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!

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

DonkeyTrotterNutterGoblinDongleSnatcher Sleeping...


WELL YESTERDAY WAS FUN. NOT.

I was depressed and stressed and my life is a mess.
My house is a mess, but I'm cleaning that up. I'm a mess but that job is near undoable. Notice I say near. Because I will do it, no matter how hard or long the job.

I didn't sleep on Sunday night so I felt crap yesterday. Due to tireness I started hallucinating again, but not very much, and only mildly. That's the only good thing about sleep deprivation, mentally spinning sideways. I never thought there was unything unusual about this wandering my tired brain does, until it wandered right out of my skull, down the road, hopped on the tube, flew from Heathrow to America and Cape Kenaveral ~ then blasted up to the moon a couple of weeks ago! The fellow astronauts, by the way, apparently just thought it was a weird kind of experimental walnut blobbering about in zero gravity with them ...

My friend Valium Marilyn is depressed too. She hasn't been at all well. She's hibernating on pills in front of an enormous widescreen television.

I asked her whether she wanted to score Valium, but it was down to me to get it and there's been a lot of fake about, I didn't want that responsibility. I'm pretty sure the last lot I got was fake. Unless you can get tolerance on 10mg a day, 5 days a week, all throughout the second week, the pills were duff. So I got 6xtemazepam 20mg for far more than I considered reasonable, but I thought what the heck, it's better than heroin.

Then I didn't take ANY pills and slept from 4pm until 2am. Went to bed. Slept through till 9:30am. Didn't want to get up. Slept another 2 hours. Woke up at 11:30am. That's a good 19 hours' under. Fast asleep. Without any drugs or pills or excessive methadone. I didn't need methadone when I woke, but I took it, to avoid Heroin-craving.

When Heroin crosses my mind now I just think of the Misery I'm moving away from. No visualization is required. I associate Heroin with Homelessness, Poverty and Misery.

Heroin did hold me together better than anything else has done. So the Depression-type misery I feel now is just me without Heroin. In the end I felt it with or without Heroin anyway. Heroin took the edge off, there's no doubt about that. But it didn't even do that well in the end. That's how I knew it was time to stop.

I used an outside event, a drought. Originally I assumed that this would be a False Paradise. That if good gear ever does come back, I'd go right back to it. But that's not necessarily true at all.

For months going on years I had genuinely wanted OUT. I just couldn't get out. Now I am out, albeit thoroughly dependent on methadone, I'm staying out. I also obtained enough clarity to realize people DO stop heroin due to outside forces. Marianne Faithfull ODd herself, fell down a flight of stairs, broke her jaw and went from hospital to rehab. No painkillers. She was in such pain, but assumed this was just the pain of living without drugs. Then they realized a splint of bone was unset and had to put something resembling a guitar sproket to tighten the broken jawbone. That the pain of a broken bone can ever be taken as "normal" should tell you something, if you don't know, about how hard life actually is for an addict without opiates.

Example 2 is from another memoir: Kate Holden's In My Skin*. This is very slickly written and ultra-succinct (due perhaps to a good editor, I don't know how much she edited herself). Though it's a very good read, in a way the story is annoying in that she skates over certain issues, never lost anyone she loved thanks to drugs, never ODd, never had an abscess and so on. She never ponders her personal failings. She explains pretty well the descent into addiction but is unable to explain how she came out. Perhaps that is inexplicable. I can't explain why I don't want heroin, either. But her turning point was that she and her boyfriend were on methadone anyhow but using heavily on top. Around Xmas, she told her boyfriend, who depended on her utterly to pay for his drugs, that she was going to her family for a week. She continued working at a fairly upmarket brothel daily. One morning she awoke with him in the room. She told him to get lost and he did. But not before fishing all her money and a week's supply of Heroin out of her bag. And away! Personally I think this served her right, and she never offers a protestation to the contrary. But she did use it as her Turning Point. To take the methadone, carry on working. Stick to the juice, with one aberration, and keep working as the methadone went to zero then nothing. The money she saved paid for a long trip to Europe.

Last example: BMelonsLemonade came off heroin in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. Four years later she's still clean. You can read BMelons' blog here: hashishdreamsandheroinnightmares.blogspot.com

So there we have it. It is possible to take an Opportunity and harness a willingness you never truly believed you had. No matter how much damage or devastation it has caused elsewhere, you can use a disaster to your own advantage.

If I'm not living proof enough, imagine BMelons clucking through that hurricane!

The only other thing that happened yesterday was the Broadband Goblin stole my internet stick, and scurried off down the high street singing "Skippadeedoodar-skippadee-day!" hopped on the Chinese Takeaway roof, said something extremely obscene in Cantonese and then vanished. Not that Gledwood would be stupid enough to put a computer dongle in a pocket with a hole in, or anything... So I had to get a new one for nearly £40 from Argos. Considering £40 used to buy a gram and a bit of heroin, and that this was usually gone well within a day unless I carefully hid some from myself, I'm not too upset about shelling out £40 ($60US).

And I still have 6 sleeping pills, untouched.


Anna Grace is having a **** time over "near" Chicago (Wisconsin). Depressed too. Very depressed. I hope it's soon GONE Anna.





*You should be able to read a bit of In My Skin by clicking here.
Without launching into a big critique of the book, it provoked a mixed reaction in me, but it is still one of the best drug-memoirs I've read.
The UK edition looks like this.


You can read BMelons' memoir extract 1 here (heroin sickness).
And extract 2 here.



Am I the only one watching that dreadful Holy Land Xmas story tripe on BBC and loathing it?
Are they actually trying to make it a parody of the Life of Brian?
Everyone has issues. Everybody’s miserable. I have a suspicion every character came with a social-worker file type “backstory” detailing how their mother didn’t love them. Lots of unholy conflict. Even the three wise men are borderline arguing… Akh Xmas! Doncha love it. I’m off for more Morrisons Best Mince Pies. Yumyumyumyumyummmmm!


Did/does nobody like Rebecca Ferguson, by far the most superior contestant ever to appear on the X-Factor? If Beautiful wasn't good enough, here's Candle in the Wind, Show 7

22 comments:

Baino said...

I'm very proud of you nonetheless. Stick with it.

Gledwood said...

I'm not taking those pills unless I really need them.

Somehow I don't want heroin today. Wow!

Z said...

I'm so rooting for you, Gledwood. Hope that we'll be able to meet one day.

Bimbimbie said...

That's a big positive statement Gleds
hold your head high - I'm with Baino, well done you... keep moving forward each little hammy step counts*!*

Gledwood said...

Z: I did once dream of doing a worldwide bloghop where I actually MEET the bloggers. Wouldn't that be great. One day....

Bimbimbie: hammy steps, that's it. And no pinging!!

Gledwood said...

Z: you aren't really a 7 year old girl are you? People might think that slightly odd...(!)

Z said...

That's my granddaughter! I'd better put up a photo of me so you know what you'd be in for...

Gledwood said...

Is there one of you on your blog? I don't really want you to change your "avatar". Did you know an avatar means an incarnation of an Indian god? Krishna is said to be an avatar of Vishnu, for example (the only example I know, but there we go..!!)

Z said...

I'll go for Ganesha then, he's always jolly.

Yes, a photo of me up now. A particularly flattering one, admittedly, and a couple of years old.

the guy in the silk taffeta dress said...

Gleds,
I think you're doing great and have come a long, long way.
I haven't been around awhile because just last week,my friend had an aneurysm, was brain dead,suffered a stroke on top of it all and then disconnected from life support and it was too much for me to take.
I WILL answer your question, but at this time kinda in still in shock over the loss.
All the best to you,
j.

the guy in the silk taffeta dress said...

P.S.
In regards to cleaning, I get no fulfillment out of that.
If only I could afford a cleaning lady.I can't so that's the end of that.
I do a little at a time, but with so many pets even that is difficult.
Anyway, take good caree.
All the best,
j.

BMelonsLemonade said...

Thanks for the links to my blog! One thing I wanted to mention...I think that mental illness and heroin can often go hand in hand. I heard an overwhelming amount of testimony at the methadone clinic about this. It is not my personal situation, so I was, at first, surprised at the number of people who claimed that heroin kept their demons most at bay. Many feel like they are comfortable in their own skin with heroin, and otherwise...they are not quite right, in one way or another. Many of the patients I knew had been in and out of mental institutions, and no medicine worked quite as well as heroin. One of my closest friends is among these. She was insane with heroin, and it helped her a lot to be normal. I must say, she also experienced the hurricane...and she is clean today. She struggles with mental illness, and that was exasperated by the storm. She also struggles with her addiction, partly due to the mental and emotional unrest. I think heroin is a common solution for various mental conditions, whether they realize it or not...they are self medicating. I am going to agree with the other sentiments, her, too...you are doing well, and I am also proud of you. It is not an easy road to walk, and it will not get better in a few months...it could even take years. It is a path of ups and downs and ins and outs, just keep pacing along, and one day you will look up, and realize you really are looking at a very different world than the one you know right now.

BMelonsLemonade said...

Gled, I went back on my blog, to look for more posts about Katrina...in a sense, they are all about katrina, because she is inherently in everything I do now, in some way, shape or form. There is a post from March, called "Katrina In Breif", and there is a post from August about katrina as well. Some of the best writing samples from my blog are in May, and also March...also June has a lot of great pieces. I am not sure how to link any of it, really...

Gledwood said...

Z: have you suddenly taken growth hormones..??!!?(!!)

Taffeta: I'm so sorry about your friend. I wasn't entirely sure when that happened or how recent it was. If I'd known it was that bad I'd not have been asking for posts about clothing!

When I'm rich I'g getting 2 cleaning ladies called Mavis and Olive. I shall torture them with my home-made shapherd's pie which they'll have to accept from sheer politeness and then pile on to their grandchildren... or someone else who doesn't want it!

BMelons: You can links posts by clicking the title, then the post appears on its own with comments after it. Click on the top bar now, and you get the specific address of that post, which is how I linked to your two posts about Katrina and fleeing katrina.

I first heard "anecdotallly" off a friend that heroin was an antipsychotic. We used to use with 2 schizophrenics and it certainly seemed to damp their symptoms down.

On me it had a marked mood-stabilizing effect. I think I had something of a "cyclothymic temperament" that is one where you're up then down. I'm not miseryguts (dysthymic) I'm not annoyingly positive (hyperthymic) I'm not euthymic (no moods) I'm in flux and it stopped the flux and stopped my depressions for a few years. It held me together really well. Not just re moods but re something I can't put my finger on, which is to do with having a view of myself and it all being complete when it's not complete. On gear that became a non-issue, as I couldn't even recall the problem for years later. There is some research about heroin's antipsychotic properties. It doesn't surprise me that heroin works stronger than any psychiatric meds. I've read throuth the post dn the CUCKOO clock cluck=cuckoo! Cuckoote]

I got told I was self-medicating at the clinic, but no advice at all was given on how to stop. No antidepressants offered. Nothing. So now I'm stuck, self-medicating. Was stuck like that for months. Whenever I tried to go on methadone without using on top I felt so flat it was unreal. On a bad day I went from flat to downright suicidal. My experience of methadone is nothing that needs doing ever getting done. This bullshit about people somehow holding down jobs on methadone ~ do they come from mars or something? Because it ain't the methadone I'm on. I'm never, ever going to be OK on this methadone, and I seriously doubt I will ever be OK on nothing.

OK I'll give these figures just for the record. They aren't my "opinion" but they are what I think when I'm despairing: 1. Assuming this is the road to Clean, I give the chances of a severe mental breakdown within 3 years of now at 80%. I give the lifetime chance of me surviving off gear without committing suicide at 50%. So those are my feelings on being clean.

Not very inspiring are they. But they are the cynnical me, just one aspect of me. Without heroin holding me together now, all these bits that used to feel in sync are out of sync. I cannot explain how or why. i can feel it, But I cannot explain it.

Even though they sound negative, I'd still rather be off heroin.

And nobody take those 80% and 50% figures to heart PLEASE. They're just ONE PART of me that WAS held together that's now NOT held together prattling away.

Knowing me I will live till 90 writing hamster books and children around the world will adore me and happily ever after XxXxXxXXX etc etc!

Now I have to post this it's really really late and I've barely slept properly! 8:30am!!

Amazing Gracie said...

I am SO glad you stopped by! I'd been thinking about you now and again, and am very pleased to see you're making some headway on your journey. I won't pile on the platitudes because I know how addictions just downright suck. None of us know what we'd do in the same situation, and all I can do is wish you well and pray for your recovery. Stay warm (inside and out!) and just let the knowledge flow through you that a lot of people you may never meet in the flesh care about you......
~~~Blessings~~~

Z said...

Some bastard broke the picture in the attic and I've aged 50 years overnight.

Akelamalu said...

Oh I'm so happy to hear this Gleds, you are doing so well.

My thoughts are with you and I hope you have the strength to carry on resisting Heroin.

I wish you a Happy Christmas and hope that 2011 is the year that you get clean and become a famous author. xxxx

Sarcastic Bastard said...

Love you, Gledds.

I read the Kate Holden book on your recommendation, and I really loved it. Quite a good and quick read.

I wish you a happy holiday and a terrific new year, my dear friend.

Love,

SB

jams o donnell said...

Well done Gledwood. You can do it

Gledwood said...

Gracie: thank you ever so much. That was a v kind comment. I miss seeing you online.

Z: akh! That's inconvenient!

Akelamalu: I wobble every day now. Never gave in though. Hopefully I'll outsell Enid Blyton and Agatha Christie combined. That's my goal. 3 billion copies.

SB : cheers dears. And to you. As I said I do have mixed feelings about Kate Holden's book. She is writing, of course about 2 subject: addiction and prostitution. I think as a prostitute's memoir it's pretty good. But I haven't (and wouldn't be interested in) reading another one to compare

Jams: cheers!

Syd said...

I too am relieved to hear that you are not taking H and hope that you will be a success story of someone who quit and stayed off the stuff. Rooting for you, dude.

Gledwood said...

Cheers Sid. Unbelievable, innit.

That's just not me. I AM heroin.

How I can ever become normal again is anyone's guess. At the moment I'm just an addict who doesn't use...

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