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!

Thursday, August 07, 2008

Furry Balls of Birdseed

AS WELL AS GORGING MYSELF ON INDUSTRIAL BATTERED FISH, I have bought my tubbies more "wild bird" (also I might be putting up a feeder; if I can find a place outside my upstairs window that will hang one...)

The Roborovski family went mad when the seeds came out. Momma Spherical led the way and soon was looking like a furry football; Baby Itchy followed and swiftly resembled a miniature version of the same... Bashful was too busy craning her head backwards to peer a look at me (and falling slapstick right over with sawdust all over her head) to bother filling up...

My mind is all set on my latest literary "scheme"... I have embarked upon my gargantuan mountain of research... Fast-paced pop fiction of heartrending intensity is what I intend to serve up to the world on the golden platter of my glittering prose (as if!)... All I am saying here is that I want to write popular fiction, not the ponderously "literary" time-wasting type... If I ever get nominated for the Booker prize or anything similar I shall commit suicide! And that's about all I have to say about writing "write" now...

Which leads me back to Paris. The guy on late night talk radio was chundering on about the British government and local authorities' surfeit of roadway speed cameras and how dangerous these are (actually causing motorists suddenly to break, sending those behind smashing into one another)... good driving is about keeping distance far more than it's about reducing speed... (surely?)... This and stories of local councils fining innocent families for over-packing dustbins or (crime of the century) leaving them out on the wrong day... Spy (sorry "security") cameras everywhere (4,000,000 and counting)... No smoking anywhere ~ except the government won't just ban tobacco completely as they are too addicted to the multibillions it rakes in in taxes they can mis-spend... innocent people slapped with £80 spot-fines for dropping litter as inconsequential as a single match stick, or in one case the end of a sausage roll that wasn't even noticed dropping by the hapless eater (it was, however filmed by an undercover local authority "enforcement officer")... and an £80 fixed penalty that couldn't even be contested as within 30 seconds the local pigeons had eaten all the evidence... this and the poll tax (sorry "council tax" (poll tax by another name though even worse as inhabitants of a house share are "jointly and severally liable" ~ ie the authorities are fully within their rights to bulldoze an entire house's bill on to just one poor resident and to hell with the consequences... all this and parking charges, jobsworths, rude kids, knives and the ineffectual Gordon Brown (yes our prime minister though I'd forgive you for never having heard of him: we wish we never had too...)... all this and I so badly want to flee this country!

Not that I think life is all rosey-tinted abroad or that I shall somehow escape my problems. I'm just fed up of living with this set of national problems and want to be somewhere where other people are complaining about other politicians and I want to be able to give even less of a damn about them than I do nowadays...

And back to cooking: my next ambition is to make my own pizza ~ from scratch (meaning concocting bases from flour, water, sugar, yeast (at least that's what I was told was the recipe))... nearest I've come thus far is buying vulgar value margaritas and chucking veggies of my own atop...

OK gotta go the day is sultry and stormy ~ amazing horizon lightning last night that never fulminated into a full electric storm... is that what they mean by "heat-lightning"?... it was forking sideways horizontally over the rooftops... quite impressive... Have a nice day everyone and don't get too hot and sweaty!!

13 comments:

Monogram Queen said...

Looks like things are going okay for you right now. Glad to see it. Yep it's heat lightning. We get a LOT of it!

Kahshe Cottager said...

Thanks for the word picture of the furry seedballs ~ it had me chuckling as I read your post! Security cameras seem to be everywhere here as well. The popular one of the moment is the red-light camera intended to catch people running red lights. Of course, there are warning signs all about advertising its presence so who knows how many people are avoiding being caught. Pizza is fun to make and not so hard as the margaritas!

Hope things are cooling down there. We have a thunderstorm approaching now ~ I can hear the thunder rolling. We have lost power already this morning so I expect it will go out again before the day is over.

Have a good day Gleds!

Janice Seagraves said...

Hi,

I always like to hear about your little flat mates. Funny story about there eating habits.

I have no idea about the side ways lightning must have looked pretty neat.

We're hot here in California, temps tipped into the hundreds again.

Take care,
Janice~

Puss-in-Boots said...

I can't wait to be hot and sweaty, but then I'm one of those strange people who loves the heat...humidity and all. At the moment, it's winter, three layers of clothing and the heater on full blast. Even though it's not cold by North Hemisphere winter standards, it's plenty cold enough for one who hates the cold.

Have a good weekend, Gleds.

Lucinda said...

Politics everywhere is horrible. I love America, but I wish that I could impeach about half of the politicians. All of the decisions this country is making is just screwing us over in the long and short run. I feel like everywhere is so messed up, I wish there was a way to change it.

Pizza is good home made. Do you guys have Pillsburys baking products in England? If so, crescents dough is really good as pizza dough, though it's obviously not home made. = )

Anonymous said...

After you make your pizza dough, knead it, let it rise once, then spread the baking pan with olive oil and a little corn meal before you flatten the dough on to it, top it, then bake. So good. I make it vegan with veggies and soy cheese.

Bimbimbie said...

I dislike litterbugs and dopey people who overfill their rubbish bins so that when the truck comes to empty the bin some of their rubbish ends up on the ground which they don't bother picking up and allow to blow away for someone else to pick up ... but if I was the spy police I'd tax the likes of those American fast food takeaway outlets for littering .... big time*!*

Hope you find a suitable spot for that bird feeder, and make the most of the warm conditions - take your writing outside to one of the parks and people watch *!*

Wanderer said...

homemade pizza sounds nice.

Arjan said...

If you want to go to a western european country with political problems..I think Belgium would be thé choice of the moment..because as far as I know, knowone knows how long Belgium will stay Belgium.
Glad I live a bit further north..so I don't have to care (too much).

Peaceful/Paisible said...

excusez-moi madame; où se trouve le département des antiquités égyptiens et orientales?
it's near the zoo, ...and the zoo? behind the cinema...and the cinema ? just in front of the school? and my tailor is rich and...
i stop saying stupid things ! good sometimes !!! did you manage to make your pizza ?
much love from Mousie, who doesn't forget you, though she doesn't visit very often !!!!!!!!

Gledwood said...

The hammies are being cuter than ever ... except SQUABBLING which I find very annoying (naughty ITCHY's fault)... no sight get for the bird feeder as my double-glazed window shuts flush and so nary impossible to fit any pumusker to poke outside... thanks for your comments everyone I shall have to get back after the weekend when more time

;->...

Welshcakes Limoncello said...

Good luck with the new literary venture! But Gleds, can yoy afford to have scruples?! Take the money and run - with the hammies, of course! xx

Gledwood said...

TheLiberator: I used to know someone DJed under that name...

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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