HAMSTERS & HEROIN: Not all junkies are purse-snatching grandmother-killing psychos. I'm keeping this blog to bear witness to that fact.

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DIARY OF A SLOWLY RECOVERING HEROIN ADDICT

I used to take heroin at every opportunity, for over 10 years, now I just take methadone which supposedly "stabilizes" me though I feel more destabilized than ever before despite having been relatively well behaved since late November/early December 2010... and VERY ANGRY about this when I let it get to me so I try not to.

I was told by a mental health nurse that my heroin addiction was "self medication" for a mood disorder that has recently become severe enough to cause psychotic episodes. As well as methadone I take antipsychotics daily. Despite my problems I consider myself a very sane person. My priority is to attain stability. I go to Narcotics Anonymous because I "want what they have" ~ Serenity.

My old blog used to say "candid confessions of a heroin and crack cocaine addict" how come that one comes up when I google "heroin blog" and not this one. THIS IS MY BLOG. I don't flatter myself that every reader knows everything about me and follows closely every single word every day which is why I repeat myself. Most of that is for your benefit not mine.

This is my own private diary, my journal. It is aimed at impressing no-one. It is kept for my own benefit to show where I have been and hopefully to put off somebody somewhere from ever getting into the awful mess I did and still cannot crawl out of. Despite no drugs. I still drink, I'm currently working on reducing my alcohol intake to zero.

If you have something to say you are welcome to comment. Frankness I can handle. Timewasters should try their own suggestions on themselves before wasting time thinking of ME.

PS After years of waxing and waning "mental" symptoms that made me think I had depression and possibly mild bipolar I now have found out I'm schizoaffective. My mood has been constantly "cycling" since December 2010. Mostly towards mania (an excited non-druggy "high"). For me, schizoaffective means bipolar with (sometimes severe)
mania and flashes of depression (occasionally severe) with bits of schizophrenia chucked on top. You could see it as bipolar manic-depression with sparkly knobs on ... I'm on antipsychotic pills but currently no mood stabilizer. I quite enjoy being a bit manic it gives the feelings of confidence and excitement people say they use cocaine for. But this is natural and it's free, so I don't see my "illness" as a downer. It does, however, make life exceedingly hard to engage with...

PPS The "elevated mood" is long gone. Now I'm depressed. Forget any ideas of "happiness" I have given up heroin and want OFF methadone as quick as humanly possible. I'm fed up of being a drug addict. Sick to death of it. I wanna be CLEAN!!!

Attack of the Furry Entertainers!

Attack of the Furry Entertainers!

Monday, May 12, 2008

Pizza the Action...

CIRCA 5:45PM on Monday... I'VE made an appointment for my doctor's for 9:00am Thusday (earliest time available). They'd had the cheek to chuck me off their list, having allegedly written to me mid 2007 to "confirm I was still on the list" (why wouldn't I be~?) What doolalliness. I just realized: if I were no longer there I would surely have registered with another doctor who would have written to my present doctor (a long Tamil-type name) in order to forward my notes and paperwork. In other words they know I've moved nowhere. Had I done so, the new doctor would long ago have been in touch!

What scandal!!

At the weekend ~ I can't believe this! ~ I got ripped off by a major highstreet supermarket for 63p. Hardly a bankbreaking sum, I'm well aware, and yet highly annoying nonetheless. When I passed through the tills with my 600g intellectual pasta tomato and cheese (ie "margarita" pizza flavour) (this is the raw tortelloni I favour: 7 mins boiling time with ready-chopped broccoli in the same pan, grate on intellectual cheese and the result's incredible!)

So I buy one 600g cheese & tomato tortelloni for £1.67 ~ broccoli I have already at home (my robos' favourite); plus one Wensleydale cheese for on-grating (not my top preference ~ far too crumbly and I hate crumbly cheese. I like my cheese strong and nutty and smooth-plasticky in texture... Edam-like, ideally (for eating); Cheddar-like for cooking (don't bother with the supposed-authentic mozzarella it's nothingness...) The holey Norwegian Jarlesburg is a particular favourite of mine. So I don't really like this Wensleydale cheese. According to the packet it's made by Northern monks:... I'd always assumed it was one of those industrially-named massmarket cheeses with no heritage. Y'know the sort of cheese with an "authentic" English TV-ad filmed Lord of the Rings-style in New Zealand...

Anyway I purchased only one 200g or so Wensleydale for £1.37; a total bill of £3.04. Supposedly.

Imagine my repressed middle-class shock when the till lady trilled out "that's £3.67 please!" in terribly cheery tones. Cussing myself for allegedly lousing up the mental arithmetic I kept on my best bourgeois poker-face whilst handing over my very last £5er...

My purchases (plus my trotter broccoli) made a yummy dinner. I have to say. I love freshly boiled-up tortelloni. Broccoli went wonderfully with it. The Wensleydale, though peppered and grated right on the steaming pasta, being too crumbly and unpleasant in texture, refused to melt.

T'was only upon a relaxed reclining idle-minded glance over said till receipt that I realized my mental arithmetic wasn't off-kilter at all, but my cheese had been scanned twice. Generously with a multisave ("2 for £2!" but ungenerously leaving me with the mere one Wensleydale I took home and not the two I'd just realized I'd paid for!

Having arranged to meet a friend down a cafe a half an hour away the supermarket had to wait...

By Sunday afternoon my indignation was no cooler. So I stormed down the supermarket, receipt and empty packs in hand (I may have been overcharged but the food was yummy!)

The man at Customer Services was quite bemused. How do I prove paying for 2 items yet receiving one? I'm glad now for the Shops & Robbers documentary I viewed a couple of years ago, which highlighted how each individual till in a large supermarket is individually CCTV'd and auto-cross-referenced on-screen as every item's scanned. This prevents (or at least records) potential staff scams. The most famous being when a till person acts in cahoots with a customer, passing several expensive articles (eg magna of champagne) with fingers blocking the barcode, while a small enough bill for Value toilet paper and bread is rung up to avoid suspicion...

So when I got a blank look I pointed out that every product scanned is filmed ~ and got my refund forthwith. How highly petty. And yet how very annoying. If I had dared walk out without paying even 63p, I'm sure security would have been all over me and quite possibly even the police. Put the boot on the other foot, however and though I'm refunded without a verbal quibble, they say ever so much more with their eyes!

What else? Our robo blood-in-wee shocker's still ongoing and I'm ever more sure the situation's "hormonal" rather than symptomatic of any illness.

I've observed Baby Itchy pee "normally". She holds still ~ you'd not even know she was doing it ~ still ~ still ~ and it's done.

The other pee is quite a different posture:~ bum up in the air and bright red drops of blood are left behind.

I think this explains her intermittently highly fractious behaviour ~ including biting me ~ if you rightly remember ~ and rides out the ever more likely seeming explanation that "she just needs a boyfriend"....

Poor little cow! So extraordinarily tiny and barely anything to her... yet so extremely highly sexed!

I cleaned out the tiny trotters yesterday morning. Bashful and Itchy went a-scrabbling in their diggery, where I dropped them. Spherical, suspicious as ever, stashed herself in an aerial loo-roll tube and pretended not to be there. They don't live among woodshaved "cage litter" any more as I don't think living waist-deep in itchy shavings can possibly be good for them as a permanent measure... I don't want my poor babies getting scratty fur. Their current (new) enclosure's as deep as it is wide (ie a mirrored square, as you view it head-on) and the floor shape's bowed outwards, necessitating special cutting or tearing of the flooring material. This I did with a specially adapted copy of London Lite. Out the old one came. Spherical glared at me balefully from her tube. In went the new "carpeting", followed by those 2 baby trotters fresh from the diggery. How they pinged around and around, bemused by the horrid new smell, devoid of days of dutiful scent-marking!

Round and round they trotted, like a furry horse-race. And I gave them a tiny new bedroom just now ~ a Swan tips filters (big-size) box.

The little trotters are a-sleeping as I speak, but they'll soon be trotting again and poking out like furry moose-heads from plaques.

Now I've got to go; I'm extremely tired and more to the point hungry. I got an intellectual chicken tikka pizza to check out my whizzy oven (225C (though the packet states 220 I always err on the side of incineration. Only one oven in my life's ever over-cooked and that belonged to a friend with relatives in Mayfair...)

Righty-ho: better go else I'll never get this posted...

... 1000 apologies everyone for not having been in touch personally (still!) for such a long while... I really haven't had the net-time, xcept to "post-&-go"! (As the cyber-shampoo ad might say...)


VIDEO:~
SAM SPARRO: BLACK AND GOLD

This is such a catchy tune; see how you like it...


11 comments:

Gledwood said...

C'mon: fess up! Who likes Sam Sparro: Black & Gold..??

Baino said...

Heheh "Intellectual cheese" that fits some of my 'friends' . . .I feel a new moniker coming on! Good for you for claiming your money back. I left a whole shopping bag of stuff in the liquor shop last week whilst distracted defending a couple of Chinese guys who were asked for ID even though they were clearly over 18 . . I didn't go back to claim it *sob*

Oh . . yep, catchy tune alright and a clever vid!

Bimbimbie said...

First I've heard of him and his Black & Gold ... thumbs up from me *!*

Good for you standing up to the double dipping of the supermarket. It hasn't happened to me for a while ... I questioned a bag of grapes which had been a couple of dollars different to when I put them in the trolley then finding they had doubled when I got to the till. Usually when this happens they don't charge for the item. Most of the time your too busy loading and unloading your items to see what's going on with the scanning so I wouldn't be surprised that errors happen without you realising *!*

Anonymous said...

Good for you Gledwood, there are regular scammers out there and supermarket tills are the most practised among them! My feet are tapping to your upbeat tune :)

CrystalChick said...

Our markets are usually good about that. One even returns money if you call to say you didn't like a certain product. They take your name for next time you come in and only have to bring the receipt and not the product you weren't happy with.

I LOVE Wensleydale cheese with cranberries. That is soooo yummy. I actually have a picture of that and some crackers and fruit that I haven't posted to the blog. Been too busy with baby pictures and our trip on Mother's Day.

Nicole said...

Well I for one am rather happy that you went down to the supermarket and told them what happened and got your money refunded. It doesn't matter how little money it is, the point being is that you'd have been arrested for not paying 63p. They can roll their eyes all they want, you did the right thing. Supermarkets are so grossly overpriced to begin with.

Merle said...

Hi Gleds ~~ Sorry I haven't been by for awhile, but glad to see the robos are doing well. Hope you get on OK at the doctor on Thursday. Glad you went and got your money back. Take care, my friend. I hope you soon get better internet time. Take care of yourself. Best wishes, Merle.

Vincent said...

That supermarket story was wel written mate, it amused me a lot and I felt all victorious myself even when I read about the refund. Good on ya! Very cool mate :-)

The other day I came across an old music video that I personally find worth watching (not because the tons of female booty, but as a whole). The music and video complement each other really well and it's a cool song.

Here's the link if you wanna see/post it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P3Wc-37pC4

Vinz.

Gledwood said...

One of our supermarkets even used to claim they'd give you a refund if you happened to drop a bag of groceries in the carpark... un4tunately I couldn't remember which one!

I was really put out about that 63p as it was my LAST. And if I'd not gone & got that refund ::~ not even one cyder for Sunday afternoon!!

Thanks for the messages everyone ;->...

ps Sam Sparro is Australian and the song got to #2 on the British charts earlier this year (March, I think)

Welshcakes Limoncello said...

Great post title, Gleds and well done for getting your refund!

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I WANT OFF METHADONE AS QUICK AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE!

METHADONE ~ A FATE WORSE THAN DEATH







Heroin Shortage: News

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







Christiane F

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

To See Gledwood's Entire Blog...

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

Drugs Videos

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

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

Mexican Black Tar Heroin: "Dark End"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And lastly:

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































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