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!

Friday, February 11, 2011

Anna Grace You Naughty Girl!

I WROTE SOME BABBLESOME CRAP at 3:30am that even I couldn't understand so I'm leaving it.

My friend Anna Grace "untruthed" about relapsing back on to heroin.
That is she said she DID relapse when she DIDN'T.

Somehow I wasn't too surprised and I do believe she's telling the truth now.

I believe her for these reasons:

1. I know Anna pretty well and she glorifies opiates a lot, yet doesn't use them. I know that if she was using over the last 2 years or so it was very light because heroin (or Dilaudid* which she also loves) take your life over completely and that would have shown.

Her reason, she said, for not using was that it upset her parents too much and she's living in their home. I said "if you truly wanted to use heroin, you'd just go out and do it whatever your parents thought".

When I wanted gear, I never gave anybody else's opinion a second thought. Or my own shame for that matter. When I wanted it I went out and got it immediately. Anna didn't do that, which tells me she isn't into it as much as she thinks she is.

2. Anna does have mental health problems very similar to mine but she's no weirdo and it would be very strange to say "I said I was on heroin but I'm actually not I just thought it would make me seem more interesting" and that not to be true.

The "heroin makes me more interesting bit" seems to be the crux of her problem. When she was on heroin, despite the misery and pain and being lost in it all, it probably gave her an Identity (that of the Junkie) and a purpose. It might be a purpose most people can live without ~ a desperate need to get funds, get heroin, get high, get more funds, get more heroin, use again... and so on. But you're always busy and never bored. I think Anna looked back to this time and romanticized it and though she gave up the drug she couldn't give up the fantasy.

She's booked into a Dual Diagnosis Rehab in about 2 weeks where for once she will get mental health treatment and addiction therapy at the same time. Anna is already on Suboxone (glorified Subutex) so she's done the nasty bit in switching on to that stuff (it puts you into withdrawal). Buprenorphine reduction is a walk in the park compared to a rapid methadone taper so she really should not find the detox hard.

Anna's mood issue is currently depression that just does not go away despite mood stabilizer, antipsychotic and antidepressants. I keep telling her that her meds aren't working the way they ought to and I hope this clinic will recognize this and tweak or better still switch them to something better.

She's on nightly sleep meds which I'm sure she'll be allowed to stay on for the sake of her mental stability. The "going 100% clean" thing isn't done in Dual Diagnosis where most patients are expected to be on medication long term if not life-long.

Dual Diagnosis means mental health problems as well as drug addiction. In practical terms this is usually severe depression, bipolar, schizo-affective or schizophrenia. With these conditions you do not play around with medications, so she'll get a much easier ride than she would in a straight rehab where you still find the rather dated attitude that using any psychiatric medication is the same as using heroin and crack when this patently is not true.

The rehabs I've been in were all "regular" ones where the street drug users prevail. There's lots of prison talk, lots of crime talk, everyone's full of front and "we're all in the same boat" (except we weren't: it was me getting the extra meds and endless counselling sessions, nobody else seemed to have a breakdown every time they detoxed...) This isn't the type of place you necessarily want to be if you have mental illness so she's definitely doing the right thing going to a specialist unit.

Good luck Anna!


*Dilaudid is hydromorphone. Diamorphine (pharmaceutical heroin) is banned in America (to back up the American government's fictitious and politically motivated claim that heroin "has no medical use") so hydromorphone, another semisynthetic opiate, is used in its place. Dilaudid is known in America as "hospital heroin". In British hospitals actual heroin is used when a powerful painkiller is required. Heroin is very occasionally prescribed to addicts here, but prescription is so rare you have practically no chance of getting a heroin script, hence the widespread heartache and misery of oral methadone which leaves addicts craving heroin all the time and using on top every single day they can afford it and feeling they have to bullshit the methadone clinic that they're doing really well when all the addicts I knew were doing terribly. For years I told them I was using on top "nearly every day" so when diamorphine therapy did come in I'd be first in line. Then I got a bitch worker who basically put me under blackmail and duress (literally) so I just lied and said I used twice a week. I might use twice a week on Mars, but not in London. Now I use zero times a week because I hate heroin. I'm turning back into my old self from the mid-90s. Someone who actually enjoyed being clean. Wow.

6 comments:

Memoirs of a Heroinhead said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Memoirs of a Heroinhead said...

Hiya Gledwood... (& You too Anna!!!)

Thanks for the little link in your side bar thats really nice. Just popping by to say "hello" really (<---- and that was it!!!)

Take care and Good health on the ever straigtening narrow....

Shane. X

Anonymous said...

Very good Gleds. Spot on.

Gledwood said...

Sorry Anna Babes your comment got dumped in Spam fuck knows why I thought you were ignoring me or really upset. Don't let no bastard upset you. Do you see how it's not the big deal you thought it was? Like I say Anna you need to keep straigth up from now on because that will make people lose patience but that lie you told was in a way just funny, I've never met someone who's an addict who pretended TO use I always pretended NOT to, like Valerie!

the guy in the silk taffeta dress said...

Great post,
Anna, she's unpredictable in a nice way:)

Anonymous said...

Buprenorphine reduction IS NOT a complete walk in the park. I found it just as difficult as Methadone (google Dr Scanlon-he claims it is the hardest opiate to withdraw off). If you are on it for over a month (I was on it for 4 years) its a botch to get off. Its a complete myth that is passed round about how easy this drug is to come off. The general knowledge about this drug is poor-I can tell you all about this drug through my bad experiences.

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