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!

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Randomness

OK THIS is a very random post... made up of my trawlings from the www. I found a video of a man being tested on his knowledge of 58 languages on South American TV... + some nice trains. I've loved trains for as long as i can remember. I like the smooth ride. I like being able to move about. And I love the view you get of the back of things...

Today's original title was "not coping" ~ penned when I was cold and depressed yesterday morning. But now it's 4am and I feel fine...

I WAS trying to go for a title a little less like a cry for help. Not doing it proper. (Life.) But who does?


Always something that needs to be done that is not being done. It's always too late. (Or too early; usually too late!) Even when I'm on to one thing, I'm neglecting something else. I'm like the proverbial plate-juggler it's never too long till the inevitable...

Sleep is like a waste of time. I try and do without it, thinking I'm being healthy or at least "respectable" ~ not lying in bed all day...

... Eventually it bites back, catches up with me. And then, as if it's some kind of disease, sleep takes me out for an entire day. Aargh!

For those of you in a hurry and wondering what video of today's multitudes is best, it's this one, of a cat playing tambourine with its tail:



I had a game of blogospherical Six Degrees of CyberSeparation tonight: find a blog at random by pressing next. It needs to have comments or links to other blogs. Pick one of these (comments are best; you get a feel of who that person is), and jump this way from blog to blog until you find someone you know, which, with 70 million blogs out there you'd think was nigh on impossible, right? Wrong! I've done this several times and usually get "home" within 30 blogs!
The point of the exercise, of course is to find good reading material and nice photographs. I found some pretty good stuff tonight:


This one has some of the best photographs I've ever seen (little boy in flat cap):
karmenlindner.blogspot.com
Have a look at these fantabulous cake-creations ~ there's one where you cut through and see flowers ~ I've never seen a cake like that before...
iammommy.typepad.com/i_am_baker
This guy says he's only an amateur photographer? Can't he get a paid job? Is there no justice in the world?
tharpography.blogspot.com
gun story
iwannabeafarmer.blogspot.com

Letzte Chance fur einen harten Euro
www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/0,1518,694476,00.html


Lebanese-born Ziad Fazah is Guinness-listed as the most polyglot person alive. Here he is on Chilean TV, being tested on his fluency in 58 languages. Don't complain about the Spanish ~ think how much harder it is for him: Finnish, Chinese, Farsi etc etc etc!



World's greatest living polyglot link:
www.spidra.com/fazah.html

This guy is interesting, he's talking about the languages he's picked up over the years ... IN ENGLISH ~ wooo-hoohh! It's little because there's little to see



If you like trains you'll like this. A clip about an expert from Deutsche Bahn training up local drivers on the new Taiwanese bullet train.
See my German's not that furchtbar ~ I can follow this perfectly:



This one's really good if you like watching trains whoosh past...
... this film brings up a longing in me to travel, it encapsulates what i love about being abroad ~ the difference: different trains, different roads, different stamps, different thing, just different
I love the double-decker blue ones. You'll never see double-decker trains on the britische Zwergbahn, because our railways, having been built first in the world, all have diddy little bridges and tunnels...




See you can see how bad my French is now. This is how I write it:

Film francais au sujet des infiltres, immigrants illegaux, qui se cachent sur les camions a Callais pour arriver en Angleterre ou ils vont commencer un nouveau vie.

And yet I can follow the clip easily without subtitles ~




And a last word on sleep:~
Mrs Thatcher's 4 hours... She famously ran the country on that little sleep the entire length of her premiership...
I wish I could do with that little. As it is, night becomes day and the days stretch together... and then I crash and end up sleeping round the clock. I hate being like that and I don't need coke to do it (or any drugs ~ that's the point). I heard that sleep deprivation can jolt one out of depression, but it doesn't. Not on me. I tell myself I'm being lazy by sleeping too long but then I try to stop and all the hours I shaved off are snatched back ~ and never at a time that's convenient to me!

Omniglot: which language should i learn?
www.omniglot.com/language/which.htm
Hey: last but by no means at all least ~ here's Wikipedia's list of languages in order of difficulty, with links to WIKIBOOKS FREE TEXTBOOKS in each of over 40 languages!
en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Language_Learning_Difficulty_for_English_Speakers

And one last-but-not-least; I STOLE this idea from Kat'rina du C who has a thing about this: here's a Japanese cat called Maru, which means round (Spherical the hamster was also called Maru in Japanese)... having a brush. Look at the look on her face, the furry swine!
(K d C's cat's called Mango btw; Maru/Mango/Maru/Mango ~ no relation but ... geddit?)



13 comments:

Syd said...

Some good random stuff here. I enjoyed the photographer's blog. Good stuff there. I also like trains.

Gledwood said...

I luuurve trains. It made me want to cry. I so much want to flee. I want to be abroad. I love the really banal stuff of another country. Like... er, different trains (ahem)...

hmmm

Baino said...

OH Gleds! Too much for once sitting, I'll have to come back on Saturday (hehe one day to go)

Gledwood said...

I thought it was just me who had the maxxed-out brains...
I'LL probably have posted up a really hard quiz by Saturday that nobody understands, so ya can lounge under giant sunshade in dark glasses, sipping a margarita and have a bash at what furry is what

Sarcastic Bastard said...

If I don't get enough sleep, it triggers depression for me. I can only go one day on little sleep. Anymore than that, and I want to cry at the drop of a hat.

Love,

SB

Gledwood said...

How dreadfully inconvenient... (!!) ... (!) ...

I wish I could go without sleep altogether, it is such a bloomin' waste of time;~ know what I mean?!

Wildernesschic said...

If I lived alone I would sleep a lot less .. well at night anyhow as that is when I wake up .. and that cant sleep but as my darling husband is snoring I also daren't move as I wake him :)
I love the tambourine playing cat.. I also from time to time love to visit new blogs like that, but find it hard enough at them moment to keep up with the ones I already follow ... Now if I could sleep less ..maybe

Akelamalu said...

I don't get more than 5 hours undistubed sleep ever but then I don't think you need as much sleep the oder you get.

If you love trains Gleds you would love living here within 10 mins of the East Lancs Railway and all the old steam engines. :)

Gledwood said...

Wildernesschic: aren't you tempted to sneak out of bed, make cup of Cadbury's Highlights, use the computer for hours and hours etc etc?

Don't you find whatever you wanna do there are never enough hours in the day for it? Humans apparently function on a 25 hour clock, which is why it's so easy to end up going to bed later and later...

Akelamalu: 5 hours at a stretch..? Do you catnap during the day then?

o yeah I luuuuurve trains... do you know I've never yet been on the Eurostar? And I so much want to ... I wish they'd make through-trips available ~ London to Berlin etc. It's quite possible, they're just being lazy

Janice Seagraves said...

My mom took my sister and I on a train ride to Riverside CA (that's next to L.A.) and I have wonderful memories of the trip. I would love to take my small family on a train trip but going by car is less expensive for a family of three. *shrug*

Janice~

Gledwood said...

Isn't it ridiculous in this day and age where we're sposed to be saving the environment by NOT using a car, it's still the cheapest way...

... hey have they started installing that high speed rail link LA-Frisco yet? It looked really funky at the design stage

Gattina said...

Now you gave me an idea ! I have to buy a little drum for my cat Pookie, she also beats with her tail all the time. At least I could make up a show with her. Pookie by the way was born in London and ONLY meauws in english !

Gledwood said...

What do you mean meows in English? I suppose most cats sound like they have a whining cockney accent (!) Do you speak English to her all the time then?

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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