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!

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Washing Machine Crisis: Clothes Held Hostage


IT HAD TO HAPPEN. Had to happen to me as well: our washing machine has broken down, impounding a whole load of my clothes, including irreplacable £13-from-Covent-Garden-market rainbow-stripey Indian trews that I use as pajamas... and nearly my entire towel collection. When I came back yesterday I was surprised to hear it still grumbling away more than two hours after the number four programme had supposedly kicked off... now I'm periodically turning it off, clicking the dial forward and hoping I might eventually get my garms back before time and an Aerial Ultra overdose turn them to shreds...

Anna Karenina really has got into my subconscious... somehow I keep having Merchant-Ivory-style costume drama dreams. Merchant Ivory never made an Anna K (as much as anything else it's too long to do justice in 90 mins) and I've never seen it on TV. Which is unusual for me. Usually I have to see a classic novel on screen first; then I'm empowered to bluster past the worst of the Victorian guff and the pages freely turn...

"Baby" Itchy (OK not exactly her but her precise lookey-likey) has a starring role in 2009's Guiness Book of Records, posing in a desert spoon as World's Smallest Hamster!

By the way can anyone tell me why, when she does her pinging up the sleeve trick and spends any time in the vicinity of my armpit she appears to go pale, nauseated and dizzy? What do you think this could be? Is it because armpits are so hot, or somthing...??...:(!!!)

MUSIC:
I am not normally into girl groups. Though I have to say they're nowhere near as bad as those smarmy boybands ~ specially when they pull that "mature and serious: I'd be a really good father to your baby" number. Ukh! Anyway these two tunes are rather good:

SUGABABES: (HERE COME THE) GIRLS
Isn't Heidi Range (the blonde) a stunna? And what a rockchick roar she's got on her; straight from the Choir of Cigarettes and Alcohol..(!)



SUGABABES: SHAPE (OF MY HEART...)
A haunting tune. This version being far superior to Sting's original...



Hey I found some Anna K online... here's Princess Kitty Scherbatsky dancing the quadrille or walz at the ball (before she rejects Levin for Vronsky (who subsequently goes off with the (married) Anna K of the title...)

Do you know what I'm frequently told I have pretty bad taste and I do lurve the aristocratic country house style. But I have to say that even I found these rooms over-guilded and garish and, dare I say it?~ rather vulgar(!!)


And here's a trailer for the Sean Bean version...

9 comments:

Zen Wizard said...

(Wait--is this Gledwood's page? I think by the looks of that top picture I clicked House Beautiful in my "Favorites" by mistake again!)

Baino said...

I share your washing machine blues. Mine's started screaming during the spin cycle and doesn't pump properly so I have soggy slacks! Re the armpit problem . . maybe your deodorant or lack thereof! hehe!

Akelamalu said...

Oh it is my worst nightmare something going wrong with my washer! It usually happens just as I get back off holiday and have a mountain of washing.

Puss-in-Boots said...

You've had rather an eventful time, Gleds. Clothes getting well and truly washed, more dreams (!) and a hammy who has an aversion to your armpits. Poor little thing.

As for Anna K, I saw the TV version back in the 70s, along with War and Peace...both really good, gritty series. Love the classics.

At present Brideshead Revisited is on at the movies...I shall have to revisit that sometime and hope that I fall in love with Sebastian all over again...

Gledwood said...

ZEN WIZZ: hey my house looks far more like from the ballroom scene (top Anna Karenina clip)...honest!

BAINO: hey I do wear deodorant... imagine if I did not poor Itchy would be put in anaesthesia!!

AKELAMALU: yes they are highly annoying. I did manage to get my clothes out... but only through cheating & turning the machine off and clicking clandestinely ahead to the end where another clunk!! and wahey!~ liberation of my garments!!!!

PUSS IN BOOTS: o yeah I heard about that new film. I think they've done a new TV as well. Aparently the same house was used throughout...

The only Evelyn Waugh I've read was one about a young man not yet come into his inheritance who had to face the horror of getting a job! And so found himself in a dreadful public school... from where a string of unfortunate occurences occur, terminating in his imprisonment... and whatever the message of the story was I have no idea!

Nicole said...

The other weekend I also thought that my parents' washing machine was broken. When I walked into the laundry the floor was wet and thankfully it was only the tap it's connected to which needed a washer replaced. Will someone replace the machine?

Merle said...

Hi Gleds ~~ Glad you got your clothes out of the washing machine at last and hope they weren't damaged. Thanks for your comments but I don't know about living to be 100 - depends how things go I guess. I am fine at present and I hope you can turn around before then. You can do it !! The specs were interesting, but probably not easy to acquire. With the opticians doing all they can to stop us. I will check up on Wikitedia or on Google. Take great care, my friend, Regards, Merle.

Liz Hinds said...

Oh now I want to see it! Wouldn't you love to dance like that?

Ssshh, I have a new computer and I think it's not going to freeze as my old one did when i visited. Let's see what happens when i post.

Liz Hinds said...

Yay, it worked!

I think Itchy would come over funny if she spent time in anyone's armpit!

I hope you got your washing out of the machine.

Oh, I have an itch. Excuse me. I must scratch.

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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