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!

Saturday, December 25, 2010

Dreaming of a China White Christmas


***THIS is a bit of a mixed-bag.***
It starts with facts
regarding World Heroin Production and how Britain relies on Afghanistan to provide our 30 tonnes+ annual heroin consumption and how arranging alternative supply-lines is easier said than done.

I then launch into a pro-Heroin-Assisted-Treatment, antimethadone critique of British prescribing practice to addicts one of (my favourite subjects to rant on).
I then apply the barely-existent treatment options mentioned to my own life and ask what else could I do, apart from what I'm already doing now...

IF ANYBODY HAS BETTER FACTS, NEWER IDEAS, FINE LINKS OR ANYTHING HELPFUL OR CRITICAL, DON'T HOLD BACK. PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT. BE AS DETAILED AS YOU LIKE. ALL OPINIONS ARE WELCOME.

MANY THANKS AND HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO YOU ALL XXX


IN ANSWER to some of the drought comments I got, I've dug out some facts regarding world heroin and opium cultivation and consumption. You'll notice from the information up top that Europe consumes more than four times as much heroin as North America.

Several commenters have wondered why Colombia, upon which the Eastern United States rely almost exclusively for their supply, doesn't ship their lovely #4 white heroin to the drought-ridden UK I can give you an answer.

Of course it is quite possible that Colombian heroin might find its way here in small amounts. But Colombia produces only 5-10 tonnes of heroin per year, enough to suffice for America's Eastern seaboard, but nowhere near enough to satisfy the UK's pre-drought consumption of 30-35 tonnes of heroin per year. 35 tonnes would be the entire annual production of Burma. (Burma produced 345 tonnes opium in 2009, equivalent to just under 35 tonnes of China White heroin.)

Alternative sources of supply to the UK could easily take two years or more to arrange. Last week I was talking to a retired dealer to used to serve my local area when it was the norm for addicts to score from other addicts. This person knows a lot about how the heroin trade actually works. I was told categorically that the time lapse between harvest in Afghanistan and heroin bags on Britain's streets is at least a year to eighteen months.

The government know they could smash the heroin trade by prescribing pharmaceutical heroin to addicts. Switzerland is the only country to have implemented diamorphine therapy as a first-line treatment. Now Switzerland, once notorious for its "needle parks" and a centrepoint for drug tourism, has some of the lowest rates of heroin use in Europe.

Pharmaceutical heroin is widely used in the UK as pain relief. Many family doctors carry diamorphine amps in their medical bags. But contrary to certain reports, diamorphine is prescribed only rarely to addicts in the UK. Estimates state that only 400-800 addicts receive diamorphine therapy in this country. The latest experimental scheme, RIOTT, trialled injectable diamorphine against injectable methadone and oral methadone. Not surprisingly the success rate of oral methadone was dire. Injectable methadone did better. Injectable diamorphine did best of all, with an 80% reduction in illicit drug use among those prescribed this treatment.

It is easy to test for illicit opiates against pharmaceutical grade heroin, so cheating is not possible. Any use of street heroin on top of a diamorphine prescription is easily flagged up by a simple urine test.

Different countries have implemented diamorphine prescription in different ways. In Switzerland, the Diaphin diamorphine is premixed to a strength of 100mg/1ml, handed to the patient in a syringe and injected in the presence of a trained nurse. A similar system was trialled in Holland. In the UK, patients are eventually allowed to take home their diamorphine prescription (usually in 100mg and 30mg dry amps). They can then fit the prescribed drug into their lives as most convenient (e.g. directly before or after food, at bedtime, immediately on waking and so on: the times addicts most like to use). They can also mix the hit to the strength and dilution that suits them best.

Presciption-wise, the Netherlands have been the most forward-thinking, issuing not only injectable heroin hydrochloride to needle-wielding addicts, but pharmaceutical-grade smokeable heroin base to addicts who chased their dose from tinfoil. Caffeine was added to the white heroin base to make it run more easily over the foil.

Another treatment used in the Netherlands yet barely heard of elsewhere is an oral therapy that has been shown to help addicts with a needle-fixation (like I had/have). Detxtromoramide (better known as Palfium) was issued to addicts in Holland who were receiving oral methadone doses, but proved unable to give up injecting street heroin on top. Palfium syrup (or noninjectable pills) work quickly and effectively by mouth. Knocking back a dose has a similar effect to slamming back alcohol. Within minutes a "hit" is felt. A degree of willingness plus a prescription for Palfium could help thousands of addicts in Britain and elsewhere to make that final step of stopping using on top of methadone. If only our governments were a little more open-minded years and years of suffering could be brought to an end within months.

Of course the Government will not listen. The "experts" who have trawled medical papers, compared clinical trials and yet may never have popped an opiate in their lives, much less lived through years of addiction... these get a full hearing. While the true experts, the addicts on the street, who can vouch first hand how ineffectual at quashing drug-cravings oral methadone actually is ~ are dismissed as whingeing, deceptive junkies who'd say anything to get a free high.

Well drug addiction IS (among many other things) about getting high. Take an addict's high from them, and they'll use something else that WILL give that missing high. This "high" gets addicts out of the door and to appointments. It gets them to eat, to sleep. The high helps them engage with their children, spend quality time and play games they might not ordinarily want to play. So get out of your head the idea of selfish pleasure-seeking. The opiate high is what addicts need to function. Without that high you have a methadone-state. No physical withdrawal (provided the dose is right) but no energy, no enthusiasm either. A mood that's flat at best, severely depressed at worst. It's methadone's extreme unsuitability as a long-term treatment that leads addicts to the typical on-methadone pattern of behaviour where they give up raising heroin-money and reduce heroin sharply, yet in no way give it up. This is the best that methadone does. At its worst it merely exacerbates physical dependency. The addict drinks it, because they're forced to under legal duress, having been caught too many times shoplifting (or whatever). And they carry on precisely as before: piping, piping, piping crack (and methadone does nothing for crack addiction), drinking, popping downers and still using heroin ~ perhaps slightly less.

I've seen pensioners ~ on methadone for years ~ for whom Money Day is the highlight of the week. The Dealer comes round and hands out bags of magic B* that really does work, and does make them OK for the one or two days of the week they can afford it. The rest of the week they live a morose half-life. Heroin days are the only days anything gets done. A life on methadone is no life. I cannot see myself ever being OK on methadone, hence my reliance on temazepam and drink to be OK. On methadone alone I have all the symptoms of depression: excessive sleep, low mood, lack of interest in anything much, low self-esteem, fatigue, slowed thought process and a generalized misery unrelated to any particular issue or event.

The sooner I can get off this syrupy rubbish the better. My experience with antidepressants has been disastrous. My last reaction to mirtazapine was so extreme ~ involving not sleeping for days on end, pinging about everywhere for a week all disinhibited so people assumed I was drunk and on crack when it was just this antidepressant... then I crashed BADLY and got so low I felt my life was over. On one of my lowest days I scored heroin, not because I wanted it but only because I didn't know what else to do. I opened it and stared at it forlornly for hours, not wanting it, not wanting not to take it either. When I did eventually take it, heroin was no help.

This is why I feel I need psychiatric help. I'm not claiming to suffer any more than any other addict. All addicts suffer. I have a sense that something is going on with me that is undiagnosed and untreated. When I'm asked to name my problem on Government forms I don't know what to put any more. No psychiatrist is ever going to be my saviour, I know that. But I would appreciate the insight of someone who recognizes a constellation of experience and might say to me "this is the issue, this is what you can do about it".

So for me, it's no drugs. That's my prescribed therapy. No drugs, no drink. I'm not exactly flourishing on the no drink. Life hurts me too much not to be in a haze, so I don't know how I'm going to do it.

My current plan is to physically tidy myself and my house up. Then I'll pull the plug on alcohol and all these pills. And if life is so very unbearable that I just want to die, I'm going in the nuthouse. That's the only place left for me to go.

I'm fine today because I've had an extra special Xmas methadone dose, an extra special Xmas temazepam dose and a half-bottle of Caramel Baileys. So I'm in a pleasant fog of indifference. Without this pharmaceutical mist, I don't know how I will survive. But I'm determined to do it, no matter how much it hurts. I don't even care about losing my sanity. When I lost it three weeks ago it wasn't as frightening as you'd imagine. Your terror of insanity is the terror of a sane person. I was insane and hence not scared. When I first began to hear voices I found them hilariously funny. In fact I spent most of my time in the manic whirlwind laughing, singing and writing crap online. You can make the best of any situation. And that's what I've endeavoured to do my entire life through. Turn sour old lemons into refreshing lemonade. To make the best of a bad lot.

One day I hope to look back on this extended period of time-wasting and see no more than a bad memory from a past life. A life that's barely worth remembering, except as a cautionary tale for others. For if I can turn into a raving smackhead, literally anybody can. Heroin does not respect so-called boundaries of class or race, intelligence or social background. I'm by no means posh, but I did not come from a deprived housing estate. None of my friends or neighbours or family ever used heroin. I came to heroin through a mixture of fascination with a fair measure of death-wish thrown in. I came to it late (only got addicted at 28). But once it did get me, I knew I was well and truly got. Hook, line and sinker, it had me. No escape. And no way out. Heroin was the only thing that made life worthwhile. The only thing that made life made sense.

Every day without heroin or my substitution drink and pills on top of methadone is a day out in the cold, where life is fractured and senseless. And it hurts. I know I've said this before. I'm writing not to convince you of anything, but to convince myself that I can Do It. There is no Easy Way, I know that. If anybody has an Answer they think might help, I'd love to hear it. As things stand I'm plodding on as planned. And I will not be shaken or moved. I'll keep on trudging no matter how tired I get. I know life isn't meant to be fun. Life is a struggle. At least by struggling I'll know I'm Living.

My one Dream is that one day I might wake up somewhere sunny and safe and realize at last that I'm now a thousand miles away from where I used to be. That I finally have broken free. And that I'm never ever going back There. Where I never belonged, but nearly drowned.

I want Freedom.


*B is short for Brown. "Brown Sugar" base heroin from Afghanistan and other countries in the so-called Golden Crescent
**Re the UN's 2007 Opium Cultivation table, bear in mind that judging opium production per hectare without specialist knowledge can be deceptive. Specialists say Afghanistan's richer soil and superior irrigation infrastructure produce per-hectare opium yields more than double those of Burma ...


PS: I'm on Gabbly now (from about 5pm London time; that is about 9am Pacific, midday Eastern, 6pm Central European and about 3am most of Australia). Gabbly is my live chat box, towards the top of the sidebar, between the Double UO Globe symbol and the rotating molecule. Every new visitor here sets off a doorbell chime. Anyone who's up for a chat say Hi. If you don't get a response keep Dmmmm-Dmmm-Dmmming that thing and WAKE ME UP!




HM the Queen's Xmas Message 2010

The Queen's speech comes on BBC1 and ITV (the 2 major channels) at 3pm Xmas day.


This year she talks about the King James ("Authorized") translation of the Bible which is now four centuries old.


Plus the benefits of sport.


The Queen's Speech isn't exactly the most exciting broadcast of the year, but I, among millions of others, watch it, as much for the novelty of the Queen talking to me as anything else ...




It's 02:27 and I've just woken up having dreamed I was posting. See I'm in a chair with the computer in front of me, dreaming about posting and commenting on my blog. Got blogs on the brain, me!

21 comments:

Welshcakes Limoncello said...

Very well written and interesting post, Gleds. I'm no shrink but I think all addictions - about which I know a fair bit - are an attempt to reach back into a time when the person felt warm and safe. You gotta figure out when that was, whast you are searching for. Then you don't need me to tell you that it ain't in the bottom of a bottle, achieveable via pills or even in a deck of cards. ALso if you are going to give something up, you have to do it NOW, not next week or next year or "after I do this" or "after this one." You can do it, Gleds. Meanwhile I hope that Xmas is as happy as possible. You have many people who care about you out here. Love from Simi and me. xx woof!

Gledwood said...

Reaching back: you're dead right. It's v interesting, my old Counsellor ~ long before addiction to heroin became an issue ~ told me in the course of general discussion that "we all like to feel like a baby. Held."

Interestingly that's precisely the same word addicts use to say that heroin or methadone are working "it's holding me"...

That's a v good point about NOW. But I really do want to get my house clear by next week. Then I can be as depressed as I like and go in the mental hospital.

If I don't go in hospital there's a crisis unit they said I could go in before. I've wanted to go in endless times.

I'm not into going for the sake of it, neither am I "planning" to go. I'm just being pragmatic. I've had a shit time coping lately, so when I've done all I have to, if I still can't cope, I'm going in there, because I've had enough really. Sorry to be negative but that's true. I feel fine now because I'm stoked up on chemicals. Just not heroin, but still chemicals. So I don't know what's going to happen.

Many thanks for your friendship and support over the years. Simi is always welcome to drop by for an extended visit. I proise to walk her in the park every day and feed her liberally with Pedigree Chum and Bonio.

Happy New Year and WOOF to the Golden Swine!
XXXXXXX

molson said...

Merry Christmas Gledwood. It was nice chatting with you tonight even though I can't type worth a fart. I saw you dropped of line suddenly. Must be the gremlin. Any who. Take care of yourself and have a Happy New Year.

Oooo. Just saw you pop back online. You are right. My brain is tired. It's been a long Merry Christmas day. I spent it with family and all is good. Had a good meal and was just relaxing trying to catch up a little on the internets. I've been offline for a couple of days so I was popping about trying to catch up on the few blogs I follow. I was enjoying your latest post when I saw you were on the Gabby thingy so I was glad to peck out a few chatty posts. Well any who again. My lappy battery and brain are drained so ciao for now.

Does this post sound a bit goofy? I think it does but I'm too tired to fix it.

Gledwood said...

Molson, long time no see :-)

Only slightly goofy. Then again I post most of the time when I'm all over the place so I wouldn't worry about it. I had a real bee in my bonnet about methadone didn't I? I just want to get OFF it. I resent being a methadone addict. It's a compromise too far to my weary pika-nibbled brainbox.

Did you ever get a close-up of a pika on your travels? That would make a really good post! Russian/Siberian hammies live in disused pika burrows so pikas fulfill a vital biological function. They save the poor little hammies lots of scrabbling with their tiny paws!

Unknown said...

For many years I have asked one question regarding the illegal status of drugs, especially in the United States: "Who benefits?" "Who profits?"

Thanks for the Queen's message. It's the first I have ever seen/heard.

Alex and I hope you have had a very merry Christmas, my friend.

Z said...

I just wish that politicians wouldn't be afraid of opinion polls and do the right thing, for once. You are right.

On the radio a few weeks ago, I heard a distressed woman talking about a substance, then legal, that her son had started taking regularly. "He's addicted, if the government makes it illegal he won't take it", she said. Poor deluded woman. I think it's stupid, reacting to every event with a new ban.

If they'd ask themselves what result they want and how best to achieve it, they might make the right decisions. But I don't think they have a clue and none of them is very bright.

I hope that you're having a good day, love, and if not - tomorrow will be better. Even I take it a day at a time, and I have a peachy life.

love to you, honey xxx

Empress Bee (of the high sea) said...

hi gled! sorry i just got your comment, somehow it went into spam and i hadn't checked that in a bit. i see you are trying to stay clean. i surely know how hard it is. chuck has almost two years now and sarge 23. so it can be done. both are addicts and alcoholics. same thing to me, just one is a legal drug but that's just me i guess.

i wish you all the best and hope you come by again.

smiles, bee
xoxoxoxoxo

Anonymous said...

Sorry I couldn't chat yesterday. I didn't take my phone with me to my families Xmas parties.

I share you views on heroin treatment vs methadone treatment.

I would love to chat with you live. We should set up a time to do so.

This post is v well written, and v informative. Bravo!

All my love
Anna

dritanje said...

Hallo Gledwood, I don't have any answers but I do believe you will one day look back on this time with amazement, and relief that it's in the past. Someone very close to me who had been depressed for years asked me if I thought she would ever get better. Yes I said. And in time she did.
Have you ever thought of alternative healing rather than conventional psychiatry? Reiki healing or past life healing? I wish you all the best,
dritanje

Liz Hinds said...

And we want freedom for you too, gleds! Keep fighting, keep battling, keep living. We love you.

Gledwood said...

Nick: I'm glad you liked the Queen. I put it there in case anybody found interest in it.

You know when I looked into the international drug trade and its history three letters kept recurring: "CIA"... strange, that!

Z: that wasn't 4-methcathinone was it? It's also called "meow" or mepherdrome/mepherdrone I can't remember. Anyway I knew someone who was well into that stuff. He gave me 200mg of the neat stuff saying "snort it" it blew my head off! A "legal high" indeed.... it did get made illegal but anyone addicted would just end up spending far more money on something easier to get after the ban... e.g. CRACK. If they wanted rid of drugs they could do it, but they don't. Even Singapore who spank drug offenders when they dont' hang them... THEY entertained one of Burma's biggest heroin lords. When I heard that, and I believed it, I despaired. It's all hypocrisy. All of it. Wherever you go. Drugs dance hand in hand with hypocrisy.

Empress: tes I will come by again. I only stayed away because I knew you couldn't bear to hear about using, you tole me. Now I'm planning on pulling the plug on everything. I have to. The dr told me to, so I will. I don't expect it to be easy but I'm following dr's orders then at least I can blame any mishap thereafer on the dr, ha ha!

Anna Grace: thanks Anna, I will tell you a time and try and translate it to Central so we can be at the same place at the same time that would be really cool. I'm glad you at least got Distraction yesterday. I got the Distraction of Baileys and pills but the drink and pills have to go (sadly).

Dritanje: I've tried Reiki and Jo-Rei. And Shiatsu. Shiatsu worked really well. Reiki I felt strongly. So strongly it burned! Jo Rei was v similar but weaker. I'm not convinced Reiki actually heals but it did feel really good when put through my head front to back. That was the all-time best, like a drug. I wonder what on earth it is? And why it feels so hot when the therapist's hands were cold. I was told I was "unusually receptive"... Past life therapy I'm not sure about. I heard you can treat bipolar with stress avoidance, reagular sleep and good diet. If that's so it surely works on depression too. I'm scared I've got bipolar because of the symptoms I've had when NOT on uppers. But as the dr said, only time will tell, you need to clear drugs and drink out before they can see what's what. That's why I'm giving it all up. I mean everything Else as well as Heroin which I'm off, everything else apart from Methadone. There is a lady I saw on TV who had bipolar type 1 (severe) who was a surgeon. She got compulsory hospitalized and everything. Then she got better with no meds but this healthy lifestyle I mentioned. She wrote a book v recently and I want to find it. If it works for her surely it can work for me. And she's a trained medical professional.

Liz: diolch yn fawr :-) I hope you had a Nadolig Llawen xx

Gattina said...

That's an unusual Christmas message (I mean yours, not the Queen) still I prefer yours to the Pope, but you should absolutely see this video !

http://gattinawritercramps.blogspot.com/2010/12/digital-christmas-modern-times.html

BTW I just returned from Amsterdam but only with Christmas gifts !

Syd said...

You have a lot to offer. Your writing is great. I too hope that you will stop the drugs and booze. I wish the best for you Gleds.

Gledwood said...

Gattina: is that link the pope? They said the old pope was "charismatic" bloody hell if that's charismatic what's dull? Ratzinger?... OK I'm clicking in trepidation in case your link is Benedict XVI... I can't do popes

Syd: I actually kept a new year's resolution not to do crack. OK I gave in 6 or more times in 2 years but never went back "on" it. That last time it was someone else's and I was puking in the street, I was so wound up about doing it. I wish he hadn't put me through that. It wasn't as if I didn't make my feelings very plain. But he was my friend AND he was buying and I'm an addict so I caved in. I will never cave in re heroin. Heroin was my all-time favourite. Now it has to be my all time fuck off I never wnna go there. These pills I've stopped as of today Monday/Tuesday. Drink by 2011

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

Gattina: thank God that wasn't the Pope! Spot on.

Sid said...

Gleds, I was reading something the other day that said the only psychological illness contraindicated with ibogaine is paranoid schizophrenia ... and I don't think that's you .. so you may be ok with it

Gledwood said...

I can't have paranoid schizophrenia. I know 2 people with paranoid schizophrenia and neither one thinks of himself as ill.

Interestingly I know someone with schizo-affective which in her case is depression on top of paranoid schizophrenia and she describes her experience the way someone describes a hallucinogenic trip ie it's real to her but she seems to know it's not concensus reality.

People with bipolar were nearly always aware they had an illness, even during the peak of mania they'd call it an "episode" and knew it was an abnormal state. They just really loved it!

Forget about my weird mental shift that did my head in, I have a problem with anything from cannabis to acid in that anything that can bring on hallucinations makes me hallucinate, anything that brings on psychedelia brings more on me, so the psychological effects would probably be more extreme and I feel too fragile to disturb the balance of my mind, or even risk disturbing it. I know ibogaine is supposed to induce more of a trance than anything else. It's ironic if I hadn't experimented with so many things I wouldn't be so wary of it.

This is v unfortunate because if I thought I could do ibogaine I would. I just got a horrible feeling I have to do this the hard way.

Thanks for the comment I'm going to continue to peer into ibogaine further. It sounds fascinating

Sid said...

Thats another problem with heroin, it closes the mind, it's normal to be wary and scared of taking something you know will open your mind again..

crown chakra an all that....

Gledwood said...

I'd forgotten about chakras. My creative writing teacher years ago said she used to get orgasms in her throat because her chakra was going nuts!

When I took MDA (sic) I remember experiencing blue light rising up my back then this lotus flower opening in the top of my head. I felt sublime.

It's not opening my mind I'm so much scared of because when my mind opened up by itself a while ago so I was tripping I had a whale of a time. If you could peel off the bad bits and bottle that you'd make a fortune. On the way down I had a can of cyder that gave me such a rush, like best quality snorty coke. I knew it wasn't really cyder doing this but remember thinking if cyder only did that to everyone every time the shops would be sold out with queues round the block for it! That was the big problem though I was in a mess. Ranting at my mother early in the morning. High as a kite later on. Crystal clear when I talked to my drug worker. Depressed as bad as I've ever been in the afternoon. Then racing high again that night!!! I would love to know what the fuck did that to me. Whether it was a chemical in the gear or whether it was just intensely weird mood swings. Of course when I googled it that nasty word "bipolar" comes up again and again but I don't want it to be so I'm blaming dodgy heroin. It's really put me off touching heroin again, because despite how good bits of it were it was uncontrollable. My head was going literally 100 times faster than it is now. I'm surprised I managed to write anything. I noticed I was swearing a lot and usually I hate writing swear words on my blog, I thought it would lower the tone and lead to bad writing so I banned myself and stuck to it despite sore temptation.

What I'm scared of in Ibogaine is making myself into more of a mess! In one way I really don't care what Ibogaine might do, especially if it cleans me up. On the other the Very Responsible Parent figure is horrified at the thought of it. This parent figure is the one I largely ignored when heroin, crack or drink were involved so I've been trying to be all Responsible by listening.

It is weird the way Ibogaine seems to have an opposite effect to heroin. AND to rid you of withdrawal.

How does it make you feel afterwards? Calm or stressed or blank or depressed or hyper or tired or a mixture or what..? Would it be true to say a lot of the revelations are hard to hold on to in the "real" world..?

Sorry this goes on. I got rabbiting as usual.

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