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, October 13, 2008

Found a Curry Sauce Mix...

I'VE FOUND a fantastic Chinese Curry Sauce mix. Got it from a Chinese market stall. It's the complete shebang: wheatflour and coconut paste included, just add water and there you go. The spice mix is almost exactly right. (All takeaways vary; this could pass 100% as takeaway-authentic...) The orangey colour is the same as that illustrated: Chinese curry is never brown... The pack cost me about £1 for 10 portions, which means I'm spending 10p a time, rather than £1 a cupfull as the Chinese demand...

Coconut paste was the missing ingredient I suspected was in there but was unsure about. Chinese curry has no overt coconut flavour, though it does have onion and garlic (both in my industrially-bought mix) and these kind of tail into the mellowness of the coconut and the further smoothness of salted-up MSG. It's a work of genius that I got precisely right last night with a mushroom curry (no ££ for chicken!!)... today I'm off to get a pre-roasted chicken (so cheap it's not worth buying the salmonella'd uncooked variety) that along with mushrooms, onions and peas shall make a fantastic curry (Godwilling). Why peas are always in the mix I shall never know; but they are. Up and down the country Chinese chicken curry means chicken-onions-peas (and mushrooms if you're lucky. Or so many mushrooms there's barely any chicken if yours is a credit-crunch curry...)

I was toying last week with the thought of coconut for my curries but didn't know what form to buy. Dessicated is a bit too 1970s British (add boiled eggs and sultanas: yuck!) Coconut milk powder would probably make a wonderful starting stock. I've seen coconut cream or paste before but last week it was beyond the glimpses of my eyes and so I went without... I did get garlick paste (v useful for nongarlic eaters like me, who leave it in the cupboard until it sprouts...) Plus an authentic light soy sauce brand that comes in a pretty squat container with Chinese writing down the side and actually does taste of soy (unlike the vulgar market leader Amoy).

My robbies were running around like a mini donkey-derby last night after plunging into the pineshavings-filled diggery. They tilt up to a near vertical angle and disappear right in, each following the trail of the other. Sometimes great caves are formed below in which they pause sometimes for a roborovski-picnic. (Wise animals, Itchy keeps her pouches packed nearly all the time, which I always assumed was a size-adding measure to counter her being the tiniest of all the trotters.)

I've still been very depressed and heavy limbed and mind-crushed, which is the main reason not to have been online posting very much. Well I'm back now so HELLO HELLO again!!

PS why am I so obsessed by my curry sauce chase?

This from my commments should explain what/how:~

Liz said...
Good grief, gledwood, are you still on the hunt for Chinese curry sauce?!!!

Sorry, I've not been by for a while. I've come in via Robyn in Australia again. Seems to work well this way.

xx

12 October 2008 20:48

Gledwood said...
Found an industrial version (just add water and stir continuously)... but want to know PRECISELY WHICH SPICES and to be able to make from scratch. I hate feeling in the pocket of the industrial multinational food business and am sure Chinese takeaway chefs don't use industrial premade mixes! I'm sure they would know precisely which spices to add and in what quantities and that's what I wish to do...
13 October 2008 11:13

16 comments:

Puss-in-Boots said...

Depression is a bugger alright, Gleds. But I'm so happy to see you posting again. So...you found the missing ingredient for your Chinese curry, well done! That must have required some detective work on your part. Enjoy your meal!

Gledwood said...

Star-anise is another missing ingredient of the spices mix (though not enough to make it anything aniseedy)...

depression. despair.

yeah yeah yeah

(no~no!!)

thanks for the thoughts

;->...

Nicole said...

I have the feeling that the "curry" sauce you are describing is some type of "British-Chinese" invention. It sounds nothing like anything I've ever encountered in Chinese cooking. And adding coconut is very Thai and Malaysian. My favourite brand of soy sauce is Kikkoman.

Crushed said...

I think it's true to say, you like your Chinese food, don't you?
Something I've noticed.

Do you like those sweet dumplings they do?

there's a lot of good Chineses in Brum I think you'd appreciate.

Kahshe Cottager said...

Sorry to have been away so long. Still in the middle of moving but am taking today off to try and get around to see how everyone is doing. Glad to hear that the hamsters are doing great and ever more happy to see you are out of the funk you were in. I have never heard of Chinese curry, perhaps it has a different name here. Glad to hear you have mastered it at long last!

Akelamalu said...

You must be happy now your search for the perfect curry sauce is over! :)

Baino said...

Haha you are indeed a man posessed! I live in a large Chinese community and there's a big Chinese grocer in my local shopping centre, guess what? They've never heard of Chinese curry sauce! I can help you out with a good Schezuan spice though! Try coconut cream in the can for your coconutty bits, you can get teensy cans of it over here, just right for one. Your robis in the trottery sound like the mice in my feedshed, I find little holes drilled in the chaff! Buggers!

Lucinda said...

It's good to hear it! = )

Janice Seagraves said...

We just got some curry too, it's made in Vermont from apples and honey of all things. But we like it. Now if I can just get my darling daughter to make it for me . . .

Janice~

Fire Byrd said...

gives whole new meaning to chasing the (chinese) dragon.... sorry couldn't resist it... I'll book myself into school for learning to be funny soon.

Reeny's Ramblin' said...

Just dropping by to say hiya! Hope all is well with you these days and for the record, coconut milk in a can works wonders in curry.

Anonymous said...

Well, I'm glad you finally found the curry mix! You've been looking for it for ages...

But be an English thing because I don't know any Chinese curry actually ;)

jmb said...

Hey, Gleds, how are you doing? Not quite so good I see. Still hang in there, depression is a bummer but I hope it passes soon.

Take care of yourself and your furry friends.

Gledwood said...

Nicole: o yeah you're dead right. Sorry I should have made that more clear. It's definitely not something they eat in Asia (I would presume)

Crushed: I'm working on Chinese dumplings.. never tried the ones with meat INSIDE.. woo!!

Kahshe: congratulations on moving. You know that is 2nd only most stressful to divorce..?

Akelamalu: reasonably!

Gledwood said...

Baino: mice are a plague though!

Isn't szechuan glorified sweet and sour?

Also I found it weird how after that earthquake in the province, BBC journalists had so much trouble pronouncing consistently something that's on every Chinese takeaway menu the length and bredth of this fair country!!

Lucinda: ;->...

Janice: honey's meant to go really well in stew..

FireBird: ha! I used to chase it now I just got stung by the "Killer B"...

Gledwood said...

Eileen: yeah I'm chasing the best form of coconut these days...

Zhu: has to be though I once had a v similar JAPANESE curry in a Japanese restaurant in Soho called Zipangu

JMB: surviving tho, ta!

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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