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, July 05, 2010

Oui, oui... c'est le French keyboard!


I HQD q go on ,y nezly instqllled French keyboqrd; just for the fun of it qnd found it ,ore inconvenient by fqr thqn the Ger,qn; zhich is the sq,e qs the English but zith Y qnd Z szqpped round:///

Enough of this. Have a close look at the letter placings above and you'll see that QWERTY has gone out the window in favour of AZERTY(!) Numbers cannot be imputted without the shift key as the top row is partially devoted to accented characters: éèçà; the keys to the right of P when tapped before a vowel adds a circumflex: âêîôû; M sits where our semicolon usually resides and the @/' key is ù/% in French.

Très confusante!

And all I have to ask you after hacking your way through this is:

Comment ça va?

12 comments:

e said...

Je suis bien. Je prefere mon clavier espgnol bien que le francais et l'allemant sont interessants!

Gledwood said...

Moi, il me faudra apprendre ces layouts stupides par-ce-qu'il n'y a pas d'autre choix.

J'ai esseye de programmer mon ordinateur pour pouvoir inputter en francais bien qu'en allemand, mais il n'en veut pas...

qu'est-ce-que je peux faire quand le technologie me laisse si confuse?


Sorry about the lack of accent marks, but as you can see, I still cannot get the hang of these international keyboards at all. At the moment I'm in UK International (Welsh).... luuurvely.

Janice Seagraves said...

So your learning French now?

Janice~

Gattina said...

I laughed my head off about your keyboard war (so don't be sorry for your not at all stupid comment) You can't imagine when you have to fight this problem in reality !
When I used the computer of my friend in Eastbourne I got crazy with the Querty keyboard because I learned and have worked on Azerty my whole life ! When I was in Egypt it was also Querty but with some arabic signs ! I also got crazy with the Quertz thing, because I type without looking so I don't know where the letters are ! I tell you it was a catastrophe. Now I have my little notebook not bigger then a book, with my Azerty keyboard and I can type in peace wherever I am !

Whitenoise said...

Hey Gled! Glad to see that you're still posting, strange keyboard or not. ;-)

Gattina said...

My keyboard !!! Youpeee !

Félicitations ! ton français est très bien !

Akelamalu said...

Have you been taking fish oil???? ;)

Gledwood said...

Gattina: Many thanks for your kind comment.

I'm glad someone understands because I'm a touch typist too (I knew computers were the future so like half the boys in my class, I did typing at business college). The problem, of course, is that these strange letter positions aren't even visualy to be seen on my UK keyboard... which is v frustrating.

I found one with EVERY special character I could need called US International, where you press Alt Gr and p for example for o-umlaut. Only in blogger this automatically publishes my half-finished post so it's useless. Also I need to input accents with ONE keystroke if I can, not two.

I think I'm just going to have to get used to the QWERTZ layout. I'm doing OK with it in German but in English it does my brainbox in.

As for the French one... I don't know if I could ever master that!!

Whitenoise: ~ great to hear from ya!
It's not the keyboard itself that's strange. That would be more doable. It's that I've set my computer to English UK, English UK international (with special symbols), USA International (which does nearly every major language, but like the UK international you need 2 keystrokes e.g. for a ß or ö or ä sign. So the German version is by far the best if you are typing in German bc you can get every letter in the German alphabet with just one keystroke. The problem is that y and z are in opposite places and of course this is a standard UK keyboard, so unless I stick horrible stickers all over my keys I'm just going to have to learn by heart where these letters are...
... the fact that I touch-type might be an advantage here.

Anyway how ARE you. I hope all the hassles of the past have disappeared..?

Gledwood said...

Akelamalu: yeah I luuurve fish but I don't take the oil, I just eat cans and cans of sardines. Why do you ask..?

ps: so sorry I didn't ignore you there's something wrong with my comments where it tells me e.g. I have 2 then I click and there's 5 or more, then I answer them, look again and someone else has appeared between my answer and the last comment and it looks like I'm just ignoring you which is NOT so

Baino said...

Bugga. I wasn't going to take the laptop to France but I need to be able to google quickly and find stuff so an internet cafe aint gonna help is it now! I touch type about 90wpm so this one's going to do my head in for a start. Expect wonky blog posts or . . yeh, I'll take the laptop. Thanks for this, I had no idea French keyboards were different.

Gledwood said...

So long as you touch-type, you shouldn't have problems in French internet cafes especially. Just explain you'd like your keyboard set to QWERTY and they'll perform the appropriate clicks and voila!
I have French, German, American International and standard UK, which came as default. (You need UK for the £ sign.) Unfortunately I set German to default, which is fine for German, and I am getting used to typing words like "zu" as "yu" ~ but I don't think I'll ever get my head round typing English "my" as "mz".
I'm using a laptop too, so it's a case of memorizing these bizarre new layouts...
So it's decision time and I think UK English is returning as default.
American International does special characters from French, German and most other major Euro-langs.
Rather than relabelling keys, you use AltGr then type two keys in sequence, e.g. for dots you press 2 and for ö press P.
Unfortunately Blogger in their wisdom have decided that either Alt or Ctrl + P should mean instant posting. So rather than o-umlaut ö, I get the message saying "your post was published successfully" which makes me want to punch the screen, ie this highly useful international keyboard is rendered useless by Blogger's stupidity.
I've complained already but doubt they even read the replies.
Sorry I'm going on but point being, if I can set my own computer to French, German and International, I'm sure French internet cafes, who are so used to foreign visitors, easily do the same...
Have a great trip. Ayez une bonne voyage!
Salut!

Lucinda said...

French keyboards are the most frustrating thing. Imagine having to write a paper and you only have an hour, by the end of that you're ready to just slam the keyboard into the head of however invented it. Oh. Those French people... but I do love their language.

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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