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

Gledwoods deutscher Blog

Bitte hier klicken ...

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, June 18, 2010

I nearly grabbed a tiny tit...

I WAS CROSSING a quiet road near one of our largest local parks when a tiny blue bird fluttered down from a tree and sat in the middle of the road. I crossed and stood over him. What looked like a baby blue tit stared up at me, chirping indignantly as if to say "and what do you think YOU are doing here??!"
Wondering what was wrong with the little bird, who still refused to move, I made a motion to grab it; he fluttered clumsily off a couple of feet away and sat in the gutter cheep-cheeping at the top of his tiny lungs.
I thought "you can't stay there in the gutter like that" and made yet another not attempt at grabbing the little birdie, who did a better job at flying this time and found himself on the footpath beside a little wall where drug addicts sit waiting for their dealers (this of course this had nothing to do my being in that vicinity...)
Then my phone rang and "a friend" said he was driving down the road right at that moment, so I had to deal with that. I thought to myself, if the tiny tit is still there in a couple of minutes, then I'll take him home with me. He cannot sit on the path like that. He'll get trodden on or killed.
Three minutes later he was gone. I looked everywhere for him. He could have strayed under the parked cars where a cat would have made a tasty meal of him... I searched high and low, but could not hear his cheep-cheeping from anywhere. I have no idea where he went, or whether he suddenly learned how to fly.
Judging by his cheeps, he was a great tit, not fully fledged, but very spirited. I didn't want to take him home, though I do have a hammy cage he could have gone in... When would I have known to set him free? Would he ever have been able to go free if he'd lived in my house and become hand-tame?
Perhaps it's a good thing he vanished...

If you go to my first post yesterday and look under the German, you'll see some wonderful video of baby blue and great tits being hand-fed worms, etc. There's a particularly funny one of a blue tit getting soaking wet in a birdbath...

So why did this happen today? Is it the laws of attraction in action?

Illustrations: top, great tits; bottom, blue tit. Mine looked like a blue tit (very blue), but the chirrups sounded to me like a great tit, so I'm not sure...

13 comments:

Syd said...

I wish that you had stayed with the little bird and not gone to the dealer. Maybe that is some kind of karma.

Gledwood said...

Yeah but if I'd stayed with the bird, what would I have done?

It is a huge commitment looking after one, and that bird, if it really couldn't fly, was very nearly able. By taking it in I could have done more harm than good.


You're not really supposed even to touch baby birds unless absolutely necessary, so I had to give it time to see if it could make its own way.

Also the legal position is hazy. It's certainly illegal to trap wild birds to keep as pets (though foreign ones are fine, in the law's eyes). If anyone heard the cheeping and found out it was wild, I could have got into trouble. And if it couldn't go back to the wild, I wouldn't want to give it up to the RSPB.

So you see, all these issues were in my mind too. Also how would I even get it home?

I just wish I knew where the feathery swine WENT!!

Ella said...

hallo gledwood,
bitte entschuldige, dass ich mich erst heute heute bei dir zurück melde.
natürlich habe ich mich sehr gefreut, jetzt auch einen echten briten als follower in meinen blog zu haben.
bin schon ein paarmal in deinen blog gewesen und gelesen.
du hast es wirklich mit birdys, he?
das find ich schön.
auf deine frage warum ich in deutsch schreibe? liegt daran, dass die meisten meiner freunde und familie deutsch können. aber nur die wenigsten können englisch, werder spanisch.
i'm a bit confused... du schreibst über drogen und trink probleme... wie kommt es dass du so klar schreibst and on top with both feet on the ground?
maybe i should reed more in your blog. i'll do it as soon as i have more time. momentan ist schlecht.
have a nice day and keep it up!
ela

Bimbimbie said...

Hi Gleds, right place right time for the chance encounter lucky you*!*

Sweden said...

i have tiny tits

Baino said...

Haha I love how you 'brushed' Sid off you ratbag. Fledgelings are best left where they are. He's out of the next so he's a survivor. Keeping wild birds is very difficult. And yes, perhaps he was there to tell you to spend more time with tits and less with shits!

Akelamalu said...

I can understand your concern of the little bird but it's best to leave them be. I'm concerned that you met a dealer. :(

Gledwood said...

Bimbie: do you know when I was posting that I thought "no one will believe that really happened exactly the next day after posting all those tiny tits having baths etc but it DID, seriously it did... isn't that called Synchronicity...? Or something like that?? Very Jungian, for sure...

Sweden: what's the expression?... any more thana handful is a waste..?? Summut like that. ee oop, aye!

Baino: I hope he's a survivor. He did appear to kind of spiral down from the sky... then again, I had a really good look up in the 2 trees he could have come from, which weren't particularly high, couldn't see any nests, so maybe he's playing games!
He did look funny sitting in the middle of the road chirping indignantly***!***

Akelamalu: aye, I never touched it. I heard their parents go off them if you do. Also as I said before, how could I ever have let it go again if I took it in. I had to give it 5 mins to make its own way, otherwise it's just not fair...

Gledwood said...

Hi Ela:
Vielen Danke für der Antwort. Ich wunderte mich über warum du sprichst Deutsch, wann es so viel Englische Blogs gibt. Aber nun verstehe ich.
Es ist sonderbar: seit 1 oder 2 Wochen, als ich ausging und traf Deutschsprechender Bloggers, hatte ich keine Ahnung, dass sie so unbequem mit Englisch würde. Du kennst das Sprichwort: "they all speak English"
Aber offensichtlich nicht wahr!

Mit Birdies, dieses Jahr scheint es so viel zu geben! Ich bestätigte, der Vogel, der in der Nähe von meinem Fenster singt ist wirklich eine Nachtigall. Wie erstaunlich! Früher hatte ich keine Ahnung welcher Vogel welches Lied sang. Dieses Vogelkentnis ist eine ganz neue Dinge für mich!
Drogen und Trink: du meinst dass ich nüchtern schreibe? Das kann ich nicht erklären, aber vielleicht hat es etwas mit Heroin zu tun, die ist wie Rohbaumwolle. Es verändert nicht
die Erkenntnis viel... mit Alkohol, trinke ich nur wenig heutzutage... maybe that's why...
I hope my German isn't too terrible today. The more tired I am the worst it seems to get and most of the time I feel totally tangled in the reversing word-order..! I hope this answers you properly ;-)...

Gledwood said...

Ela: talking about birdies, I just read that through and it's pracically pigeon German!!

Ella said...

hey gledwood, you're doing well!
your german is like my english. i havn't used it for so long. only about once a year when visiting my doughter. but now i'm getting in to it again.
well i have to... i have the british passport. ;-)
and about 250 mini union jacks hanging on a string in my room! honest!
my children are half british too.
well, have a nice weekend!
ela

Gledwood said...

Thanks, you too ;-)...

Gledwood said...

PS your English is far better than my German. You don't get into constant tangles and then slap all the wrong endings on your adjectives ;-)...

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