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, March 02, 2010

Middle Class "Plant Food" = Britain's Favourite New Drug

MEPHEDRONE, a legal high with effects similar to "ecstasy plus cocaine", is fast becoming Britain's drug of choice according to a survey in dance magazine Mixmag.

Today's Metro London newspaper reports that mephedrone, which was unheard of little more than a year ago, is already the fourth most popular drug amongst Britain's clubbers (after ecstasy, cocaine and cannabis) and is fast overtaking cocaine as recreational drug of choice on the middle-class dinner-party circuit.

Priced at £45 for 5 grams of upwards 90% purity against cocaine ~ £50 for one gram of possibly less than 15% purity "economically it's a no-brainer" says 30 year-old "Paul" a London-based osteopath who adds, "And it's delivered to the door so you don't have to cross the city to meet some guy on a council estate."

Mephedrone's rise in popularity goes hand-in-hand with cocaine's fall in quality. "People are sick and tired of spending high amounts on rubbish drugs. At least with meow you know what you're getting and it also gives you the impression you're not funding the wrong people; some sites are run by people who are genuinely selling it for plants," explains Paul, who is either naïve or stupid, or thinks we are.

4-methylmethcathinone is a close relation to cathinone, which is to the khat leaves commonly chewed by Somali immigrants what cocaine is to coca leaves. Commonly known as miaowmix or miaow-miaow, mephedrone is a crystalline white powder with a candy-like aroma. Like MDMA (ecstasy) it is a member of the phenylethylamine family of compounds, which includes MDA and mescaline. Most of these were made illegal in Britain in 1977 after an MDA factory was discovered in rural Wales. Mephedrone remains legal in the UK by being too molecularly distant to fit current drugs legislation.

I was given a free 200mg sample some months ago (remember? I didn't even know what the stuff WAS!) and can report that after snorting up the nose, which was about as pleasant as snorting a line of powdered ginger, the high came on within three and a half minutes, was considerably stronger and longer lasting than any coke I've tried (I was never much into snorty coke for the reasons outlined above ~ I think people are wasting money on something cut nearly to extinction and basically kidding themselves)... the high had a transcendent "E"-like quality and went on for about three hours, taking a further three hours or more to tail off. I can certainly understand its popularity with nightclubbers.... but that phase of my life is over with and I don't really want to relive it.

The guy who gave me the freebie, incidentally, chucked himself under a tube train a couple of months later... whether there is any connexion between that and the drug I've absolutely no idea...

Mephedrone hit the headlines in December 2009 when 14 year-old Gabi Price from Brighton died after taking the drug on a night out with friends.

The Linc: dangerous new legal high

MEOW MIX 1984 TV AD
It's a cracker... this is one of my favourite telly ads of all time. I was pleasantly surprised to see someone else had actually (1) saved it on tape and (2) loaded it to Youtube! Note the Noel Cowardesque "I went to boarding school in 1914" rolled Rs ~ a throwback to the days when a posh voice could even sell catfood. Have a look, it's really funny:




13 comments:

Syd said...

I don't understand the need to do any of this stuff. I guess that I have been able to have a good time over the years without being drunk or stoned out of my mind. Shame that the energy spent on coming up with a drug couldn't be used for something more positive.

Baino said...

I'm with Sid. I'm afraid. I think it's 'legal' days are numbered frankly.

Akelamalu said...

LIke Syd and Baino I cannot understand the need to take any drug that is not necessary for your health. These drugs just wreck your body and mind. :(

Gledwood said...

And nobody even knows what it does to you!... except prods the serotonin-producing part of the brain to over-supplying, getting you high, activating the dopamine system (which gets you higher)... and the outcome is exhaustion and misery as the depleted brain struggles to cope for days afterwards...

Gledwood said...

And nobody even knows what it does to you!... except prods the serotonin-producing part of the brain to over-supplying, getting you high, activating the dopamine system (which gets you higher)... and the outcome is exhaustion and misery as the depleted brain struggles to cope for days afterwards...

Whitenoise said...

plant food?! I hope nothing starts growing in your nasal cavities afterwards...

Laura said...

LMAO@Whitenoise

Sarcastic Bastard said...

Gledds,
I love the Meow Mix advert, too.

Hope you are well and happy.

Love, SB

Gattina said...

The video is so cute ! of course with my 5 cats I can call myself a cat lady (but I don't have a stick and feed them in a parc, lol) I had to laugh about your saying that you are an old man, of course you are but then I would be from stone age ! You know growing up amongst ruins was even fun, because we kids didn't realize that people had lived and died in there. for us it just was a marvellous place to hide and play and somethimes find a doll or something in the ruins. It's only as an adult when I understood all the history that I thought my goodness what a playground we had !
I wouldn't consider canabis as a drug, my son and I smoked it together, lol !

Gledwood said...

!!!!!!

Lucinda said...

That's sounds like some pretty crazy shit. I was up in Amsterdam a few weeks ago, now that was interesting. All of the head shops sold "legal" ecstacy, coke, and opium. Weird fucking place, honestly, it depressed the fuck out of me. Also, we were offered heroin about 15 times, the thought of which wasn't helping.

That shit sounds good though, haha, I don't really like uppers because they make me too uncomfortable, I get the want-to-pull-off-skin type of high. But, I'd probably try that stuff.

Gledwood said...

note to self:

replacement picture for top ~

http://www.drugs.org.im/Mephedrone%20Poster.jpg

Gledwood said...

Hi Luce I did get your comment.
But when I tried to reply the STUPID COMPUTER CYBERCAFF PLACE shut me off!

I have to say if you were going to try any upper that stuff DOES actually work properly.

But my family knew for days afterwards something was wrong.
They could tell by my voice on the phone!!

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