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!

Saturday, July 10, 2010

My own funeral

MY ALARM shrilled me awake at 7am; I was up by 7:20. Did all the bits I had to e.g. picking up methadone.
At 10:30 my dealer rang me but I ignored him. At 11:00 I rang the dealer using my harshest voice to demand "a decent one, coz they've been getting smaller and smaller" (dealers like to try it on ~ they wanna see how much they can get away with. I had been punishing him by going elsewhere.)
He said yeah yeah and he would be "fifteen minutes" (ie ages), so I took my time getting to the place. At 11:15 I was at da place. Then I sat on a lawn reading my 1943 Kathleen Speight edition Teach Yourself Italian, which I so wasn't in the mood for, but I'd left my German book at home. (I can actually enjoy this German book without constant recourse to a dictionary (though I'm not claiming to know every word) ~ what a wonder that is! I was knocking back white cyder and puffing on cigarettes as I learned to conjugate my verbs. At about 11:45 the dealer showed.
Home by midday. I had one hour clear.
I checked on my clothes, hanging dry from my windows on coathangers (I've nowhere else to dry them). Then I rushed to cook up my hit.
The my first attempt was far too pale in my opinion, though a goodly chunk of "brown" had gone in. The dealer had made good on his promise and sold about six or seven "points", as we say, for £20. (Those are points of a gram ~ five points being half a gram.) Well as I say it looked too pale, so I added more and re-fried. I'd put about a third of a gram into the spoon. With vitamin C it dissolved into half a millilitre of tapwater. The resulting hit was midnight black.
I took this half-millilitre of death-black liquid, dropped my clothes (which also gave relief from the oppressive heat ~ only 31, 32 degrees C but this morning so humid, I looked like I'd showered with my clothes on.)
Afterwards I was trying to remember where I'd banged the hit in, but I couldn't. But it went in directly...
... and knocked me out cold.
Next thing I knew it was 1:45 hours. FIFTEEN MINUTES TO GO. There was absolutely no way I was gonna make this event on time, and crematoria will not put funerals on hold just because some stupid junkie took too much gear to get there on time.
I rushed to the shower and washed my hair. This only took three minutes but when I next checked the clock it was two o'clock.
Knowing I'd missed it I slumped back in my chair of living death and was instantly unconscious. I woke up at 2am.
Y'all can have a go at me if you like. I feel the weight of your disappointment already.
My second thought, after "what the hell have I done to Pinky?" was "what will I say on my blog?"! You see your opinions matter very much.
As I saw it I could:
1: obfuscate ~ give an oblique account of the day. Not lying, but making it seem to the uninformed reader that I'd actually been, even though I hadn't.
2: lie. But the day I start telling lies on my blog is the day I should give up blogging
3: tell the stark truth
So I'm sorry, but this is the truth.
I missed the funeral because I was too stoned on heroin to get there. And there you have it.
Trust me, you won't be any more disappointed in me than I am in myself.

20 comments:

Janice Seagraves said...

Sorry Gled, but I am disappointed. I thought you were doing better than this?

Try again. Baby steps. some times the first couple of times are just practice. No loss. Just try again.

Baino said...

All too predictable Gleds. I could have told you yesterday that you wouldn't have turned up. You didn't NEED the hit after morning meth but took it anyway. As for Pinky, she knows you're a hopeless junkie so probably expected it too. Definitely disappointed but not surprised and pleased you opted for the truth.

Gledwood said...

:-(

Lesley said...

Hi Gled, having relied on mind-altering substances for most of my life I know only too well the lure of temptation. Today is a new day and don't be too hard on yourself.

I'm aware of your interest in all things German..... there's a mention of Sophie Scholl in my latest blog post if you'd like to have a look.

Have a good weekend. :)

Reeny's Ramblin' said...

U know it's bad so I won't dig the knife in further. I wish you could stop, too much to offer the world. Someone told me a long time ago that one could never depend on an addict. The world is waiting for you...life could be so much better than this.

Gledwood said...

Lesley: thank you. Thank you for your sympathy.I'll drop right over & have a peep or a peak, the latter being American. All the best 2 ya :-)

Elaine: ".... you can never depend on an addicct"..? If so I'm glad I'm an addict but I wish people would make it clearer they barely expect anything of me, it would make certain situations FAR less stressful know what I mean?
Yeah I know I got more to give and all that. It's a cliche you can say about any addict.
Then I realized perhaps I really AM special, in my own special way. And I started to realize recently that far from saving my life, heroin is ruining my life...
:-(

Gattina said...

I also thought that you wouldn't make it, now be furious with you (but without your so said vitamin C) ! Pinky probably hasn't believed either that you would come. She would have done the same as you. Get stoned and stay home. That's much easier.
I thought for a while you were better, but now I have the feeling that you are back to the future !
The only person who can get you out of this shit is yourself. But that you know.

molson said...

I guess when the easy fix is another hit, then there is no easy fix. What is done is done. You can't kill Perky twice by missing her funeral. You will just have to suck it up and do what you have to do to make it right with Pinky. A face to face apology might be a good start and if that doesn't work then oh well check the box that says I fucked up again and move on. Look the Earth is only going to spin around the sun so many times before it spins no more and none of this will have made a damn bit of difference in the end. We're all just digging in the dirt until we become dirt. How you dig is up to you. Peace.

Gledwood said...

Gattina: hmmm. I don't know what Pinky was expecting. I don't think Pinky was too bothered about me or whether I came, she was in such a state before. That's why i want to write her a letter

Molson: I was going to write Pinky a letter anyway... not so much a letter of apology, but one eulogizing Perky's life, if that's the right expression, and their relationship. And I think that letter will say more than my quiet attendence at a funeral ever could...

Sweden said...

i'm not disappointed in you, i understand fully gleds.

Unknown said...

I am sorry. If you keep this up, though, you are going to be early to your own funeral..... I am paying for you!!!!
JAN

Unknown said...

I mean praying.... oops

molson said...

I'm sure you'll do a fine job writing the letter to Pinky so it won't be all bad after all. There really isn't much else to be done. Poor Pinky will be all alone regardless and I know what that feels like.

Bimbimbie said...

eeh Gleds you do make life hard fer yersen.

Write that letter and perhaps hand delivering it to Pinky will give you some peace of mind.

Gledwood said...

yes... the letter isn't a letter of apology it's a letter expressing sadness and regret at everything else... I don't know what reason I'm going to give for not going, I might say that I got myself into such a state that I made myself ill, which IS kinda true.... I mean I wouldn't have taken such an enormous hit under ordinary circumstances

I was gonna use that one about late for mz own funeral meself but you got there 1st Jan ;-)

Bimbimbie said...

... no, I know it's not a letter of apology, you'll know what to say, but if she's close enough for you to hand deliver it then do so.

Syd said...

I am sorry that you shot up. Whether you missed the funeral or not doesn't really bother me. It's the near death stuff that you are playing with by shooting up. My hope is for you to live. I don't want to come here some day and see the clock stopped with no more posts. That's my concern.

Lucinda said...

It is what it is. It's what junkies do. In the end, that's all that it is. Not that I'm some shining beacon of druggy excellence, but I've found that heroin seems to make impressively great at fucking up important shit. My ex missed his own sister's wedding because he was high.

Sarcastic Bastard said...

I can't be disappointed in anybody who is honest. You may have disappointed yourself, but you did not disappoint me. You can't change the past, only do better in the future.

You are loved.

Anonymous said...

I'm not disappointed as well. It's not like you passed out on purpose for that long. And i can relate to having to shoot up right the fuck now, even if it's not really necessary. Especially before a sad event like a funeral of a dear friend. I guess it sounds crazy for a person that doesn't know about addiction for him/herself.

Writing the letter is a great idea btw.

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!































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