HAMSTERS & HEROIN: Not all junkies are purse-snatching grandmother-killing psychos. I'm keeping this blog to bear witness to that fact.

LIVE FROM LONDON

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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, January 17, 2009

Have a Furry Weekend Y'all!

YES... A FURRY WEEKEND. My hammies have been lying in bed, like little birdies in a nest together (three little gremlin faces peer up at me whenever I speak to them). Itchy has kept her pouches continuously packed with the new hamster food I put out on Thursday, so she wanders around looking like a furry cobra head, which is faintly ridiculous. Specially for Lime, the illustration is a pair of European harvest mice (apparently American ones are bigger and different), these being called micromys minutus (doncha just luurve that Latin~?!?) They live up corn stalks where they make weaver-bird-style nests for their chirrupping furry babbies (which are born blind and naked, like mini baked beans with paws...).

Now on to drugs, but in a more "clean" way... as I mentioned (and I'm sure this is the cause, though I'd imagine the addicts in London would get through that much in not much more than a week...) I believe the current glitch in the heroin market, which seems to be threatening to become a drought, is down to a 150kg seizure made in Forest Gate early last December... Low quality gear is reportedly everywhere (when I have used I've managed to avoid it, mainly by going to one person who's still got a nice lot)... a vast number of the dealers are switched off because, unable to pick up anything worthwhile they'd rather simply stop trading. As I told myself if or rather when this happened again I would give up rather than stress about what I buy/when/how much/from who/what/why/whatever. Life has better things to offer than worrying about heroin, which I'm so fed up of anyhow... so I'm seizing my chance...

PS I can smell the gear off that photo... but why on earth someone's seemingly tried to smoke it off the spoon I've no idea...


PPS I WAS JUST considering this: how can it be a "success" when drugs are taken off the streets only for their price to rise ~ resulting in more crime ~ and drug-dealing criminals to add dangerous adulterants that could kill the drug-using criminals... what a crazy world...

PPS Read how mad these droughts get from this from earlier this year when we did have a drought...

PPPS FROM THE SIDEBAR: HERE's Pablo the "drugs dog"... made for "Talk To Frank" ~ the UK National Drugs Helpline, this is the tv commercial "There's a Darker Side to Coke"...



DRUGS IN THE NEWS: NORTH KOREAN STATE-SPONSORED HEROIN PRODUCTION CLAIM

16 comments:

Jeannie said...

Success has different forms. You, for instance, are doubly motivated to get clean. You want to for yourself, but also because the supply isn't stable or dependable anyway. You might not be the only one.

I just find it strange that the cops have such a hard time shutting things down when for instance, I, knowing nothing about drugs, could probably score whatever I wanted in about half an hour through people who know people. I wouldn't think it would take long to find out who is supplying them and on back, if i were motivated in that direction. I somehow think that the war against drugs is a lot of talk and little action - maybe action only if someone doesn't get paid off. I'm a little cynical.

Gledwood said...

I sometimes don't think the police WANT to shut it down

yeah i'm using the drought as a kind of excuse-on-top thang...

Crushed said...

I agree, one of the main problems with prohobition is more people die because with prohibintion, there's no quality monitoring.
Crazy.

Akelamalu said...

If it means you stop using, long may the drought continue! :)

lime said...

those are some awfully cute little corn critters there. thanks.

Gledwood said...

Crushed: Aye!

Akelamalu: Aye-aye!

Lime: Aye-aye-aye!!

molson said...

You asked about the elevated tent sites on the photo on my blog. It indeed increases the comfort of camping especially when it rains. Tent floods in the middle of the night are not fun. Plus the Park Service wants to control where people set-up tents so as to avoid crushing all of the landscape in the camping area. Of course not all camp sites in Rocky are so posh.

Looks like you're ready to scale the addiction mountain again. I guess first camp is reached when you are 'done' only. May you have good climbing weather. The pikas are waiting for your arrival.

Anonymous said...

I hated it too, until I stopped doing dope for a week or two. Then any kindof high was sounding very very good.
So, when I'm not doing h, i make due with pot, or whatever else less addictive drug i can find to control the craving.

Puss-in-Boots said...

Hmmm, getting clean is coming closer, Gleds. Good luck with it all.

Cute little furries on the wheat stalk.

My Daughter's Addiction said...

Thinking about you! It's interesting that you mentioned you could smell the photo...my daughter use to say the same thing...she could smell it if she thought about it. The brain is definitely strange.

Your PPS- Its called "Success" by the police because they confiscate vehicles, cash, and property...yeah crazy world.

Chunks of Reality said...

Those are the cutest hamsters. It's funny what you said about American hamsters being bigger. I say that because I used to live in Scotland and England and it was so funny when I realized how people thought everything was bigger in America. LOL Unfortunately it's true most of the time. Bigger isn't better.

Thanks for stopping by my blog.

Bimbimbie said...

Hi Gleds, love that mental image of mini baked beans with paws ... too cute. Smiles*!*

Gledwood said...

Molson: ~~only in America would they have luxury mattresses pinned to the woodland floor..!

I hope there are pikas on descent from Mount Addiction ~ haha!!

Cody: I wish I could find something else that fitted. I tried it with drink and just ended up turning into an alcoholic!!!

Puss-in-Boots: aren't they tiny....

Gledwood said...

MDA: I was going to hammer on about the "smell" saying it's why I don't want to switch back to smoking it, which is how I started. Smoking takes ages (reinforcing the addiction) and has strong taste/smell associations ~ further reinforcing the addiction!! That's my "excuse"...

As for success... did you know Khun Sa offered to sell an entire year's opium production of 3000 tonnes to the American DEA ~ ie "best of both worlds" ~ he'd get his money for the Shan people, heroin would stay off the streets. But no the DEA would not do it. It would involve rejiggling far too many budgets... (but they can afford to save toppling banks with multiple $$$billions$$$...

Chunks of Reality: harvest mice but yes probably true!!

Bimbimbie: I once saw newborn baby mice who looked just like that...

Terry Wright said...

Howdy G.
The bust you mentioned would have absolutely no effect what-so-ever. The estimated volume seized in drug busts is less than 10% of the total shipped. A heroin drought is because of bigger issues like a change of direction for drug lords or a war.

One of the strategies of drug control is to reduce supply and therefore increase prices. The idea is that it will turn people to treatment because they can't afford their drugs. It actually works but like all price driven strategies it ignores those who don't stop. What they forget is the supply and demand equation. Demand is fairly static so supply will always eventually meet the demand. If prices are too high in the interim, crime rises ... simple.

Love the hammies BTW.

Anonymous said...

What part of London are from. You see, my mum is a traveling nurse, and we had planned on going to the UK, in Sept. when her contract is up here in Hawaii.
She looked into going to London, and found that she needs to get her BA before she can practice as a nurse in the UK. So instead of the UK, we will be moving to New York City, in the states.
While in New York my mum plans on getting her BA, so we can move to the UK.
I really want to move to the UK. Anywhere in the UK is fine. In my mind Everyone from the UK is smarter, and listen to better music than us stupid Americans. I'm sure, or postive when I get their I will be disapointed. I've built up your country so much in my head, that I can only be let down. Humans are human no matter where they live. Still in my heart of hearts, I KNOW that my soul mate is from somewhere in England, perhaps Scotland, really he or she is from somewhere in the UK. I need to get there and find him or her.
Plus the Brits have a much better vocabulary than us Americans.
This comment has nothing to do with the blog you've posted.
How did you know about this bust in Forest whatever? Was it in the BBC news, or did you find out thru your dealer(s)?
So you want to get clean. I of cource hope you do. I hope that when you get there you are happy, and satisfied with life...your life.
I should have just emailed you, but I don't have your email address, and well I'm too stupid and lazy to figure out how to use that icon on the bottom of every blog post that seems to be where I need to click to send you an email.
Anyway, I think your well writen, and most likely well spoken. You seem to be witty also. I like you. Sincerly like you.
Sorry for my spelling errors.

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