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, November 13, 2008

My Broken Spectacles Anna Karenina Rehab Dream

ONE OF THE WEIRDEST DREAMS OF MY LIFE the night before last. I would have posted last night if only the internet caff didn't shut by 10:30. I dreamt vividly that I was in a drug rehabilitation centre which was half oligarchal luxury yacht, half swanky St Petersberg townhouse. I was surrounded by aristocratic druggies with the same sloaney voices I associated with drugs from my university days, only these guys had titles like "Count" and "Princess" as in the novel. No bonnets and meringue dresses on the ladies unfortunately: this was modern hi-soc.

So I woke from that feeling bemused. Perhaps nighttime TV had inspired me with a Learning Zone feature on fairytales. This children's writer said Cinderella was the all-time classic as far as she was concerned, but I thought no no it's Hansel and Gretel. Lost children, wicked witch, gingerbread house. What do you think that house symbolizes to me..?

Je n'ai plus des lunettes!
Meine Brille sind kaput!

I'm totally sans specs. My glasses are no more! I'm feeling my way through a blur like Daphne or Velma in Scooby Doo... Totally lost in the haze, man. (What does that stand for?)

Yes my old percentage-sign glasses that were too done in for anything other than TV have finally fallen apart. I'm surviving on someone else's luxury bendy frames I found on the streets over a year ago. The prescription's barely half as strong as I actually need and so the world's still half a blur. But we've come down from JMW Turner watercolours to Claude Monet's Poplars on the Epte. Walking around in a 24-7 impressionist painting of London is pretty cool anyhow...

I do apologize I have not posted, neither have I been in touch with anyone since I've been so depressed I've felt like I was stabbed through the brains by a psychiatric knife. I need to go doctors' for some pills, I think... (But of course I've been far too down to be bothered...)

BTW I know I've barely mentioned them but my hammies, all 4, are alive and well ~ but there's another point of contention: I have a really nasty feeling that Spherical, who's adopted Bashful's bizarrely exaggerated pantomime peering into space has gone blind as well. What am I going to do? The vets won't be able to help even if they could diagnose. So I suppose I'll have to do nothing...

VIDEO

Angela Lansbury: Tale as Old as Time (Beauty and the Beast)


Do you know I'd never heard this till a couple of days ago? Now it's running round and round in my head. Brings out the inner child in me:

11 comments:

Reeny's Ramblin' said...

Hey You! Broken glasses oh no! I am blind as a bat so I know what it is like to walk about in a complete blur. I panic when I don't have my eyewear. Will the gov pay for them?

Akelamalu said...

Nice to know you're still there Gleds. Sorry to hear you're still depressed and your glasses are not up to scratch. Hope things improve all round soon. x

Gledwood said...

AUNT R: I am supposed to get free pairs but have to fill in forms and wait over a month... this is the thanks they give me for HAVING WORKED IN THE PAST. It means you get a pittance more that they take away with the other hand by making you pay for things they give out free automatically to PEOPLE WHO'S NEVER DONE A DAY'S WORK IN THEIR LIVES!!

AKELAMALU: The glasses ARE good enough to read a computer screen and that's good enough for me. I'm going to try that better sight without glasses thing...

Baino said...

Can't you get new ones on he NHS? I thought they were cheap or even free? I'm lost without mine and I hate my new ones, they leave marks on either side of my nose. Sorry you've been down Gleds, you were so chirpy last week. Maybe the dream is a sign? Rehab calling?

Gledwood said...

Maybe the dream IS a sign I'm getting more and more sick of living half life... threatening to get myself trouble for never paying bills etc I want NORMALITY!

Glasses are cheap not free anymore. I really have to send this form off (well, GET the form 1st)... then I get a free eye test and will either go for new lenses in these frames that I like or get contacts.

I'm really up for learning "better sight without glasses" I know someone whose prescription went down by "three dioptres" (or something like that, whatever that means...)

Bimbimbie said...

Hello Gleds - get those forms in and get some more specs otherwise you'll end up with a squinty face and horrid headaches. Animals do have a knack of adapting to losing their sight, even better when they have food and shelter provided for them*!*

Gledwood said...

... you are right... I just looked up the bates method and read a really cynnical wikipedia report on it so I don't know what to think now.

but hey my friend did it and she's not impressionable... also she had blacked out specs covered in pinholes that focus the light just as a pinhole camera focuses and supposedly adapt your eyes to the correct focal length as glases never will...(??)

Megan said...

Like Donald Pleasance in The Great Escape, "I can see up close. I can see to work. But, you're just a blur."

I would be lost without my glasses. And new ones are not covered by my insurance so they just keep getting re-taped! Yep, it's the 'super nerd' look over here...

Keshi said...

u dun need specs to SEE...a good heart will do ;-)

HUGS n ty so much for ur kind words in my blog. I will see u again when I return. TC n bye byez for now!

Keshi.

Vincent said...

Hi dee ho Gleds, sorry to hear about your glasses. I hope you get that form sent off soon. 3B is right, get them before your headaches start. You don't need more shit, you got plenty of that already. Don't make life even harder for your self mate.

Greetings from warming up Adelaide!

Gledwood said...

MEGAN ooer insurance, I never had that, except years ago I was covered on my Mum's (just when I needed nothing doing). If I had the chance now I'd get my eyes lasered

KESHI good luck ;->...

VINCENT I know I know I ought to go up the DSS this very afternoon...

... I did fill in the form b4 but LOST IT ... how typical!!

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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