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, May 24, 2010

Cool Down With Perrier

NOW HERE'S A BLAST FROM THE PAST... or ought that to be a splish-splosh-SPLASSHHH!! PERRIER WATER! Today has been roasting hot.
When it's hot in Britain everybody roasts because nothing in this country is designed for anything other than a mediocre range of temperature from about 3 degrees C to about 20. Any day outside that range feels unbearable. Unbearably hot or wutheringly cold ~ because there is no insulation against cold and worst of all no ventilation to dissipate heat.
Buses are sweat-boxes with barely-opening windows.
The Underground is unbearable. It feels well over 100 degrees F down there.
The chemists shop was boiling. I have the slightest mildest hint of a cold and like just about any sickness (apart from drug withdrawal) it is making me sleep. And sleep. And sleep and sleep and sleep all day. So I wake up cold, put my coat on.
First thing I notice on the high street is how everybody else is wearing school PE kit. (That was The Face magazine's estimation of 1980s British summer fashion ~ lurve it!) And I'm in my junkie's long coat with lots of pockets.
I get to the chemist without sweating. Bring the methadone home. In my old area, which was far more junkie-ridden I would never walk down the street with methadone bottle in hand, even shrouded in pharmacy bag, because everyone who would know knew what was in that bag and I was once violently accosted by a crazed woman (who I knew) DEMANDING that I GIVE.
Thing was, (I wasn't just saying telling her this; it was true) it was not my chemist, not my dose.
I had just undergone the third degree to prove yes I WAS supposed to be collecting this prescription, gone through all this stress just to help out a sick friend. (Heroin addicts very rarely get ill, but when they do it lingers on and on...)
And methadone clinics don't really seem to be oriented around the fact that their "clients" might not be in optimum health, which can make organizing methadone collection when you're too sick to go in an absolute nightmare. Anyway this silly hag harangues me and in the end I just walked off.
She threatened all sorts of stuff and I told her to do her worst.
This particular crazywitch is an Irish traveller and she's always threatening her brothers on people. What she does not realize is, I know her mother from times of old. Her Mum used to give me 50p every time she saw me in my begging years. I was told she liked me because I was so unlike her scummy daughter...
Anyway!
All day I have been craving... Water! Fizzy water!! I could have bought fizzed up tap water at 10p for 2 litres from Morrisons (packaging says something like "value sparkling water": no mention of minerals or springs which means it's just tap water, filtered and CO2'd! Consumer tellyprogs like to make out this would be a "con". To me it's a lesson not to make assumptions!
Anyhow, in the end I purchased 75 "centilitres" as they like to call them ~ a centilitre being 10mls of Perrier. Good old yummy perrier volcanic water that if it weren't treated would taste of rotten eggs ~ so we all heard in the benzene PR disaster of yesteryear... "fortified with gas from the spring"... there's something yummy in that gas, for Perrier tastes nothing like any other water I know... Plus it's a real blast back to the 1970s and 80s, when, in Britain at least, Perrier was the only mineral water widely available and the idea of actually paying for bottled water, when our own taps ran freely with eaux potables was sheer anathema to the frugal Brits... Anyway. Further to yesterday's FUTILITY, here is Wilfred Owen's most famous work. The title Dulce et Decorum est refers to a Latin phrase of the time: "it is a sweet and noble thing to die for one's country"...


Dulce et Decorum est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! -- An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime. --
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, --
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.


Wilfred Owen 1893-1918


Greatest war poet of his generation. Died aged 25... what a loss...



Reminds me of the old song: Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile...


17 comments:

Puss-in-Boots said...

I try not to buy bottled water. I put some tap water in a bottle, shove it in the freezer and voila! Bottled water. Tastes no different to the other stuff to me...

Baino said...

Good grief man you're all over the place with this one! I can't afford Perrier! What comes out of the tap will have to do. Oh and to answer your question (because you never read your email!) Hamsters are indeed illegal in Australia, I had mine when I was a sprog in Manchester. And a margarita is basically tequila, triple sec ice and lemon juice. Blended into a frappe and served in a salt rimmed glass . .bloody awesome!

Jeannie said...

I never buy bubbly water. Maybe I should for a treat. I don't often buy bottled water at all but many do - not trusting our local water which is fine although without filtering at home it tastes of chlorine.

Gledwood said...

Pussinboots: I think the most popular brand here is Volvic. It tastes of nothingness (as opposeed to chlorinated nothingness). I can definitely tell the difference 'tween mineral or spring and tap...

Baino: Am I that all over the place today... compared to other days..?
Ho-humm, but margaritas sound pretty good though. Far more palatable at 6:46 than White Star cyder.....á

Jeannie: personally I prefer Value 10p/2L fizzy, even if it's NOT spring, it tastes OK and I know it's "nutritionally" OK..!! Low in fat and sugar, no artificial colourings ~~~haha!!

Syd said...

I like club soda but don't buy Perrier unless I get a bargain at Costco. Glad that you are up and about. Take care.

Gledwood said...

ps Perrier was 99p for 750mls; as against Value fizzy at 10p for 2 litres ~ a huge community saving, I know but Value ain't available from the local shop :-{)

Gledwood said...

Hi Syd you commented while I was online inside this commentary box and some "cookies" failed to alert me, as I believe the operative expression ought to be...

what was that?

does "club soda" mean just anybrand pop? the cheapo lemonade we get here is usually OK but you have to use discretion, orange usually OK, other flavas can be dreadful, i would rather just the sodawater without poisons drilled inside!!

Sarcastic Bastard said...

That's a cute photo of the soldiers, Gledds.

Tennyson was a pretty great war poet, too.

Hope your Mum is feeling better.

Love you,

SB

S Club Mama said...

I do have holes in my socks LOL although not bloody (yet, thank God). :D I must have mentioned twice I'd ran the 10K but I've only ran it once. I do have a 5K this weekend (and I have to push the boys).

Akelamalu said...

The only time I buy bottled water is when I'm abroad, otherwise I drink tap water which oop north is nice and soft. :)

molson said...

So it's been a little warm in the UK? I looked at your forecast for today and it didn't seem too bad so must have improved. The high I saw for London was 15 deg C. That would seem a little chilly to me. Here in the Midwest Wasteland, the high is forecast to be 28 deg C. Tomorrow is going to be 30 deg C which is pretty warm compared to what it has been. Why no AC in the UK? In the States, there is an abundance of air conditioners. My old truck has an AC unit that could cool a small house. I even have a window AC unit some prior tenant left behind at my craphole of an apartment. I just shove it in the window, plug it in, turn it on high and enjoy the frosty goodness. The damn thing makes some noise, but that noise is music to my ears when the temp soars above 30 deg C and it will. As you might say, it's quite posh. Well enjoy the fizzy water and stay cool.

Gledwood said...

SarcBast: didn't you post up some things about trains? I have a thing about trains. they are amazing

here i have a train link, except the bloody computer will not copy it you swine you SWINE i tell you!! bloody computer!!!!

yeah i like too. tennyson war poet? you sure?! you don't mean rupert brooke "if I should die think only this of me ~ that there's some far corner of a foreign field that is forever England"... that one that's rupert brooke... also siegfried sassoon was meant to be good, but wilfred owen, to me at least, wrote far more memorable stuff. he had real poetic greatness and it is such a shame he died aged 25 ~ the only true rival i can think of to t.s. eliot

7: you are running FIVE KILOMETRES pushing a pram?!? Wow!!

Ake: Aye, when I came from Wales, tut Water in London were FAR FAR FAR too hard for mi taaaerst I'll tell yer that fer nowt! Aye, I will! I get tut impression Australian tap water's far more fragrant than ours down South, aye, ferras fer me, if I had tut dosh and cerd bi bothered, aye, I'd drink Volvic all't time too! Aye that I would!! (Or summut...)

Mols: that air con sounds cool enough to cool down an entire multicolour bunting-ridden donkey-derby jamboree, aye that ti does! And I heard that America now spends more on COOLING in summer than heating in winter!

And I heard that various tropical countries have banned the ridiculous western business suit in fava of proper robes and sht ~ i would go for robes if i was out there, i tell ya. Anyway, they've banned western dress because it is THAT that is ruining the environment, forcing people to turn on air con far too high when basicaly they could dress sensibly... and also build sensible houses! In Southern Europe houses are made of stone with large shutters etc etc. They are cool in summer. American houses seem to be made out of polystyrene and be swelteringly HOT, hence the whacking gut-wrenching permusqua, so ~~ aye! Trotterdonkes and horses in the stocks I must go now butr jibbery mcQuollox to you all and happy her majesty's birthday, ahoy!!

15C are you kidding?! maybe they mean 15C HOTTER THAN USUAL!...!!!

Reeny's Ramblin' said...

I prefer Sanpellegrino. I know, who cares right?

Also, I found England to be extremely stuffy (as far as the air is considered). There is just simply no A/C. When I was there this time a couple of years ago it was NUTS I tells ya NUTS.

Z said...

I love hot weather because it's so rare here. I don't care that I sweat and I don't mind being too hot, because it won't last and people are kinder in lovely weather.

Mind you, being too hot in a crowd of people makes me claustrophobic.

Wilfred Owen was wonderful and his death was a tragedy. But so was everyone's in that dreadful war. I live in a tiny village and 25 men died in the first world war. I listen to the Roll of Honour being read out every year and it makes me grieve.

I'm mildly pissed, darling - in the drunken sense - don't mind me...

Gledwood said...

REENY: re air-con ~ I know I know I KNOW I TELL YOU I KNOW!~!~!!!

still ain't got a clue who this sasparillo guy might be tho...

Z: aye, yer all right! I did read your comment days ago when you posted it but I must've been rather drunken, too, for I THOUGHT I had replied here, but no... so I do apologize

there is a war memorial down the road from me... names names names
of course reading down we all know or have known people with similar names and can imagine what those people might have been like... if only they'd lived past age TWENTY-FIVE
it's so so sad

Gledwood said...

Reens: hey I thought Sanpellengrino was a type of twirly pasta..(?!?)

Gledwood said...

Sanpellegrino.

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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