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!

Thursday, January 27, 2011

How to get a life in 1000 easy steps

I say one thousand because that's very approximately 3 years and I think anyone Recovering from serious heroin addiction would be hard pressed to truly be able to say they'd broken free in less time.

All I'm doing at the moment is

1. seeing psychiatrists
2. going to mental health groups/meetings and methadone clinic appointments
3. sorting out housing problems (I think this social worker type person is meant to get in touch soon)
4. looking after myself in basic ways
5. going to NA

I'm not sure I could do more than that. Not today.

My attention was so scattered last week I could focus on nothing. Cooking was fun because everything burned (couldn't hang on to the fact it was in the oven) and the smoke alarm which "went right through me" felt absolutely fantastic. Rather than just pissing me off the way it normally would.

I didn't realize I had a truly "high mood" until last Wednesday when I got taken to a Mental Hospital for being too hyper (and proving I wasn't on drugs with a drug test) and having complained of mood swings (up and down) for a long time. And now being tired of just not functioning the way others seem to find it easy to function, and living in a mess. And also getting pretty badly depressed on occasion. These were and are what I'm trying to sort first. Drug addiction itself has to come second. As my old Worker, who was a mental nurse, told me I was "self medicating". At first I thought this was just a load of tosh that sounded good, though I'm sure I repeated it here. Then I slowly realized how true that was. Now I'm after either Nothing (ie I piece my life together myself with no chemical assistance) or I take psychiatric meds. The word "antipsychotics" has come up repeatedly and not out of my mouth. From doctors' mouths.

Yesterday I was in a meeting and couldn't focus for hearing voices. I was nowhere near as hyped up as I've been before. Yesterday morning, for example, I had this weird sensation of actually being in my body, the way I was before, but hadn't been for about 9 days ~ and didn't care about, at the time...

So I'm off to this doctor in about an hour's time. I will post what happened, unless I just decide to hibernate.

This is another problem, and I suppose it comes under self-care in the above list. I just am not sleeping the way "normal" people seem to or the way I used to (which often involved feeling crap and sleeping too much).

I was taking sleep meds (zopiclone 7.5mg). I was prescribed a week's worth and took it every day in an attempt to reset my sleep cycle.

It hasn't entirely worked, as on Tuesday night I slept between 1 and 2 hours then just woke up and got up. Yesterday I was absolutely exhausted and slept about 7 and a half, going to bed in the early evening and getting up at 2. Yes I know that's not ideal timing... just you try and be that tired, that distracted and not sleep, knowing there's a good chance you might go UP and keep going through the night.

Yeah I'm pretty sure this is what doc-docs like to call a "mood disorder". I certainly had one before (depression). Whatever this one is I cannot diagnose so that little issue has to remain there.

Now I'm off. I have pizza cooked for breakfast. It's only 10 past 10 in the morning, but I've not eaten since I got up. I have no appetite, interspersed with sudden, intense hunger.

So that's what I'm up to, and thanks to the person who said get a life at Melody's, you inspired a fairly focused post for once.

I told that person to get their own then tell me about it. I wasn't being entirely sarky: I'd be interested to know what that person does do with their time. I mean if they keep house, have cats, kids, a job. Or whether they're just some addict who cannot break their habit. I know how the latter feels, but not really the former.

Take care y'all...

:-)

4 comments:

Merle said...

Hi again Gleds ~~ Well you are doing all the right things it seems and trying so hard to get well again and I hope it doesn't take 1000days. It should get easier as time goes by. Wish you could sleep like you should as it helps us heal.
Stick with it all. I can't believe they took you to Mental Health and gave you a drug test.
Anyway, my friend, I wish you well as
always. And I knew you could do it.
Take care, Love & best wishes, Merle.

lynn said...

hiya.i think after years of using that basic self care and keeping appointments is enough to worry about .hope you get somewhere with the doc today.im strugglin too since the drought but you had the will to leave the crap gear alone and im still hoping each time i score somewhere different that it will be better gear.rarely is,and the odd good bit justs keeps me lookin day after day.i just try to keep the depression at bay as it scares the hell outta me how i feel without gear.anyway enough of me.really hope the doc helps in making you feel better .look forward to hearin how you get on.take care,lynn.ps.sounds like your doing better than me at the basics,most times i cant even make it to the drug clinic without gear in me first,so hang in there mate .i only started using computer at start of shortage when i found your blog,now im gettin addicted to that too.love reading your stuff and got loads of info from it.nice one.

Gledwood said...

Merle: I'm not offended about the drug test, I took it before the mental health, at the drug clinic. The worker drove me to the nuttyclinc/"mental health facility" (ahem). Being a drug addict who likes to tell esp. now EXACTLY what I used (which was kind of impossible before as they expect a Great Three Times a Week Lie (not nearly every day, as it actually was)... also a psych dr had only seen this other thing whatever it's called (hyper) once. Now he's seen it twice and another dr has seen it and neither time I had drugs in me. It can be caused by drug withdrawal but I'm not withdrawing, and wasn't then. The only jolt my system had was heroin to methadone and methadone alone. I've never known anyone go cuckoo on methadone or nothing who didn't have issues anyway. Akh I am totally ambivalent on this issue. Putting it all down to drugs is good as I can take drugs away. If drugs made it worse, from what I know it doesn't alter any diagnosis. Only "substance-induced" (meaning in the short, not long term) would.... Sorry Merle, I'm going to post on that dr. in a sec. Hope this hasn't gone round in circles too much. I'm far more focused today than any other day in the past week and a half, so that's good.... (wow I called something that didn't involve a stratospheric high plus a feeling of being plugged into the Electricity Grid of the Galaxy "good" ... mean's I'm .... "getting a bit better".

I am avoiding using a word that rhymes with frown and begins with the letter d as that makes me think of another word "epression" that also begins with d and I hate both of them

Lynn: especially when I got a Bitch Worker I could not make it in without gear. Before that at one time I used gear and crack and drink then the worker I had then started breathylising me. Loved that little machine did that one. Using it all the time on me on all her punters. They all moaned about having to sober up before they got their scripts. Being as I'd nearly always picked up methadone a day in advance it made no difference.

Computers make great therapy. Along with great time-wasting. Problem I had last week was to do with barely being able to post what anyone seemed to understand (I wasn't trying to be incomprehensible! When I was totally gone I tapped in what was happening, then when I felt I was OK I tapped in again, but hardly any difference seemed to show except less bing-bang-bong crap-ap-appapapap o man can you believe my head actually did that? I didn't even know that happened. Knew people "heard voices" knew there was a thing called "paranoia" knew all that. Tapapapapapppapapping I knew nothing about. My brains disappearing into a noise! What's that all about? Dr Headshrinker seemed to find a lot to type about today.

Thanks for the message. I'm trying to be Extra Clear today, so I hope I'm past mud and if not crystal then... maybe black tea clear..??

I hope ... ??

Take it easy. Don't do anything I would. And don't take any drugs either. (And how you'd do that I've no idea!)

:-)

the guy in the silk taffeta dress said...

You're sounding good.Everybody gets messed up on their sleep time 2 time.
Take care & sounds as if you are too :)
j.

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