Gleds ~~ I am so happy to hear about the new window. It took them long enough, but at least it will be a big improvement. I hope the robos were OK after being hidden away.
English sure is a strange language.
Thanks for your comments and believe me 29 is fairly warm, but you should try 39 C or over 40. We have some of them. Take care, my friend, Look after yourself and you little family.
Best wishes, Merle.

Arjan said...

whoa..that was one hell of a post.
I got double glass in my room, but I really need to clean it on the outside.
The heating seems to be malfunctioning though..it's freaking cold in here. And I'm not usually cold.

@ Japanese/Chinese language:
There's a book made by the Swedish Cecilia Lindqvist which is all about how the Chinese signs (at least originally) correspond to things in the real world.
The original Swedish book was published in 1989, but there are a bunch of translations now.
There was an article in a Dutch newspaper that they made a Dutch translation, I bet there is an English one.

Gledwood said...

Bimbimbie:... eventually I managed to sleep. My body seems so confused I slept all night. And yet had been up a lot of the night before and yet had slept all morning, afternoon and evening on Sunday...(??)!

That window has quite a nice view actually

Zhu: Looks like an exploding bundle of firewood to me!

Lone Grey Squirrel: Cheers!

Whitenoise: I'm not sure whether the window installation IS the start of something new... it's quite something though. I'm not even sure whether they WANT to do the rest of the house...

Gledwood said...

Vi Vi Voom: DEFINITELY warmer now! Used to feel like the old windows were wide open even when they were shut...

Jeanette: ;->...

Merle: I only think I've been in 40C once in India. Not sure exactly how warm it actually was as nobody had a thermometer! All I can say is heat haze everywhere and baking baking dry heat. If I pinwheeled by arm around the air felt hot. Not cool at all. That was a really hot day. Nr Madras/Chennai that was...

Arjan: I will Google that book and see what I find. The only book I do have about Japanese script isn't that good at all as it relates the Kanji to ENGLISH words not Japanese ones... which nearly made me hit the roof in rage. How STUPID can you get? Teaching people to read characters and say the meanings in English?!? Duh!!
:-<

Odat said...

Came to check in on ya...and say hey....Congrats on your new window.....lol...take care of those furry balls...;-)
Peace

Gledwood said...

The furballs are still stashed under groaning great weight of lots of records. Did not trust Evilstein my landlord not to come poking in for them (type of thing)... - haha!

Guilty Secret said...

How nice to be able to see out of a nice clean window now! UPVC is nasty, eh?

Anonymous said...

England is cold you say?!? You don't know from cold...... ;)

Anonymous said...

Oh and ....check it out...a wee bit worrisome

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article2982640.ece

WAT said...

You are so hilarious, and I don't even think you realize it sometimes. Deported from your own room? AHAHAHHA! Well, glad to see even though it took a while the glasslessness was finally repaired.

My goodness! I am sooooo happy you're into her Royal Highness herself. These updates on what she's up to are priceless!

Gledwood said...

Guilty Secret:... I know. I used to type in advert after advert advertising "classy" PVCu windows for my old local paper... if only those poor people had known how foggy and not nice the finished product was..!

I'm sure they're warmer than glass windows though. Surely. Because they're plastic ..??

Eileen: thanks for that I read that scandalous announcement. What other country on earth thinks it has the right to kidnap people off foreign soil? I hope America realizes its operatives are guilty of SERIOUS CRIME if they do such a thing on British soil

Wat: they should show that on American TV by next year. I really can't see why they would not... it's 5 parts. part 1 90 mins, parts 2, 3, 4, 5 60 minutes

Akelamalu said...

New windows eh> They took a long time to put just one window in didn't they?

I agree about publishing your blog - it is a great read!

Gledwood said...

A bloody long time you're quite right. And how on earth they managed to insert 2 layers of glass AFTER sticking up the immensely heavy PVC frames I've absolutely no idea...

Anonymous said...

I am sorry to disturb. I have just been browsing this blog and I wanted to leave a comment. As this is the latest entry, I thought I would leave it here. You quite changed my view of drug addicts. I knew it was awful but not that awful. Actually, I used to think Requiem for a dream was a bit exaggerating. But what you told in your first blog was even harder and it's not fiction. I wanted some information about heroin and what you said really struck me. I wish you to be completely recovered soon. And, by the way (I hope these sentences are correct), anata wa haiku wo yomeru koto ga dekimasu. Sugoi desu ! Watashi mo haiku wo yometai desu.

Nicole said...

Vincent and I were at a very posh restaurant once and I ordered some fancy starter and said the name all wrong and the waiter made me feel like such a dickhead as he spoke it back to me in his stupid accent. But then I thought, screw that, you people are just making me some dinner, it's not brain surgery and then I felt better.

Liz Hinds said...

So glad you've got new draught-proof windows. Don't want you or robos being in a chill wind.

I missed the Queen this week. I wonder if it's repeated.

My puppy loves broccoli too. He is very strange.

That is interesting about the Japanese writing. Tell us more.

CrystalChick said...

It's about 29 today and we are expecting a teeny bit of snow... maybe an inch. I'm glad to feel winter... altho, not while windows are being replaced... glad that job is done for you.
So when I visit England... gather up all your friends/neighbors/acquaintances/or just anyone who would be willing to give the royal wave to me out their window as I stroll the streets of London. How cool that would be. ;)

Unknown said...

Window replaning is wiser to do in summer.

Gledwood said...

Anonymous: arigato gozaimasu!

Nicole: you're quite right they ARE just dolloping out dinner at the end of the day ... (on the other hand I'm careful not to offend too much; have you heard the stories of unwanted "extra ingredients" getting into fractious customers' white sauce/etc...?!?

Liz: surely HM is repeated on BBC 3 or BBC 4 or something..?? If you click the link where I mentioned it on Monday you get to the BBC's monarchy docu homepage ... also it will be out on DVD. Surely!

(I noted it's NOT on youtube though!)

Gledwood said...

Crystalchick: 29.. you mean 29F!! I thought you meant 29C! Which is about 80 degrees in normal!!!

Emperor R: you said it> evilstein=too thick to grasp that the old ****

Anonymous said...

I want to see a photo of little pet. I liked the way that you described him.

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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