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!

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed...

YESTERDAY MORNING I was drunk and maudlin. By drunk, read "alcoholically intoxicated" ~ not falling over, puking, fighting with lamp-posts. By 11am I'd had 2 or 3 of my special cocktails, which are based on cyder at 7.5% in 500ml cans, so you can do the mathematics yourself. 6 cans a day is the amount of alcohol advised by Her Majesty's chief doctor in a WEEK. Then again I'm cynnical. Very cynical in fact ~ about this "a couple of big glasses of wine a day is doing your body all manner of wrong". You may see a junkie making excuses. And yes I do believe I drink too much. But I think the Government's recommendations on dangerous levels are ridiculous in the extreme. I'm totally against altering the drink-drive limit (making it even lower) ~ if it ain't broke, why fix it?
While we're on the subject, I also believe the amount of Calories nutritionalists let us get away with is ricidulous. MOST of the world survives on 1000 to 1500 cals a day. I've been to India. Only the Indian police are overweight.
I've eaten in their equivalent of a truck driver's caff, where you get a ball of rice smaller than a tennis ball, with perhaps ~ at most ~ as much fish as would fit into a small sardine tin. This came coated in a thin batter so it looked more than it really was. This is considered a working man's lunch. Oh and I forgot, three tiny bowls of dips ~ pickles, chutney and sauce.
Incidentally, the Indian food I ate, betweeen Goa, Bangalore and Chennai (aka Madras) was nothing like the fragrant delicately spiced to raging hot array of dishes on sale in British curryhouses. What I experienced was more like ultra-hot Mexican ~ ie mostly chili-spiced. I don't recall ever eating anything resembling "curry". And no tikka masala, jalfrezi, balti or anything of that nature. All that food comes from the north. In Tamil Nadu they sold lots of Thali (pronounced Taarlee ~ without that burred R, you Americans!) , which is usually vegetarian and involves a great many bowls of things to mix and match dipping-wise. Another speciality, and this cost about 5 rupees a portion, each portion being cupcake sized, was bhel-puri. Which is sold at stalls. There's about four variations and it's really nice.
Indian takeaway food in India was what would here be considered "Chinese!" Though no attempt was made to decorate the stalls and restaurants with Chinese characters, red lanterns/etc. And it wasn't called Chinese food at all. It was just greasy stir-fried noodles and it was the best Chinese takeaway (if you wanna call it that) I've had ANYWHERE. And you know how much I like my Chinese.
If you wanna know the exact location of the shop I'm afraid my ex who I always called "Libra" here, went out, but we were staying at a cheap hotel that literally backed onto the tannoy at Chennai railway station. So it's walking distance from there. And well worth doing an Elvis-style expedition to get some (you know: I'm talking about the peanut butter sandwich story or whatever it was Elvis Presley had flown across America from his favourite diner just because he loved it so much. Though judging by the state of him towards the end of his life I find it difficult to believe it was only one ...
Now: what do you wanna hear? Me maudlin drunk. Well that had to do with my realizing the total death tally these past twelve months is at least FIVE probably SIX. I am not sure, as I do not care to ennumerate. Two heart attacks, two suicides. Another alleged heart attack... (Come on, you leave rehab, have a mysterious heart attack that very evening and it's not crack? Gimme a break. But that's the received version. It was just a somehow hitherto unnoticed heart complaint that decided to manifest just after leaving drug rehab...)
As far as Pinky & Perky go, I've not been in touch with anyone since the funeral. To be frank I don't think I was particularly missed on the day. I would have been tolerated like a particularly noxious, wafting fart that nobody would admit to. What I didn't post was that this group of friends involved a person with whom I was once in a close substitute mother-son type friendship (she used to tell people we met I was her son) and that person... well makes the situation less than simplistic. She invited me. But that doesn't mean she wanted to see me.
After the event: not a single phone call. For all she knows I could have been hit by a truck on the way. And I'm not (probably) telling this one the full facts. I don't trust her not to pass on a revved up bitching version to Pinky.
Yeah don't I have wonderful friends. Ex friends. I apologize.
Pinky and Perky were people I used to see every week but through this other person, with whom friendship has withered on the vine. So do you get it now? that my feelings were mixed from the start. That to go there would be... slightly weird. And as I said, to be frank I'd rather write personally to Pinky, not an apology for not being there. I doubt she very much noticed. But to put my own written eulogy (is that the expression?) My feelings on the life of Perky, who had so very much life it's hard to believe she's actually gone...
Apart from that, I bought two huge bags of gear on special offer. About 1.2g+ for £35 (usually bags that big they won't discount, unless you buy several). I had two or three hits and knocked myself unconscious the entire day yesterday.
Early that morning, I met somebody on the street and asked after the local dealer who drops off one minute from my house. I encounter people waiting on him all the time and I still haven't had an introduction. Every time, the situation falls through. Or I'm told by someone else that his gear's shyte. I've heard a lot of times that his gear has been shyte which is, I spose, what put me off bothering with this intro.
Anyway: long story short ~ I fessed up to this friend of mine/acquaintance/whatever you wanna call him about the Funeral Scandal (as it is labelled in my own personal mythology).
And he said to me "does it have little black bits in it?" and I said "what you mean minute black specks that cook down so the hit looks black?" (ie not "tea leaves, which are big floaters of something inert that you only find in drought or ripoff gear ~ these little bits look like a fine powder, as fine as cheap preground white pepper or black talc, if you can imagine that)... anyway he says yeah he knows someone who took the bus one stop and woke up in Trafalgar Square. Another started fighting with his best mate. Whenever it's taken, chaos ensues. I don't know what this weird black stuff is, but it's obviously pharmaceutical. And it's not heroin. In druggie language you could call this "B+" that is it's B (brown heroin) and strong enough to pong of brown, both in the bag and while cooking up, and the smell of brown heroin base is unmistakable. (Nothing like vinegar, incidentally. Vinegar is what Mexican tar and some China white heroin smells of.) The plus, whatever it is, is some pharmaceutical agent, probably either a benzodiazepine like Rohypnol or a barbiturate like Seconal or Phenobarb, or methaqualone ("quaaludes") or both.
What it cannot be is sleeping pills crushed down. Bearing in mind that a small pill weighs 200mg minimum and a large £20 bag weighs 600mg and I'm using a third of a 600mg bag at a time usually (ie "two points" or a fifth of a gram) ~ how much sleeping pill is going to fit into that? Nowhere near enough to knock me out for the day, no matter what the potion. So whoever's adulterating this stuff surely has access to illegally-manufactured knockout drops, probably from China or Central Asia. That is knockout stuff in its pure form.
One of yesterday's bags was the Midnight Black, the other just ordinary heroin. It's the second kind ~ just heroin ~ that I've had today ~ so I feel crystal clear!
The very fact that I've more than half the gear left over says how strong it was. Ordinarily I could get through a gram-and-a-bit in an afternoon, if I wanted to.
My head is not in a particularly good place. I wander about stricken by guilt over times when I was four and crushed a ladybird. And other such nonsense. (This is depression.) I tell myself this is depression to console myself. Perhaps recognizing some of the psychological tricks and mind-games of the condition gives me an edge over it. Not much of an edge, but something.
And that, my friends, is that.
Now I have to go. I have to think of something to post in German..!
Have a good day everyone :-)

25 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey i've had that gear with the black shizz in it and i'm in yorkshire. its fucking weird! haha. i'm still falling asleep the next day when i've had it. We was also getting some with little green like balls in it! its like a kinder egg, u get something extra in the middle.

Unknown said...

Gled..... wake up!

Gledwood said...

green balls??!?
I've had gear that looked like dark toblerone (dark chocolate with lighter speckles) - that is always strong but GREEN bits c'mon, you're having me on..!
it wasn't cannabis leaves was it? I have frequently found bits of fcking grass in my gear. Lots of times. I mean specks. It's cause those dealers are also addicts, only to the green. Da 'erbal green, of course.

Gledwood said...

Jan I'm awake! and if you're wondering why this comes separately, check the comment time stamps, you were typing exactly the same time I was answering comment #1!

Syd said...

I had a feeling you were down and out yesterday. I'm glad that you are alive today. Nothing short of a miracle there.

Gledwood said...

not so much a miracle, more a regular occurrence.

(or a regular miracle, if you like...)

Akelamalu said...

I'm sad you're taking Heroin again. :(

I have to disagree with you about the drink driving limit - it should be reduced to NIL. Any alcohold consumption when driving is dangerous. :( I do not drink and drive and neither does MWM, we do like a drink though.

Sarcastic Bastard said...

Gledds,
You are in my thoughts. That's all I can say.

Love,

SB

Jeannie said...

Hope you sort yourself out soon. Don't take too much of the new stuff if you don't know what it is.

Gledwood said...

Akelamalu: I disagree with drinkdriving totally, I just think the limit is stringent enough where it is. Lowering it will just result in convictions of people who weren't drunk but just had a tiny bit more alcohol in their systems than they were allowed before...

SB: :-)

Jeannie: I think the new one was purer than the old one... (think...)

Anonymous said...

I feel miserable as sin. I am constantly knocking back alcoholic "cocktails" in the form of the cheap and nasty white cyder British street drinkers usually opt for, mixed with tropical juice, which results in a rough home-made alcopop. It's quite nice actually.

Gattina said...

In some way you make me think of van Gogh or Toulouse Lautrec, they both were drinkers, and I am sure they would have used all drugs, but at that time not available. You are a very talented and intelligent guy only you use both the bad way. You very badly need a GPS to reach your good self.

Gledwood said...

Anon: I trried clicking your link but I can't read Cyrillic, let alone any language written in it!

Gattina: I wish GPs could help, I had one fantastic doctor years and years ago, but he was a one-off. I'm trying this psychiatric assessment thing that will show (hopefully) that I do NOT have a personality disorder. But whatever else is there, it should also show up...

Reeny's Ramblin' said...

Over here if you have a glass or two of wine a night then people will look down their roman noses at you....

I must be a waste case by their terms.

Gledwood said...

Really are they that anti-drink?
I've noticed in American TV shows they hardly ever show characters drinking unless they are getting drunk, or supposed to be alcoholic already... I take it the same attitude prevails North of the Border..?

Reeny's Ramblin' said...

Left over puritanical BS....

I was blown away by drinking culture in the UK. New Years in York reminded me of a cross between the intro to Das Boot and the end of world war two....

Sweden said...

the intro to das boot is fucking brilliant

Gledwood said...

ha ha ha!!! you serious??!?

I know American men see British women as tarts because they knock back beer like men, belch, pee in the street and have fights and/or sex in public before passing out face down into a chili kebab... this is the standard British Saturday night.

In my day you could at least go out pilling if you wanted an otherworldy experience without the chaos alcohol brings on... I don't even know that youngsters do that anymore.

When we went out and took pills we drank no alcohol AT ALL - it will only takes the edge off E, or will make you feel sick. Only idiots drank AND took Es.

Stupid thing was, back in the day, I was known as someone who NEVER got drunk AND could go to a rave WITH ecstasy and, if I didn't feel like it, not take it. Which made me feel daisy-fresh at 6am...

... and just look at me now. I STILL wouldn't pop an E just because it was there (in this sense I contradict NA's description of an addict)... but I am a HEROIN ADDICT. I take heroin heroin heroin. Even during the peak of my addiction I had no interest in any other drug, except crack (which intensifies heroin's effect, especially if IV'd together (speedballing). I only started drinking because that also made the heroin stronger. See it's all about heroin. If I can kick that out of my life, I doubt I'll ever want another drug again. I gave up coke for good new year's 2008 going into 2009 and lapsed or cheated only 4 or 5 times and I never want to touch it again. BIG waste of time.

As I say, if only I could kick out gear too... if only if only if only

FONT LOVER said...

keep up the good work my friend!
I wish you gain more success in the future 0_0

Gledwood said...

I know you just spammed me, but some of those fonts are pretty cool...

Baino said...

Even I have rules about daytime drinking . . not before midday and only if lunch is involved. You'd have to be a bloody scientist to work out what's in that gear, how you can put it in your veins, I'll never know - especially without knowing what's in it.

Gledwood said...

I tried googling it but got no result. Or rather "Mexican black tar heroin" which it most definitely is NOT.
It is not just the smell that distinguishes "tar", it actually looks like tar: this is "normal" heroin with something weird in it.
I gotta stop doing this anyhow.
I tell myself this with needle poised to limb, which is a new thing.
Usually junkies only want to be clean when they're dirty. Or to put it another way, high.
Rest of the time they just wanna use. So maybe that means something, but it's down to me to make the change. Me! The person I trust least in the world!!

Akelamalu said...

I think that would be a good idea Gleds - people shouldn't drink at all if they are driving.

Gledwood said...

I do agree with you, but enough people get done for being ever so slightly over the limit. Obviously the best thing is not to drink anything (I would never drive unless I knew I was clean. I'm so glad I don't have a licence, so the issue never arises.)
Bear in mind that lowering the limit will bring all manner of people into trouble for having drunk THE NIGHT BEFORE.
That's what I am against. Getting people into trouble who are innocent at heart.

Gledwood said...
This comment has been removed by the author.

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