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!

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

A Sense of Responsibility

08:54 I DIDN'T SLEEP at all well last night, but officially got up around 5 or 6 or 7, after surfing the net in bed (as a way of falling asleep without knowing it, I wasn't surfing intensely I was pottering about blogs I should have been but have not been, in a highly random fashion. Which means I probably never got to any of y'all actually reading! Sorry. Seriously poor attention span going on here. Imagine taking a sound recording, razor editing to cut/cu-/-t/b-/-its/out it's kind of like that. Which means pictures can actually be easier to deal with than words. The sudden accelerations I had a few days ago have mostly gone, at least they're nowhere near as intense. Whenever something stressed me, or just because it happened, I had a feeling of foot on the accelerator and me flying into a vortex hyper-whirlwind thing which you could imagine as rapidly swirling letters of the alphabet, where sound and thought were one and the same. Which is why if you saw me doing that you'd probably think I'd gone truly cuckoo because I know there were times I was saying it. The only bad one (in a social sense) was when this is going on and the phone rings... ukkk I think I explained that one before. It was not good, not pretty, I'm not proud. I was trying, trying to keep a lid on my behaviour. I'd love to see what someone else would have done. I'm sure a lot of people would have done more of the yelling and less of the deliberate, conscious calming down.

I could have compared it to losing your temper, as that is intense; and you can cool down over the course of a few hours (if you really badly lose it, which I only remember doing once) but this is way more intense, hyper intense, more out of it by a factor of thousands. So the calming down involves a kind of detachment from something that is still going on to a near-infinitesimal degree and eventually you drift further apart and IT calms down (in a sense) after you do. I don't know whether I'm explaining well at all.

Today is my clean day which means I'm cleaning my house. I hadn't the focus to do that before. Bear in mind I was utterly dishevelled with random braids going down one side of my hair, where I'd distractedly plaited it as something to do. Had no clean clothes (and still really don't what I do have is badly handwashed: the laundrette is either too slow and too much just too much stuff going on to do and remember when I'm too intense, or a paranoia headfuck. The paranoia is easier to get through because when I feel that way I tend to be going slower. In the fast zones I feel fantastic and fantastical. No drug has ever lifted me that high. Ever. They call amphetamines "speed"...? Why? Nobody on speed is any faster than by maybe a factor of two or three. And the euphoria of speed, cocaine etc is kind of concentrated, like a golf ball or a tennis ball of white light. This is a beachball with more light, but the light can be slightly more diffuse, which makes you think there's less of it when there's still more. This is the difference. And as for speed, I don't ever remember not following people. Not like this. This has gone way beyond the Can't Be Bothereds into the Just Can'ts.

If I don't write this down I'll start kidding myself, later, that it somehow wasn't quite like this, the way it was. That this is an exaggeration. When I can witness now, this is the truth. And I accept it's not all pretty. I know I have been falling apart. (Why do you think I've been trying to get help?

Main reason for seeking help is because housing problems are reaching a peak and I need somebody who can vouch for me, somebody who knows each professional I'm in touch with. That's all I'm asking. A bit of link up for someone who's lost the links. Nobody can cure me. Nobody can sort out my life bar me. I never ever said that and if you think you read that I suggest you read wrong. Why do you think I hated being addicted to drugs so very much? I'm an INdependent person. Yes I might have aspects of me, just as there are aspects of you, that occasionally like to depend. But in heart and in spirit I'm not motivated by others' evaluation of me (I just try and be nice) and I don't like having other people running my life like I'm a 3 year old. Just remember there is nobody alive who has no responsibility.

Seriously ill people in hospital do fight for their lives. Fighting to stay alive, that is a responsibility. But you could look at somebody stretched out full of tubes and not there and secretly in some tiny way envy them because they're not subject to the stresses you are. Actually they might be subject to more.

Here endeth the Morning Proclamation!

3 comments:

Syd said...

Yep, every day of living has some responsibility. But that's okay with me. I have been so responsible for so long that just having the boat and going off for a few days is irresponsible for me. But it is nice. And I derive much joy from not working now and being as free as I can.

Akelamalu said...

That's what being an adult is all about - taking responsibility. Is that what you're doing? I'm not sure what you're talking about lately m'dear, I'm truly not :(

Gledwood said...

AKELAMALU: yeah because I have to otherwise I'd do something stupid.

I have to clean my house.
I have to see a dr.
I have to get this social worker/type person arranged.

That's what I'm doing.

If they gave me one appointment a day I'd go. I also go to the mentally ill drugs club which is better than NA as NA are drug-and-recovery focused. These people were all high last week and nobody looked like (or gave the vibe that) they were on drugs (the high was a fast uppers high, not heroin, like we all seemed at some point to have been using). The conversation centred around where voices come from when they go into the head (front back left right, where?) etc. One thing I've noticed before: drugs and using barely ever come up. In fact I don't recall them ever coming up there.

That's what I'm doing. I was so cabbaged, physically, today I had to go to bed all day. I was about to have a panic attack, I felt ill and sick and I had to go to bed.

I don't know what else I can do. Seriously.

SYD: even on a boat you're still responsible for not crashing it. We're all still responsibile at all times.

I gotta learn to be responsible for more I don't know how you do that except by just doing it. "Baby steps", as they say!

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