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, August 04, 2008

Mon rêve parisien: la vie en rose

ZUT ALORS!!... last "night" I slept in (and in; and in...) longer and longer until it was past 3pm. I must have needed the sleep... and my dreams! I was dreaming galore! My heart tells me to up and flee to Berlin or Paris. I am in a quandry as to which, but as I know Paris a little, I dreamed about there...

Illustrations: top: metro map and RER map below that ... (click twice to see in vast detail); left: Paris nightscape; right: Galleries Lafayette, view up from the perfume hall...)

Galleries Lafayette (Parisian Harrods).. Shakespeare & Co. (English language bookstore providing free accommodation to anyone willing to muck in int shop that day...) the pursuing aroma of doggies' diarrhoea from Parisian pavements (all those pampered pooing pooches...) and the most luxurious of luxury goods I have ever seen (on the Champs Elysees)... only place in my life I've ever glimpsed a genuine crocodile-skin bag! And I'll never forget the amazing Egyptian room in the Louvre. Or the assistant who directed me there, stopping my dead half way through my "excusez-moi madame; où se trouve le département des antiquités égyptiens et orientales?" with a halting hand and a businesslike: "what language?"!

... and later following signposts to La Joconde... eventually to file amonst a transcontinental crowd into a chamber where from about 4m or 12 ft away and through the bulletproof sheen of several smoked glass coffee-table-tops I was at long last able to glimpse the tiniest and most famous painting on earth: Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa!

The best art in Paris is to be found in the Orsay museum. A bright, light and airy former railway terminus, this features a room packed with about 20 Van Goughs. All I could think as I craned to within inches of the legendary brush-strokes ~ and how they stick out! ~ and through no glass, no barriers bar an ankle-height metal string... This was the late 80s/very early 90s when Sunflowers and Irises had sold for upwards of £50m each or $100m a piece (in today's money) ~ I was in the presence of over a billion dollars' worth of modern art!

The Mona Lisa, incidentally, was vlued by would-be insurers at $100 million at the turn of the 20th Century. So costly in fact was the premium that the Louvre baulked at sending it on an American voyage and, one adventurous theft aside, it has remained at home in Paris ever since... Where its value has surely surpassed the one billion dollar mark...

My Mum, who spends some months a year in a 2nd home in the French countryside (where I've never been invited) described an hilarity moment back here in Angleterre when, caught up amongst a roomful of babbling fellow-humans, she quite unexpectedly realized: wow! I can understand every word they're saying! She's definitely a chip off the same block as me: my lifelone obsession with acquiring exotic languages stems from a sheer repulsion of not being able to understand similar crowds of foreigners from my own childhood as they blibble-blebble-blobbled in "foreign" ~ a tongue I had decided I should master so that nobody would speak over my head ever again!

Photo-blog of the Day:
Misty's Musings www.mistysmusings.com
... fantastic wildlife shots...

19 comments:

Vincent said...

For some reason Paris has a bad reputation when it comes to dog shit and cleanliness in general. Now, it probably deserved it at some point and reputations are hard to get rid of but I would like to point out that when Nicole and I were there about 1.5 years ago we did not see ANY dog shit and hardly any rubbish. It is a thousand times cleaner than Amsterdam and London.

No pooing pooches diarrhoea mate, sorry :-)

Arjan said...

Dog poo can be found almost everywhere haha. I'd vote for Paris.
As to different languages..it's always funny when I'm abroad..I understand Dutch (native..duh), English, German and French if spoken slow enough. Always cool to listen in on people ;)

Monogram Queen said...

So.... are you going to Paris or not?! I'd love to go!

Gledwood said...

VINCENT: to be honest I don't remember ANY dog pooze on the parisien streets but EVERYONE goes on and on and on about it so it MUST be there somewhere...

ARJAN: one BIG disadvantage of being English mother tongue and of course having mostly monoglot friends it is well nigh IMPOSSIBLE to have a private babblesome conversation in international company, which I used to find really annoying as a child (that foreigners could ALWAYS understand us, yet we couldn't understand foreigners...)

MONOGRAM: definitely wanna go but it's difficult on a methadone script...

Akelamalu said...

Sounds to me like your heart is in Paris Gleds.

I haven't been to Paris but I have been to Nice and have to say there was dog poo all over the place!

sally in norfolk said...

Paris a place i would love to visit :-)

Kahshe Cottager said...

How lucky to be able to visit Paris - even in a dream! It is someplace I would like to see but will never likely get the opportunity! You are sounding as though you are in better spirits!! 8-)

Have you had a chance to visit my new photoblog Views From My Camera yet?

Baino said...

Paris is my dream too . . I don't know why because I'm not keen on the French but to spend days in the Louvre and the Pompadeu Centre, drink coffee on a sidewalk and get thrown out of Chanel because they don't 'do' my size plus a night or two in the George Saint with a pink tea rose and a bottle of Billecart Salmon . . ooh la la! Although that Crocodile bag is probably made out of an Aussie croc!

Lucinda said...

Paris is nice, I went there when I was younger so I don't have such a clear memory of it. But what I do remember is beautiful. = )

I've always wanted to learn other languages, but for some reason I decided that Latin was the way to go. I think I'm going to learn how to speak French and German in college. A bit more useful than Latin, but I can't imagine that they are as much fun.

CrystalChick said...

Well, we're currently trying to decide where to go for our 25th anniversary. For many reasons, I think Florida has a slight advantage. We don't have passports right now anyway, so if we go out of the country we need to hurry that along.

Never been to Paris but I have a cousin who LOVES it there. Been a few times.

Your Mother has a home in France that you aren't allow to visit??? Do explain that sometime.

Keshi said...

I wanna go to Madrid!!!!!!!!!! :)

Keshi.

Bimbimbie said...

I'm going to have to return to read this post properly ... just wanted to let you know I've added a link at the bottom of my latest post so you can hear what a Noisy Miner sounds like ... and it's not got a Yorkshire or Welsh accent either ;)

Anonymous said...

South America....go to South America.

Gledwood said...

AKELAMALU~ some of my heart is definitley in Paris, for sure

SALLY~ well worth going. specially on Eurostar... it wasn't even open yet when I went (which makes me feel very old just to mention the fact...)

KAHSHE~ one reason I feel blest being in London is that you can catch a simple TRAIN to Paris: how glamorous!

BAINO~ hey probably it was... do you think Steve Irwin had a hand in the supply of those bags..?? Paris is not France, just as New York is not America so don't worry about that... Folks from other parts of the country look down and laugh at Parisians on their weekend country excursions.>!!!

Gledwood said...

LUCINDA~ German is supposed to be a bit like Latin. You have to put the word "the" in a great table according to its gramatical function in the sentence... French is like a degraded and massively funked up Latin, as is Portuguese. But that's about all I know about Latin. If you can say it's "fun" you should find those 2 languages dead easy!

CRYSTAL~ passports are a right pain if you need one in a hurry... but hey can't you get one quickly in person in NYC? Just a thought... Paris is, after all, City of Luurve...

KESHI~ I've been to Madrid for half an hour! You look out over a vast spread out town from "Chmartin" station (well that's what it said on the ticket...)

BIMBIMBIE~ eh oop I shall have to pop right by

EILEEN~ how did you guess? I have a Brazilian Portuguese thing going on right now... all set off and fuelled by that Lambada song as well...

WAT said...

I don't care how dirty Paris or any of these other main European cities are, I would love to just have the privilege of going/visiting!

Anonymous said...

I would hate living in Paris but it is a fun place to visit for foreigners!

I also learned languages so that I would understand people talking behind my back. I love to surprise people in China this way ;)

Gledwood said...

Wat: yeah come to Paris... by morning and evening the sandstone buildings are the colour of the rising/setting sun... all glowing-buttery. Amazing!

Zhu: I bet you do!!!

Gledwood said...

Wat: yeah come to Paris... by morning and evening the sandstone buildings are the colour of the rising/setting sun... all glowing-buttery. Amazing!

Zhu: I bet you do!!!

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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