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!

Monday, March 21, 2011

Sundry Talk

THIS IS the molecule of the designer drug "meow" (also stupidly called mephedrone) 4-methylmethcathinone. I tried it once. Somebody gave me a free sample and expected me to ask for more. I didn't. He said it had no comedown, which is true, it didn't have any comedown effect on mood (which is basically chemical depression; very similar to the down I get naturally). This stuff was like Ecstasy with cocaine on top. Except the cocaine lasted about three hours instead of half an hour. Just reading the wikipedia mephedrone article made my nose hurt in "euphoric" recall. (As NA call it.)

I know two people who died after taking mephedrone. The first one (who triggered the second suicide) was floridly psychotic from taking the stuff. He had a borderline personality disorder and he took mephedrone and became psychotic. She took it increasingly after his death. Then mephedrone was made illegal and she wouldn't have known where to get it on the black market (because it's taken by clubbers, not heroin addicts ~ two totally divergent scenes). At the end of the day you're just paying to be "moderately manic" when you take stuff like that. Though I'm distantly tempted to induce the state (because it did feel really really nice being manic). If I truly wanted to go "high" I could just stop taking my risperidone. Which I don't want to do. There's no guarantee I'd go up and I feel weird enough as it is ON antipsychotic; without it I know Id be hearing voices etc etc.

Warning: 3 mental paragraphs follow, so skip it if you're tired of mad-talk:~

Eg today I was tired, so I retreated to a park bench where I drank cherry flavoured Latvian cyder named Fizzzz (I love cherry Fizz!) during the course of this decampment I saw the concrete path before me turn into a grey river. If my feet hadn't been on the concrete, so I knew it was not liquid I might have gone into one on this bench, believing I was stranded in a boat in water. I never used to see the path turn into water before I was "mentally ill". It was heroin that kept me sane. How ironic is that. Heroin blocked mood cycles (though it kept me depressed) I barely got manic on heroin. I got manic enough to be horrified at the wikipedia article on "racing thoughts" in bipolar disorder. It was a portrait of my experience when I used to go off on one in my house, long before I got called "schizoaffective". Bipolar symptoms a couple of years ago, and I wasn't on crack.

So I'm tired today; I never seemed to get enough sleep. I'm sleeping OK. I'm not under sleeping nor over (well, not much over) but my sleep is all over the place. I sleep at night then I don't sleep at night. Then I sleep by day and at night. Then I feel tired then I feel weird. Then I do feel depressed. Then I just feel flat. Then I feel odd again. It's all like the "depression" I had for years on end, only punctuated by little blips of hyped up high (kind of bipolar). The only full mania I've had was recently. It cycled constantly back and forth between higher and lower levels of mania and mania and a sour mood then back to mania. I got very very high on this mania. Higher than I've ever been low. I started going higher than I have even heard described and I knew what bipolar did. I've read An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison. I know you see Death and blood goes everywhere! I didn't see death I just turned into a roaring noise. See this is what happens when I go mad. Now I have something to be frightened of, because I lost my sanity to a Noise. All thought turned into this nosie and I was yelling and screaming enough that I can see everyone in my house now thinks I'm not just a junkie but a nutter-junkie too. See, if I think about this I'm scared and not scared. This clanging thing happened intensely every day and in the end instead of backing off from it I went through it and stood on top of the cyclone and that meant a feeling of standing on top of the universe.

I saw that Trisch Goes Nuts video the other day and was horrified to read underneath that I thought she was "just a bit manic" ("moderately manic" was the wording). When I actually was hyper I thought that video was so hilarious, that's why it's up there. But bloody hell if that's moderate then what is severe? I know I went severe I just don't like to think of what I looked like.


I am watching some Japanese children on TV. One just found her school bag in the wreckage of her tsunami-flattened house. She said (defiantly, I thought, or bravely): "but I like living by the sea" and I thought "that's my girl".

Speaking of the news: what the hell are we doing in Libya. Is it just so we can have cheap petrol (that's gasoline to you Americans)..? I'm sure it has far more to do with that than protecting Arabs' liberties. The liberty protection is just the excuse. They did nothing when Mugabe went totally nuts in Zimbabwe, did they? And what's the difference between Zimbabwe and Libya? More elephants, less oil!

Now I must go I hope this isn't too much of a mess. I am washing clothes in the sink then going to sleep. I'm exhausted.

Illustrated: meow-molecule; a funky blue walled bathroom. I want walls this colour and will have them soon...

8 comments:

Bimbimbie said...

You can't help but be struck and admire the calmness and dignity of the Japanese public dealing with the aftermath of the disaster. A big contrast to the disorder what we have seen in recent years from other countries*!*

Bimbimbie said...

ah! that not what ;)

Gledwood said...

"disorder what we have seen" you know i always imagine you talking like that!!!

those poor Japanese, why did it have to happen to them?

Syd said...

The Japanese are amazing. They will need all their resolve to get through this terrible time.

Libya seems troubling to me. What are we doing there?

Gledwood said...

They have culture. We don't!

bugerlugs63 said...

wen i went for first lung function test and told guy in test room i was on heroin & methADONE, he says. . ."that methadone is illegal now"
hmnmm . . .junior drs.
Libya . . .yes u right "we" would not be there unless it was to benfit "us". arseholes that we are.
not learnt from Iraq.
C im trying to remain on topic of post today ;-)
love the tune. Who did the really slow sad version of it. was it Mark Almond or similar? REM? cant recall.
Japan, Why them . . .?
I think sooner rather than later it will be us all. just in random order.no one deserves it . . . only those responsible for fucking up the earth and thinking "we" can control nature thats "us", arrogant,superior,greedy,money obsessed, religious yet Godless, selfish, disatisfied,ungrateful(for nature)humans again.
obviously not all of us, but the majority, and majority rules or thinks it does.
rant over.
what is sarsparilla? sounds yum.
hope u enjoying the warmth
with love
x

Anonymous said...

Gary Jules does the slow version to the person above.

So I bought some Oxycontins. I also bought some syringes. You know how when you get excited about something and you feel like you have to poop, well I have that feeling right now. I'm sooooooooooo excited. I'm only using half one 80mg.

I'm not going to blog about it, because people will think I'm lying again. I don't plan on doing this very often, but once in a while, sort of like you do. Unlike you though I'm excited, and your repulsed.

I gotta go and get this over with. Nodnodnodnod!!!!!!!!!!!!

Gledwood said...

BUGGERLUGZ: what is sarsparilla? Some weird herbal stuff? I don't know.

I agree with everything you say re Iraq/Libya.

Does a junior doctor really not know what methadone is? I never cease to be amazed how little they know about the "issues" surrounding opiate addiction. I NEED to get off opiates INCLUDING METHADONE before this country falls which it will do very quickly and nobody will have a script left to collect.

Are you interested in going on subutexes? I am but I'm on FAR too much juice even to consider it.

I want off I want off I want OFF!!

ANNA GRACE: I like the slow one as well. Do you know this video was produced as a school project? Maybe I should have put that up...?

You got oxycondoms? BE CAREFUL PLEASE your tolerance is down be careful PLEASE. You have zero tolerance BE CAREFUL I DON'T WANT YOU TO DIE :-)

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