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, January 06, 2008

Szechuan Chicken Egg Fry Rice with MSG

YES! FINALLY I MADE EGG FRIED RICE proper. There are two ways of doing this and I tried both.

You must boil basmati rice properly and according to the instructions. ie use boil-in-bag as I did or the 1 cup/2 cup method (twice the volume of water to rice). If you overcook the rice it will be too mushy and sticky.

Drain and heap out the cooked rice into an uncovered bowl. Refrigerate 30 mins to 1 hr (or overnight if required but beware; keeping cooked rice for days on end can breed a foodpoisoning fungus all over it!)

Method 1: Separate egg. Crack egg into a glass. Whisk with fork until thoroughly yellow. Heat ring medium-high. Blob butter/oil into pan. Bring to heat. Pour on egg. Within 30 seconds it's cooking. Scramble it. Literally 1 min later it is done. You add this egg midway or towards the end of rice-frying (too early and it gets so mixed in you merely have yellow rice without visible eggy bits).

Method 2: you chuck rice into pan or wok. If doing mixed vegetable fried rice fry these first THEN add rice. When rice has been fried for a minute or two: make a hollow in the middle of the rice. Crack an egg right into this. Immediately bash it up with chopsticks or a fork. Allow the egg to half-cook, then quickly stir into the rice.

I think the second method works better - it looks more like the way the takeaway does it.

As for monosodium glutamate (MSG) - this is a fine crystalline powder - like salt. The flavour is slightly salty, but warmer. They say that MSG "intensifies" flavours. I would say it smooths them over, like a magic factor-x. Making things like fried rice less bland. (It doesn't go nearly so well with boiled rice.) I added one pinch to the rice-water before boiling (so it was right spread throughout). And two pinches to rice just before frying. Lots of people say MSG is bad for you. But on the plus side it does give egg fried rice that "direct from the takeaway" buzz.

The Szechuan chicken was just plain chicken stir fry with Morrison's own Szechuan sauce piled on. I wasn't too impressed by the quality of this sauce. It had needlessly demoralized vegetable traces in it. And more to the point I found out that "szechuan" was the horrible spicy yet sweet and sour stuff I got fobbed off with by the takeaway the other day when I'd ordered Thai chicken with babycorn. I love spicy but loathe sweet and sour. Urgh.

I want to learn my own saucemaking.

Tomorrow: egg-sucking for the experienced cook.

28 comments:

Lone Grey Squirrel said...

hi there, Gleds,
I am happy that your experiment in cooking fried rice turned out well. Now that you got the confidence, the next time will probably be better. Use more soya sauce instead of MSG though. MSG is known to cause high blood pressure.

Anonymous said...

I thought something like that... also there is another flavour enhancer that is meant to be more "natural"... you don't remember what it is, do you? it is also a white powder...

Vi said...

you can't even buy msg in oz anymore cause how bad it is for you. Everything is msg free. And it still tastes good!

Kahshe Cottager said...

MSG will also trigger migraines for some people .. be careful!! I like the added flavour of soy sauce (also salty) or ginger to punch up flavour.

Really, all this talk of Chinese food is making me crave some too!!!

Bimbimbie said...

I received a Christmas Card with a pair of hammies on from our little niece - she was letting us know she now has one called Harvey *!*

Prodigy ....I love their Breathe

Unknown said...

That dish sounds deeeeeelish! Yay for you! :) I think I may try it out. I'll let you know if I succeed or not! I don't think I'll use the MSG though. I don't have any in my kitchen cupboard. My sister-in-law is dreadfully allergic to it so we just don't have it in the house.

Love the blog. Cute hammies! My first pet was a hamster named Robbie. He was the love of my life...until I returned from a family vacation to Trinidad & Tobago and my neighbour told me that Robbie died while we were away. She put him in a shoe box and buried him in my backyard. I think I was 8 yrs old or so. I haven't had another hamster as a pet since.

Unknown said...

P.S. I'm not even sure if we can buy MSG in stores here. I've never really looked for it. I know many Chinese restaurants here now have huge signs that read "NO MSG HERE". LOL! My sister-in-law will only eat at restaurants that have that sign posted. She gets really debilitating migraines from MSG.

Okay, off to bed I go. If I haven't already wished you a Happy New Year....Happy New Year, Gleds! :)

Gledwood said...

Vi Vi: yeah I get your point. ONLY thing I think it really jazzes up is fried rice. And maybe the more subtly flavoured things like mushrooms. You definitely don't need it in stuff like curry that's for SURE. They say it gives you really high blood pressure...? Also here in the 1960s and 1970s there was a phenomenon called "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome" of headaches and other horrible symptoms from the literal OVERDOSE of MSG they used to heap into British "Chinese" food at that time

Kahshe: yeah there's SOME E-numbered (that is officially Euro-registered additive) "flavour enhancers" in my soy sauce but they are not MSG. Later, when I have the numbers with me I shall look 'em up. I'm sure they're just msg's cousins...

Bimbimbie: She is in the UK? I was SURE hammies are ILLEGAL in Australia... my ex-girlf who was from Melbourne used to go nuts when I let Pandable run around the carpet: "he's just like a cartoon character!" she exclaimed. Couldn't get over it..!

C: I can't find out what country you are in without losing the comments... hang on ...

Gledwood said...

Hey everyone: isn't this fantastic stuff:~

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Unknown said...

Hello from Canada, Gledwood! I'm originally from Toronto (but have spent most of my life in Montreal) and now live on a resort island.

Gledwood said...

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Alors! Donc, tu parles le francais courrement, non?

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BBC said...

"BBC: not as in anything to do with the British Broadcasting Corporation... no?"

Not a thing. :-)

They are my initials, as it states in my profile.

Gledwood said...

duh. OK. nobody reads my profile either

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Anonymous said...

Yo!
Ta for the recipe, I am into that sort of thing and have never been able to get the egg fried properly cooked, either too soggy or doesn't taste right.

ON THE subject of rodents, do you have any experience of diseases of the hamster? My daughter has five year old hammy which has taken to sort of "wobbling" his way around the cage and every now and then sort of jerks as if somebody has stuck a pin into him, if you know what I mean. (best description of the action?) Is this natural in old age do you think or possibly may be a sign of hamster parkinsons or similar? Daughter doesn't want to take him to the vet in case he wants to put him to sleep.

Gledwood said...

Sounds to me like he has something wrong with the inner ear. You obviously need a vet to confirm this. If the animal's Ok but just a bit confused... anyway it's YOUR pet don't let the bloody vet bully you!

btw your owl avatar looks totally mental

;-]!!

Akelamalu said...

Ah you did it! :)

Gledwood said...

"it"?

you mean the egg fry rice?

o yeah. I've done it about five times over 2 days and am becoming a master!!

Gledwood said...

RON KNEE:

in reply to your hamster query: sounds like the hammy may have an inner ear prob. this causes the odd behaviour you are talking of

this on its own i would personally NOT say is grounds for putting the poor little swine down

maybe you should take him/her to the vets, get your daughter out of the room, hear what he really says

the hammy is YOUR pet YOUR responsibility YOUR decision no way should you put him down even if the vet DOES say so ... unless he's in real agony or something...

i hope this is of some help

Anonymous said...

Got it; I must admit the little bugger is looking shakey though. Thank you for the info. It does appear that poor ham is getting 5000volt shocks up his bum! Poor likkle soul!

Gledwood said...

it's really hard discerning what's wrong with hamsters.... has his entire body gone limp, as if the muscles have lost their tone? if so this is old age and means he hasn't got long left. i'm sorry

Welshcakes Limoncello said...

you seem to be doing very wel, at the sauce-making, Gleds!

Gledwood said...

yeah but I need to learn how to make my own blackbean sauce from scratch. it doesn't seem to be much more than dark soy sauce and tinned black beans... maybe i'm wrong...

The Zombieslayer said...

I'll have to borrow that recipe, except what Lone Grey Squirrel said, I'd have to substitute the soy sauce for MSG. Our blood pressures are fine, but my wife is slightly allergic to MSG.

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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!































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