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!

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

NA Again

THIS MORNING I heard the landlord's man saying "I'm outside the house" through my open window, then I heard him a few hours later on the phone talking about having moved my bed. I heard him. I'm questioning whether he was real now. Because just before I went to this meeting I heard several voices amongst random teasipping flowershop driving a car and buttering toast type things a woman said in one ear "nervous breakdown" then a male voice speeded up said a few minutes later in the other "schizophrenia" and this put me on a real downer. Usually I don't let them get to me but tonight they did. And now they know because if they can't read my mind, they can read my blog.

All the way there people were talking about me or I felt they were or saying weird things really wierd things like conversation at a rave club chillout room at 5am everybody drugged talking at rather than 2 and me saying nothing it fracturing in.
The meeting was OK I calmed down a lot in there. People talk about serenity well I did find a bit at least. But as I think I said in version 2 below as soon as I went to the loo the literal madness came back and was back all the way home and is still with me now at varying degrees at varying times but always still here. I feel like a starburst, a kaleidoscope, not a whole person not broken but funkily rearranged in a weird way I cannot say why or how or wherefore I can describe as best I can what follows is a deliberate speed of consciousness. Stream (steam train) of consciousness. And here we go:~

A letter to self. To future self. if I ever ever have a self back again this is for me, not for you but for me. I wasn't sure who it was to now I know...

22:51 18 Jan 2011 after NA
DUDE dude methadone disabled disability. Church. Satnus. The dmmmf kept going all the way there. That is the way my mind is going. No laundrette. Cleanest clothes I could muster. V bad paranoid mood everybody talking shit on bus all the way there. A rattle-voiced old man saying "hallelujah!" and "have a nice day" I don't know if he was trips and dripping on peaches or not. Then two crack dealers discussing my habit at the back and a kid at the front who sounded like a rave sample. These people were there. I saw them. But the voices in/from/around my head I didn't see but they followed me into the meeting where I eventually found some peace but was hearing them again the minute I was in the toilet which was like Aladdins Cave. I keep getting told to keep coming back. I complained about being judged for being on drugs when I'm not on drugs. What has made my brain go kaleidoscopic? All nuts all these ways every which way and all at once surrounded by itself in pieces like that kaleidoscopic. I'm not editing my grammar you wanna know how I think how I am this is it. Hey McDonalds very fucking rude dismissive but had to serve me woman did me x2 double cheeseburgers for about £2.80. Aren't they $1 each in the USA? Ripoffsville Britain how typical $2=£1.20 not £2.80!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am fed up tired and happy and want to laugh and everything all at the same time dude my computer dude dude. Why do people say dood. Wow. That's what I'm wondering. Christmas Carol Vorderman McGiffin. Akkh so that's it it it o fuck it this is an essay in selfwanderingness shall I post it and go or not go i will timestamp it and save for later. Not in mood to be judged yet again.


Illustrated: was looking for "henchman" as in my landlord's henchman. That word appears in Snow White so I googled Snow White Henchman and found gnomes like Itchy, Bashful, Spherical my robo-hammies (in name). Ha not so crazy now am I. I am quite sane... oh I don't know what is happening to me does anybody know?? Be honest I'm not taking drugs why does it go then come again then??

OK Voices I admit it you won tonight. You set me off on one. You won. Tonight.
That battle is won. The war ain't over.

PS 23:26 I read the top part 2 back methadone disability. Is that what's causing all of this? Methadone? Wouldn't surprise me at all. That a drug given by you know who is sending me mad. So what do I do?? Stop taking it? Take what? Cold turkey really sends me round the twist my family have seen me go and that was very mild compared to recently. Can't they give me something else? Or are they going to start playing mindgames? And where does the mindgame end and All Else begin? Biggest Question. And is this better than normality as I previously knew it I'm not sure. I'm not sure where I'm going. The TV looks amazing it's cartooning in the snow, no aerial but moving images in snow sometimes they look amazing. So am I tripping then? On what precisely??
[the sound is there, the visual channel half there through snow, it's enhanced in the most amazing way...]
Please somebody if you have one give a sensible answer.

23:44 just remembered supposed to rate mood? was it. that scale doesn't fit i was very para and then angry and then relaxed but trippy and now uptight and not feeling good but tired will try and sleep early exhausted don't feel i'm getting better though i feel it's getting worse hence need to scrap old scale and invent a new one that gives more separate biorhythms/mindrhythms

Drink: 3 cans so far but not into finishing can 4 (barely started) each is half litre 7.5% alcohol

PRAGA KHAN: INJECTED WITH A POISON
There's a rainbow inside your mind... injected with a poison: we don't need that any more
Sums up what my attitude to heroin used to be; is again




03:37 I had forgotten how hyped-up that tune sounded. Don't wanna sleep anymore. It will only bring me down. I wanna wake up buzzing like I did the other day, buzzing and rushing on free natural neurotransmitter ecstasy

06:00 eh! now look what I found. i clicked trish li going cuckoo, she's so funny she makes me laugh. what i didn't put is that she and i act a little bit the same. when i had hamsters i talked to them sometimes the way she's talking to her surroundings. i continued talking when they were dead, because the words were stuck in my head. yeah i have mental health problems. anyway: this vid shows another woman who is also manic but presents very differently. to me, she's acting way more like someone on uppers. more composed. speaking very fast. they call her grandiose but she's not that grandiose at all. thinks she has lots of money but there's none of the raging ego i've seen in the mental hospital in two particular patients of four i engaged with (one was very paranoid, the other very hyper and euphoric ~ these two patients i'm thinking of were boorishly boringly egocentric. the sort of person you don't really find interesting after a while, they're so arrogant, so into bigging themself up, though i liked one for the rest of his personality... point being notice how less fidgety and hypekinetic this black woman is than trisch. to me that is the difference between uppers and natural hyper. though the drug is called "speed" the natural version is way way faster and way more powerful. the euphoria of the drug can be intense and the drugged mood is more stable than the natural high, which switches in me into irritation very easily, not to mention paranoia; it also fluctuates during the day by a factor of up to ten... and as i said before ~ moving around, walking when i have to go somewhere, that really brings me up nicely. sitting in a chair doing nothing, i actually start coming down slightly... i can feel a high off caffeine that would make it illegal if you normally got it. alcohol can take some of the jittery edge off and further intensify a high into something really really nice, but you don't need a lot of drink to do it, just a single can or so. o yeah and ive had 5 cans today. so my drinking has gone up. and no i don't know what is causing mine. those 2 ladies are called manic, i don't know what i am, i just feel high and low and paranoia and tripping at different times, sometimes all together. what is that???

13 comments:

the guy in the silk taffeta dress said...

I'm all mixed up. I thought there was a post about Valerie, the one who writes to Anna...but I can't find it.
Anyway how is Valerie and Ling Ho? (is that right?)
Please send Ling my way ASAP.;)
She seems like a very skillful lady.
j.

Gledwood said...

I pulled Valerie off because she is a bit risque for my present state of mind I can put her back later some time just not now you can see what she says re Ho Ling her cell buddy in Anna's This is for Gledwood post the rest is in posts going back that week back to december 26 and early december

Gledwood said...

I'm v pissed off, but calm. Not raging as I have been when recently pissed off. What the hell set me off like that yesterday? I was off my tree. I'm not hearing voices now, but I was all evening and very much feeling paranoia and lots of fragments of other things. I can write quite nicely, as I said the second part of the post in italics is written in the style I would write in a diary to show myself who I was when I wrote it. But the first isn't that different. I feel I cannot convey what's happened and is happening and I need to preserve it so it can make sense. It doesn't need to now but it might need to later. And I have all this weird stuff going on and barely the vocabulary to explain it... which is frustrating as I blog to explain. Not to apologize, but to explain. That is my blog's raisin d'etre.

I need to get off and away from this methadone as rapidly as I humanly can I am sure it is poisoning me. Call that paranoia if you please but I'm pretty sure of it now. It follows OBVIOUSLY. On heroin I "felt" OK but "wasn't" OK. On methadone I have never ever been OK or felt OK, not in a fully rounded mentally healthy person with a life type way, not as I conceive that, no: no way.

The week I did on heroin that was however many weeks ago, must be approaching 2 weeks or more now... THEN I had had low-grade "symptoms" including hyper-osity with a feeling of disinhibition and euphoria and quickness ie "hypomania" however brief (can't remember: maybe only a couple of days) but there was other stuff in there, low grade voice hearing and depression that got increasingly bad between then and my more recently becoming hyper. Between then (near now) and then (back then) I felt low and I wanted to feel OK. But the heroin blocked out the last semblance of going a bit stardusty, for sure. On methadone "something" I always knew was inside me though never knew and still don't know what it's called ~ it's always been inside me. I've known that since my early 20s. Known it intuitively, stored it at the back of my mind where, for the first time in ... how long? It's aired. Like a revealing diary of long ago, this fragment that now makes sense... "I knew"... "all the way back then, I knew about now"...

weird

Anonymous said...

Gledwood, is the clinic weaning you off the methodone? As much as I believe in being 100% drug free (which includes alcohol), I do have concerns that coming off the methodone too quickly could really do some damage. From what I've heard methodone withdrawal is worse than heroin withdrawal. But what do I know? While I've taken methadone, I've never been "on" methadone. It does seem like you're on the right track, stay on this path and one day you'll look back and be stunned by how far you've come. The happiness, serenity, and sanity of recovery is worth all of the hard work. It's worth walking through hell, which is easier than living in hell.
And yes, we American's say "lift".

Syd said...

I am glad that you found some serenity in the meeting, if only for a while.

BMelonsLemonade said...

Gled, I think the italicized part of this post is a completely different "voice," to describe it with writer's jargon. I am glad you mentioned something about this is your comments because I wondered, at first, if you had done this on purpose. I wondered if you had intentionally used this different voice, and italicized it to represent an alter ego, of sorts, talking. I wondered if it was a creative choice to let this "other person" to speak...and I see that it was not intentional. Very interesting. I like the way your alter ego writes here....

Schizophrenia is not such a bad thing. One of my best friends is schizophrenic. I actually have two very dear friends who have been diagnosed schizophrenic. They hear those voices at times, too. The voices my girl Shannon hears a lot are always scaring her in regards to her aliens. You see, Shannon really likes aliens, and has all this alien paraphenalia. When she starts throwing all the alien stuff in her yard, I always know the voices have come back. My other friend Alicia's voices are more harsh, whispering all kinds nasty things that cause self doubt. I will tell you that Alicia and Shannon are two of the most interesting people I know. I love them both very much, and their madness only makes me love them more. They both try to manage their illness with meds, and sometimes they really help. Other times, things spin out of control despite the watchful eye. Did you ever check into that book by Lori Schiller?

Gledwood said...

Anon: i'm gonna do the weaning myself. if they dare put me on supervised consumption i'll just score methadone on the street. i'm not living to somebody else's idea of a body clock. i need mine really at night when no pharmacy is open, i drink the second dose very early morning as i hardly ever sleep without waking at least once, so i drink dose 2 between 4 and 6am usually unless i'm all over the place like now then it cycles later and later with my sleep

methadone withdrawal is said to be worse than heroin withdrawal because it goes on and on and on. why the hell they give it out i really have no idea. i question their sanity far more than my own

lift: never heard that from an American mouth it's always "hey cutie, want a ride?!"

Syd: interestingly although i still felt hyped up yesterday and very angry today i have never "hallucinated" in an na meeting. people have remarked on some serenity they feel well it must be there, it does something to me too

Gledwood said...

BMelons: do you think so? At the time I couldn't tell. I could when I wrote it, not when I read it back, as I was still in precisely the same frame of mind.

the italics show my thought pattern, which i wouldn't usually publish. i want a record of how i thought because it was going all over the place i really had difficulty making connection with people after the meeting. chopping up what i said/between people/yes/no/what?/stuff

schiz: i found out i do have symptoms. lack of volition yeah i do have it, have had it for years and yeah junkies get it my physical mess is way way worse than anything i have seen. at its worst it was considerably worse than anything i've seen on tv even and there have been 2 programmes about it

what's the other thing? yeah seeing everything through compound eyes what the hell is that? seeing 4, 5, 6 versions at once which all take my attention, though i can fight through it it takes some doing

and a feeling of being smashed up and fractured, like a kaleidoscope, where every bit lives but doesn't live in sync with the rest

i only think this because that fucking voice put the idea in my head and i wondered what these things were called. i am after all trying to chart my mental state no matter how unstable i or it feels or how fucking embarrassing, exposing, shaming, degrading it is to me. i've come this far, i feel like an internet prostitute already as if i've given away so much i shouldn't have, that a normal person would not do, that i just carry on regardless now. but it bothers me sometimes a lot

i know 2 schizophrenics and one schizo-affective (unipolar) there's nothing freaky or strange about any of them. they say some odd things sometimes that i don't believe but they're easier to get on with than the grandiose bipolars i've met that's for sure even though one is ultra-grandiose in his delusionality he lacks something of the boorishness that some maniacs can have it's hard to describe what i'm trying to say is despite the reputation i don't see them as very much different from a normal person

i'm leaving all reading for later. i only ever google a v specific question and glance it over. extended analysis of anything i cannot do. reading i can't do well. i can only really read my own stuff in detail bc i know what's there. other people's i have to keep on and on checking and re-looking at and stuff that's all metaphorical i can't take it makes me think more about the metaphors than whatever they are saying ukk!!

re my alter ego it was a choice to publish but not to write. i felt at first a bit actressy (sic) and "false" being real in this particular way because it's a very personal thing, how you actually think

BMelonsLemonade said...

Gled, I really like the italicized alter ego thing. I think it is ingenious, whether it was intentional or not. The whole thing got me thinking about so many story ideas...

I think the slice of your mind you give us is facsinating. And it is also VERY interesting. Who wants to be fucking normal, anyway? What is fucking normal, anyway? And who decides normal?

Baino said...

Stick with the methodone for a while. At least you get some peace at the meeting. Perhaps you could spend some time with friends as a distraction (clean friends). Keep it up hun. As for your question about hits . . don't give a shit about them really. Just the commenters. Bounce rate's about 87% but doesn't worry me. Normal is a cycle on a washing machine.

lizzydripping said...

dont get hung upon diagnosis its just a collection of symptomns - does it matter whether you have schizophrenia or bipolar? you are at times clearly suffering psychotic symptoms ,gleds this aint going to go away on its own i believe you ever need to learn ways to manageit and not through drinking or get some meds from the doctor, i am worried about you, you seem like a beautiful soul and it sounds like torture what you are going through.

great track by the way!

heres one for you

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCuwxDSFafM&feature=related

xx

Gledwood said...

Lizzie: I think I understand that some people are trying to reassure me by saying "you are coming away from lots of drugs and it's not at all unusual to feel really badly messed up in such a situation because you're seeing what you ARE... don't get hung up on some illness you dont even know you have..." type thing but it does sometimes feel like I'm seeing a beachball; they're seeing a pingpong ball. I don't know anything about Schizophrenia except that it involves 3 syndromes I can discribe ~ a paranoid one, a really fractured one (which I'm definitely not) and one where people move in a stereotypical way called catatonic which can't be me either... but I do see that I have symptoms that ARE associated with schiz more than bipolar. And I fucking hate this not knowing I feel upset enough as it is, if I let myself, so I try not to and I do have control over what I think and feel it just gets really really difficult sometimes I don't think people realize how it feels and I don't mean "it hurts and I suffer horribly" I mean "it feels really really WEIRD" that's the crux of it. Weird. Not pain. All the time when I write I feel somebody will think I'm just selfpitying or hypochondriizing. I got to the point where I HAVE to take care of myself I HAVE to worry about my health because my health got that fucking bad if I didn't I'd be negligent that is the simple fact if anyone disagrees they really really don't hear me and I tell it as it is that is the sad thing. If I were exaggerating I'd feel OK bc I'd be hiding behind something. I am hiding behind nothing but a hamsters face with a lot of uncomfortable truth in the public domain i'm not sure this is good for my sanity but fuck it i've done it haven't i. I am responsible for my actions. I am an adult. i think i'm a bit troubled, but i'm a grown man. i'm trying to be grown up in every way i can be i don't feel i always am... ukk thanks so much for all your support it is v appreciated

Baino: I don't have any clean friends except people i know from na and na are keeping a distance bc i am SURE they see the SCHISM between what I say and how I behave and suspect a little bit of drug induced lying might be going on i'm telling the truth. the mess they see is a mess of nothing, of having been on drugs, not still being on drugs they need to fucking ...
... no they don't i need to calm down. sorry. thanks for your comment. you're right about the washing machine

BMelons: really? I've thought like that quite a lot. In a way I wish I had blogged the peak of that really powerful "episode" as was. But I can tell you what it was BING BONG CLONG TING THING WITH A SING ING ING NNNNNGG. More breaking up that-a-ways than the other way. But memory is a trickster. Hence this blog! Thanks for your comment.

I'm starting to feel v self conscious. It's late I need a bit of sleep, that might be part of the prob. ha ha :-)

Gledwood said...

shit

Baino I do know people who used to use but are now on methadone but there's a little bit of fantasy going on sometimes bc in fact most do use, just not all the time

i just want to be around when drugs aren't, that's most important to me

i still haven't seen Rebs, who i need to text or i'll seem to be blowing hot and cold (yet again) ...

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