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, December 23, 2008

Trying to Behave (Again)

YEAH I'M TRYING TO BEHAVE MYSELF AGAIN by taking just methadone... To be honest it hasn't been a smooth ride lately. All this is down to my rocking the boat. When you use heroin on top of a methadone script the methadone becomes partially ineffectual, so unless you time when you take it very carefully, you can end up feeling sick... On top of that sickness I think I really was ill last week.

It has all been very inconvenient indeed and I'm trying to distract myself with petty little things... the most recent being my "discovery" that I could write shorthand despite not having practised any for years. I never did classes either: just went through the book scrawling outlines ~ and THAT really took off when I had to burn off some nervous energy: I was giving up cigarette smoking and felt the need for something to do with my hands. On top of this I am someone who always has had a terrible proclivity towards doodling. Even when I've no pen and paper I find my fingers curling the shapes they would doodle if only I'd the accoutrements to write 'em down ... It has been this subconscious habit of mentally doodling outlines that kept them so fresh in my mind that when I recently came across a page of Gregg squiggles I was able to read them with an ease that really surprised me. I've done the "simplified" manual my Gran bought me years ago and now another family member has agreed to print off an advanced one in PDF I found online.

When I was younger and was more fascinated in cracking a secret code than steno-writing, I acquired a Victorian shorthand manual for about 50p from one of those fantastic secondhand bookshops you don't seem to see nowadays. This one was an entire house, rooms burgeoning with books of all dates, sizes, descriptions. The must of yellowing paper hung in the air. Downstairs by the door sat an old man chainsmoking and reading. In those days you could run a business that way. Though there were mirrors and faked up cameras upstairs if you'd half an ounce of nous you could very easily have shoplifted, but those days more people were honest... The "something for nothing" culture had not pervaded Britain's rotting core the way it has today... But now it has and all the old men have died and with them have gone those Aladdin's caves of all that was fascinating, antiquated and bizarre (mixed in with so much crap!). My Victorian manual for some long-defunct stenographic method gave about 20 pages of rants telling how only HIS system was the greatest discovery since mankind began etc etc I wish I still had it the language was hilarious. If you click (and pause and click again to see properly) on the little picture you'll see a display of just some of the steno-methods around in the 1890s... The only one I can read is Gregg's at the top... Anyway back to drugs:

Heroin is pharmacological superglue. It hijacks the brain at the most basic levels. Which is why kicking the habit has been so awesomely tricky for me. Once I found it and it found me and embedded its psyche in mine I was done for.

But ho-hum. Where there's life there's hope!

Gotta go and write some shorthand (or smoke a fag!)

PS I do laugh... On one of those innumerable on duty with the ambulance service docusoaps that litter our channels I saw a man yesterday who'd run into trouble injecting Jif lemon with his heroin "to get more of a buzz". At first some hilarity ensued when the ambulanceman misunderstood and thought he meant the lemon-scented kitchen cleaner (now called Cif) rather than bottled lemon juice. (The 2 products shared one name for years because both were marketed by Unilever...) I really do wonder what planet some of these junkies live on, where the properties of common lemon (but not somehow the citric acid or vitamin C, both of which are added to make brown heroin base soluble in water) could possibly potentiate diamorphine giving extra "buzz"... probably the same planet where ordinary table salt is turned into home made saline to reverse overdose. TABLE SALT HAS NO EFFECT WHATSOEVER on anyone who has overdosed and if you try injecting them with this you're wasting time they might die in. Incidentally this second myth comes from the common hospital practice of giving saline and other fluids via IV drip. It's NARCAN (NALOXONE), given usually by IV injection in stages that reverses overdose. Nothing else will! Though giving the kiss of life to someone who's stopped breathing might well help. For info about whether or what acid to add to what heroin click here.

7 comments:

Akelamalu said...

I'm so pleased to hear you say you're doing without H again!

May I wish you a very Happy Christmas and I hope the New Year brings you the strength to kick your habits and brings you much happines m'dear. x

Gledwood said...

thank you!

Bimbimbie said...

Hello Gleds Wishing you a Happy and Heroin-free Christmas from me and the feathered ones. Have you got some fancy nibbles for your furball family?

Enjoyed your description of the old house/bookshop ... Mr Dickens would be smiling*!*

Keshi said...

here's wishing Gledz a drug-free and a very merry Christmas! Stay focused! ;-)


Keshi.

Vincent said...

Hey Gled! Merry Christmas to you too mate! I hope you'll have a good Christmas and an even better 2009. I also want to wish you good health and stability for the next year because those are the most important for you I think.

Keep on writing mate,

Vinz.

Anonymous said...

Fröhliche Weihnachten, Gledwood.

Gledwood said...

Bimbimbie: thank you ... and that was an amazing bookshop. That one happened to be in Paignton, a town I don't even know but I found the bookshop ... being "drawn" to it...

Keshi: you too ;->...

Mago: danke schön!

Vincent: cheers!

Baino: those are v nice thoughts thank you. I will TRY!!!

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