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!

Monday, December 21, 2009

Brrr!



LONDON IS VERY, VERY COLD

Pavements are like icerinks...
... yes, this picture was taken in London ~ honest! (I'm a dishonest person...)



The outsized ferris wheel is called the London Eye... isn't it majestic?!?



This one really is London ~ wahey!



Merry Xmas to all you pagans out there!
(It IS, after all, a PRE-Christian festival...!)



PS and OH ... a Trotter Donkey in the snow...!



Come here QUICKLY for some snapshots of les vacances parisiennes/etc chez Bimbimbie!!


16 comments:

Laura said...

Cold here in Canada too ... -15c in Nova Scotia.

Bimbimbie said...

Hi Gleds ... love the trotter donkey. London looks gorgeous under it's snow blanket.

It was the place de la Concorde, in front of the posh Hotel de Crillon where the traffic controller was working ... stay warm*!*

Jeannie said...

If only snow would limit itself to that adequate sprinkling. How cold is very cold to you there? I have found that cold is relative - if you have cold after it's been warm, it feels colder - if you are unaccustomed to cold, it's colder; if it's damp, it's colder; if it's windy, it's colder; if it's grey, it's colder. If I'm tired, or hungry, it's colder.

It's been around -5C here which is cold (obviously) but not really cold for here - when your nostrils stick together, the snow squeaks and ice forms on the scarf around your mouth - then it's really cold. We don't get as many of those days here as even just 100 miles north which don't get as many as another 100 above that etc.

Unknown said...

A very Merry & WARM Christmas to you, my dear friend!

Although I'm posting at my blog, I decided that I'd also answer your question here at your blog:

What I call KATZ are primarily LOL Cats that folks create and post to the website I Can Has Cheezburger. The site also features similar pics of other creatures, even a few roborovski hamsters! The pics that I post as KATZ also contain other photos that people send me. I do add captions to some photos that come without any words, including ones I've posted of Alex, who is proud of being a LOL Cat.

BTW, I learned a few days ago that my grandchildren now have a very small, miniature hamster that they love dearly. I must drop by their home soon and meet the little fellow.

Gattina said...

I see you are also sitting in the snow ! We have - 11°C and 8 cm ! very unusual for Brussels, it happened since the Global Warming meeting in Copenhagen !
I wish you nice holidays we celebrate traditionally, but not religious it's nice to get gifts, lol !

molson said...

There was near 2 feet of snow here at my brother's place in eastern PA. So how does London deal with snow? Poorly I bet.

Hey was that a supersize horse box I saw in that video in your previous trotter donkey post? Was that really in the UK? Is it possible to fit a super-size horse box on your Roman Roads? Super-size horse boxes are very common in the States. So are super-size travel trailers. I believe you refer to them as caravans in the UK.

I did see one youtube video of a trotter donkey derby in Texas. I suspect trotter donkey derbies are held all over much to the dismay of the trotter donkeys. Can't say I've heard of any around my parts, but then I don't go looking for them either.

Stay warm Gledwood and merry Christmas to you.

Akelamalu said...

We had about 6 inches of snow here oop north yesterday. :0

Syd said...

That little donkey is really cute. There was about 20 inches of snow in Washington, DC. It was a wild weekend for weather over here.

CrystalChick said...

We got almost 2 FEET of snow on Saturday!!! Pictures on my page if you want to check them out! Scan down past the family drama and see what we had to deal with. It was real pretty at first, but no one can or wants to stay home so it gets chopped up and iced over and is just an ugly mess after a day or two.

Still, it was nice to have some snow before Christmas.

Amazing Gracie said...

Hello! I wanted to stop by and wish you a Merry Christmas (since I'm not a pagan - smiles....)!
Glad to see you're still blogging - I'm sorry to see that you've lost some of your darling little guys.
Our weather is cold when it's 50 degrees. We have horrible problems with valley fog and truck accidents (lorry?).
Anyway, I'm not dead and glad you aren't either!
~~~Blessings~~~

Janice Seagraves said...

Does it snow very often in London? I had an impression it didn't.

We're got rain, and its pouring outside just as I'm writing this. :)

I did a post on writing synopsis, its short and I hope it helps you.

Janice~

Tatyanna (and Dorian too) said...

Where did you get these amazing pictures, beautiful and adorable and amazing?? I love them! It has just snowed significantly for the second time here in Chicago...pity I have just begun trudging out for last-minute gifts for everyone.

Gledwood said...

ANONYMOUS DRIFTER: that IS cold... I'm sure it's barely minus one here. I haven't heard people complaining about the cold, actually, which I'm sure British people would ~ most vociferously ~ if the temp plunged much below -2C... Was that C or F you were talking...? -15F would be truly shocking... surely you could keep seedless grapes outside in the garden all night and then shatter them on the pavement the following day... like our chem teacher did on dipping said grapes in liquid nitrogen (that can't be MUCH colder than -15F... surely..??!?)

BIMBIMBIE: Place de la Concorde I know but cannot geographically place... do you know I actually have spent more time trudging the streets of PARIS than LONDON... so for years I knew the way around the French Capital far better than the English one!

Isn't the Tonky cute!!!

JEANNIE: oh no! I doubt it's any colder than that here... you DO mean -5C though, don't you???? Hectic confusion is ensuing over international temperature standards...

What pisses me off the MOST about Britain... and remember I'm set to EMIGRATE anyway as soon as I possibly can (ie if I EVER write a successful book ~ I'm OFF!!!) is that in high summer the roads melt, buses are super-skin-meltingly hot with no ventilation... the country isn't designed for it AT ALL... yet the newspapers pretty much print SNOW IN WINTER SHOCK headlines... and the country comes to rapid standstill then AS WELL. What a crappy set-up ~ I ask you!!

NICK: OOOOOOOOOO! I would like to see the Pygmy Mongolian Roborovski Trotters!

GATTINA: I fully agree with you... not that I get many gifts, because my family never really bothered much with Xmas. My Mum cooks dinner but if we forgot and did a normal day I don't think anyone would care. Best Xmas dinner ever was when we had BEEF instead ~ wonderful!!

MOLSON: if you said "donkey derby" to an English person they wouldn't think "what creative use of language" they'd picture a tubby furry horse race as pictured... though I have to say I always thought of DONKEY BEACH RIDES as donkey derbies ... strictly a separate occurence, I'm now duly informed! So it sounds like Trotterdonkey Derbies are an ABERRATION in America... how odd!

Gledwood said...

AKELAMALU: oh dear!!

SYD: bloody hell ~ nice to hear they still do things outsize in America even to this day..!

CRYSTALCHICKMARY: I'm going to have a look... You do realize you can BET (legally) on a white Xmas in this country... but I've pretty much given up for fear of terminally crap odds as surely it's (technically) snowed every day. The bookies' definition of a white Xmas is ONE flake of snow to FALL (not be lying on the ground ~ there could be 18 ft drifts but no precipitation = no white Xmas!!) on the roof of Bracknell Weather Centre. I've been to Bracknell and belive me, apart from the 3M Sellotape factory, the National Weather Centre is just about all that town's got going for it!

GRACIE: I'm still going ~ lovely to hear from you darlin'! xx

JANICE: oh thank you so much for the synopsis "thang" ~ I'm sure it will be VERY HELPFUL INDEED ~ I'm absolutely stumped when it comes to them... As for snow in London... possibly two vaguely snowy/frosty days in THREE years... but anything resembling true snow is rare ~ maybe once in 5 years and proper extended children-sledging-down-the-street-for-2-months-on-end cold snaps as in 1981 or 1982... about once in 20 years!!

UNIQUE:

Gledwood said...

How typical ~ I knew I'd forgotten to answer you Unique, but couldn't get back to a computer yesterday (I don't own one)...

How do I get the pictures? By googling on "images" for e.g. "snow donkey"... or "snow parliament" and that's how such images come up. It's better to be as specific as possible, if you have an image in your mind it's very often up there... then you click on the image and put it in the blog. Some people complain about doing this, but if you upload images you DON'T want used you can blockade this, so I don't know what they're complaining about...

Anonymous said...

Thank you for this super write up keep up the super work. I found it useful cheers.

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

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