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!

Sunday, September 26, 2010

A NEW COSTUME DRAMA hit our screens tonight. Downtown Abbey on ITV. In common with the BBC's dreary, bourgeois Larkrise to Candleford, it's an original, not based on any classic novel.* But it's quite good. A modern Upstairs Downstairs. And it stars Dame Maggie Smith. If you're reading this on foreign shores, keep a look out for it. If you like historical drama, you'll probably like this. I think historical is the only stuff produced for British TV that's in the same league as the best American telly.

My one gripe with the genre is its tendency to reinterpret the past in the light of modern (politically correct) outlooks. For example the master of the house objects to a war-wounded servant being referred to as a cripple. "I hate that word." But in those days that was the expression; nothing condescending or insulting was meant by it. Here's the trailer. Perhaps someone'll load a longer extract to Youtube by next week ...

*that statement isn't quite true: according to the BBC's website, Lark Rise is based on Flora Thompson's memoir of her Oxfordshire childhood...



THE WOUND ON MY LEG is less manky since I stopped covering it up and have been cleaning it with alcoholic ("pre-injection") swabs every few hours. It isn't oozing chocolate sauce, just a hint of strawberry. It still smells like a drain, just not as strong. My wound and I are off to hospital tomorrow to see what the emergency doctors think of it...

I hope y'all had a cheery weekend. What are you doing next week? I'm making a start cleaning my life up in a literal sense. My house is a mess. I have that festering sore on my leg. Not a clean stitch to wear. I have to wash my jeans as they've absorbed pus down the leg. So I'm starting by laundering my clothes so I can skulk into casualty (that's the ER to you Americans) looking at least vaguely respectable. Then I'll get the wound seen to and hopefully dressed. Then I can set about cleaning my house. It was cleaning my house that set it off last time, with things knocking into it making it bleed. It's been itching lately. Itching is a good sign with these things; in my experience it tends to mean they're healing.

18 comments:

e said...

I'm off to clinic in the morning for a doctor visit. I do hope you get some good antibiotics for that wound. Take care.

Arjan said...

I'm gonna check 1.01 at least, I like these kind of series too.
I'll give it a chance.

Hope the wound's gonna be ok :)
I also cleaned my house, always feels good when it's clean again.

Gledwood said...

Hi Arjan
How are you going to watch Downton Abbey? It's not on BBC but if you can get Sky or UK Freesat it's on ITV1 or ITV1HD, you might also be able to catch up with it from the online catch-up service "ITV Player". I just don't know what to do with this wound, nothing seems to make it heal...
(...I think it needs maggots...)

Syd said...

Hope that you get your leg looked into. Sounds nasty and infected.

I answered your question on my blog last night and wrote about why I like the solution rather than being stuck in the problem and pain.

Sarcastic Bastard said...

I hope you leg will heal up quickly and well. You are right about the itching meaning healing, but I'm still glad you're having it looked at.

Love you!

Arjan said...

@ Gledwood: I hope I'll be able to find torrents :)

Furtheron said...

Not so into the period drama thing... Larkrise just is soooo slllooowwww... zzzzzzz....

Oh Sorry dropped off there...

With you on the itching hope it is better soon

Ellee Seymour said...

I taped this last night and will watch it later.
Sorry to hear about your leg.

Gledwood said...

Syd: is the mystery solved? I always wondered what it was that was so terrible that happened to you?... By what you said, though, it sounds like you don't want to say.
If I ever manage to get away from the present situation in which I have mired myself then I want to stay away. I don't want to think about it, don't want to know about it. Don't want to recall anything about it. At all... ever again.

SB: everything's conspired to stop me going today so it's going to have to be tomorrow. But I am going ~ I am I am I am ..!

Arjan: torrents of what?? You've lost me!

Furtheron: Re costume drama, I like stuff set in amazingly opulent country houses or best of all something with and upstairs/downstairs theme like Downton Abbey last night. Larkrise is boring to me bc it's so middle-class. Also I don't see much of a plot in Larkrise.
I think like lots of people I prefer something a bit more escapist.

It all conspired to stop me today. But I am going to hospital tomorrow I am I am I am

Gledwood said...

Ellee: sorry I missed your comment.
That prog last night is really good. Like a modern upstairs downstairs... Hopefully it will run and run for ages.

Arjan said...

well people who live in England are so nice as to put these kinds of things on the internet in what is, basicly, called a 'torrent file'. I have a program that can download that file and when it's done, I've got the video on my pc. Hurray to the internet. That's how I watch almost all of my tv series so I don't have to wait years for it to be shown on Dutch tv (if it ever will!)

Gledwood said...

O wow. I got the link to a German film on the German RTL channel last night on RTL's internet catch'up service and to my surprise it started to play. Strangely it kept stopping at the same point, which made me suspicious but I can't see why I should't watch it. I see the German soap-opera Lindenstraße every week on catch-up and they don't blockade it the way e.g. BBC I-Player is blcoked to foreigners ...

I heard BBC1 television is (or used to be) available on Dutch cable; is that true..?

Gledwood said...

... by "stopping at the same point" I thought this was bc the broadband was too busy in the early evening. I'm going to try watching again after midnight or something, see if I get any further. But I can't see why RTL would let me see the 1st 2 minutes then cut me off just bc I'm outside Germany

Arjan said...

BBC 1&2 are still available on cable (analogue and digital)

If you're blocked because you're not in Germany it normally would say so..I get these kind of notifications all the time (BBC, but also tons of US websites).

Gledwood said...

Yeah I once got told I was in an alien territory by NBC. I felt really exotic!

I'm going to have another go at that German film in a sec, to see if it runs any further...

Tatyanna (and Dorian too) said...

That show looks good; I love the British period pieces like that, once they get round to allowing us Yanks to view 'em! :) I hate it too, though, when they put in all the political correctness; guess that's why I often just go and read stuff instead; lots of writers leave it be as it really was, with violence and racism and drama :)

I'm doing a lot of catching up on blogs, including yours... what happened to give you such a nasty leg wound??? I've read a couple posts here but can only find so far that you have it and that it's nasty! Hope it's better by now...

Gledwood said...

What happened to give me such a nasty leg wound... er, I "acidentally" pricked myself with a needle full of drugs...

... I just had a thought re the pc-ness. If they had just called the disabled man a "cripple", as they used to in those days (the word cripple went out of favour here long before it did in America) - floods of complaints would have come in.

So I suppose that was the only way they could keep the authentic language and keep the programme broadcastable by modern standards.

Then again, it might have been better to drop that piece of dialogue altogether... but hey

Liz Hinds said...

I steer clear of ITV period dramas. Is it worth watching?

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

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Gledwood Volume 2: A Heroin Addict's Blog

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