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!

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Drought goes on (am I bovered?) And the evil GREEN*.

*UK methadone is usually green.

I HAVE TAKEN NO GEAR today or last night and don't intend to.

Yesterday
I ran into 2 brothers. We got talking on the inevitable topic ~ huge heroin shortage all across UK. I said I couldn't be bothered and was drinking instead. At least it is legal and therefore 100% safe, 100% respectable. Nobody has ever died because of alcohol, because the govt. allow it, we all know this. Anyway, they asked where I found the rubbish I found, and I told them. Then I asked them where they got their rubbish and they told me. They said one person had "decent gear" (ie it was rubbish), I didn't know them and didn't ask for the number. I did have money on me (was carrying huge Andy Warhol Diaries back), but sensed they did not. I have one of their mobile numbers and will not be ringing asking for an introduction. Their parting shot after the good gear mention was "I bet everyone's saying that" and that said it all.

It is 11am and I've had just over half a can, mixed down with fruit juice. This is way down on yesterday and especially Monday's consumption. Bearing in mind I get up at 6 to 7am and usually guzzle it down then (if I'm carrying on) drink more smoothly just supping it from there on.

The govt. (and what do they know about any real life? The rubbish MPs spouted about casinos was a case in point. If they knew anything about gambling, they'd have seen that every local betting shop has at least a couple of roulette machines and I've seen people feed the best part of a month's wages in there every half hour. Staff have to empty them several times a day, they collect so much money. + roulette is now on ITV! That, is channel 3 of old-fashioned television, every night!)... what was I saying? O the government. They want to increase the price on alcohol per unit ~ ie 8g or 10mls of neat booze. It's easy to work out units per can. Mine are half a litre at 7.5% ABV so that's 3.75 units per can, 7.5 units or 75 mls alcohol in each litre. They want to make my cyder something like four times more expensive. What is this if not a tax on the poor? All they will do is take food from poor kids' mouths. Make people with drink problems even more undernourished than they already are. And what doesn't come off the food bill will come off clothes, bills anything else, because to a drinker, drink comes first, and always will. If this policy is introduced, a huge market in bootleg liquor will spring up overnight, and I know exactly where to go to get it. Everyone will switch to spirits, thus causing themselves more harm because most won't bother mixing in lemonade or just water. All the profits will go to fund other criminal activities. So nice one, Tories. Just go ahead, see what happens.

Booze rant over. Actually just writing that has made me want a drink...

... Ha! It's right here and I didn't do it. Am I actually getting cleaner in my old age??

Was I really offensive yesterday? I had to edit what I said twice after posting, bc 2 particularly ridiculous things were in there. Proof if any is needed that less gear does not (instantly at least) bring more sanity. Opiates are antipsychotic. You can google this yourself, though you won't find much official research. First thing I noticed about heroin was a marked mood-stabilizing effect. It still is a huge antidepressant, especially compared to methadone. I think the clinics are (by and large) barking up the wrong tree with methadone. Morphine continus pills would work far better and can be taken twice daily. Injectable diamorphine is far safer than injectable methadone. It's only expensive bc the manufacturers are taking the pee-pees. (It costs £4.50 or so for a 100mg dry amp, about half what very good gear would cost. It just shows the "we profit from your pain" motto levelled at pharmaceuticals corporations is so true. Diamorphine is mostly used for terminal pain management here, NOT for addiction.) I fit the criteria for diamorphine treatment exactly. If they'd only given that several years ago, I might actually be clean now. What would not work about diamorphine therapy is making it really hard to get on to, or not letting people up the dose if it's dipped, or when people switch from injectable diamorphine to oral morphine, or actually come off altogether, not to let them back on. If they do make it seem so hard-won, as it is now, people will feel like they're onto a sure thing, to be prized and treasured. And they will not give it up. Basic psychology, but I'm sure the govt don't understand that either.

What they are saying now is that because methadone only has a 3% success rate (I haven't seen it to be that high), rehab style treatment is the answer. Well good luck paying for it in a recession. How many rehabs are they thinking of paying for for each client? They may well need 4 or 5 or 6 before they finally get clean. I've been in City Roads Detox once (horrible) and proper rehab/detox once. I left on day 3 both times. Couldn't do the detox. Too in love with heroin. Nothing else about life grabbed me. Not without heroin being there as well. In other words I was trying to exit into outer space, where there was nothing for me.

Stop smoking clinics like to compare nicotine to heroin, saying it's more addictive. Perhaps it addicts faster, but even that would be spurious. When I had no habit at all, I now know (only by looking back in confusion on a certain day when I decided to give up long-sleeved teeshirts forever because I was too hot/too cold/never right) that I got myself a mild one, and I do mean very mild ~ still but noticeable ~ within just five days in a row of smoking it from tinfoil. I can tell you this. Craving heroin and craving a cigarette aren't even in the same universe of comparability. Have you ever seen someone puking because they needed a cigarette that badly? Well then. Anyone who wants to enough can give up smoking without too much bother. Just use gum or something else that gives a nicotine hit, albeit tiny when you want it ~ I don't think a patch would work for me. I've given up twice, for months on end, and I used gum. Heroin is a totally different ballpark. Whoever they used to be, whatever they did, once people get a taste for it, they invariably go on and on and on taking heroin. Just the average habit is 14 years. These people aren't weaker than you or me. A lot of them are stronger. In fact heroin turns your strength against you. The more willpower you have before heroin, the more willfully you will use it, once you get addicted. Now that has to be an obvious equation.

The drug treatment system in this country (not to mention elsewhere ~ AMERICA, very good example) is totally corrupt. Run for the convenience of the staff. All about box-ticking, quota-filling. Workers being seen to work successfully. This actually makes them complicit in all the lying that goes on in-clinic. Typical pattern on methadone is: cut down heroin perhaps by as much as three-quarters. Give up crime, if you're tired of it. But then whenever money comes gear is what comes first. Crack usually goes out the window relatively early on. From my experience anyone in treatment still using crack frequently 6 months on is probably barely following the programme at all. Or has just been pushed into it because they got caught shoplifting. Lots of that about.

I have seen old age pensioners, who've given up "grafting" up money, been on methadone for years. And yet they still spend the best part of their pension on heroin. The image of an old lady injecting heroin, reading glasses on, is still emblazoned on my brain. Methadone does not sooth the itch for heroin. Unless the person is unusually motivated. Simple fact: it just doesn't. Keeps you OK. How anyone could possibly hold down a job on methadone I do not understand.

I think a better way of running things would be to give people an assessment but NOT put them on methadone, or anything else automatically, unless they really do want it. You could give them a card, and then when they actually want it, they can get scripted within one hour something that really will take them off street drugs. Ie probably not methadone.

Methadone is a tool, so I am using it. But it certainly is not the best, and absolutely not the most suitable tool in the pharmaceutical box.

Alprazolam (Xanx) + Subutex/buprenorphine (no!) found in UK heroin thanks to shortage:
http://www.talkingdrugs.org/benzodiazepines-sold-as-heroin
Thanks for the comment directing me to this; I had heard about the alprazolam (somewhere) and someone told me he tested Subtex positive, even though he doesn't take it.
Alprazolam is really weak compared to Valium and Subutex you would never in a million years mix in heroin. It has no hit, to any hardened junkie. It actually REVERSES the effects of heroin. Whoever did that has no clue...

10 comments:

Syd said...

Ahhh Gleds, but people do die from alcohol. It happens every day, many times a day. What about just stopping all of it and being who you are without any chemicals?

Gledwood said...

No no my sarcasm that is all.

Can't do NA (properly at least) with chemicals. I do want to do NA. Not being totally distracted like last time I intended to go would be nice

Akelamalu said...

I'm so glad to hear that you are staying off Heroin. I suppose alcohol is bad enough but certainly not as bad as Heroin in my book. I wish you could get off it all and live a normal life Gleds. x

Sarcastic Bastard said...

I love The Andy Warhol Diaries--such a great juicy read.

I also love alcohol! Gledds we have SO MUCH in common. Laugh.

SB

Baino said...

Hey it's beyond hard but perhaps this is what it takes to turn you around. Nah who am I kidding.

Anonymous said...

Found your blog searching for info about this drought. Love it, but cheer up m8, u gotta be in it to win it!
What the &%$* is up with the gear situation? I live close to the south coast and its getting on to the third week of nothing. I keep hearing is that its cos of xmas (some truth to that perhaps as usually before there is some sort of slow down) but nothing like this. It's getting a bit worrying. Love to hear anyone who has any notions of when things might get better?
Keep posting!

B.

Gledwood said...

Akelamalu: here's hoping. I don't hold out too much hope, but more than I used to

SB: haha!

Baino: I WAS thinking, well people in prison SAY they want to clean up and stay that way while in there. Although it's in prison as drug of choice, it's weak and expensive and might well lead you into stuff you really don't want to do. So there are wings/areas designated clean, in some prisons. Staff, incidentally LIKE people on heroin. Far more manageable and less likely to kick off.
I have strayed from the point. I meant people do clean up in prison. Esp. women's prison. Apparently harder to get in there.
But it's not their choice to be there. Nearly all choice is taken away. So as soon as they're out, it's to the dealer before anywhere else.
But my situation is not the same at all. I still have every other choice I used to have it's JUST the drug supply that has waned. And I would be a fool not to take advantage while I can. I do want to stop all this so I just should. Know someone spouting cowshit about tomorrow. Not going for it

B: I will. The mental post is about 4 down with all those comments. That's where the action is!
It can't be just xmas surely? I've had people saying to me "it's always this time of year you get droughts" I don't recall it that way at all. There was some shortage this spring. Apart from 2008, the main ones I remember were all springtime. Feb-May. 2002 was the worst. But there was gear that was OK. This is what I don't understand - NO PROPER GEAR AT ALL. Why not?? Most strange

Anonymous said...

Hiya,
Pleased to find Your Blog, just so I know I'm not Going Crazy!
Our Dealer Quit 2 weeks back after putting a 16th up from 60 to 75 to 100, He said his Supplier told him there would be a drought until March and anything else would be really expensive. I've been IVDU for over 10 years (I love that picture of the Granny shooting up!) and have had a double (methadone) habbit for most of that.
So Not a Surprise, I Feel Nasty.
I Send out Vast Waves of Sympathy to everyone out there who is Suffering from this Terrible Drought in particular Anyone who, Like my other half, Has to Work as well.
Hope for the Future?
CJ.
SURREY

Alice said...

thank fuck for the juice at this time though, i have a good idea of how we'd be feeling without, god help us all...
i refuse to spend my money on anything other lol, i went to the shop to buy some booze and just ended up coming home with nothing...fuck it if it aint brown i aint interested...good luck mate, ill let you know if naything happens from the north. People seem to think it wont be until after christmas though, depressing or what

Gledwood said...

SIAN & CJ

Whisky is brown... then again I am not interested either. Cyder is OK. Fizzy, goes surprisingly well with lemonade, various fruit juices etc.
Not that I'm suggesting anyone drinks..!
March sounds about right. That's about the time of the major harvest.
I said to a couple of people, if it doesn't sort out soon, it will be next summer before it's proper again!
There is one proviso. I've found no evidence of a shortage in Europe. At all. Even put a shout out on my "Deutscher Blog" and not a soul replied so far.
If it's still cheap there and the people "in charge" here won't bring it in, some new supply lines will start up and they'll lose out.
You can also get gear from Colombia. That is another obvious possibility. But supposedly cultivation/etc has gone down too. Probably for other reasons.
Colombia supplies New York especially, + the eastern USA. The American figures for heroin addiction and how much is grown and imported into America and from where (nearly all from Mexico/Colombia, supposedly) just do not add up.
I decided to just take advantage and stick to this script of mine for once in my life. I feel really sorry for those without. Wished I'd not launched into the antimethadone rant this morning. It must sound so ungrateful

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?

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Gledwood Volume 2: A Heroin Addict's Blog

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