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, July 02, 2008

Where is the Love?

WHERE IS IT? C'MON, SOMEONE TELL ME! In illustration we have Raphael Nadal (L) currently playing tennis against Andy Murry in Wimbledon and Naomi Campbell (R) currently doing community service for going mental when a bag containing a gown she had been scheduled to wear that night on an American talkshow went missing in London Heathrow's "fantastic" new Terminal 5 (don't go there! All they ever seem to do is lose everyone's luggage and leave you hours late still sans baggages...

Plus I'm posting below (Godwilling it will actually be there on Youtube for me to plunder) the Black Eyed Peas' Where is the Love: the only pop song I can think of that makes a direct plea to Almighty God: (paraphrased)

Father help us send some guidance from above;
People got me questioning: WHERE IS THE LOVE?


Talking of Higher Powers yes I did make it to Narcotics Anonymous last week. Unfortunately I missed the best part of the meeting (something to do with "acceptance") though what people had to say about "acceptance" was interesting. One guy said he never throughout his entire career of using conceded defeat to crack cocaine. What he meant was that he never threw up inner hands and went "that's it, I'm an addict I'm going to give up on giving up and I'm just going to use" ~ which I have to say is not like me. I "accepted" that I was a deadbeat junkie long ago and I can tell you once the inner struggle and all the lost promises "I'm giving up tomorrow/next week etc" had gone I felt a lot more comfortable just wallowing in the pigs' diarrhoea of my addiction (well what else can I call it). Another guy said that the heroin-crack snowballs he used to inject put him "in another dimension"... "but I'm in this dimension. So I stopped doing it". I know exactly where he's coming from re crack and have found it quite easy to accept that you simply cannot stay that high all the time. Heroin isn't a "high" as such, it feels more like pharmacological "food". In fact the dealers often call it "food" if offering in anything like mixed company... I know the heroin-crack mixture well and though I have done it strong (ie 50:50 strength) I can think of one morning in particular when I knew I had "a bit of coke on my spoon", threw heroin on top, banged it up in the bathroom with the window open. All I can say about the coke was there was more than "a bit" of it as I broke into a profuse sweat, felt a trembling nausea rush up from my heart like an express train, followed by a literal whooshing through the ears (you can actually hear the crack rush when it's strong) and a high that was rather like being picked up by the feet and swung around somebody else's head by the ankles. Right in the middle of this the next door neighbour's kid screamed in their garden... a scream that got snagged on the crackrush and seared through the back of my brainbox and out into infinity. I do not wish to experience THAT again 1st thing in the morning and ever since have kept my crack use tinsy-winsy! (Not gonna lie and say I've given up ANYTHING entirely as I only fall flat on my face back in the pigs' diarrhoea when I do...)

Righty ho. It's still FAIRLY hot. Actually I might have got yesterday's temperature wrong. It could have been 38C not 28C which makes it 100F. Boy can you feel THAT in this town. The tube, as Eileen said is particularly stifling and an average of at LEAST 5C hotter if not 10C hotter than the overground shade-temperature. Now I have to go else I'll never get this posted. Take care people!

VIDEO:~

BLACK EYED PEAS: WHERE IS THE LOVE?


11 comments:

Gledwood said...

I really like this video.

Gledwood said...

ps sorry I cannot comment chez vous anywhere as am OUT OF BLOODY TIME AGAIN!

Anonymous said...

Crack is wack yo ;) Keep going to the meetings, chin up my friend. Re; The Weather: Toronto has been experiencing some crazy weather...massive T-storms, hail mixed in with sunny skies and on/off again hot, muggy weather. When it gets hot here, it doesn't let up. Yesterday was Canada day so we spent a lazy afternoon on an Island called Ward's watching the world go by......Yesssss Canada! Nooooooo crack!

Baino said...

Great move Gleds keep going . . .we have a big ice problem here,herion seems to be on the fall but the party drugs are everywhere! Send us some of your hot weather . . it's a cool 19 here and I'm tucked up in a hoodie! Keep the faith pal!

Deb said...

I like Nadal...Andre Agassi was my favorite tennis player (athlete) and when Nadal arrived on the scene he mentioned that Andre was his idol and he was so incredibly elated when he beat him. I've liked him ever since. I love tennis but, unfortunately, haven't been able to follow this round of Wimbledon. I think it's the first one I've missed in 20 years!

Puss-in-Boots said...

Hey, Gleds, well done on getting to the NA meeting. Keep on keeping on, my friend.

As for Naomi Campbell, that is one seriously bad tempered lady (and I use the term advisedly). I like Raphael Nadal (and his body, too), but Agassi is my all time favourite tennis player. Roll on Aust Open!

Cheers, Gleds, look after yourself.

Lone Grey Squirrel said...

Good on you for going to the NA meeting. Hope you will find it helpful. I also really think this video is great.

Audrey said...

Very powerful video Gleds, where is the love ? supposed to be inside us isnt it ?

Never been in London when the weather is hot but I can imagine the tubes being unbearabally hot I find them hot and claustaphobic at the best of times.

Must admit Im missing the sunny Texas skies not too hot here in Aberdeen. Went to San Antonio where it reached 93f cant imagine anything hotter but know the temparature rises..........whey!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! hot hot hot.

Interesting reading about your meeting, keep strong Gleds and wise and happy xx Auds

Gledwood said...

Eileen: crack is indeed whack. It certainly cracked my brain (for over a year) one time. It's nice not to be paranoid-psychotic now!!

Yeah the NA meetings "keep coming back" as they say...

Baino: heroin has been in drought Down Under for over a decade (as I understand) mostly to do with bad poppy harvest in Myanmar. Now our Afghan brown "#3" is flooding in but wow! The price chez vous is over x4 here. Ice is ukky. "Party drugs" kill too!

Debs: the only games I wanted to watch were Nadal-Murray and (probably the final) Federer-Nadal. I might go betting shop to catch the 2nd one...

Puss-in-Boots: Naomi Campbell ought to play scarey Grace Jones Terminator type roles in the movie. Surely she's precisely cut out for that...

Gledwood said...

Lone Grey: fantastic vid, innit?

Auds: you're dead right - of COURSE the love is inside us all only we're all too PATHETICALLY SCARED to exprss it!

Anonymous said...

She is very famous now

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