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, March 09, 2008

Tyrannical Itchy Rex & Hurricane Alert...

I AM SO ASHAMED... but I have to get this shocking tale told as quick as poss ~ to get it over with.

Yes Itchy is turning into a real tyrant: she bit me last night! And drew blood!!

I had a bucket of lukewarm (clean) water out and was so furious I dropped her in it.

She doggiepaddled desperately (as expected) then bobbed under which panicked me. I rapidly fished her out. And there she sat all tiny-looking, wet and miserably bedraggled in my hand (which she tried to bite again!) then shrouded and swathed in warming scarves and towels of various kinds for a long while. I burst into tears and rather pointlessly told her how sorry I was (as if she comprehended one single word)~ and felt contrite for ages. What an evil thing to do... but then again Itchy what is WRONG with you? I think she finally has cracked (well I hope not... but what else? She squabbles with her sisters... she's a real rotter trotter!

She is in disgrace in a toilet tube as I write...

Other news: a "hurricane" is forecast locally for tonight (the "worst one in a generation (except we don't get cyclones here: our storms are hot and cold fronts where low pressure causes the sea to rise and wind to come rushing in. When the isobars are packed tightly together on the weather chart that means bad news on the shipping forecast! They are "gales" not hurricanes. The windspeeds are pitifully meagre in comparison... barely 100mph let alone the 200mph of a proper category five superstorm...)) anyhow... sandbags are being delivered... If I fail to write tomorrow it's because London has been blown away...

PS: I only didn't write last night because bloody BLOGGER was down for TWO HOURS last night making any posting impossible? Did anybody else have such troubles? They occurred around 6pm local time...

14 comments:

CrystalChick said...

LOL Love the pics to go with this blog. Maybe Itchy was freaking over the impending storm? Are robos known to be aggressive for anything?
We had funky weather yesterday too... rain, rain, and more rain, then lots of wind, electric flickered a couple times. When we went to pick our son up from a school trip, we noticed a good bit of the town was without power.

molson said...

Don't feel too bad Gledwood. Family squabbles are never pretty, but you can always kiss and make-up or in Itchy's case, bite and make-up. Plus, if anyone was wondering if robo-swines were good swimmers, now the answer is known. I doubt pikas will win any back stroke competitions either.

Enjoy the extratropical cyclone courtesy of the States. That was our crappy weather from last week. We should be sending another one over forthwith. Just ask the snow bombed residents of Cleveland, Ohio. I think they are willing to share the love right now.

Akelamalu said...

The little devil, biting the hand that feeds her!

I had trouble with blogger all day yesterday too!

Liz Hinds said...

Naughty Itchy! George bit me and I was so cross I slapped him and then spent ages apologising. We are too soft!

Blogger was being a right pain yesterday. Maybe it was the stormy weather blowing the ether around so the waves couldn't get through properly ...

Anonymous said...

I flung Jack our parrot once off the head of my son which Jack was beak attacking. He loves me again but I still feel awful about it. His wings weren't ready and he fell to the ground. He's never 'attacked' like that again. Maybe Itchy is a teenager now? Best of luck in your weather ... we seem to be getting Summer again ...

Nicole said...

Don't worry! Vincent said they are finger-printing everyone in England and who ever is responsible for this hurricane will be caught! (Sorry, it made me laugh a lot, since we were discussing the 1984 England has become, they just revealed their plan to finger print every domestic air-traveller as well, on top of that a poster campaign was rolled out last week to report people who take photos and the amount of CCTV cameras is already well known.) So with all that security the hurricane terrorists will not be on the run for long!

Apart from that bad humour, we too had a terrible time posting our blogs yesterday and uploading photos took a long time. We kept getting errors and then somehow managed to do it one photo at a time. It was frustrating.

Keshi said...

love the pics!

Storms ha..here in Sydney its more like SUN storms..:) so hot!

Keshi.

Jeanette said...

Hi Gleds,I hope you escaped the impending storm. They say animal get frightened when a storm is comming, Im sure Itchy will forgive you soon. look after that bite.and thanks for your comment...Jeanette

Gledwood said...

Crystal: the pictures...? really? I am flattered! You know they're ALL only library pictures... "this is 'Itchy'"/etc are looky-likeys (all robos look exactly the same apart from the "white-faced" roborovski)... no robbies are THEE most unviolent and unlikely to bite of all hammies... the opposite of the "normal"/regular tubby Syrian hammy who is a lovely pet but gets VERY moody, esp if awoken suddenly by poking fingers from a deep sleep... I never poked him but Pandable used to chatter and gnash his teeth (a real warning "I am NOT happy" and lash out and strike like a poisonous snake if any rustle awoke him during the day... soon as he realized it was just me he calmed down... o! how I loved Pandable he was such a little star!
Actually our weather hasn't been anthing like as bad as predicted. A bit blowy, a bit rainy. But not the non-"cyclone" predicted... as for BBC London's talk of "the eye of the storm" British gales come in "fronts" and hence HAVE no eye!

Molson: I knew rodents could swim as my old pet mouse fell in the bath once when I took him out for a ramble along the side (of course the water was warm and clean and I knew he MIGHT fall in but assumed a small rodent would be surer-footed than that... again doggiepaddle and fished out totally safely)... ITCHY I dunked in not intending not even briefly to "drown" but to give a short sharp shock and put bad associations between her biting, my hand and nasty water drops. not sure it worked. She's been hiding in her nest (alive and well: I checked repeatedly) for 2 days now!

Akelamalu: bloody blogger. then I thought I'd get a slew of answers criticizing me and couldn't get online to find out as the internet caff too packed out!!

Liz: Glad you see it as soft: I feared I'd get reprimanded over and over!

I think bloody BLOGGER did one of their "outages" (why are these always timed in Pacific/Californian time? California is the furthest END OF THE EARTH... surely more people live on the Eastern Seaboard of America, it's nearer (in time & all else) to the rest of the world... and what's wrong with good old GMT?
I just think they buggered up and refused to admit it.... I could get my own blog for ages but nearly everyone else's was anathema to all else and refused to make any apparition!

Gledwood said...

Anon: parrots are really difficult... most fascinating non-relevant-to-me book I ever read was about parrot training absolutely fascinating... hight of the perch (too high= tyrannical parrot)... and to punish them give them "aerobics" that means they're perched on your arm but you flap it up and down like a tree in a gale and they rapidly equate pecking with a bad perch!

Nicole: yeah it was almost impossible to log in and then safely KNOW you'd logged out again I find that particularly annoying I like to know 100% where I stand... fingerprinting, yes. Everything to make a lovely police state the "new" Labour govt are doing to us (how I loathe them... I'm politically central so I "should" be pro-Lib-Dem but find them so ridiculous I really could not stand them they're crap and want to impose extra taxes on the rich which I disagree with... well when I AM rich I don't wanna pay any more tax. Rich people already pay more tax as it's done on percentage... also they know they're never getting in and so just say stuff they think sounds good... little tyrants that they are... political Itchies!
The new biometric passports are brought in line for America's satisfaction:... why can't we opt for a "rest of the world" nonbiometric passport? Just Britain's buckpassing... I'm sure most people would go for a passport letting them into everywhere BUT America to escape their DNA being stored on a future Jurassic Park cloning database...

Keshi: hey at LAST someone from Sydney... sorry darling I didn't realize you came from there... nor what a dusky stunna of a maiden you were ;->....

Jeanette: I'm sure Itchy used the impending storm excuse as well..> I'm sure it was too ahead of time for that to have any bearing on anything she is just a bloodthirsty little git! ;->...

Lone Grey Squirrel said...

Great title for the post. Is there any risk of infection from Itchy bites? Your storm is in the news even here in Malaysia. Stay safe, brother.

Anonymous said...

Gleddie......I CAN'T BELLIEVE YOU CRIED 2 HOUR OVER THAT MINI-RAT! My friend has a REAL rat that is tame as can be. I would not feel an ounce of pity if you have to discipline itchy but you have to use the SAME KIND of negative reinforcement each time. My friend told me that since they hate water that using a spray can (they seel them for a dollar for plants), it sounds like Itchy needs some serious discipline. Friend said you should also smear your blood on his nose, a HUGE drop of blood on the middle of the nose and then flick him real hard on the snout (away from the blood) and then put him in a "seclusion cage" after saying 'you bad fucker' or whatever you want since hammies cant understan their name. TTYS- Sandy Portland, Oregon USA (who thinks Brittish guys are cute!)

Gledwood said...

LoneGrey: no. Itchy is very clean and harvesty-smelling, except when she smells of wee. How come she's in the Malaysian news? Duh. I mean how come our slightly blustery rainy day got in your news? Are you talking about BBC exaggerating as per usual?

Sandy: yeah I was thinking of flicking with my finger if she did that again... the whole idea of the bucketwater wasn't to drown but like you say negative reinforcement I can't BELIEVE she bit me when I fished her out though the little TYRANT!
So she has to go in solitary too?
She's been avoiding me hiding in toilet tubes ever since. Serves her right the little swine!

Oceanshaman said...

sounds like a carnivorous hamster to me . . .

I WANT OFF METHADONE AS QUICK AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE!

METHADONE ~ A FATE WORSE THAN DEATH







Heroin Shortage: News

If you are looking for the British Heroin Drought post, click here; the latest word is in the comments.







Christiane F

"Wir, Kinder vom Bahnhoff Zoo" by "Christiane F", memoir of a teenage heroin addict and prostitute, was a massive bestseller in Europe and is now a set text in German schools. Bahnhoff Zoo was, until recently, Berlin's central railway station. A kind of equivalent (in more ways than one) to London's King's Cross... Of course my local library doesn't have it. So I'm going to have to order it through a bookshop and plough through the text in German. I asked my druggieworker Maple Syrup, who is Italiana how she learned English and she said reading books is the best way. CHRISTIANE F: TRAILER You can watch the entire 120-min movie in 12 parts at my Random blog. Every section EXCEPT part one is subtitled in English (sorry: but if you skip past you still get the gist) ~ to watch it all click HERE.

To See Gledwood's Entire Blog...

DID you find my blog via a Google or other search? Are you stuck on a post dated some time ago? Do you want to read Gledwood Volume 2 right from "the top" ~ ie from today?
If so click here and you'll get to the most recent post immediately!

Drugs Videos

Most of these come from my Random blog, which is an electronic scrapbook of stuff I thought I might like to view at some time or other. For those who want to view stuff on drugs I've collected the very best links here. Unless otherwise stated these are full-length features, usually an hour or more.

If you have a slow connexion and are unused to viewing multiscreen films on Youtube here's what to do: click the first one and play on mute, stopping and starting as it does. Then, when it's done, click on Repeat Play and you get the full entertainment without interruption. While you watch screen one, do the same to screens 2, 3 and so on. So as each bit finishes, the next part's ready and waiting.

Mexican Black Tar Heroin: "Dark End"

Khun Sa, whose name meant Prince Prosperous, had been, before his death in the mid 2000s, the world's biggest dealer in China White Heroin: "Lord of the Golden Triangle"

In-depth portrait of the Afghan heroin trade at its very height. Includes heroin-lab bust. "Afghanistan's Fateful Harvest"

Classic miniseries whose title became a catchphrase for the misery of life in East Asian prison. Nicole Kidman plays a privileged middle-class girl set up to mule heroin through Thai customs with the inevitable consequences. This is so long it had to be posted in two parts. "Bangkok Hilton 1" (first 2 hours or so); "Bangkok Hilton 2" (last couple of hours).

Short film: from tapwater-clear H4 in the USA to murky black Afghan brown in Norway: "Heroin Addicts Speak"

Before his untimely death this guy kept a video diary. Here's the hour-long highlights as broadcast on BBC TV: "Ben: Diary of a Heroin Addict". Thanks to Noah for the original link.

Some of the most entertaining scenes from Britain's top soap (as much for the poor research as anything else). Not even Phil Mitchell would go from nought to multi-hundred pound binges this fast: "Phil Mitchell on Crack" (just over 5 minutes).

Scientist lady shows us how to cook up gear: "How Much Citric?" Lucky cow: her brown is 70% purity! Oddly we never see her actually do her hit... maybe she got camera shy...

And lastly:

German documentary following a life from teenage addiction to untimely death before the age of 30. The decline in this girl's appearance is truly shocking. "Süchtig: Protokoll einer Hilflosigkeit". Sorry no subtitles; this is here for anyone learning German who's after practice material a little more gripping than Lindenstraße!































Nosey Quiz! Have you ever heard voices when you weren't high on drugs?

Manic Magic

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Gledwood Volume 2: A Heroin Addict's Blog

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