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!

Saturday, December 27, 2008

Robo-Jamboree (et cetera...)

I CAUGHT MY ROBOS in chaos this morning. Not only have they chewed an entire issue of the Sun newspaper to squiggles in the past couple of days, creating bedding so deep it has combed their fur into frosted white colour matching the weather. But when I disturbed them today they quickly dropped all they were doing: the loud gnawing from the toilet tube ceased; the scratching and scrabbling from the outer corners stopped ~ and three tiny faces staring at me as if to say, "what do YOU want..?"

They ran out of hamster food over a month ago ~ by that I mean "hamster food in a glossy labelled packet"... meanwhile they've been living on breakfast cereals, granary bread and kitchen scraps, so they've hardly starved. Anyway they got really excited when I presented them with a courgette ("zucchini") top and what I call a "pumblechook" ~ that being the inner seed head of a red pepper with all the lovely crunchy bits pinging out... a pumblechook is only a red pepper's, however. You get a bumblechook from a green one; yellow's is a tumblechook and green with yellow flecks is a ker-mumblechook. And if you believe that you'll believe anything.

I did sleep last night and woke up very early indeed (well: 8am). Drank 4 cups of tea and methadone (I'm being so good). I'd like to say I'll be doing no heroin next week when a bit more money comes, but that really remains to be seen. Getting DSS money is linked so intimately with scoring (not spending the entire lot on drugs but a bit of it) that it's tended to confound past resolutions to take a break... but hey, as NA say: you can only do it one day at a time...

And on that note I'd better go. Tapping that out took ages because I'd squiggled it out in shorthand first and my net-time account's running low so I'm running against the clock which is highly stressful. I need to make sure this gets safely posted. OK have a cheery weekend y'all!

And I hope Xmas was nice to you...

5 comments:

Akelamalu said...

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that when the DSS money arrives you don't spend any of it on heroin. x

Megan said...

That might be the cutest picture of a hamster I have ever seen.

Keep being good!

Puss-in-Boots said...

Pumblechook...you're mad, Gleds, hehe. Although I must admit, I quite like that name. Our chooks don't like those seeds and membranes from the capsicums, though.

I hope you're feeling a bit better than you were a couple of days ago, Gleds. Keep well.

Baino said...

Love your 'chooks' although that means 'chicken' over here! As in "May your Chooks turn into Emus and knock yer dunny down!"
Gleds, one day at a time is all you can do. Great resolution. It's a real shame that you don't have internet at home because then you could join a forum and keep in touch with others trying to do the same or with someone who can offer you online encouragement. Can you get internet at home and maybe borrow someone's laptop? I'm off all week and would be happy to be 'support' if you needed it.

Gledwood said...

Right thank you for these messages, folks. I DID try and reply to them the day after, only for the computer to crash shut on me, all credits spent!

AKELAMALU: mmmm it's been an up-&-down weekend...

MEGAN: that's just what they look like but someone else took that of someone else's pinging little hammy...

PUSS-IN-BOOTS: yeah I do really call a pepper-inside a pumblechook; it's just the colour-variety designations I don't do... hey I'd 4gotten about Aussie "chooks" meaning... don't they mean clucky lil hens and ducks..?? I know Dame Edna brings them up frequently in conversation...

BAINO: ey ~ see! Just as I was saying. But this is a PUMBLECHOOK: compound noun. The appellation comes originally, so it seems, from Mr Charles Dickens's "Mr Pumblechook" in David Copperfield or something like that...

4ums etc: o no I have annoyance enough just signing IN to stuff like that... I do see what you mean as much as anyone who CANNOT use such things ever can though.... righty

no i cannot get internet at home
cable tv are doing a v whizzy deal for broadband on top of all the tellychannels... if ONLY I HAD A LAPTOP...

many thanxx for the offer though ;->...

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

Copyright 2011 by Gledwood