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!

Monday, March 02, 2009

Craving Crack Cocaine

MISERY MISERY MISERY. Yes yes. I'm depressed out of my mind. Craving crack out of my mind. And no I didn't do the obvious to trigger said craving (which is weird, considering I've not had a single pipe/hit or anything else containing any sort of coke this YEAR)... But all last night, after a dealer gave me a free hit of heroin and has been pressing on me the fact (but not a free bag) of crack cocaine. I could go on and on about this but really don't have the energy to repeat my own boringly circuitous personal mental ramblings...

I long to be straight yet I cannot imagine a life without drugs. Or to put it another way, yes I can imagine that life, but I cannot imagine being happy. Heroin is the only thing that has made life bearable. It gives life value. And it's been like this for years.

I know many of you are sitting there wanting to headbutt the computer with rage saying CAN'T YOU SEE: IT'S HEROIN THAT BROUGHT YOU THIS MISERY AND HEROIN KEEPS YOU HERE.

Yes I have some understanding of this; but I know I don't see it the way you do. I can't do. I know I can't. I'm like a horse in blinkers ~ knowing it is blinkered yet comfortable to stay that way.

To put it more directly: I am just a cowardly junkie without the courage to get clean.

From time to time I get flashes of what it must feel like to be clean. That is to feel things, to smell things. To live in a world of vivid associations and full colour.

But here, behind my bulletproof-glassed existence, nothing's left to feel. Just the sense of so much lost that I will never grasp back. Not just because I'm too scared (and I am) but because the experience of recapturing lost territory just feels so overwhelmingly meaningless, bleak and deathly-tiring, it hardly ever feels worthwhile...


VIDEO OF THE DAY: THIS IS CLASSIC.
I only heard about it from today's Sun newspaper report...
The actual fish-catching (a dolphin-sized fish bigger than him!) happens around 1 min 30 into this clip ...



MARLIN IMPALES WOMAN'S BREAST IMPLANT!!

Utterly bizarre and yet seemingly true...




6 Degrees Of Association
Still haven't found anyone I know though I only did about 3 or 4 hops today.
Now I find myself in "organizing your life" and "decluttering" blogland
e.g. http://overcomingbusy.com
and
http://www.organizingyourway.net
and
http://lifestylesoftheorganized.com ~ Lifestyles of the Organized
Creative solutions to help you organize your space, time, and money in today’s hectic world

12 comments:

Jeannie said...

I think your fear is what addiction is all about. Way back when I smoked, even though I hated smoking, the thought of giving it up and never having another cigarette - that huge chasm of life without a cigarette - would throw me into a panic. Looking back, it seems ludicrous because once you are without it and free of the craving, you wonder how you could have held on to something so bad that NEVER lived up to the satisfaction that you expected when you used it.

It takes time to get past.

Gledwood said...

o yeah you got it! definitely it's about fear and being too ***** to face up to it!!

i do remember being in the past-addicted state, when I'd given up on a relatively minor scale before, and would look back to the supposed black hole that was inside me then and see how remarkably it had closed up. and how painlessly, too.

i think a lot of the pain i feel now, or fear, is of expectation, rather than a reality... spot on there Jeannie

Akelamalu said...

The secret of giving up any addiction (I used to smoke)is actually wanting to give it up. Until that feeling is the overwhelming one you can't succeed. :(

Gledwood said...

wELL I HAVE DECIDED TO BE FAR MORE PROACTIVE IN MY APPROACH
YOU'RE RIGHT I DON'T WANT TO GIVE UP HEROIN BECAUSE THERE'S NO POINT BEING ALIVE WITHOUT IT
BUT CRACK MADE LIFE PRETTY MEANINGLESS WHILE I WAS ON IT SO I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO SAY ABOUT THAT ONE
in fact that's why i post so very little about crack. it's a crap drug, crappy with so very little to say about it...

Kristine said...

Nice to meet you. Thanks for your comment on my blog. I don't know how far you read, but you may have noticed a lot of the feel-good stuff comes from my background in AA/Al-Anon. I have spent my whole life around alcoholics and addicts, and have dabbled myself.

I have learned a lot. I know that nothing will change until you hit the bottom and if you are still with us, look up and say "G*d, help me." And then you will do whatever it takes to stay clean. One day at a time.

Until then, I wish you love and luck, and I hope you find what you are searching for.

Anonymous said...

THANK YOU
TO BE UTTERLY FRANK I DON'T KNOW WHETHER THAT IS LIFE OR DEATH
BUT LIFE IS THE MORE ACCEPTED DESIRE TO HAVE ~ DON'T YOU THINK SO?

Queenneenee said...

i felt the same way about booze. How in the hell could I live without it? But like Karissa stated, I hit a bottom and it was a choice I had to make. Life or Death. I chose life.

kellylebelly said...

don't feel too bad... I gave in last night. though crack i don't get... i found it a horrible cruel drug. i'd much rather have coke but can't have that without b to smooth the edges after (i get panic attacks after a while, heart pounding, stop the ride i wanna get off!).

you can only take one day at a time. obviously the further you get away from it the easier it gets. but i do understand the thought of giving it up forever is scary esp when you relied on it for so many reasons. forever is too scary to think about, just think about now.

i'm in no position to judge. the fact is i think i'm a better, more pleasant person on it but i realise a lot of that is to please other people and meet their demands and expectations.

speaking of which better get back to work, waiting to feel worse so can have my sub.

take care

xk

Gledwood said...

QUEENEE: the stupid thing is I've hit rock bottom lots of times. I asked is this rock bottom? where you feel you just cannot go on like this a single second more? and everyone says yes.
Then there's the other issue about loving the drugs MORE and the balance of adoration. It's that second thing that's not yet swung over with me. God knows I want it to!

KELLY: o yeah I know where you're coming from with that. Some years ago when crack was a pretty occasional thing I used to smoke pipes, get "prang" almost straight away and end up injecting "B" just to get rid of that crack-horribleness!

Mandi @ Life Your Way said...

I gotta admit I was really confused when I saw that you had linked to me at Organizing Your Way, but I love the idea of the 6 degrees of separation experiment. I bet you do come across a lot of really interesting blogs by doing that!

I also wanted to let you know, as cliche as it sounds, that I'm sincerely praying for you as you battle your addictions. My step-dad has been clean for 21 years now (as of St. Patrick's Day – ha!), but I know we still don't take the "recovering" part of his recovery for granted. It's a long and hard road, no doubt, but I hope and pray you find people along the way who can help you as you travel it.

Anonymous said...

Oh, oops, I used an old, irrelevant login for that last comment!

J said...

having played with morphine WAY too much, i know exactly where you are coming from. its frustrating and frustratingly comfortable.

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