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!

Friday, May 28, 2010

History of Heroin....


I HAVE BEEN conducting research into the tale of opium and heroin production and use... what a convoluted tale it is! The following post is simply a digest of what I found out... I hope someone manages to follow it to the end!

One pattern I heard about and we can all see repeated time and time over: when America goes into drug source-countries, rather than seeing these drugs destroyed ~ what happens, but a gigantic INCREASE in the amount of narcotics sheipped west.

But not just west. Wherever these drugs touch ground, addiction follows. Cocaine addiction is rife in South America. Heroin (plus opium) addiction is now endemic on all six continents, though in descending order, the largest markets are now Asia, Europe and North America...

The oldest evidence of opium poppy cultivation goes back to Mesopotamia in about 3500BC. For centuries an opium trade flourished in Babylonia, Assyria and ancient Egypt. In later centuries trade spread throughout the Mediterranean ~ Greece, Rome and far beyond.

The first recorded narcotic prohibition dates to the Dark Ages, the era of the crusades when anything Eastern, opium included, was branded Unholy. European references to opium disappeared for two hundred years.

By the age of the Enlightenment poppy was back. Shakespeare references opium in Othello, when the noxious character Iago declares

Not poppy nor mandragora
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep.


(III.iii.329–336).

The Romantic poets were famously into opium. Colerage claimed to have jotted down Kubla Khan

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea...


Analysis of the text reveals he was poetically running out of steam as the verse runs on (lines are getting shorter and shorter) but he blames an acquaintance hammering at the door on the premature end of his reverie.

Keats claimed his Ode to a Nightingale was opium-inspired:

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk...


Alex Hayter's Opium and the Romantic Imagination explores the relationship between the drug and literature in depth. Hayter frequently references Thomas de Quincy's Confessions of an English Opium Eater, a tome that tells far more about De Quincy than it ever reveals about opium. Apart from this, Hayter's solidly researched tome is a core text for anyone interested in the topic.

By the Victorian era, opium use was rife throughout the West. Many patent medicines (no ingredients on the bottles!) ~ including those for teething babies ~ contained opium amongst many other things. The Opium Eater became a popular figure of revilement at the time. Opium generally wasn't "eaten" but consumed as laundanum drops. Laudanum was a tincture of opium in brandy or sherry.

In 1810 morphine was first isolated from opium. (Opium is typically 10% morphine.)
In 1843 the hypodermic needle and syringe came along ~ the junkie's "works"
In 1874 diamorphine was first created by heating morphine for some hours in acetic anhydride, (interestingly, this mirrors the production process for aspirin, which had been invented some years earlier)
In 1893 Bayer Pharmeceuticals in Germany began production of diamorphine. They trademarked their product Heroin. Like laudanum and morphine it was sold openly in chemists' shops throughout the world.

Because morphine was refined "essence" of opium, and because diamorphine was further refined from morphine (1g of morphine converts to 1g diamorphine, but diamorphine is at least twice as potent) ~ proponents of these products naively believed each one offered a cure for addiction to the one before!

The British Government became involved in the opium trade in the early 1800s, growing vast amounts of the drug in North-Westerly India and shipping it to China, upon which they had imperial ambitions. Hundreds of thousands of the South Chinese quickly became opium addicts. The Chinese empire was not best pleased. A full-scale opium war kicked off. The Brits won and took Hong Kong in triumph.

Hong Kong would later form an important trading post for China White heroin from the infamous Golden Triangle in Thailand-Burma-Laos more than a century later.

Chinese immigrants, addicted due to the actions of the British, flooded to the United States, bringing their addiction with them. This, among other factors, was a starting point for the heroin addiction now widespread in the west.

By the early 20th century heroin and cocaine addiction were rife throughout the west. America was the first country to take action in 1905, 1906 and 1914, eventually banning all narcotics sales in 1923.

From then there was a very small, underground market in illicit heroin in the United States. In Britain, meanwhile, heroin was illegal but, like morphine, available on prescription to anyone with clinical need (severe pain). It could also be prescribed by any doctor to treat heroin addiction, as it was (to a tiny number, perhaps 200) for many years. Heroin still is prescribed to a tiny number (around 400) heroin addicts in the UK, but doctors require a special licence to do so.

World War II effectively blocked supply routes for opium and heroin to the west.

After the war European gangs set up a network whereby Turkish opium was shipped to the South of France where it was turned into high grade heroin by expert chemists. From there some travelled north. Paris became a centre for illegal narcotics. But most was shipped across the Atlantic, where it hit the streets of New York. New York City was the first western town to develop a serious heroin problem.

With the advent of 1960s' drug experimentation, heroin became fashionable for those bored of cocaine, LSD, speed and the rest. In London, a couple of notorious "junkie doctors" took advantage of the liberal British law to prescribe enormous doses of heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine to anyone who had money to pay them. According to Tony Sanchez in Up and Down with the Rolling Stones much of the heroin availble to London-based experimentors at the time was in the form of 10mg "jacks", which resembled saccharine pills. These were easily obtained either via "junkie doctors" or via groups who specialized in robbing the woefully under-secured pharmacies of the time.

Cocaine, incidentally, was often diverted from legitimate dentists' supplies. Being a controlled drug any use of cocaine had to be written up in the book. Novacaine and the alternatives were not controlled, so nobody compared drugs ordered with those seemingly used. Bent dentists simply expressed a clinical preference for treating ALL their patients with cocaine, but actually gave them Novacaine or something else. The cocaine was sold on at extraordinary profit ~ it cost several hundred pounds per gram in today's money. Hence its cachet as the "rock star's drug".

With the tightening up of heroin prescription in the late 60s and early 70s, illicit Chinese heroin made its first appearance on London's streets, specifically Gerard Street in Soho, which was centre of the action. My friend Lucky always said she was involved in heroin supply at this time. She was the right age and did indeed have a mysterious, faded Chinese tattoo on her right hand. She said the heroin of the time was called Elephant, Rice or Three Crowns. The brands denoted varying grades of drug. It was imported via Liverpool and cost something like £100 or £150 an ounce, which sounds cheap but translates to more than £1500 in today's money ~ more than double what today's dealers pay.

Chinese heroin dominated the tiny British market until the end of the 1970s. Meanwhile in New York the French Connection fed the East Coast's growing habit.

Opium had been grown in Mexico since the 1800s. In the 1950s local drug gangs, whose main trade was in cannabis, began experiemnting with heroin production. Unable to obtain the proper chemicals they improvised their own production process, coming up with the notorious Mexican Black Tar, a low-grade mixture of diamorphine, and 3- and 6- monoacetylmorphine. Tar heroin has a low purity at manufacture (in the 80s, when tar heroin first made an impact, purity was less than 30%, it is now 40-50% diamorphine, though levels of 3MAM and 6MAM can be extremely high. This type of "heroin" still has the latexy consistency of opium and unlike ordinary heroin, a hard block, tar is often soft and putty-like. It is extremely bad for the veins and can cause terrible problems when skin-popped. Anyway, this stuff took off in Los Angeles and the Western United States in the 1980s. It is still the dominant form of heroin there today.

By the early 1970s, a 120-kilo seizure and raids on Marseilles-based laboratories, the French Connexion came tumbling down. America's war in Vietnam fuelled a new trade in "China white", to which by the war's end an estimated 15% of GIs were addicted. They returned home, bringing their taste for narcotics with them. As has happened so many times, American invasion and involvement in an area rapidly produced a burgeoning drug business. Throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s the Golden Triangle region of Burma, Laos and Thailand led the way in heroin and opium production.

Meanwhile, revolution and overthrow was happening in Iran ~ which just so happened to be a another major source and transit country for heroin (in the so-called Golden Crescent of Turkey-Iran-Afghanistan-Pakistan). Wealthy Iranian nationals fled to the west, taking with them (so it is claimed) their wealth in the form of heroin bricks.

The 1973 Afghan Revolution, where the King was deposed, marked another new chapter in the story of heroin. Opium, previously unheard of as a cash crop, began to be grown in vast amounts all over the country.

In the mid to late 1970s a new base form of heroin, known as "brown sugar" and "number three" ~ as opposed to the high-grade China white, which is heroin hydrochloride, also known as "number four" began to make appearances across Europe. It was distributed by Turkish gangs, who were far better organized than the Chinese and used land routes, rather than individual couriers (who can only carry a few kilos) ~ to deliver multi hundred kilo shipments to western Europe.

Heroin is produced in four basic stages.
Stage 1: raw opium is processed, removing surplus plant matter, reducing the mass to 80%
Stage 2: more easily-smuggled morphine base at 50% purity reduces weight and mass to 20%
Morphine base can, if desired, be refined into morphine sulphate ~ the drug used in hospitals across the world
Stage 3: morphine base is converted to heroin base ~ aka #3 heroin, which can be very easily smoked from tinfoil, making a more versatile and attractive product for those who do not wish to inject
Stage 4: injection-quality heroin hydrochloride ~ aka #4

Brown heroin first hit Germany (with its huge Turkish immigrant population) in increasing amounts from the mid-1970s. Overdose deaths quickly multiplied. Though lower grade than Golden Triangle "China white", the Golden Crescent heroin was often stronger at street level (ie less adulterated). It was also cheaper. A new habit started up, starting in continental Europe, but spreading to Britain by the early 80s "golden brown" was the mystical intoxicant of the Stranglers' chart hit. 1980s "brown" was the first true heroin epidemic in Britain. Inner cities and housing estates were flooded with a constant supply. Purity remained constant at an average 40%.

In the 1990s, the Colombian Cali cartel, seeing that America was awash with cocaine and crack, began producing their own #4 heroin. By undercutting the Chinese considerably on price, they soon forced China White out of the market. New York Street heroin, which had sunk to less than 10% purity in the 80s, now soared past 60% and higher. Colombian heroin is now the dominant type in the Eastern United States. Purity, of course fell as Colombian market share strengthened. Latest figures put retail purity at just under 40%.

Political upheaval and extended drought saw Burma, once the world's largest opium producer, lose this dubious honour by the early 2000s. War in Afghanistan saw poppy cultivation there boom. In 2007 world production of heroin exceeded that of cocaine for the first time. Afghanistan was producing 96% of this heroin, against Burma's 3% and 1% each for Mexico and Colombia.

Central and South American heroin supplies an estimated 95% of the American market ~ ie 2% of the world's total. With the heroin problem there as bad as it is, some pause for thought is required: where is that other 98% going?

Contrary to popular assumption, most heroin isn't used in "the West" at all, but at home in Asia. Addiction rates are astronomical in Pakistan, Iran, India, China and the "Stans" along the former Soviet Union's southern border: Uzbekistan, Kyrgistan, Tajikistan and so on.

As new supply routes target Africa as a transit point, addiction in that continent has boomed in the past decade.

Australia, famously in "heroin drought" for much of the early 2000s, once again has a constant supply of China White heroin from Burma and bordering states.

In 2003 a North Korean liner, the Pong Su, ran aground on Southern Australia's trecherous coast. But not before 125kg or more of China White were offloaded. China White heroin bearing Burma's famous Double UOGlobe stamp... yet chemical analysis determined the high grade heroin not to be Burmese at all...

And so we come to the newest chapter in World Heroin ~ North Korea, has quietly and constantly been producing an estimated 6 metric tonnes of high grade heroin annually (as well as 15 tonnes or more of methamphetamine). Perhaps because these drugs go to Taiwan, Japan and other places, but never the vociferous United States ~ North Korea's involvement in world narcotics distribution has someohow gone barely remarked-upon... Though the climate is said not to be ideally suited to poppy cultivation, farmers have the state on their side to assist, and to refine the opium professionally in factories that otherwise make legitimate products.

There is no end to the story of heroin because it goes on and on. Here, wherever you are and in the poppy fields, where farmers, already in debt to opium dealers, say they cannot afford to farm anything else.

If the our governments wanted to stamp out opium production they would have ensured the poppy disappeared long ago from Afghanistan. Instead it has flourished. And it will continue to flourish wherever the winds of instability blow next. And the finished product ~ white, brown or a dirty tar will wend its way to a town near you, where someone like me will pick it up... and the whole nasty cycle of this history continues to roll on ...


MUSICAL INTERLUDE:
THE STRANGLERS: GOLDEN BROWN



AFGHANISTAN: ADDICTION
Note (about 2 mins into this) the cleaned-up addict keeps a loft of cooing pigeons who go for a flutter in Kabul's evening air ~ just like Flapper, who loves my local cherry tree!



To see this film: Fateful Harvest Afghanistan's Opium And Heroin Trade in its entirety (about half an hour) click here.

18 comments:

Sweden said...

very interesting gleds thanks for that, i read the whole thing and actually the stranglers song is in my top 10 fav songs of ALL time.
personally i think they should make all narcotics legal lol but thats just me.
ive only tried heroin once in my life that was 10 years ago and i was into chrystal meth then so smoking heroin wasnt my scene a completely different high obv than what i was used to then 4 years later i was not interested in speed and uppers but downers and switched to opiates (oxycontin and morphine) and have been doing that now for the last 6 years. ive been thinking of trying heroin again (not shooting it though) only because its actually easier to get heroin than prescription pills lol who knows we'll see.

Gledwood said...

it is pretty much a 1-way street; once i got into heroin i couldn't imagine not being on it

i think that is my biggest problem, i cannot even imagine living clean. i try to, but i can't do it %-/...

Memoirs of a Heroinhead said...

Hiya Gledwood,

I've not really anything to add there... it's great as it is. really fantastic.

My only natural point of query was North Korea. It would sit well at the moment that this 'evil, isolated' country was also responsible for the problems on western streets, but could very well be anti-north korean propaganda. I don't say it is.. was just a thought going through me as i read.

You know, i really am not one of these addicts who know the entrie history of heroin. The supply routes, cutting agents, transformation process, names, quality, etc. I'm just glad its there and take it. If 3 out of four dealers phones are off only then do I start to care abouit all that. I say "glad it's there" because I still have no regrets on what I've done and still feel it helps me as it kills me. but doesn't everything?

Anyway, great post and sorry I've not been over so much in these past months. I was going through a methadone phase and couldn't bare to be reading or writing endlessly about smack. Just made my mouth water! lol

Hope you're well and until very soon, Shane.

Gledwood said...

I gave up posting about my drugs for ages and ages. I did mention them sometimes but mostly it was furry animals. I keep trying to convert over to Just Methadone but cannot make the transition.

The info you read here was gathered mostly over the last 2 weeks, I was interested in how heroin addiction actually took hold across the world when on the surface this "war on drugs" "should" have killed it off ~ yet war seems only to make the heroin trade flourish!

I didn't used to believe these political interpretations that blame America for "drug dealing" and while I don't know about that it does seem to be true that they've been more than willing to turn a blind eye when some "greater good" ~ a political one giving America more control over a region ~ is in play.

Also I suspect a lack of political pressure over Afghan heroin purely because it is NOT, in the main, going to America. If it were, somehow I suspect the situation might be rather different.

I very much resent being dependent on anything or anyone, but especially an illegal chemical that puts my happiness in the hands of outright criminals. I hate it and want it to stop, but I don't know how. With years of methadone as well as heroin in my system stopping is going to be a far from straightforward process...

You should carry on posting. Your stuff is really good. You are just about the only one out there posting as you do.

Remember the Community of druggiebloggers that built up after the Follow funciton came online?... Most of them appear to have given up. I carried on posting but gave up too. For months I seemed to post about little furry animals and not a lot else... o man it is 5:48 am and I haven't slept, take care and see ya later!

Janice Seagraves said...

Hi Gled,

Sorry you couldn't get on the chat, maybe next time.

Great info on Heroine. Right here in my own home town we have a problem with chrystal meth. They brew it in the kitchen and dump the crap they don't want out the back door saturating and contaminating the dirt and ground water. Terrible stuff.

Take care and remember to take it one day at a time. Okay?

Janice~

Gledwood said...

I seem to be going one decade at a time at this rate, though!!

jams o donnell said...

An absolutely fascinating post. One or two things I did know but I had no idea that North Korea was in on the Heroin trade.

molson said...

It's hard to eradicate something that grows like a weed. After billions spent and possibly much more, it seems the war on drugs has failed to accomplish anything except chaos and misery. It is my belief that governments would be better served by providing addicts with a clean and cheap source of heroin there by undercutting the criminal producers and dealers. This of course is a very controversial opinion and will likely never be implemented on a large scale anywhere as there is also money and jobs created by the so called war on drugs. So sad really. It seems that humanity sows the seeds for its own destruction every day of every year of every century and so on.

Keep on writing about heroin as you see fit Gledwood. I have to say your posts about drugs are some of your finest even though I'm not sure that is what you want to hear. Who knows maybe the knowledge you pass on here will help save someone from the fate from which you cannot save yourself and as always keep up the good fight.

Anonymous said...

Very informative. I always wondered why Black tar H was so much cheaper than China White or even brown sugar. I sort of figured that it was because the actaull diamorphine it was a lower percentage, but I never knew for sure. Now I do.

I too was intrested to know that North Korea is in on the Heroin supply around the world. Mostly Europe and Asia.

Where did you find all this information. I'm always awwed, at how you learn so much so fast about literally anything you decide is interesting. I like it when you blog about drugs, but that's because drugs is all I thind about. I read almost all you blogs for over a year now, and you always amaze me how much knowlege you have about the things you decide to write about.

I decided I want you to write a blog about me and what you really turely thing about me. I swear to you I won't be offended, and will stay in contact with you. You could also email me too. younganna@ymail.com

Great post. Today's pst is good too. I'm starting to love the pigeon outside your window in the Cherry Tree outside. I love Cherry trees also. Do you live in an apartment or a house

XXXX's

Anonymous said...

Sorry for all the spelling errors. I feel like a complete idiot. Oh well, people know the truth about me now. I am stupid.

Arjan said...

hmm my earlier comment seems to have disappeared (or do you have moderation on - I'm fine with that).

Very interesting article you've written. I'm staying the hell away from Heroin, it scares the crap out of me.

@ music vid: never really listened to the lyrics that well..didn't even think about the fact it's about heroin..
@ docu: interesting and nasty that the little child is made into a child-junky.

WAT said...

You've done your homework Gledderini.

Nice job. Wow.

Gledwood said...

Jams: I heard about N Korea some time ago, looked into it and it does appear to be true. Re the Pong Su fiasco the Aussie police never directly blamed N Korea for producing that heroin, but they did point out its chemical signature matches no known type from anywhere in the world, which is odd...

Molson: Drugs is my favourite topic. Unfortunately. I wish it could be otherwise, but it's not. I started looking casually into the question "how did all this start" ie how did heroin spread round the world? Being an obsessive junkie, the facts and figures stick in my brains, just like dealers' phone numbers!

Maybe one day I will actually manage to write a proper book. When I post I just dash it down and hope for the best. Howling errors are cleared up only if/when I spot them (otherwise I'd spend my life editing, & never get round to posting, haha)

They are experimenting with prescribed heroin yet again, but as is so typical shillyshallying about rolling the scheme out. Other countries have done far more. But here, where the law ALREADY allows it ~ almost nothing!

Gledwood said...

Anna G: hi how are you? Not too depressed I hope. It sounds like your bipolar meds aren't working as well as they could be otherwise you would not be reliant on methadone to feel OK. There's surely some other type of meds out there for you? Something better than lithium... OR heroin...??!?

The books on romantic poets and Rolling Stones are ones I read years ago, back in the day. My English teacher recommended Opium And The Romantic Imagination. Most of the resesarch is stuff I googled over the past 2 weeks. I have a good memory for trivia, hence my memory for street heroin purity in New York City .. etc etc! A lot of the dates I got from an opium timeline that I really should put up a link to. Also you can read more by clicking a few links I put in the post.

OK I will do a post on you. I hope you don't mind if I make it a post on dual-diagnosis and "self medication". Self-medication being a big buzzword at the clinic I go to. I was told I self-medicate too...

I'm not in an apartment it is a house share. Flapper the Wood Pigeon is on the TV aerial about 10 houses up the road, cooing away. He hardly ever shuts up!

I meant to reply to your blog last night but don't think I did, I passed out, slept all night and all through the morning too... see ya later! xx

Gledwood said...

Arjan: I don't have moderation and have only deleted maybe one comment in three years... I think you left the other one under my wood pigeon post. Re child junkies I have seen footage of a baby withdrawing in hospital. Screaming out for something that was not there. Horrible.

Wat: thanks ;-] It took about 2 hours posting that. A lot of time was taken by the pictures. The text I just had to bang in off the top of my head, else it would never have got said, haha

Anna: you don't have to apologize for your spelling. My spelling is not much better, anyway your brilliant writing more than makes up for the odd spelling error

Syd said...

Bad stuff matter what. Life is good for me without drugs. Never had the urge to be hooked on a drug.

Gledwood said...

I don't think most people "want" to be addicts... Surely not! (Perhaps some do: there's nowt so queer as folk!) I certainly didn't!

Do you know I heard, and I heard this a few times, not just once (apparently it was a theory current in the 1960s) that NOBODY GETS HOOKED ON HEROIN UNLESS THEY WANT TO BE...

... well I knew very well that in no way did I wish to be a heroin addict, though I certainly enjoyed experimenting with the stuff.

Whoever wrote that stupid theory should be shot through the head because it's hogwash. People get addicted to drugs because they take drugs ~ simple as.

If you don't take drugs you'll never get addicted. And I think that's the best policy the govt./etc could possibly take...

Anonymous said...

You've actually taught me a lot! It's a really well written interesting blog. I'd love you to come over and check me out at

ajunkieslife.blog.com

Keep up the good work mate, Ginger x x

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

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Gledwood Volume 2: A Heroin Addict's Blog

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