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!

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

No Rest For The Wicked...

CLICHE, cliché, cliché... and yet how very true... who on earth thought up the saying deserves a pat on the back or a knee in the ..**** (well that's wicked)...

I never feel I've gained sufficient rest for the "demands" of my jam-packed soul-empty days...

Suffice it to say I feel exhausted; I won't go on about that...

More to say I have THREE potential writer's projects about to go. OK one, my memoirs is "going" except, as you may well have surmised, it really has stopped. Autobiographical writing is so very much harder than fiction, I can tell you...

Picking over any modern novel you'll soon realize there's a certain strict protocol to constructing a scene and it pretty much works out as a third/a third/a third. That is, almost any chapter of fiction will tend to break down into a third dialogue, a third description of action and a third character-introspection or explanation. That's very roughly so, but speaking from experience when I have written fiction before, once you get the knack of the protocol of telling a tale (and I can only speak for myself): it comes very easy.

The memoir writing did not. Partly because I refused to "novelize" my own experiences: that is construct long-past events into neat scenes (which nearly always involves conflating experiences together, simply for the sake of neatness), then re-inventing dialogue to fit. And slotting the whole lot together into a fast-flowing narrative. In the novels I've attempted yes there were times I feel I managed this. But the memoirs are naturalistically told, ie raconteured in a more blog-like fashion, so what I recall I write, what's less relevant I race through and what's sticky and tricky I attempt to explain. Still, well over 25,000 words in (a good minimum third of a book) I don't feel I truly have the hang of that manner of writing... And I'm still not 100% sure I'm into the whole business of self-exposure on that potential scale ~ my whole life to the "whole world"... So I don't know.

As for the other two projects one is a historical tale so unready I can't tell you what it's about. And it would obviously require much research. The last is my fictitious tale of junkies and addicts, the one with that great mythic hellhound Gwendolina, still locked up in the kitchen to this day for her doll-chewing misbehaviour ~ and baying at the striplight. The rule is ~ most especially for the new and inexperienced writer and this is how I count myself ~ write what you know. This is what I know, and if it comes easy, it's surely what I ought to be writing.

I have one draft of such a book already done but it has such glaring flaws ~ not on a line by line basis, but inherent in the plot itself ~ that the entire tale requires rewriting. What I actually did in my first draft was to break that cardinal rule write what you know, spin off into other areas not adequately researched, and came unstuck.

So I do have things brewing up my sleeve (my sleeves are always smouldering, always festering, always seething out smoke; always have been. Sometimes they fulminate so vigorously they emit volcanic lava...)

So that's me. And as for yesterday, that was another thing I have to contact someone else to be able to do ~ someone I don't actually know. But if they like my idea they should hopefully let me do it. I hate posting "oo, it's secret" but none of this stuff should remain secret in the long run. Unless I garden-out or whatever the expression is. Veg out? Lunch out. That's it. I'm thinking rocket salad here...

Righto I'd better go and squander yet another afternoon... my attempts at room reorganization have turned neat stacks of things into a pigsty explosion of upended furniture upon tartan-bagged robos and falling piles of paperbacks etc...

So I'd better go. In answer to some queries of a few days ago, my robos are fine. They have ceased squabbling, thanks to living again in the same lightbulb box. They trot around quite happily at random times of day and night (seemingly no rhyme nor reason to when...) And they still love me (more to the point seem intrigued by me) at some times; flee in utter terror at others! And that's about THAT...

So bye for now!

24 comments:

Monogram Queen said...

"and the righteous don't need none" I had to finish that! Staying busy keeps you out of trouble my friend!

Gledwood said...

hang on i pondered on that for over a minute... righteous don't need no WHAT????!??

i try stayin' busy; end up xHAUSTED haha!

Unknown said...

You organize rooms and post Creeque Alley, possibly one of the coolest songs evah, on your site...I think I like you.

Gledwood said...

i hope you do; just bare in mind i'm a raving smackhead (sorry!)

tomshideaway said...

I'm so with you on writing memoirs..it's like I am constantly asking myself..Do I really want everyone to know that??

Thanks for your comment Gleds, to answer your question..I spend 98% of my efforts in blogging at Toms Hideaway..the others are experiments..

PS I am surprised you aren't in on Tome Trivia Challenge..we have Australia and Germany represented..we need a Brit!!You's find the link on my blog!

Gledwood said...

hideaway: now I can list ya. can only list one blog. or i spose a profile. but i'm one of those too-well-ordered-slightly-confused personnages (in a way) except when I'm so badly ordered i have used cotton buds sprouting out my ears...

memoirs: wow! someone sees what I mean!!!!

as for tome trivia challenge..? Brit entrant..?? what IS that thing..???

Nessa said...

Keep writing and it will all come together.

Gledwood said...

cheers! i hope so

lime said...

your intro made me wat to chant...rah rah ree, kick 'em in the knee. rah rha rass kick em in the...other knee.

but i didn't

as for your question about thia curries....i dunno. one is red and one is green, that's all i know. no help at all i know.

good luck with the various writings. it can't be easy whether it's a novel or a memoir you're writing.

Baino said...

Ah, you're tired and exhausted and I can't sleep . . shame we can't trade. Three projects on the go? No wonder you're smokin'

Akelamalu said...

Keep at it honey. x

Akelamalu said...

Keep at it honey. x

Bimbimbie said...

According to one author, (forget who!?!) says the secret is to write drafts and reduce them down and down until you have a book ... no pressure then apparently on the writer to produce the book by a set deadline.

Your "secret" sounds very interesting ... don't let it get lost in the rocket salad x *!*

Anonymous said...

Hmmm fuelling volcanic lava with rocket salad ... no rest for the wicked! Mwhahhahhaaa

Gledwood said...

Lime: I kind of had the sense today that if only I could sort out the plot (have to know what story I'm telling first I hate just trundling in the dark) I might just be able to siddown and write it all out...

Baino: OK. shut eyes. concentrate. swap! OK. OK!! SWAP NOW!!!! C'MON!!!!!!

Akelamalu: cheers dears

Bimbimbie: ooo ~ reducing down trash? sounds like distilling some essence out of it.

actually sometimes I have to ADD to the bare skeletal rushed bones of my draft... (do sometimes!!)

Anon: I always imagine rocket salad delivering up Sputnick (or some dog in a space suit...)

franzy said...

I think the thing to ask yourself about autobiographies isn't "Do I want to write about that?", but "Do other people want to read about it?"

I think it's necessary to conflate stories and anecdotes within autobiographies in order to give them some semblance of structure that can be sustained over its length. Ask yourself why you are writing it in the first place. Is it to entertain people? To sell? As a truthful legal document? These would all have different outcomes in terms of what you produce.

Good luck.

Zen Wizard said...

I am a big fan of fiction--it is harder to write for non-writers, therefore you are not REALLY (appologies to Fabio) competing with celebrities.

(I would actually give a pretty penny to see Fabio's novel before the editor/book doctor at the publishing company got ahold of it...)

I have recounted ad nauseum what I think your problems are going to be when you try to get the memoirs published.

But go ahead and prove me wrong!

It would just be better if you were a famous soccer player or something and you were writing about shooting 'roids in your ass. And the asses of other famous soccer players...maybe soccer is such a wussbag sport that the players don't do 'roids; I don't know. Would 'roids benefit a cricket player? Having watched cricket, you could tell me that swinging a chicken over your head would benefit a cricket player, and I would believe you.

Like I said--again ad mauseum--James Frey et al. have kind of soiled the path for future "Average Joe Drug Memoirs."

But, as we have already determined, you are going to write what you are going to write anyway, and hopefully you will sell a million copies and prove me wrong.

I'm just sayin'--it's too bad you can't change yourself into a famous soccer player with a hot model wife or something and then mix the real shit that happened with made up shit.

Anonymous said...

I'd assume it's hard to write memoirs. As you said, novelizing is tough and I would be scared to hurt people around me as well...

Gledwood said...

Franzy: I know what I think you're saying. You're talking about what I'd call being "object oriented" which can mean being selfish (in other circumstances); can mean rather selflessly paring one's life and experiences down. It's not easy though!

What I did was to study a few "auto"-biographies...

of those I found, (with one notable exception) only the GHOSTWRITTEN ones "novelized"... the others did what I'm doing: telling as it is.

Rather than second-guessing what precise subject matter might or might not please my readers, I just ploughed on.

Then the finished draft I have to cut up, excise, blah blah etc etc and get a "polished" raconteur out of...

ZenWizz: soccer... wussy? hang on what game dresses up fully grown men in the most camp get up ever seen? ah yeah! AMERICAN football. that is space-age rugby. ordinary soccer football is so popular across much of the rest of the world because it does NOT require complicated equipment, pitch markings or anything of the sort (not when kicking ball round streets)...

James Frey never heard of.

My story is not average that's the point. It's always too complicated to tell in short bursts and get the winding truth made plain. Hey I got to press that link now...

Zhu: other people. that was ANOTHER big FCKR about it ON TOP of all else

Gledwood said...

Franzy: I know what I think you're saying. You're talking about what I'd call being "object oriented" which can mean being selfish (in other circumstances); can mean rather selflessly paring one's life and experiences down. It's not easy though!

What I did was to study a few "auto"-biographies...

of those I found, (with one notable exception) only the GHOSTWRITTEN ones "novelized"... the others did what I'm doing: telling as it is.

Rather than second-guessing what precise subject matter might or might not please my readers, I just ploughed on.

Then the finished draft I have to cut up, excise, blah blah etc etc and get a "polished" raconteur out of...

ZenWizz: soccer... wussy? hang on what game dresses up fully grown men in the most camp get up ever seen? ah yeah! AMERICAN football. that is space-age rugby. ordinary soccer football is so popular across much of the rest of the world because it does NOT require complicated equipment, pitch markings or anything of the sort (not when kicking ball round streets)...

James Frey never heard of.

My story is not average that's the point. It's always too complicated to tell in short bursts and get the winding truth made plain. Hey I got to press that link now...

Zhu: other people. that was ANOTHER big FCKR about it ON TOP of all else

Gledwood said...

ZEN WIZZ:

ok in brief:~

hang on hang on as i said nobody has HEARD of J Frey over here. his book, if in the shops is not in many...

my memoirs rely on the power of bringing to life very ordinary junkie events. not exaggerating life into a series of nonexistent carcrashes, imprisonments and escapes from the law...

lettuce said...

i kind of think post-modernism means there aren't any rules any more... are there?

i love rocket salad tho......

Welshcakes Limoncello said...

Some interesting observations on writing, Gleds. Perhaps you'll go back to the memoirs one day - I hope so. Don't give up on any of these projects!

Gledwood said...

Lettuce: true: PoMo = the valuelessness of nothingness in the contemporary Wasteland.

...or something...

Welshcakes: no I'm never giving up!!

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?

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Gledwood Volume 2: A Heroin Addict's Blog

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