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!

Friday, February 29, 2008

Poor Harry~!

POOR PRINCE HARRY! Ten weeks in Afghanistan, the news embargo broken by an American website... closest thing to normality he's had in his life, so he says (what a life, then!)... Now poor Harry has to fly home, not just for his own sake, but for the sake of his comrades who would be put in extra danger if the taliban thought that by blowing them up they might score an international news "victory" by getting him. How very sad, I feel for the poor boy. Born into the most famous family in the world: destined to a life of cossetted boredom that really doesn't suit his character...

ROBO-CHAOS. I cleaned them out this morning. (Changed their newspaper.) This caused a tubby horse-race type event with them scuttling round and round and round. Ever since I got rid of woodchips or shavings litter their fur (surprise surprise) has improved. Imagine if YOU had to live stark naked upto your waist in woodshavings. Sawdust in your hair. How comfortable would YOU be? Yet that's what we inflict on our small pets as per standard...

When I had Russian hamsters, which have the softest fur of any rodent (like chinchilla fur: and just like chinchillas they bathe in dust which means you'll see them inexplicably rolling around on the floor as if they have itchy backs.) I soon realized the wood-dust was doing them no good at all and changed their litter to cat litter. They improved immesurably in record time.

That is pretty much the only thing I did today. The day is cold. And dull. And rainy. And nasty. And thoroughly unpleasant. I went to bed in despair at about 10am and didn't get up till nearly three...

Outside it is raining. Lights are on everywhere despite it being mid-afternoon (no wonder we have such galopping "carbon footprints" our shops and offices are so poorly designed! Why not make USE of this flooding natural daylight? Instead of blanketing it out and then running the entire country on electricity 24/7?

I must go; I am cold. May the weekend come and go quickly or slowly. Whichever is best for you...

Research News: Heroin for Hamsters: Hamsters Tested With Self-Administering Steroid Patches To Test Addictive Potential of Drugs Commonly Abused in Sports

Blog of the Day:
Diary from Laos


(Laos along with Burma, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam the ONE area of the world I've most wanted to visit... I wouldn't even dare go there without a massive supply of the opiate-blocker naltrexone ... imagine the consequences if I did not...?)

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Run Down

VERY RUN DOWN and exhausted today. No idea why. Went to bed spectacularly early (about 8pm) and slept through. How glad I was not to be disturbed. It's a nasty day and empty. I just want to go back to bed. Outside it's chilly. I would like a plast of intellectual chicken-mushroom-peppers fried rice (slice the mushrooms realy thin) and Lea & Perrins these and the chicken towards the commencement of frying...

Not a lot else to say. STILL no sign of my phone's owner and it's been switched on all this time...

... I agree with the person who suggested requesting they post up my tubby trotters' video as a reward for their phone's safe return. But they have to call me first! Surely the very first thing you DO upon losing a mobile phone is to call it straight back to find out where on earth it's got to..? Or maybe this person's stinking rich, has another five to spare in different sock drawers and just does not care..? Who knows?

Better go now. O, what a dismal day..!!...

Drugs News:
Weak Heroin Badly Manufactured More Often Than Deliberately Adulterated

Daily Blog Choice:
Glacier Photo Blog

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

British Earthquake! And Personal Roborovski Burrow Film...

EARTHQUAKE has hit the United Kingdom! All 5.2 on the Richter scale "hit" at just after 1am last night... wow! for all of eight entire seconds! The media have not ceased prattling about it since...

... I must admit I DID feel something. The house took to shaking
and yet no noise of heavy vehicles passing... (Wow, I was in a real live earthquake: I might die of the sheer excitement.)

The epicentre was over 200 miles (300km) away "oop north" in Lincolnshire. And this is the worst earth tremor to hit the British Isles in over 20 years.

I might be able to put my scurrying trotters on Youtube! Already I have filmed them on a mobile phone I found this morning (waited all day for someone to call back: no result...) if they DO call I decided I would just give the phone back. I don't even need one. And the owner gets a free film of three tiny tubby furries scurrying around behind a newspaper. (Newspapers are not very photogenic when it comes to burrowing pets. The crazy print confuses the eye... but beggars can't be choosers. And I did get Baby Itchy at her excitable best. The last shot shows all three in a row looking... well, very tiny and furry (wow!!)

Does anyone know HOW I put this on Youtube? Do I need a USB cable? Then what do I do once the Youtube account's initiated and the cable plugged in? Do I just press play? Or is it more complicated than that? What's the function called? The phone is a Samsung (SGH D600 far as I know...) ...

Hot News from The Sun:
Quake Rocks Britain...
My Man-Boobs Made Me Suicidal...

And not from The Sun: Roborovskis in Singapore...

Great Blog of the Day:
Bringing up NINE kids in the US of A...

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Vulgar Tea

I WAS ALL SET on stocking up on the prime ingredients of a lower-class tea for supper:~ all potato waffles, Heinz baked beans (value are poorly sugared and full of water; I heartily advise against them) and several litres of frying oil. Heck, I even had the Benson & Hedges ciggie for afterwards!

But what attack of prissiness has struck the modern "supermarketing community"... NO frying instructions upon ANY of their industrial foods' packagings... am I really going to GRILL my greasies? I think not... especially as I live in a fleapit so ill-equipped we don't even HAVE a grill ...

And what is it with CHICKEN. CHICKEN CHICKEN CHICKEN cluck-cluck-clucker!~?? Chicken chicken EVERYWHERE and yet no pleasantly battered simple sqauares of fish. How dreadfully vulgar. ALL I wanted was battered fried fish with potato waffle in baked beans and a fag on:~ what's wrong with that? And yet my attempts at purchase were thwarted by a supermarket that stocks ALL chicken (e.g. chicken fingers) where it should be fish... and no frying (shallow or deep) cookery instructions. New Labour is like that short story we did at school where someone trod on a butterfly in time travel... then the world was ever so subtly, sinisterly different.

Not only do they erode our human rights. E.g. they're going blue in the face for the right to lock someone up without charge for 42 days (of course they would do this in the name of anti-terror)... they INSIST on ID cards as a cure for... guess what? yeah, TERROR. even though Spain - surely a tie with Britain for most-bombed country in Europe HAS identity cards and ID cards would NOT have prevented the 7:7 attacks. They keep 4,000,000 people's DNA profiles WITHOUT their permission... the only thing they do well with data is to frequently LOSE it. Oh and they assume they already HAVE the right to SPY on our CARS with some Orwellian device that MEASURES THE VOLUME OF BLOOD IN THE VEHICLE. Nobody even remarked how intrusive or sinister this was: the issue at stake was "should we have number of person in car lane charging things?" answer no and stop snooping. They EVEN want to instal a gizmo in each and every motor vehicle in the UK that would record by satellite tracking literally EVERY journey - no matter how short - taken by every vehicle in this country. Cross-referenced and checked against the 4,000,000 security cameras we already have snooping on us.... TONY BLAIR: a big fat thank you for setting up ALL THAT IS REQUIRED for when a TRUE DICTATOR DOES COMMANDEER THIS COUNTRY ...!

Right I have to go it's late and there were squeaks from my trottery earlier! Yes, that would-be Napoleon Bonaparte of the Roborovskis, Baby Itchy was probably asserting her ever-higher rungs and echelons on the hamster-peckery... and pink nose to pink nose knocked her housemate over and all manner of squarking ensues! (Well anything to change the subject off the state failures of Tony Blair...) righto better go ~ as they used to say each evening at Welwyn Stores:~~ GOODNIGHT EVERYONE; GOODNIGHT!

The Antidepressants Don't Work!

I COULD HAVE TOLD THOSE RESEARCHERS THAT YEARS AGO! "Scientists" have found that Prozac and three similar commonly prescribed antidepressants work no better than a placebo and are only worth prescribing for the very most serious cases of "clinical" depression...

Yahoo News reported: "'The relationship between initial severity and antidepressant efficacy is attributable to decreased responsiveness to placebo among very severely depressed patients, rather than to increased responsiveness to medication,' the researchers wrote."

How very depressing!

Wah-waah!!


I never got on that well with antidepressants in the past.

I vividly recall picking up my first ever script in the tiredness of the late evening. The pharmacist handed me a blank white box containing two strips... I walked away into the night, pushing one out of the strip as I went.

I vividly remember staring down at the big red sugary pill and despairing because it had come to popping this every day for a month. And then, I might, if the drug happened to be effective in me and there was no guarantee that it would be, begin to pick up feeling happy.

I look back to that time... you might think I post a load of miseries up here but let me tell you my misery then was in an alltogether different league. I wouldn't have been able to explain any of my feelings on a blog, for one thing... Couldn't explain anything to anyone.

Anyway I did soldier on with that pill. I think the psychiatrist had chosen it because I'd complained of not sleeping. Well you took this one and initially nothing happened. I say "initially" advisedly, for it merely took a while to kick in. About two hours later the most incredibly potent knock-out effect came on... and this was only a side-effect... not even the major effect of the drug. Of all the drowsy-making tablets I've ever come across I must say that one (Prothiaden/dothiepin) was the most potent by a long way. Far stronger than Rohypnol or anything like that... And I was supposed to get up for university seminars the next day! Gimme a break!!

Next one was a smaller pill that gave me constipation. And made me hallucinate tigers walking down the street. Only for split-second gleams. But enough to disorientate me. Only thing I did seriously use it for was to try and kill myself and it didn't even work for that. Lofepramine ~ trade name Gamanil (can you get much more Franensteinian-sinister-sounding than that?)Altogether useless!

Oh I can't reel through everything in chronological order that is even more dullardly than scribbling my dratted memoirs (which I'm still very slowly and unenthusiastically doing).

Suffice it to say that with antidepressants I've tended to have either 1. no discernable effect whatsoever or 2. just side effects or 3. an over-enthusiastic lovely enhanced feeling (probably the pills kicking in more excitedly than they're meant to... but at least the pills are doing something...)

So that's my life in antidepressants for ya!

*

Do you like vintage, second-hand items?... with other people's stories to tell? If so go to this blog: shabbyinthecity.blogspot ~ fantastic stuff!

Ice Covered... this has some of the most wonderfully atmospheric snow-at-evening shots I've ever seen...

Attic Full of Clutter keeps a marvellous blog... reminds me of my own mental state most of the time...

STOP PRESS: here's some 0.5-baked thoughts I cobbled together on the role of cognition in the aetiology of affective disorders ... in other words whether you THINK yourself into depression or FEEL depressed and utterly despairing, loathesome etc and the dreadful thoughts consequently follow?

I remember STOPPING antidepressants; a weird intriguing thing happened whereby I felt my old negative ways spring back behind every thought...

... which is why I have some doubt in that cognitive therapy. because they say thought CAUSES emotion whereas when I pulled myself up I had thought something pretty neutral "I will go up the rd to the shops~" in POSITIVE mental state = a good secure feeling comes over... in NEGATIVE mental state a feeling of defeat and dread creeps over following such a thought... I caught myself out feeling this one time when I was on antidepressants but stopped taking them not sure quite why I ceased taking them (what with all else I'd been popping/hitting/etc-etc.ing!) but hey!!




Monday, February 25, 2008

Self-Aspirated Blisters/etc

I'M INCLUDING A PIC of that beautiful giant mountainside trotter the PIKA, who collects poisonous flowers for the winter, that, as they slowly break down over the cold season, become nontoxic and edible before they rot... and that is how the tubby little pika feeds himself... and did you know this...= 100% true? In the wild, roborovskis use the established rambling paths of and sometimes live inside the burrows of pikas!... that is 100% true and correct! Imagine what the giant pikas think as my tiny robbies quickly scuttle on past into their personal deeper levels... "grrr! Bloody vermin! Tweetie-Pie meeces in my house again! We shall HAVE to put down more poison!!" (Robos are too intelligent to nibble the pika's poisonous flowers...)

I'm very sluggish and slow and miserable today... not entirely sure why... leg a little less painful by the day. Pain seems to be caused by the blisters re-forming/filling (where of course underneath it's red raw...) On Friday the A&E nurse "aspirated" these for me (basically means she burst 'em with a whacking great horse-needle and sucked the gunge into a gigantic syringe... surely something we've all wanted to do? ... Or am I totally barking up the wrong tree? To pop a zit by sucking it into a syringe... or to do likewise with a boil or pussing abscess... or even plain old "brandy"-filled blisters...

Anyhow, seeing as it's now mostly dried out and scabberous by now, and going all itchy inside I felt I wanted to change my dressings myself... cleaned it up and "aspirated" my own blisters (barely anything to drain they're sinking down into soon-to-be-scabs now...)...

Even Mother Hubbard, whose last abscess was so spectacular, the doctors asked if they could photograph it for their records, (it required surgical intervention literally on the FIFTH day since first appearing... and was so deep it required "fingers" of tampon-like interior packing... she was lucky to have sorted herself hospital-wise so soon as these "fingers" (which I saw myself: empty, I could literally have inserted my own fingers into them... this was the infection's jamboree of drilling not one but TWO attempts right down into the bone and it very nearly had reached there... abscess is VERY difficult to get out of bone... that requires the highest antibiotic doses of all... that is what loses people their legs...

Anyway, Mother Hubbs said my wound was pretty spectacular considering it was just a "miss"/partial "miss" caused by bad drugs and not even an infection... that's NASTY business.

And the sneery look on "nurse aspirator's" face at me the "barbiturate injector"... I TOLD them it was unwittingly and inadvertently done... I SAID I haven't actually "seen" a barbiturate capsule in my life. (All I "saw" prior to that injection was scummy brown heroin!)

I am going to have to get my dressings changed properly and professionally tomorrow... the GP's surgery will supposedly do this for me... if not the drugs service...

Hmmm I am TIRED. I slept for a LONG long time last night... from a miserable 6pm turn in to a 9am "gotta run!" I sorted myself out gloriously...

... gotta get my chicken pieces and peppers and all... y'know. I found some Arabic Coca-Cola on the street (in date! Just because it was covered in unusual writing and obviously some kind of special edition it had been judged inedible/undrinkbble and so chucked outside...) this had me peeing all night... When I awoke in the early hours, full-on robo-tainment was happening...

Hey best of news: my robbies seem to have stopped excessively washing and itching... seems they've left their "mites" far behind themselves... and their harvesty-coloured coats smell all fresh and harvesty now, too... not that they ever smelt nasty but they're fresher than ever living on and behind newspaper now... excellent stuff... Even pingy Baby Itchy seems well... too well almost... she was squabbling with Bashful this morning. Which made me wonder where that power-struggle will end up... with Queen Itchy I ruling over them all, do you wonder?...

... I dunno! Well I better had go. Hope all is well with y'all my friends... take care...


g
xx


I am behind with my Videos, so here's a whole list of all the most recent. If they aren't upscreen then click on anything you like the sound of and you'll go straight there on whatever other blog it's to be found on...

Staxx: Joy
Liza Minelli: Losing My Mind
Talking Cat
Madonna: The Power of Goodbye
Two Cats Chatting: Translation
Michael Jackson: Stranger In Moscow
Madonna: Hung Up
Amy Winehouse: Back to Black
Kraftwerk: The Model
Right Said Fred ~ Too Sexy ~ Daz Commercial

I love doctors' medical memoirs: this is a good one you can "listen again" to from Radio 4: Trust Me, I'm a Junior Doctor by Max Pemberton. If you want to hear it all from the beginning you'll need to clickonit today as (last) Monday's (the first) instalment vanishes as of midnight London time tonight...

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Sunday Oven Shelf Hamster

HAVE AN ENTERTAINING SUNDAY EVERYONE... no talk of d***s today... I am just thinking Sunday lunch... and how I must wash my clothes they STINK of tobacco smoke like I'm the Ashman of London. Dreadful stuff. Righto what else was I going to say: hey do you like that hammy apparently hanging upside down from an oven shelf? (Looks like an oven shelf to me...) Take care everyone... have a nice weekend what remains...

Saturday, February 23, 2008

The Feeling Vial <:-o

I USE THE ABOVE PUN ADVISEDLY as today I've been feeling vile. Only some people I used to know broke open (prescribed) pharmaceutical vials several times daily to shoot up in their groins... what is called an "injectable script". One, who a decade ago and before this drugs stuff totally got to me in my own infection injection habituated way, had me calling the (then) "National Drugs Helpline" (0800 77 66 00) (now it's called Frank; "talk to Frank"... and on the same number...) (Frank's online "A-Z of drugs"; click here...) and saying "my friend is prescribed
Dexedrine (pharmaceutical speed whence the "rock" group "Dexys Midnight Runners"...) and this doctor must KNOW she is injecting it in her groin... is it not possible to get injectable dexedrine on private prescription?" And the lady (they think they know everything about drugs after a month's training but don't. One confidently declared Valium to be an opiate. Another had not heard of injecting crack (the other aspect of my friend's behaviour that drove me to distraction. Why take such a massive risk to your health injecting that stuff when it's been specially washed to smoke on a pipe..?)... the lady said there was nothing anyone could do. Inectable speed is not available on prescription; only those pills. And though they are well aware their patients are "banging them up" and killing themselves the doctors carry on with these presciptions... I was utterly scandalized and despaired ever more... What can you do? And then I realized you cannot "save" an addict, no matter what or how bizarre or ridiculous their behaviour. There is nothing you can do except be there for them when finally they are ready to stop. She never stopped until finally the day came when Dexedrine pills, crack injections and methadone amps (plus ketamine at weekends) all injected into the crook (very top: bikini-line) of her thighs where the vein is finger-thick... but not thick enough, so it seems, to so continuously take all those chalky Dexedrines... and so she lost her leg. I was utterly gutted for her: but by that time I myself had plunged down the toilet too... there was nothing I could do for her.

So she now lives alone, using a wheelchair, no longer on methadone, (injectable or otherwise) nor dexedrine nor ketamine but still smoking the odd pipe on the crack. I know this as our oldest crack dealer accosted me with his new number a couple of years ago saying this woman had been asking after me. She used to be my best friend for a short time but in the end I just could not handle hearing her pain. And she literally was screaming in pain sometimes, at the abuse and ill-treatment she'd received in the past... it was not my job to save her and I got badly hurt.

Yes I have been feeling nasty all day. I went to the drug service drop-in, where they know me, and described my skirmishes with barbiturates that, further research has confirmed have to all intents and purposes left me with second-degree chemical burns on my back thigh. No wonder it hurts. Those drugs are, so I discovered so strongly alkaline they can destroy the flesh... which is nearly what they did to me... Never in all my years have I seen damage so extreme (a "local soft tissue 'reaction'" so I was diagnosed. "Reaction"~?? You can say that again! Not from a single botched injection (though I'm not even sure it WAS botched: it went straight in: just really hurt at the time... and of course more so afterwards...) Most abscesses I've seen are far smaller than that. It's horrible. Ukky. And has put me off a lot of things.

I'm living life in "senior review"...

Though I am glad to have my tiny tubbies trotting away on their wheel like fat old gremlins... they bring sunlight to my shadowy life... never had such enduring entertainment for the tiny sum of £23!

Have a great weekend, everyone... take care!

G
xx


ps who sent me the hamster dance on youtube? the url?? there's several hamster dances as it's the name of that squeaky song (I think) but I would really like to see the one you pointed out to me... having viewed back and back and sought it out over and over again through my comments I CANNOT FIND the url you posted me... could you please post me again in a comment under this post here? I'd be ever so grateful. Many thanks!

Link: Methadone Amps vs Diamorphine Amps comparison... (on grounds of cost)

Link II: Peter McDermott (probably Britain's top drugs counsellor)'s basic heroin/methadone/opiates/-oids factsheet...

Friday, February 22, 2008

Consultant

THE RECEPTIONIST FROM LAST TIME was having a fag outside when I arrived at casualty 20 minutes early for my appointment. She smiled ruefully but directed me to the right part.

Bang on time a nurse called my name. Went through the fairly needless procedure of asking why I was there... "senior review" it is apparently called...

A very friendly Indian doctor had a look at my marbled chemical burn and blisters thing... confirmed again: no infection (even though it is bright red and hurts all the time a bit and intermittently quite a lot as if the burn is spreading... looks far worse than the illustration (about six times as many and probably bigger) but the pictures I yahoo'd were either far less serious or much worse than mine so I thought I'd veer on the side of not grossing people out today: "if it was infection it would have spread all over by now" he declared. But transferred me to an even stronger antibiotic Augmentin (amoxicillin and clavulanic acid tablets 500mg and 125mg one three times a day). He said keep the flucloxacillin in case you ever do get an abscess. I don't know about "getting abscesses" any more; had enough.

I didn't want to sound all junkie but remembered to ask about these suspected barbiturates in the gear. Yes! Barbiturates cause blistering all over the place, he said and we have our diagnosis. Barbiturated heroin. No wonder I was weaving all over the place last week...

The nurse (only black woman I've ever met with an Aussie accent) rather grudgingly drained about 10-20mls of yellow water (not pus) out of the blisters with a huge needle and syringe. "Sharp scratch," she said. But I felt nothing. Even when she said it "might sting" and I dreaded I would hit the roof I barely felt anything: this sticky brown stuff like cuprinol... Now I have transparent patches all over it (are these for burns patients? They looked highly professional: never seen anything like them before...) All posh packing and bandages on top. One bandage even came on a crown-like fixture I put my foot through then pyoing! ~ It's on my leg... From now on the GP's surgery have to rebandage twice a week so no staving me off from now on else I'll start talking about... actually you probably don't wanna hear.

On the way home I passed a shop selling tiny trotters of the winter white variety (they're twice as big as robbies and have the softest fur I have ever felt on a domestic pet... just like chinchillas they take dust baths... beautiful animals (but roborovskis are more pingy and panicky and exceedingly inquisitive and copy one another more which is hilarious to watch...) I found a beautiful "cage"... it was a glass tank not much bigger than what they're in now; only this has two layers of caging on top fixed with ladders... it's beautiful. But they want £55 for it. Is that too much? Can I afford it? (Not really...) Maybe it will give me more reason to steer clear of that nasty brown rubbish.

I feel wounded and depressed and cannot sleep properly. Lost my appetite too.

Do you want to hear Vanessa? She is the most fluently articulate speaker of English I have ever heard ~ bar no-one ~ can let slip any word in the language past her lips without ever sounding pretentious...

Navigate past the red list on the right to "listen now/listen again": choose listen again Friday 22/2/8. She starts on banned atheletes. But I think her "should cheap alcohol be banned" speech is hilarious... "do you stay at home because you can smoke and get plastered for tuppence ha'penny?..." she piques us... and so on. Blah. Clickonthis if you do...

I just looked up some barbiturates on wikipedia: aparently Judy Garland died on only ten 1.5 grain (approx 100mg) Seconals... they must've been powerful pills!!

Thanks everyone for your messages of support I'm sorry not to have been back to anyone for several days... I think I am getting better. I am trying to be good. Too depressed to bother racing about anywhere...

Thursday, February 21, 2008

A few of my favourite things...







I AM SO SORRY about the post below... all blood and pus gung-ho... I was on a bit of a roll about abscesses I'm afraid and started wandering round the subject of drugs (yet again)... so in an attempt to counteract it here are some pictures of "nice" things I like...

ps I also took down that horrible back abscess video: if you still want to see it it's on my other blog and the link is at the bottom of the post below...


(and btw Vanessa (Feltz) is my favourite radio talkshow host... does a daily show 9am to midday Monday to Saturday on BBC London...)

Uh? Ukk.

WHAT? UH? O! Whatever: I have to remember this vital appointment is tomorrow morning. Doesn't feel that close... On close and distant and reflexion I've realized the guy I saw yesterday, whatever class of doctor he was, basically did not know precisely what was wrong with me or why it was blistering (which is unusual) or what was going on. So I am particularly thankful for tomorrow's consultation with a Consultant Dermatologist.

Illustrated is Google images reply to "necrotic" that is NOT the appearance I conjured or the guy seemed to be saying yesterday. From my experience necrotized flesh tends to look white, dead. It's open, like an open sore and may be weepy or wet but isn't pussy to any great degree. It looks and more to the point smells like what it is: dead flesh. My exhousemate had what he claimed to be a shotgun wound on his leg the third time he told me. The first time: it was an injecting "miss" ~ and that's precisely what I thought it was... The other person I knew with "necrosis" or chronic ulceration was a guy who'd already lost one leg (OK: technically half of one) he was a beggar on crutches... I remember walking past him one day and nearly puking... he smelled so bad. The worst smell ~ no exaggeration ~ I have ever smelt in my life. I've never smelt a dead body but would infer that they smell the same. Necrotic number one actually volunteered to inject me (he was a raving crackhead who'd lost his own veins, so he said through injecting speed)... something in his cavaleer attitude made me draw back... when two of the local prostitutes stayed in his room for a few weeks (and he would have me believe they'd left him "exhausted" through their indomitable bixexual lesbian threesome "services" they moaningly "bestowed on him"... as if! :~you haven't seen the guy) I asked one of the girls whether he had injected her (yes) and whether he butchered her (yes) so my instincts as per normal were bang on. In fact nearly everyone who I've let near me has butchered me up: missed, blown the vein by pushing in too quickly, partially missed (because when skin is rimpled up and the needle fully in-vein, the pressure of skin may eventually lapse, pushing the needle out, even though the needle hasn't moved a nanometre) and so on and so on. So whatever these problems of mine are caused by, bad injection technique is not it. As the man said yesterday it is bad (more to the point heavily "stamped on" ("cut") drugs that cause the trouble as well as the low-grade "number three" brown heroin: it never has been meant for injection. It's more popular with dealers than the higher grade "number four" white because it can be "smoked" (off of tinfoil: through a rolled up tinfoil tube:~ the socalled "chasing (the "dragon": though I've never in my life heard an actual user say "chasing the dragon": that is a press and media phrase...) Of course a smokeable drug is more saleable than one effective by snorting or injection only (heroin smoking isn't quite like smoking crack: unlike crack which vapourizes all at once the moment a flame touches anywhere near it ~ allowing considerable doses to flow straight to the brainbox; heroin (which also vapourizes rather than "burns") takes ages to "chase" along tinfoil line after line after line... I only used to smoke at the very beginning of my habit... then I realized "skinpopping" that is injecting subcut (subcutaneously) or IM (intramuscularly) had a double-strength effect and took about as much time (about ten minutes) as my then-tiny smoking habit to affect body and brains...

I only STARTED to inject myself because I was by this stage in a relationship with a 10-year junkie who had left works, citric acid (for breaking down the crappy brown heroin), swabs... all I needed to make up a hit. And because when I had been hit up before the junkies doing it had almost perversely made me cook up my own gear: I had no problems judging how much water/heat/citric/timing were required (well it's hardly rocket science)... anyway...

... so I find myself (many years ago) alone: fully-made-up "hit" in hand. I made some half-hearted attempts to plunge it into the crook of my arm but was basically too scared to hit up intravenously... and so I took up injecting but by skinpopping.

Skinpopping compares to IV injection as trickling warm water into a bath over ten minutes or so... over plunging straight from a cold pool into hot at an Icelandic sauna... skinpopping (at the time this meant an SC/subcut/subcutaneous injection which means pronging the needle just under the skin at a 45 degree angle...) with acidified brown heroin what happens is that within about five minutes (if not straight away: it is dreadfully low quality gear ~ almost as bad as that West Coast American Mexican crap)... a welt starts to appear: like a giant mosquito bite... walking around will move the drug faster through the system... within ten minutes I felt like I was fully immersed in a hot bath; totally relaxed... and free enough to contemplate what a "terrible habit I had and how I needed so desperately to come off"... in the one compelling heroin memoir I have read the author states the same point in different words:

I was never so determined to get clean as when I was dirty...

If this sounds counterintuitive or contradictory then bear this in mind: in withdrawal ALL ANYONE: that is YOU or ME will think about is HEROIN: how to get it. As quickly as possible. Into the body. To stop feeling this bad.

BTW: the above procedure only worked for me with pracically NO tolerance... at my very worst I could take heroin even in quite big amounts and literally feel next to NOTHING... an utterly despairing predicament...

Of course NOBODY in withdrawal will want to get clean... if this were so the AVERAGE length of a heroin habit would not be 14 years! No! You only WANT to get clean (at least anywhere but the very end of a habit) once you are HIGH... and have the luxury of jazzing about in a mindwandering space where you can judge life rosetintedly from afar "my problem is so bad... I really must stop. I HAVE to stop... tomorrow..." (cannot stop now you are stoked up and high!)

The IV injection takes about 30 seconds to come on (unless administered ultra-slowly into an exceedingly narrow vein); peaks in about two minutes... within 6 minutes (so I hear) the heroin has transferred into morpine... but not before the superior (and more addictive) heroin buzz has (in the not over-tolerant individual) suffused body and brain...

Which: yes. Around and about and by the houses, I hope has told any miscomprehenders or doubters or people who just don't get it out there precisely what this habit is ABOUT...

PS Following my own intuitions I googled "barbiturates" and "blister" and, eg here, found out that... seemingly (among the near-impenetrable medicinal language...) barbiturate injection CAN cause skin-blistering... which is why I wanted to get treated by a specialist and not someone who did lots of straw clutching... you want to know how I KNOW he was clutching at straws: he pointed out a bit of "inflamed" (just buised) vein and said "knowledgeably" "this might turn into phlebitis" (which is inflamation OF the vein itself... I've already HAD this: it was like a red hot poker stiking up the side of my thigh... and which, all in all along with his "not infected" (then why as well as feeling literally like a hot oil burn at worst of times did it the night before my hospital appearance go red hot and raging with heat?)... I really think this guy didn't know what the hell was going down and just spouted his reflex "scare the junkie" with not-spot on approximations talk... THIS talk is what leads junkies NOT to believe doctors (because they are being lied to: or the facts are surmised rather than 100% surely KNOWN)... likewise doctors don't believe junkies (specially when drugs come into the equation: "I'm in agony dr!"/etc... because junkies, being so used to being fobbed off and dismissed ~ or if given medication, under-prescribed to ~ become accustomed to exaggerating or lying merely to get the meds they genuinely feel they need.

Valium is for anxiety. Zopiclone is for sleep. Morphine and diamorphine are for severe pain. No dr, far as I'm concerned has any reason to withold any of these just because someone is an addict... when to most old ladies the same drugs are dished out like sweets!!

***

RIGHT: I've found some abscess pus youtubes... only nothing as hardcore as I was hoping for... and the bestlooking one some twat had categorized as "login/adults only" how prissy can you get??

Really I was hoping for some general anaesthesia ~ arse-scooping brown fulminating bloody pus multilitre pusbags but only got these... the first one (on some poor guy's back: my video of the day) is the best how it swooshes out! Hold your breath, prepare not to puke and have a beautiful pus-indulgence (ugh what a phrase) everyone!

1. Draining a Massive Abscess (on the back)...

2. Brotherly Love: Lancing a Boil...

3. Infected Abscess Removal

4. Burst My Abscess (in the mouth)...

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

FREEDOM! AND GOOD HEALTH!! (Not mine: he said it did NOT look infected; but prescribed 2x250mg flucloxacillin x4 a day anyway to stop this...) What he did say is it was the consequences of injecting bad drugs "heroin does not do this" he said pointing at the blisters, which have been packed under special drainage pads. "If this does get infected or you continue injecting in that leg it could go necrotic." Which means dead flesh and I've seen and smelt it it's absolutely vile. It's like an ulcer that never heals. So that told me!! (I have to say for "not infected" it looks remarkably colourful. Bright red patches, purple bits, dead-looking white bits (not "necrotic" open sores) all warbled and marbled. Ukk. I'm not saying anything more. This happened at casualty/A&E/ER by the way and I have an appointment for a consultant to see it on Friday... I'm so glad I'm not stuck in there I had visions of carting a drip stand downstairs twenty times daily for cigarettes (found it hard enough going without in casualty)... I have to go I am exhausted. Whoopee!!!

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Fobbed Off

I GOT TO THE DOCTOR'S on time... asked for an appointment with a nurse or a doctor. Said it was urgent. Nothing available till FRIDAY and a room full of "sick" people (ever noticed how nobody in the doctors' surgery actually LOOKS unwell most of the time... maybe that means they're a good doctor with a really high cure rate... whatever... I was directed to a 24-7 walk-in centre which is MILES away and allied to the biggest casualty department (ER) I have ever experienced. Let the fact that the British government have decreed to all NHS trusts that ALL "customers" MUST be seen WITHIN FOUR HOURS tell you how long the waits in these places can be... and of course you have the dregs and drunks of society haranguing, arguing (or in the best circumstances performing) in front of you... NO WAY did I wanna go up there. I got the phone number of another walk-in or drop-in at a hospital that is nearer and better (why not automatically referred there then? Literally it has to do with being on the "wrong side of the tracks"... or to put it another way, having the wrong postcode...) I am glad I had the presence of mind to telephone this place first. The young man who answered took an immediate interest in my complaint... "an ABSCESS?" he queried excitedly, (I wasn't even going to go down the "cellulitis" route: too exotic for most people)... he lowered his voice to intimate tones: "is it a peri-ANAL one?" "No. It's on the back of my leg." And then to throw an instant explicatory light upon the matter added (and I know I didn't have to) "I'm a heroin addict" oh I see. Then I DID get some good advice. Do NOT leave it. Come into casualty tomorrow morning or go to the drug service. They never HAD a walk-in (I'd been misinformed)... Once I was told to go to the drugs people I was relieved... they were the only place I wanted to go anyway. No lecturing Nigerian doctors; no four hour weights. They know me and I know I can come at 9am and get seen within half an hour. They are not meant to be a first-line treatment setting for stuff the family doctor's supposed to see to unless you don't have another doctor or (as in my case) the doctors have in essence refused you... Injecting infections are obviously a speciality and so I'll get a proper set of advice and treatment. I really did NOT want to go to casualty tonight... though my leg is dipping into chip fryer mode again... it does feel like a huge chip-fat burn sizzling away sometimes; then it gets a bit better and I think maybe it's not so bad after all... y'know how it goes...

I spoke to Mother Hubbs on the phone because she called her Dodgy (he is anything but dodgy actually) when we were down the pub round the corner from the doctors'... she is with her grandchildren across the country. She sounds normal now. When I spoke to her before seeing her and how her face had literally fallen: eyes barely open... after a "fit" she said she had... she sounded smashed out of her brains. I think she had a stroke but I know what she's like she will put off and put off seeing any medical professional... hmmm... who does THAT sound like?...

Well I am definitely going tomorrow my leg is only getting worse and worse. Weeping wet blisters and purple mottling with bits going white around it... doesn't look good...

So it's 9am at the druggery for me... and my hamsters are hiding in their huge tartan bag... maybe for several days...

RIGHT I HAD BETTER REPEAT HERE FOR REITERATION: IF FOR SOME REASON I AM NOT ONLINE FOR A FEW DAYS IT MEANS I AM IN HOSPITAL. THEY WOULD ONLY PUT ME IN HOSPITAL IF THEY THOUGHT I NEEDED IV ANTIBIOTICS. AT LEAST NOW I'M GOING TO THE DRUGS SERVICE DR AND NOT JUST A GENERAL ONE I GET A SEASONED APPRAISAL OF HOW BAD THIS THING REALLY IS AND IF THEY THINK I WANT TO BE EATING SHEPHERD'S PIE FOR A WEEK THEN SHEPHERD'S PIE IT IS (AND JELLY AND ICE-CREAM FOR PUDS: YUMM!) ;->...

PS I am now listening to Billy Bunter's Birthday Bash... it is so entertaining... do you know Billy Bunter? That 1950s nasty tubby schoolboy... like a humanized evil version of Spherical

Off to the Doctor's...

RIGHT I AM OFF TO MY LOCAL DOCTOR'S surgery... where I have been very reluctant to go... especially having been lectured by an ignorant Nigerian locum last time "why don't you just stop?"... (if I could it would not be called "addiction" ~ duh!)... if I am offline for days and days it means I am in hospital I am avoiding there like the flying plague though I know Evilstein will only use it as an excuse to throw out my robbies/make me homeless/etc. I am just about to leave for the "surgery" now... assuming I got the details right they don't shut till six... And I will only ask for an appointment with the nurse. Why? Because assuming this is really as dreadfully terrible as everyone says she will be utterly horrified and get the doctor right away and I will have someone on-side backing me up against the probably barely-English-speaking doctor... If I opt straight for the doctor I will be assumed to be a timewaster (as most patients are: coming in with common coughs and colds that no medication can really treat anyway...)... blah blah and so on right I'd better go

Monday, February 18, 2008

Secret Passage

...Secret passageway!... during my recent robo-re-removals, out-cleaning, lightbulb-box-filling etc etc when I changed their newspaper I left the new paper (one of the free London commuter papers; not The Sun any more so maybe that's why it didn't fit... where it was too big I just let it flap up one side... and to add entertainment to "injury" I hid a standard toilet tube, plus Baby Itchy's "Magic Wand"... ie her personal half inch/2cm diameter clingfilm tube that only she can ping along on through...
... None of the robbies knew anything of this secretive area as I basically made things like that and left them...
... Only early this morning to be puzzled by Spherical determinedly scratting against the glass in attempted burrowing... alternately grabbing the piled up newspaper in her mouth and furiously nibbling at it...
Clever girl! I thought. Despite no food, no treats... nothing more exciting than two of their familiar old toilet rolls being hidden behind there she had detected the "sectret passageway" I'd hidden in their home!
... Eventually I got frustrated and wished to pingingly hurry things on a little... so I dropped Baby Itchy behind the newspaper fold right into the secret passageway where she very amusingly smelt it out and cautiously explored. Of course I could see right through the glass so there was nothing "secret" or even obscure about it to me... though Itchy, by her supreme caution, appeared to feel very differently...
... and Spherical grabbed at the paper and heatedly gnawed on and on... which terrified Itchy, to see the walls shaking and bowing out and being so viciously nibbled upon.
... And then she realized another robo was on the other side and highly amusingly made contact whisker to whisker and paw to paw through the tiny gap...
... Then Spherical desisted her furious scrabbling and scratting... at which point Itchy chose to squeeze through, from the secret side, the hole Spherical had been so dedicatedly chewing... o! the look of sheer astonishment on her face as her dear old housemate suddenly emerged from that secret compartment! It was so hilarious I had seriously to restrain myself from cackling aloud at them both...
... Now realizing there was indeed something worthwhile hidden behind there, Spherical bit open, scratted apart and burrowed through to the secret passageway in record time.
And of course where one robbie ventures, the other two rapidly follow. it was so entertaining witnessing them exploring their new secret burrow together. And once I'd taken the narrow length of tubing only Itchy could fit inside away; the three of them had the run of the place...
... Every now and then some scrabbling noise (ie one of their own kind) would cause terror from the main side of the divide to the new secret burrow... then the burrow's occupant would panick and spring out like a furry jack-in-the-box...
...And presently, at past three thirty pm all three are stashed behind the excess newspaper in this secret tiny burrow... even Evilstein, glancing in, would assume the tank was empty with just waterbottle, wheel, seedbox ~ and nothing else... do I didn't cover them up... just being able to see their naturalistic behaviour in such a confined space is hilarious... how they scramble over one another... suddenly their pink nose to pink nose robo-greeting makes sense... they have to do this in the burrow to ensure the whiskery bedmate is friend not foe!... One time yesterday Itchy was rambling the wheel on and on while Spherical sat idly by... Itchy stopped about five times in three minutes to pink nose to pink nose do confirmational greeting... poor swine! She is bottom peck and so has to be subservient. Bashful and Spherical do a weird borderlilne-squabble greeting where one wrestles the other backwards so the "loser" is lying on her back with Daz-white undercarriage on vivid display... then she gets her private parts forcibly groomed for her...
... And if I hadn't seen this with my own eyes, I would not believe it...!

PS... this is a bit of a major thing to leave for a "ps"; I know... but I didn't know what/how to say it... I will say it tomorrow... Mother Hubbard's had a stroke! She looked utterly done in yesterday, her face all fallen, everything... dreadful...

PPS My leg I've been told is cellulitis... true enough it hurt so bad I was close to screaming point on Saturday night... seriously bad, like a burn from hot oil still sizzling away under the skin. All I wanted was to cut it out... and this, of course, I could not do... I've been told contradictory things about whether or not I ought to go to hospital. It doesn't hurt anywhere nearly as much (it's about 4 days old now)... since it blistered up... it seems to be that the nasties gnaw out the human flesh which can be excruciatingly painful (my one is nearly behind my knee; the main bit's palm-sized... (which means 1% body area)... and it goes on all mottled and bruised for another palm-sized area... the main bit which was excruciatingly painful at one point has blistered up, just like the bit on my arm did... now it hurts far less. It feels like the flesh-eating bug has at least eaten-out some of the flesh... which kills some pain in the process... I don't know... or something like that. I've been told to go straight to casualty by Mother Hubbs' friend who says they may keep me in. I will have to go to the laundrette before that as all my clothes are dirty. I really can't go in as I am I would rather die. OK I shouldn't say things like that but you know what I mean... or I could just go to my GP (family Dr) and get flucloxacillin/something like that... surely that will work... there is no point being in hospital except for the free shepherd's pie (which I love... you know that mafia expression "do you like hospital food?" well I love hospital food... all mushy and squelchy... really yummy and not challenging at all... beautiful food. Well I won't need that as I'm making a dr's appointment for 1st thing tomorrow morning right as soon as I've logged off this... and am purchasing chicken fried rice ingredients forthwith... which is essential for my mental wellbeing!

And how are you?


Video: 2 Cats Chattin'...

Music: Madonna: The Power of Goodbye (specially for Audrey)...

... Come to the House of Lime for some excellent winter pictures...

... right I really am going to have to get in touch with my dr's forthwith as I found out how serious this cellulitis can be I honestly didn't realize... no wonder I was in such agony!

... ps: and this is a fantastic birds blog...

...Leslie's blog has some especially atmospheric snapshots of the winter weekend...

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Treats for the Tubby Trotters

I HAD TO THROW OUT THE OLD TEABOX as I thought it was full of mites. The bedding in there was months old and raggedly falling apart. My robbies used to stash their seeds in there and then sleep on top of them some nights. A highly sensible security procedure with those wild sewer-mice roaming so closely nearby...

I have given them a new "granary"... this one's a lightbulb box, taped shut and with holes cut at the front and back top. This I slotted inside a slightly larger box with correspondingly cut openings. This was mostly as a mouse-deterrant as I'm genuinely scared something will sneak in and leave its nasty germs and droppings about the place... I filled the inner box to the brim with Bill Oddie's luxury bourgeois birdseed, plus some "hamster mix" (though the coloured "scones" are too big for my little robos' tiny pouches...), then I added Weetabix and Cheerios breakfast cereals and half a broken up custard cream biscuit. Spherical really liked the scent of this and was frustratedly nibbling away for hours making the entry big enough for her tubby frame!

The righthand picture of the robo on the spoon came from a web-page on some of the world's smallest pets... if you clickonit and scroll down you'll also see the world's smallest Golden (or Syrian: that is a "normal") Hamster. Who looks quite raggedy but is apparently quite healthy despite having stopped growing at only a few weeks of age...

I hope your weekend is going well. I have been in agony with a sore on my leg which I will have to take to hospital if it gets no better. I have to sleep with my leg up and bent and it can't touch against anything else I would say "yaroo!" and hit the ceiling!

Have a cheery weekend (what remains)... it has been minus five degrees (C) here in the Big Smoke...

... and how's things at your end..?

Saturday, February 16, 2008

Dropping Clangers

I DROPPED A CLANGER: well not really... that's just my justification for illustrating my first favourite TV programme (when I was 2, 3, 4 years old)... the Clangers lived on a moon made of cheese. They were black and white mice (well they were on our telly because THAT was black and white...!) and lived out their adventures to the soundtrack of a swanee whistle... (that weird bicycle-pump implement thang illustrated to the right is sposed to be a swanee whistle...)

Not much news: I was intending on a quiet weekend but constant phone calls from "old" friends... then my old dealer did telesales on me... telling me he is back on. This person I do have a soft spot for. I wouldn't use the label "friend" but he is at the edge of my circle of friends... we go back a long way... there is something about him that even when one night he kept a multinational crowd of twelve of us (Italians, Spanish, French, even two Americans and, surprisingly (the international banking set aside) you don't get that many Americans in London at all... anyone who sounds "American" 9 times out of 10 will be guaranteed Canadian. I think that has something to do with reciprocal visa arrangements... anyway we're waiting for time... he comes out with all this crap about "I'm coming up the hill now. I can see you!" and that was when he was still 20 minutes away. But somehow, once he did actually arrive and we all saw his face... all of us did the same thing and forgave him. He is that kind of person. Also it's well known that he got himself a habit on the crack, which you may see as poetic justice but it gives me no pleasure to see someone I like going down the toilet...

I've been trying to tame my other two tubby trotters! Namely Bashful and Spherical. Without too much success. I tried it on Spherical first as she hates me the most. Unless I'm feeding her, any sign of my hand and pyooing!... off she skedaddles. If she were human she'd be waving hands in the air and screaming. She's such a drama queen. So I put her in the "vet's box" (the black plastic box where they go when they're being cleaned out)... she hates it in there. So the introduction of my hand offers welcome escape. Gratefully she clambers up it. I even got her to sit on my hands for ten seconds without panicking, wriggling, dropping or jumping. And I got to handle her without her wriggling too much (roborovskis are so wriggly they're unbelievable!) But as soon as she was returned to her ordinary enclosure she made rapid escape. And glared at me balefully from safely underneath the wheel...

I am thinking of purchasing a brand new gigantic trottery for the robbies. For a mere £6 or £7 I can get a near-transparent enormous lidded plastic container literally four times the size of their current home that I could lay out with all burrows and driftwood and extra wheels and ultra-robo-tainment... I will let you know.

Next week or the week after I get my drugs test back, to throw light on my mysterious barbiturated or benzo'd episode... I shall reveal all as soon as the information is mine to impart...

Take care everybody and have a pleasing weekend... don't you think that picture below is reminiscent of Baby Itchy..~??!?

Tune of the Day:
Michael Jackson: Stranger in Moscow
... this is one of his best songs EVER ...

Cute!

MY OH MY WASN'T I BLABBERING ON YESTERDAY..??! Surely I must have been "stoned"... did anyone actually WANT all that information...? I do apologize. I have been squeezing my scab in contrition (that is, poking alcohol swabs underneath it to try and "sterilize" any infection...)

The hilarious picture to the right is to wish you all a happy weekend. Although she is actually white only underneath and on her "eyebrows"... something in that snapshot does capture the spirit of Baby Itchy when she escaped those THREE TIMES in the space of ONE WEEK... the sheer joy of bounding entertainment!!

Friday, February 15, 2008

Dodgy Gear: Explanation ;->...


OK: I'M SORRY I didn't realize you didn't all understand what I was rattling on about re "barbiturated" gear etc...

BARBITURATES were the heavy sleeping pills liberally prescribed by family doctors in the 1950s, 60s, 70s, to "bored" (or more to the point pained, depressed, cheated-on) housewives. They usually came as capsules: Seconal secobarbital/quinalbarbitone 50/100mg (red) Amytal (amylobarbital/amilobaritone) similar dosages (blue capsule) and "Tuinal" (red/blue: as illustrated yesterday) = a mixture of Seconal and Amytal. Read Jacqueline Susann's Valley of the Dolls ("dolls as in "barbie dolls" (barbiturates) for the best explanation...)

In the 1980s, SouthEast Asian heroin (ie Burmese) was regularly "cut" with "methaqualone" ("quaaludes"/"mandrax": illustrated left). Methadqualone is a non-benzodiazepine/nonbarbiturate "hypnotic" (sleeping medication) which, if obtained in pharmaceutical concentration (ie 100% pure) would make a highly effective cut to the white Burmese heroin, augmenting heroin's natural drowsiness yet saving the top-end dealers money as illicitly manufactured methaqualone (quaaludes) are far cheaper mg per mg than high grade heroin.

In order to cut high grade heroin with barbs/methaqualone/benzos it would be necessary to add 20mg-100mg NEAT drug into the heroin. This is simply not economical unless one has access to the 100% unadulterated pharmaceutical supply ...

Afghan brown heroin has, from time to time been adulterated with benzodiazepines (temazeam, diazepam, alprazolam, medazepam, oxazepam... etc) in pure form (ie diverted from the factory) or barbiturates (as described above) there is little point tipping barbiturate capsules into street heroin as one capsule contains 0.4-0.5g powder, of which 0.05g to 0.1g is pure barbiturate. Anyone "cutting" the gear with barbs, methaqualone/quaaludes or benzos must have a 100% pure source of pharmaceutical grade drugs:~ (probably diverted direct from the factory: somewhere in Asia or Africa)

Of course different junkies take different doses: but the typical "shot of heroin" in this country would be about a fifth of a gram (ie 0.2g or 200mg) some take a little less... maybe as little as half the above ie 0.1g or 100mg...

My point being that if one is going to cut heroin with barbiturates, quaaludes or benzos, in a typical heroin shot of 150mg to 250mg (250mg = a quarter gram) if you're going to adulterate the heroin with other drowsy drugs or sleeping pills those drugs must be pharmaceutical grade and 100% pure. For example temazepam is only effective in doses of 20-50mg, diazepam (Valium) likewise needs at least 20mg to have any effect on a hardened junkie. If top end dealers are going to cut their heroin with such drugs they need a pharmaceutical grade near 100% pure supply to do so...

My ordinary dealer wasn't on the other day, shoving me into the hands of my not even 2nd, 3rd, 4th but 5th choice dealer. I call him "Diarrhoea"... it pretty much sums him up. I took the merchandise. His gear seemed OK. Only I felt a little more wuzzy than usual.

Hobbled zigzagging down the street this-a-way and that... ran straight (almost slap-bang) into THEE shoplifter of the decade (remember I described him previously)... he pointed out that I LOOKED as I FELT:~ ie ALL OVER THE PLACE! SOMETHING in this heroin was seriously compromising my ability to negotiate the pavement and every aspect of the streets...

We all know the phenomenon: "I'm not drunk!" when we are.

Well I knew, I FELT I was all over the place.

I've had comments back "how can you function on heroin" (implication being: "it is the strongest drug"...)

yes: heroin is the strongest drug, but as a user you gain such rapid tolerance you may hardly well be taking it....

So a couple of days ago, when I DID have my drug worker appointment I politely requested a total drugs screen: of benzo(diazepines) barb(iturates) etc etc... if anything DOES come up I shall let yous all know...

as it is... whatever it was had me literally virtually CRASHING INTO LAMP-POSTS ... I'd love to know what it was...

... if and when the mystery is EVER SOLVED.... I SHALL TELL YOU!! ;->...


Videos:
Madonna: Hung Up
.
.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Barbiturated Gear?


Last lot of "gear" I took I was all over the place... haven't a clue WHAT could be in it, but have asked the drugs service to test me ... in case it was cut with barbiturates...

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Mighty Mites? Might Not Be...

I DON'T KNOW WHAT IS/is not/might be wrong with my robos. As besides scratching they have no symptoms of mites OR fungal infection. I've looked this stuff up here and here and was told that mites you can quite easily SEE (they are about the size of a full-stop ("period")) and tend to cause scabberous fur loss anyway which none of my robbies have... fungal infection or "ringworm" as it tends to be called causes again fur loss in a ring. My Itchies have nothing more than itchiness and perhaps some pinkening of the skin... I don't know that they are stressed either...

... Believing that it might be infested with mites (because it's full of old bedding: I left it in there as it was the covering of their old food stash) ~ I removed their famous "tea box". It did, at one stage used to be an actual Sainsbury's Red Label teabox but was later replaced by a "water for injections" box... which doesn't somehow have the same ring about it, which is why I continued to call it their teabox... anyhow I got rid of that and, despite a wealth of tubes to doze in they set up home in the furthest corner of the tank out in the open. A pile of furry dozing grooming nibbling hamsters. Looking a bit like the one illustrated though I think that is a Russian hamster not a robo.

Yesterday, thinking they might perhaps NEED more tubes I added another FIVE,making EIGHT toilet tubes and one half inch wide ten inch long length of kitchen roll tubing that only Itchy can ping down as only Itchy is narrow enough! Sure enough their ears went up and their eyes looked beady as they explored these new additions to their "burrow" (well that is how they think of tubes: they love to hide in them sticking only their pink noses out...) ... yet despite all this enthusiastic exploring they won't sleep in them and prefer to go on sleeping au naturel. Which suits me as they look so entertaining when doing it...

If I do have to de-fungus/de-mite them I will look for a powder not a spray. Sprays make a massively panicking noise for most animals (ever tried to aerosol a cat?~ well then!) Plus some of the stupid instructions: ("shield the animal's eyes") ~ ever tried to HOLD a wriggling roborovski let alone shield the eyes: that is IMPOSSIBLE without general anaesthetic and even I think that is going too far... so my solution is to construct tubes into a U-bend shape. Then to fill the U with the medicinal fur-powder. Place hammy at one end of the U. Poke her bum with a chopstick or otherwise encourage her to burrow through... and hey presto she emerges covered in treatment powder and not hating me TOO much for doing it... does everyone agree that is the best way..?

Monday, February 11, 2008

Pile of pompoms/Eggfried bread...

MY ROBOS have taken up living outside in the far corner of their tank. Suspicious that they had mites, their teabox had to be removed. So now (despite a wealth of tubes they would ordinarily sleep in still on hand (or robo-paw...)) they've taken up residence in the far corner, in broad daylight, like a pile of mini-hamster pompoms, all grooming, clean and sleeping and alternately itching and dozing and leaning upon one another in the most hilarious manner. E.g. Itchy ends up the most squashed-against in the furthest corner, her head thrown up and down as Bashful vigorously washes. Then Spherical falls asleep sideways banana-shaped against Bashful with Bashful preening her most private of parts for her. I've had to be ever so restrained from laughing at their predicaments...

NOW: on to eggfried bread. There are three possible variations.

1. Plain fried bread. For this you heat a generous amount of good oil in a small pan, preferably with black pepper and chili powder (if liked). Fry the bread until golden brown and crispy. That is ordinary fried bread.

2. Soft egg fried bread. Crack an egg on to a medium-sized plate. Mix yolk into white as if scrambling. Dip bread both sides. Fry until brown. If the bread is nontoasted and nonfried it will be fairly crispy on the outside yet soft on the inside.

3. Crispy egg fried bread. Toast or ready fry (as 1 above) bread. Then dip into beaten egg (as 2 above) and fry. This potentially gives the best of both worlds. Fried egg on the outside (which is not eggy, more cheesy actually) and yet lovely and crispy in the middle. The chili/black peppers are optional but a good thing to consider (along with Lea and Perrons) as you perfect your technique...

And then, my friends, you may well turn out the perfect breakfasts for yourselves...

Poetry of the season:
(Both are extracts; click to read the rest...)


T S Eliot: Little Gidding

Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.
When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,
The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,
In windless cold that is the heart's heat,
Reflecting in a watery mirror
A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon...



Wordsworth: Daffodils

I WANDER'D lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils,
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze...



IN THE NEWS:

Australian Courier Mail: Horse-Surfing. Mad poms' latest beach-sport...
The Sun: Gored of the Rings. Matador gets horn up bum...


Photo-blog of the Day: GusGreeper. Amazingly sharp ultra-real pixx... clickonit and see...

Life With Dogs... this blog contains fabulous snaps of the Cote d'Azur as well...

Larchmont Daily Photo... this one has a beautiful mirrorbuildinged NYC shot up top...

AND THANKS MERLE for this Award:
The You Cheer Me Up Award
;->...
Excellent stuff!

Friday, February 08, 2008



EGG FRIED BREAD AND METHADONE... how exciting. It's one of those days!

Thursday, February 07, 2008

Robomites?

MITES? I'm not so sure. Robo-mites, I'm talking about... Itchy has always looked "licked to death" (as in literally wet-licked)... I assumed this was a grooming thing; by herself, as well as the others... Now the others have started to look wet again. That and the fact that I saw a picture of a wet roborovski with mites at http://www.roborovski.net (click on health and wait for the mites pic to load)... Itchy doesn't have the pink legs or pink patches behind the ears or the arched back, miserable expression or anything else EXCEPT wet fur (and being thin and tiny, which she always has been). A robo is smaller than a housemouse (or pet mouse: they are the same breed mus musculus), which I've always assumed means a "muscular mouse" but then again I freak a bit of Spench but no Latin...

Also, the mites section said (as I thought) that mites are actually big enough to see with the naked eye. I have seen NO crawly parasisites on or off them...

Hamsters and all small animals (and birds, especially parrots) will excessively preen out of nerves. Perhaps Itchy's recent squabbling has something to do with the rest nervously over-grooming. In psychology this is called "displacement activity", meaning a behaviour indulged in to work off nervousness or anxiety.

I re-added their parmesan cheese tub (which is exactly the same length and diameter as a toilet roll and so has a toilet roll taped on the entrance, like an extended robo-front-porch). All three live and sleep quite happily in here together despite the 1cm wide opening (yes they are tiny animals! I thought everyone got that until I posted that toilet tube comparison a couple of days ago...) What I do need to get is an extra wheel. Maybe that will stop the troubles. The heavy two end up on the existing wheel. Spherical thundering rumblingly onwards, sometimes with Bashful holding on for dear life to the wires (it's a wire wheel) doing endless revolutions until she can synchronize footing. Then if Itchy can't manage to jump on (like timing entry to a skipping/jump-rope game) she tears up and down and round and round until she can. That's what the "pinging" is... running very quickly.

Time is low and I cannot reply or get in touch with any of yous probably till after the weekend. I'm sorry... better go or it will be all gone!

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Laundretta: Spin Cycle


LAUNDRETTA'S IN A SPIN AGAIN... I just sat with her for well over an hour at our local pub as her "punters"/customers sloped on by; she pointed them out... waggling her enormous false eyelashes as she chattered on... three stopped to talk. Two of these were noticably jealous (of me) (for what~??)... She told me about her complexicated relationships. I told her as long as you're a "working girl" all your relationships are going to be like that. With no set parameters. No lines firmly drawn. And never knowing truly where you stand. How could you?

Then we walked up the street and she grabbed my arm. And yet another friend of hers accosted her (you should have seen the look on her face: losing patience by the second). He thought I was her customer or something so he was all over her. She did say several of her "friends" have been very kind to her in the past...

I AM IN ROBO-HORROR. Not because of Itchy's starting squabbles but because... remember I called her Itchy because she was so licked wet all the time and I thought she might have mites? Well I saw a picture online of a robo WITH mites. It was tiny, like Itchy. Wet fur, just like Itchy. (Thing is Itchy's skin isn't red or even particularly pink; there are no bald patches... which is why I assumed it was NOT mites...) And this pictured hamster had the arched back, miserable posture of an ill hamster that Itchy most definitely does NOT have. Apart from looking like a tiny Porkshire Terrier (rather than a fat robbie) she is VERY pingy and healthy... So I don't know. I shall have to do further reasearch online...

THIS IS: the robo-website I found the details on ~ http://www.roborovski.net... but you'll need to click on "health" (I think) and scroll down to see "ill Itchy-lookylikey"...

MY ARM has been playing me up. As you may recall, there is a "wound" on it (yes! caused by my needleering...) it blew up, got very sore, got a huge blister, which transformed into a scab... It went all hot, red and puffy round this scab, which got it labelled (by the nurse) as an abscess. Well I didn't really pick at it but did stick a needle right in... which produced nothing more exciting than a few drops of blood. No pus. Even now, as the swelling's going down and the scab loosening (because it's shrinking) where it comes open at the scab's edge at one end it looks a bit white inside with the texture of tastebuds from the mouth... and only the tiniest ooze of pus. I think maybe it's a nonfocal abscess or a tiny cellulitis. I've had cellulitis before. That is an infection of the skin (rather than under the skin, like an abscess)... it can spread really rapidly to cover an entire limb but I've been lucky with antibiotics in the past... and this time, despite no antibiotics, whatever it was stayed localized. It does hurt quite a lot. If it's like this next week then I will go to the doctor's...

VID:
Kraftwerk: The Model

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Robo-wars!






THESE PICTURES WERE TO ILLUSTRATE THE DIFFERENCE IN SIZE BETWEEN A FULL-GROWN ROBO and an ordinary Syrian hamster. Bashful, Spherical and Itchy could easily hide inside one toilet tube ~ with room left to move around; whereas you can see that an ordinary hamster fits snugly through with head and tail poking out either end!

My roborovskis had a fight this morning¬! I don't know what was wrong with them. I happened to be watching them at the time, it happened around 6am. Itchy and Bashful, instead of doing their weird robo-greeting and that's it, wound up lashing out paws as if trying to tip the other over. Both were squeaking loudly. (Not a super-shrill scream like a mouse's shriek, more like the noise of a squeezy-toy... they are just like living cartoon characters.) Bashful pinged into the teabox. Itchy seemed very upset. Then Spherical lumbered on the wheel and started thundering along. She is so heavy she runs firmly at the bottom. Itchy is so light and quick she runs almost vertical... kicking her feet in Spherical's face. And then THOSE two started squabbling too... I dunno what is eating Itchy. She had better be careful; she is the tiniest one. Maybe she's fed up of being bottom-peck.

I hope she doesn't start a real fight; hamsters can fight to the death. I don't want a dead Itchy!

IN THE NEWS:
BABY THROWN FROM 3RD FLOOR (4th floor to you Americans) OF BURNING BUILDING CAUGHT BY POLICEMAN...

The Sun ~ best tabloid prose...
Mail on Sunday ~ best illustration...
Post-Chronicle ~ has video (actually it's a stills montage...)

CALLING ALL AMERICANS! Yeah! You "caucuses" voters out there... however you do it... (what IS a caucus? why the weird Armenian name?...
You have to stop that dreadful, vacuous policy-less OBAMA from winning! Oprah supports him (I don't know why but, Oprah, if you happen to read this I LURVE your book club my memoirs would make an ideal Choice of the Decade feature thing...) Anyway now not only Oprah but even Schwarzie's wife's nailed her colours to the mast! If this goes on the guy might win. America is in danger! Come on! The guy's half WHITE yet plays the black card every day... all that affected Martin Luther King impersonation... the guy only LOOKS about 12... and more to the point has demonstrated none of the skills (far as I've seen) that come in handy for running a country of 300+million... Come on VOTE IN HILLARY!

MILK, Honey & Cyder... Brit expat blog of the day... in quite atmospheric nonCosta del Sol Spain...

Here's a good photography blog: driftwood

PS: the EUROMILLIONS LOTTERY's peaking at £95/98,000,000 this week... that's $190-196,000,000 US... so even I bought a ticket... (gotta give it a whirl!)... what I find profoundly displeasing (and so typically British-minded. I bet it was the boring Brits who insisted on this petty rule...) after a certain number of rollovers the prize cannot roll over again thus limiting the prize to less than $200 million. I'm sure the American multiwhizzing powerball lotto is bigger than that. Why should everything European have to be smaller and more crap? We ought to have BIGGER BETTER SHINIER EXCITINGER things...
what IS better about Euromillions (so in effect it definitely IS the biggest draw in the world) is that all prizes (in the UK) are TAX FREE and paid IMMEDIATELY IN FULL!
I've heard the American multi-state one only pays out HALF if you want it in a lump sum ... is that true? or else you have to take paltry "enough to buy a broom cupboard opposite Harrods" (ie about $5 million a year) dribbling annual payouts...?
also do they limit the number of rollovers? if so that is a crime against humanity and the lotto-leaders should be frogmarched to The Hague...

***

VIDEO:
Wood mouse, field vole...

Monday, February 04, 2008

Running (not shunning...)

THIS WAS GOING TO BE A MEGA-ROBO-POSTING but I'm too tired. I've got some entertaining photos of pygmy tubbies... but no time (or NRG) to post 'em up today unless later on I get a 2nd wind (not like the farts: I've been trumpetting away all day so that-wise it would be the 264th (joke).

YES RUNNING up the road. Down the road. Catching buses. Turning round. Catching more. Exhausted.

FINALLY Pingpong and the tubberovskis got some fresh wild bird seed again. I do still have over a pound but... who knows where it's gone. Maybe the wild mice have eaten it (and you think I'm joking? they demolished half a kilo of premium multigrain flour in not much more than a week. which I stupidly left in my undies drawer (don't ask).)

Even the wild bird hunt was a chore and a half. The normal shop was CLOSED - at 3pm. The other pet shop had sold out and only had parrot mix at £4 a kg. My robos don't really like "hamster mix" because most of it is too big for them. Plus those grass pellets rabbits (apparently) like: hamsters HATE them. So eventually I had to go in the massive supermarket on the corner and pay double the going rate for Bill Oddie (THEE birdman of Britain: has his own BBC "cereal"/serial (well both)... This supermarket's seeds came in three distinct classes. Upperclass: these birds live in giant nests and birdboxes and don't mix with the ordinary birds at the table that readily... Middleclass: these would really like to have their offspring taught to chirp in Mandarin... but somehow never get round to it. They only like wholegrain nibbles. "Working" class. These birds sign on the dole so they don't work. They get heavily drunk at weekends and get other birds pregnant. Or else just start a massive fight at the birdbath...

Upperclass (in Bill Oddie's own) was the same per kg as the more bourgeois one per 2kgs so obviously I got the 2kgs. The cheapo birdseed just looked like hops and barley to me (or maybe I've got beer on the brain...)

When I got it home the hammies went turbo for it. Also I found Weetabix and the remnants of a pack of cheerios in our outside bins... so they had cereals treats galore...

Apart from that I am too knackered really to tell so it shall have to save for L8R...

take care everyone!

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