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

Gledwoods deutscher Blog

Bitte hier klicken ...

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, August 04, 2009

Shortest Ever Hair

I'VE BEEN (INTERMITTENTLY) AT MY HAIR with a pair of nail scissors all weekend; and the result ~ my shortest hair for 20 years! All the long bits, the crap bits, the straggles are gone!The remaining crop's uniform just-over-1" long and deliberately styleless. No dreadful parting anywhere to be seen. It stands up readily ~ electroshock mad professor-style with a hint of fledgling birdie chick chic.

Because it was cut with nail scissors, you can still see where it was chopped off in clumps. A look I was hoping to achieve.

THE RAZOR-BLADED EXPECTORATIONS of last week's non-piggery-influenced Common Cold are cruising smoothly to oblivion. My last cold post ~ you know the one exclaiming something like "Better Already!" ~ was, I now confess, a little over-enthusiastic. The fiery worst was over, but my airpipes were and still are cobwebbed in choking, membranous rattling phlegm. I have coughing fits an ancient pensioner would be proud of.

But it's not a rattling old peabag cough ~ and that's the point. Nothing coughs up. I just feel like five thousand grains of half-buried itching-rice are semi-dislodged by my hackings. Yet still: nothing ever comes up.

Here's Britain's "socialist" National Health Service (o yeah what a commie idea ~ not to demand a dying man's credit card before he's out of the ambulance! ) ... Pandemic Flu Service site. Do have a non-public hysteria whipping peek.

I read that last sentence back and read it wrong. But I won't tell you what I read. You can read that into it yourself...

ANYWAY I FEEL we're in the 21st Century now. man: I really feel it. WH Smith, Britain's biggest stationers, no longer sell bottled writing ink!

So now-a-days you get 6 or 8 Parker cartridges ~ containing about a bottletop full of ink ~ for £2.60 (I ask you!) ~ which is far more than a 2 fluid oz" (is that 56 mls?) bottle of Quink ever cost me.

Not to be deterred, I'm Harrods-bound ~ Harrods being my favourite shop in the world: the food halls in particular are amazing. And their downstairs stationer's dept. sells every brand and colour of writing ink imaginable. Last time I got Montblanc (click and see), which comes in a shoe-shaped container; the "heel" being reserved for a pen-shaped filling-reservoir while the toes house the swilling year's supply of ink...



Montblanc's Mickey Mouse-style Meisterstück is theee fountain-pen of choice for treaty-signing world leaders. Tradition being that upon signing, statesmen swap "Stücks" as a nod to international harmony. (Then swap straight back as soon as the eyes of the world's media are off them ~ Meisterstücke cost $800-$1000 or more depending on whether you go for gold-nibbed or platinum...

HAVING SAID ALL THIS I'm in an emotional fight for survival (again!). My mood is down on the floor. (Perhaps Harrods might sell something to lift it. But I doubt it. Their heroin dept. closed down in the 1920s ...

PS Gledwood Volume 2 got 355 hits yesterday!

I can barely believe it. Perhaps my hit-counter is wrong ...

Just who from..? I'd love to know ...

11 comments:

Baino said...

Honey Harrods say they can procure ANYTHING . . maybe you could ask them to get you clean! Shame about bottled ink but frankly I think you can only buy it here in art supplies shops. Amazingly, the best one in Sydney is right in the middle of Darlinghurst our gay and junkie centre. I loved Harrods . .not so the lady in the Crystal department who had a caniption watching clare and I walk through the Waterford with backpacks on . .I think she was worried we'd swing round and lacerate her Lladro!

Gledwood said...

Gemme clean? I wish... Yeah up till 4 or 5 years ago bottled ink was still readily available... now it feels like a real antiquity, like asking for powdered ink as, (so I'm told) the "ink monitor" used to make up each morning and dutifully fill each well in each desk in olde grammare and secondarye moderne schueles ...

yeah we have a brilliant shop in Covent Gdn called The London Graphic Centre which sells a brand called Higgins Eternal ~ a carbonic black fountain pen ink for vain people like me who want their writings to "last forever" (well at least it won't fade)... + drunks like me who're constantly spilling "water", "cups of tea" etc all over their intellectual manuscripts... haha!!

Nicole said...

I like the sound of your haircut.

Jeannie said...

How daring - to cut your own hair!

And for ink - if Harrod's fails, try an artist's supply. You can get India Ink if nothing else there.

Laura said...

Cutting hair with nail scissors .. now that's brave! I once took a good chunk out of my hair with hair buzzers back in the 90's. It surprisingly turned into a new hairstyle and I kept it for years.

Sarcastic Bastard said...

Gleddy,
Sorry you are low. I, too, struggle with clinical depression. My sympathies.

Sending love,

SB

Akelamalu said...

I always used to write with a fountain pen - I just love the smell of ink! Unfortunately email has taken over.

Puss-in-Boots said...

I'm a total philistine...I couldn't wait to use ballpoint in school and now email has come in, I use a pen only under great duress!

Well done on the hair...as long as you're happy with it, that's all that matters. I used to have mine long, but was too chicken to chop it all off in one fell swoop, so it got shorter by degrees over a period of months. Now it stays short...suits the grey...

Hope the blues don't last too long...nasty things they are.

As for all the hits, they're from the anonymous cruisers and lurkers who loiter outside our blogs but refuse to come in...

Keep well, Gleds.

Gledwood said...

Nicole: it's FAR better than anything I've had for YEARS...

Jeannie: before I forget yes I definitely wanna still see your blog pls don't 4get to contact me

Drifter: see! Bravery pays off. And hair DOES grow back (as I constantly reminded myself..!!)

Gledwood said...

SB: I really wish sometimes I could just pop antidepressants like normal people but they disagree with me and turn my mood from a pit into a rollercoaster leading to a deeper pit~
Not good!

Akelamalu: yeah the aroma of Quink was unmistakeable, wasn't it...

PussInBoots: at my first 2nd-ary school we weren't allowed anything else bar fountain pen... which of course made ballpoint feel like exotic forbidden fruit by the time I arrived at the second...

Syd said...

Gleds, you know how much I like fountain pens. I haven't found any problem with getting good ink. I order my pens on line. There is a Montblanc store here but there are a bit out of my league. I check E bay though.
Hope that your mood passes soon. Hang in there.

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