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, December 20, 2010

As a pancake ...

I COULD HAVE CALLED THIS POST MISERYGUTS but y'all know that's who I am (at least half the time). FLAT AS A PANCAKE. Yeah. I blame Sunday, the Sunday blues not wearing off. I'm supposed not to be drinking but I can't do without drink. I need a Valium or two. I haven't taken Valium in weeks, so it might work. Then again Valium is for anxiety and I don't feel anxious. I feel depressed. I would score gear but do not trust it any more. And I'm not sullying my body with anything less than A grade China White*, that's what I'm telling the dealers. (Not that China White felt any different from decent B, it just doesn't sting my collapsing veins.) Now I'm left without gear but with the pointless bleak emptiness of it all.

Snow and ice is all over the news. It's snowy outside but not too slippery. It's not cold here. One good thing about shivering is, it's supposed to make you lose the flab (I once heard). I have gone off food, it's a waste of time. I bought two carrier bags full. Mince pies. Cornish ice cream. Pasta. Broccoli. I shoved it in the fridge/freezer.

The only good thing about today was sleeping through most of it till 3:30pm. Got up at 4. I wish I could sleep 24 hours. If I'd lived in Victorian times I'd never have been on heroin and I'd hopefully have died of some infectious disease. When I was homeless I thought that was the most natural way of living: in darkness, squalor and cold. Somehow I never managed to adapt to living in a house again, I never got myself together. Don't know why.

All this hypocritical crap about Xmas is on TV. I hate Xmas. Absolute waste of time. The only good thing about Xmas was having an eighth of gear to get through by boxing day.

Heroin never made me happy.

The drugs don't work.

*Number four heroin, often called China White no matter what its origin (Burma, Colombia or Afghanistan (yes it is produced there), is very rare here. More common was a type of white rock gear called white heroin base, an intermediate product between Brown smoking base and injection quality white heroin hydrochloride. I don't really want China White. And I meant "telling" in the future tense. I haven't spoken to any dealer since I stopped. I just love being bloody-minded.

19 comments:

Syd said...

Hey Gleds, thanks for stopping by. I am sure that the "hard crack" brought you around. It is a mystical state of candy mixture that is around 305 F. Very hot stuff. Whew--I made it through all the cookie stuff without a whimper. We did have some good times working on the stuff. I have simple pleasures I guess.

Gledwood said...

I bought mince pies today.
I heard they used to have meat in them. Now it's just mincemeat as in raisins etc squashed up. Do they even have those in America? ... I'm never sure of anything. Xmas pudding they don't, do they? I don't know

Sid said...

Thought this may be relevant to you mr...

From anecdotal reports, it appears that memories are relived in a sense, primarily in a visual modality, but without the emotional weight they carried when the events occurred, allowing the individual to view them with greater insight (Naranjo, 1974; Alper et al., 1999). Subjectively, these effects have been described as fantasies, "as a movie run at high speed, or a slide show" (Lotsof, 1995). These fantasies are easy to manipulate by both the subjects and the clinician, and therefore this phenomenon has been sighted as a potentially valuable tool in psychotherapy (Naranjo, 1967, 1974). The imagery experienced under the effects of ibogaine is often largely Jungian in content, involving archetypes seemingly common across cultures; frequently animals, birth and rebirth sequences, and/or the subject with or without individuals (Popik and Glick, 1996). While ibogaine does share features common with many compounds labeled as hallucinogenic, it does not cause thought disturbances, alterations in reality testing, nor is it psychomimetic (Luciano, 1998; Goutarel, Gollnhofer, and Sillans 1993; Popik and Glick, 1996). Rather than classify ibogaine as a hallucinogen, it is suggested that the compound be termed oneirogenic, due to the "waking dream" state it induces, from the Greek, meaning "dream creator" (Naranjo, 1974; Goutarel, Gollnhofer, and Sillans, 1993).

In addition to ibogaine's psychological effects, it elicits a number of physical effects, which include tremor, light sensitivity, nausea and vomiting, ataxia, and dystonia (Lotsof, 1994; Glick, Maisonneuve, and Szumlinski, 2000). All of these effects, psychological and physical, manifest in a dose-dependent fashion (Schechter and Gordon, 1993). In light of these properties, and that the sum effects of ibogaine can last up to 24-36 hours, ibogaine is not considered to have a high potential for abuse (Popik and Glick, 1996). Indeed, those who have experienced ibogaine, typically characterize its effects as a "rough trip;" one that is not suitable for recreational use (Shulgin and Shulgin, 1997).

Sid said...

Thought this may be relevant to you mr...

Cant paste the original text as it's too large but it mentions talks about the psychoactive effects, ie: that it possibly has uses in psychotherapy as the 'trip' can be steered, also it isn't as ego dissacoiative (sp?) so relatively safe for people scared of hallucinating

Baino said...

You bought gear? I thought you were off it. Can't get very christmassy myself this year, dunno why. Perhaps a drive around the streets looking at the pretty lights might do it.

Gledwood said...

Sid: thanks I have a fascination with Ibogaine. I'm still v unsure about it. If what happened the other week hadn't happened I'd not be nearly so bothered, but that trigger was a nothingness. I've never heard of anyone getting all hyper from a downer, or from heroin and I wasn't detoxing so it's all v strange. If something that small sets me off I'm not at all sure about a hallucinogen. On the other hand as I said it was far more fun being crazy than being on heroin so maybe it's worth it... who knows????

Baino: no! I'd cut my wrists if I did gear again. So I might well be cutting my wrists soon, but haven't yet.

That's why I'm saying I'm only doing China White, because there isn't any China White to do!

I only wanted to use because I felt empty. So I distract myself. Only thing that works :-(

Gledwood said...

SID: IBOGAINE

At low doses, ibogaine exerts primarily a stimulant effect, increasing alertness and reducing fatigue, hunger, and thirst (Rezavani, Overstreet, and Lee, 1995), though not in the manner of stereotypical CNS stimulants, such as amphetamine or cocaine (Da Costa, Sulklaper, and Naquet, 1908). At higher doses (typically above 3 mg/kg), ibogaine's primary psychological effects include the retrieval of repressed memories, closed eye visual imagery (CEVs), and a state characterized as "waking dreaming" (Popik and Glick, 1996).

From anecdotal reports, it appears that memories are relived in a sense, primarily in a visual modality, but without the emotional weight they carried when the events occurred, allowing the individual to view them with greater insight (Naranjo, 1974; Alper et al., 1999). Subjectively, these effects have been described as fantasies, "as a movie run at high speed, or a slide show" (Lotsof, 1995). These fantasies are easy to manipulate by both the subjects and the clinician, and therefore this phenomenon has been sighted as a potentially valuable tool in psychotherapy (Naranjo, 1967, 1974). The imagery experienced under the effects of ibogaine is often largely Jungian in content, involving archetypes seemingly common across cultures; frequently animals, birth and rebirth sequences, and/or the subject with or without individuals (Popik and Glick, 1996). While ibogaine does share features common with many compounds labeled as hallucinogenic, it does not cause thought disturbances, alterations in reality testing, nor is it psychomimetic (Luciano, 1998; Goutarel, Gollnhofer, and Sillans 1993; Popik and Glick, 1996). Rather than classify ibogaine as a hallucinogen, it is suggested that the compound be termed oneirogenic, due to the "waking dream" state it induces, from the Greek, meaning "dream creator" (Naranjo, 1974; Goutarel, Gollnhofer, and Sillans, 1993).


Those effects are something like what happened to me that CRAZY WEEKEND. Then I went off heroin. What a coincidence..!

Gledwood said...

Sid I just got the longer comment it had gone into spam. Is ego-dissociative what ketamine's supposed to be?

If you want to read about ketamine and haven't read it already there's a link on my bar to JOURNEYS TO THE BRIGHT WORLD by Howard Alltounian and Marcia Moore.

As she said, when you come back from ketamine you suddenly realize you used to be a person, then you remember your name, then you remember your life and it seems awfully weird to be a person with a name and a life... very slowly you click back together with this person. That's what I loved most about ketamine. Going so far out of it I didn't even know I was a person any more. Once I turned into the number one. One in white lines, like the broken line down the middle of country roads. Then I turned into one and a half... then the trip weakened and I cam eout ot it. But I quite liked being the number one, while it lasted...

O re Marcia Moore btw, she was hieress to the Bausch and Lomb optical fortune, and got into K enough to write this inspirational book. At the end they were applying for a licence to do ketamine psychotherapy... it all sounded great. And I wondered why I had never heard anything more. Well she was found dead up a tree a couple of years after publication. From what anyone could work out she'd gone off, taken all her ketamine, gone under and died of frostbite in the American winter... very depressing. DM Turner of the Essential Psychedelic Guide died in the bath. John Lilly got sectioned for going crazy enough to call the president. None of this ever is as alluring as it seems on the surface. That's why I'm so jaded about drugs. They just seem variations on one theme: they're all chemical lies. Which is incredibly sad to me as I sought enlightenment through drugs and I never truly found it. I never found happiness either :-(

Liz Hinds said...

Yes, shivering or twitching all use up calories so are recommended for slimmers!
Come on, gleds, get those mince pies warmed up with some cold ice cream; that'll cheer you up. Husband has taken to having mince pies and clotted cream for breakfast as well as lunch now.

Akelamalu said...

You might feel better if you eat Gleds. Xmas is a nice time of year for those for whom things are going well and normal, so I can understand you feeling it is a waste of time. :(

Sarcastic Bastard said...

Drinking doesn't make me happy, but I still do it way too much.

I know what you mean about the holidays. A bunch of sound and fury signifying nothing. The only thing I like is the time off work.

I'm a champion sleeper, too. It's one of the ways I deal/don't deal with my depression.

Love you!

Cloudia said...

Aloha from Hawaii, Gleds

Comfort Spiral

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Anonymous said...

what happened to melody lee?

Gattina said...

You know at Victorian times, people were not that innocent as you think !
Did you know that Queen Victoria loved jam made with canabis especially when she had headaches or other female troubles ? History doesn't say if she smoked too. And smoking morphium was very in fashion !
I don't like Christmas either ! I can count on my fingers when I had spent a nice Christmas since I was a child !

Sid said...

Sorry Gleds,.

I only just saw your comments here, no Ibo is the opposite of K, K is a dissacoiative, other hallucinogens seperate the ego from the mind, Ibogaine is not classed as a hallucinogen it's some other word, omner somthing? Ill try find it..

I changed my comment form!

Hope your temazzies worked!?
S

Gledwood said...

Liz: I've gone through 3 packs. 6 of Morrisons' best; 2x4 for £2.50 Morrisons bakery-made. I also tried Sainsbury's own but didn't like them as much. I ate the Best packet in one day, with Cornish Dairy ice cream (yumyumyummmm!!!) the 2xMorrisons home-made were devoured yesterday night on their own with a nice cup of British Rail strength tea. I luuurve strong tea. I prefer them room temperature. Especially in bed late at night, midnight feast-style. Bad for the teeth. Good for the hibernation-binge instinct. Replaces those cals lost by shivering, ho-ho-ho!

Akelamalu: You make a worthy point, but I never was into Xmas anyway. That's why I spell it with an X ~ because there is no Christ in Christmas. If there were I'd celebrate it. But because there isn't, I don't

SB: I love you too. Sleep: the best therapy!

Cloudia: thank you. Sunshine on a Cloudia day..!! (Sorry, my dreadful puns. I deserve to be shot. I know..!)

Anon: I wish I could tell you. She's one of my favourite bloggers and she writes amazingly well, as you probably saw.
Her last posts were very angry and defensive, insisting she didn't want pity when she obviously just needed a hug. She was very cut up because she lost several of her friends in a short time.
I sincerely hope she's still with us. SURELY if she'd died somebody would sign in and post an obituary. They owe that to her memory. Even if they culdn't sign in they could at the very least leave a comment telling us what happened.
My biggest hope for her at the moment is that she's gone back to California and left her misery behind her. She never was happy in New Mexico, but felt she was safer with a guy she loved and some stability.
The worst I can imagine is that she's in prison. At least if she's in there she's (relatively) safe, fed, warm and out of the elements.
I love Melody. It hurts me just to think this stuff. I really want and need to know how she is and I so much wish someobdy who knows would please post something USEFUL.
If you do find out anything PLEASE drop in a comment here letting me know.
Thanks ever so much.
Sorry I cannot be any more helpful.

Gattina: Christmas? Really? Do you bother with Xmas now? What about with your little Grand-doot on the way? I suppose you'll be Granny-Xmas soon!!
Yes you're right about Victorian morphia. At least it was legal then. I saw an American advert for Bayer Heroin advertising an ounce for $4! That costs about £550 or more now!

Sid: Have a merry Ibo-Mass!
How did you change your comment form? I had trouble with that form-built-into-page version. It never runs on Firefox and I've spent literally 20 ins sometimes trying to get a comment to go through. I'll have a look in a sec.

Sid said...

Thats it oneirogenic!

I just changed it under settings to pop up comments form.. lets see if I get more comments! It does say something in the help section about it not working with firefox,. i've been using safari recently as firefox is so CPU hungry.

Gledwood said...

Oneirogenic!? Never 'eard of that one. Does that mean it's reverie-genic rather than hallucinogenic?
It doesn't produce those interlocking celtig-type designs of magic mushrooms does it? Or does it? I used to have a real fascination with hallucinogens and I wanted to try Ibogaine as it appeared to give a chemical passport OUT of heroin addiction wtihout protracted suffering.

What you said at yours about clucking being an unavoidable part of detox, I accept as a general truth but don't see that it HAS to be this way.

What I mean is that when you're on street heroin it is possible to reduce your dose to a third of what it was within a week. Or if not a week then 2 weeks at longest. You know how gear varies so extremely in strength. With maybe 2 or 3 exceptions I have never been sick because I've had weak gear. Gear held me as long as I had enough to take it when I wanted, even just a filter or two.

Using the same principle it's surely possible to arrange a detox where no suffering at all is involved. They could dose the final fractions of milligrams and switch to placebo so the addict had no idea when they were actually coming off.

Rehab and detox is run for the convenience of the staff. If it wasn't, they'd give methadone long before breakfast, so you can eat breakfast. They'd pour your dose into a small bottle and allow you to knock and sip as you please throughout the day. And they'd do a million and one little things they don't do, because they don't care how badly their clients suffer. If they did, they'd whack them out cold on general anaesthesia. The only form of detox I'm willing to consider.

The new comments form is way easier to use. Firefox wouldn't let me use that form at all, so I had to switch to Internet Explorer. The trouble with the old version is that it changes page 2 or 3 times and I sometimes lost the page between word verification and it going trough to you... argh! Every comment I post now highlight and save in case it goes awry!

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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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