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!

Saturday, August 23, 2008

All In Between

MAYBE I OUGHT NOT to be posting today. Nothing at all's going on and nothing has happened. (Probably I ought to be grateful for that.)

I've had some more dealings with the Indian woman downstairs who demanded that ambulance last week. She is very dependent on people. Needed somebody to come with her to the Social Security office, where her claim appears to be in a complete pickle. Really she wanted me to stay with her all the interminable hours it was going to take her not to get her claim sorted that day but I really couldn't do that and ten minutes later made my excuses and escaped! (I thought I'd done her enough of a favour just taking her there. And I really didn't want to go. Just thought I might do a "good Samaritan" act for once in my life...)

She keeps asking to borrow my phone "just for a minute" to ring somebody she calls "Auntie" then babbles away in what sounded to my ears like Indian Portuguese. But when she read her "Auntie" her own phone number back I realized it was some odd type of French she was speaking. Aparently she comes from Mauritius and that's the local patois, a kind of French creole.

Bashful has been running around in the daylight (because she can no longer see it's not dark and robbies have such an aversion to light. You only have to turn it on them at wheel-scurrying peak hours of the early morning and they're back in bed within ten minutes!)

My abscesses are going down. I was trying to say the other day that I've been lucky in that, with the one exception of that dreadful "barb burn" from February and two cases of cellulitis, my abscesses have all been babies. So tiny in fact that only one has ever burst through the top like they're meant to do; they just rise up red (very painful at first) then go hot and itchy and sink down, healing themselves. Mother Hubbard says it's because I eat lots of vegetables...

... which reminds me, she has the most shocking case of laryngitis. Sounds like she's got a throat full of dried cornflakes and razor-blades. My other friend Valium Marilyn's got it too, and has been really hamming up her already-powerful Cockney accent to sound extra-vulgar..(!)

Righty-ho. It's a gorgeous day. I wrote my Gran another letter last night. (She is very poorly and in a nursing home these days.) And a long weekend. But as I promised yesterday I'm going nowhere near that Notting Hill Carnival, which, apparently is indeed the second-biggest street-carnival in the world, attracting crowds of nearly a million a day two days in a row. (No wonder it feels so opporessively crowded!)

Righto then, have a lovely weekend, y'all...

14 comments:

Lucinda said...

That Carnival sounds horrible, I can't stand big crowds. It's surprising I go to big shows, I saw Iggy Pop, imagine 1000 people squeezed into this tiny club. It's kind of scary in some ways. I'm sure that the Carnival is like a sensory overload too. Those are the two reasons I have to be dragged into Time Square: large crowds, sensory overload.

Akelamalu said...

Good to hear you're not getting too many boils m'dear. How kind of you to take your neighbour to the SS office - you'll get your reward, someday. :)

Do you get replies from your gran?

Anonymous said...

Lucinda: I hate carnivals now! Sensory overload I used to lurve... being so packed in you faint and remain standing I can do without, however...

;->...

Akelamalu: thanxx!

Welshcakes Limoncello said...

I think you have been very kind to your neighbour, Gleds. Now look after yourself! Hope you have a good bank holiday weekend. Love from sicily xx

Puss-in-Boots said...

That was a nice thing to do for your neighbour, Gleds. You're a kindhearted fellow.

Ah you eat lots of veges. Good for you...that's why your boils are tiny. Someone brung you up right.

lettuce said...

i hope mother hubbard's laryngitis gets better soon

Nicole said...

Mauritian lady sounds like a complete fruit loop and bad news dot com at that. Do any more for her and she'll probably end up thinking you're her aid worker for evermore. I am not against helping people but not when you're in a state where you need to be taking care of yourself first and foremost.

Deb said...

I'd watch how many good deeds you do for that neighbour...once they latch on, it's hard to shake some needy people. I know that sounds cold but, in some instances, the more you help someone, the less they help themselves.

Linds has a book of Cockney slang...she loves it. That bit about Marilyn just reminded me of it.

M- Filer said...

I think your good deed went quite far enough! Geeze, give an inch and they'll take a mile!

Good day chap

Gledwood said...

Welshcakes: cheers, Dears!

Pussinboots: yeah but I had to get BACK in the habit of eating them veggies as I totally stopped for AGES!!!

Lettuce: it has, thank God. Another of my friends DIED last week though!!

Gledwood said...

Nicole: I'm a bit suspicious of that, 2. only this morning she hammered on her window JUST as I was leaving (late again)... I threw my arms out angrily like "WHAT NOW>!>"... it was her mobile phone she claimed not to be able to turn it on again!

Debs: I hate being "selfish" but Know What You Mean ... this one's a real leach.

I think maybe she's lonely more than anything...

MFiler: hey she did give me a bus swipe-card with about 9 journeys on it... and hasn't asked for it back... wahey!!!!

;->...

Monogram Queen said...

I'd be careful of letting the Indian woman too close, she sounds very co-dependent!

Gledwood said...

very annoyingly dependent indeed

not sure she's even trendy enough to be "co" dependent..!!!

;->...

Gledwood said...

o I've got to go I'm falling comatose in the internet shop!!!

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

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