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!

Sunday, April 24, 2011

The Art of Living and Other Issues

TO START WITH, 2 VIDEOS I SAW LAST NIGHT THAT DISTURBED ME:

BIPOLAR BREAKDOWN ART
How I found this I have no idea. I wasn't looking for bipolar or art but it somehow spewed out of youtube.


I was high on coffee. One single black coffee stopped me sleeping last night. I thought I was doing so well.

It's the last colour picture on part one that I like; it reminds me of visions I have seen when I was out of it (mental out of it not drugs out of it). And it looks like the kind of picture I would draw if I could.

What freaked me out was the energy in that picture. By this time she's gone through paranoia and into grandiosity which is when you're really hyped up. She hadn't slept for seven days straight. Her mind was completely out of control. I somehow related and it scared me.

It pops up at 3 mins 52 it's the blue and yellow one.

[Don't be distracted by my psychedelic mouse: I'm talking about the blue and yellow picture on the Youtube screen Mental Breakdown Part 1 3 mins 52 in.]

Even her phrases like "cycling up" do my head in. Makes me think of a helterskelter. I spiralled up very high and stood on top of the immense cyclone, I stood exalted as high as any human being can ever go.

Then she talks about hallucinations and her art reminds me of my visions:

The last vision I saw, as opposed to a hallucination was when a blank wall suddenly turned into a moving abstract film in full colour. I had had about 4 hours sleep in 4 days (ie I'd done 2 days averaging 2 hours per day then 2 days with no sleep at all). Nothing has ever made me stay up for a week. Most I've ever done is 4 days on that nasty antideressant mirtazapine (Remeron). It made me manic then depressed.
I related to what this woman said being manic AND depressed AND psychotic and the energy and the not sleeping she talked about frightened me. And then I fell asleep. Around seven o'clock this morning.

Incidentally the blank wall was in the mental hospital reception. Where I saw that beautiful psychiatrist with shiny stockings. I was having immense trouble making myself understood beyond simply answering whatever questions were put to me. I was told I kept changing the subject. So no way could I explain about the wall breaking out into a fabulous movie.

I tried to tell her "Usually I need my sleep, but I don't need my sleep now because I have so much energy. Nonetheless it would be good if I had some zopiclone to sleep because then I could have some semblance of a sleep cycle. My body gets tired easily, even though I can't feel it now." And it was just impossible. I got the word Zopiclone out (a sleeping pill) and she gave me a 1 week supply.
That was before I went even HIGHER and started turning from human being (as I felt it) into energy-being.

As the mania came down I suddenly had this sense of being in my body again. My feet felt literally on the ground.

I had been living with the windows as wide open as they'd go in January. Hadn't realized I was cold until my hands froze up too much to type.

If you wonder why all this talk NOW it's because I'm scared of going mad. I'm scared of being sane. I can't handle that one either. I'm scared of being on heroin. Scared of not being on it. Scared of dying. Not scared of being dead.

How much of a mess is that?





I watched Gone With The Wind last night and it's really good.

I woke up this afternoon and have had no alcohol today. I went out and bought chocolate milk. Ironically a half litre of this is more expensive than a half litre of 7.5% ABV cyder!!

I didn't ring the dealer yesterday, didn't ring anyone today. Or see anyone. Or use anything bar a swig of methadone.

So Im doing good. I'm living on black coffee and the minimum food. I have about 4 cups a day (I say this in case anyone assumes "living on coffee" means 40 cups!). Yesterday I had one chicken tikka pilau and 2 full chicken legs. That has to be about 1200 calories. I have to watch what I eat, I don't want to get fat. I find eating offputting when I remember how I used to enjoy certain food directly after IV heroin. Heroin gave the most amazing savour to food. Part of me feels "how can I ever eat again". I knew I ought to work on breaking that heroin-food association while I was still on it.

Now my head has suddenly switched into "not using anymore" mode. The mode, but not the mood (the "elevated mood") I got into before. When I dropped heroin for several weeks on end.

I wish I could live. Actually live. Not just be alive but master the art of living. I know this is my challenge in life, but I don't even know how to start, let alone how to go on...


I hope this post isn't too much of a mess: I can't be doing with editing today

Illustrated: a psychedelic mouse! Yes a psychedelic mousie ha ha

ANNA GRACE: the way this guy talks is the way everybody sounded to me at one point:
http://gledwoodvideo.blogspot.com/2011/04/psychosis.html




HERE IS A TUNE!!
this is Elevated Mood

IT'S EXALTED



4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Okay, the last video reminds me of what you were writing when you were in your manic mode early this year. Keep in mind I didn't see you so I can't really judge how much alike you were with the man in the video.

The lady with the drawings I've had that before, and I do paint, and write for days straight with no sleep. I do enjoy those days. Yet I know those days are numbered and a depression will soon follow.

Which brings me to this. Why do you want to go phycotic manic again, when you know sooner or later your going to drop down into a black depression after it?

I know you don't want to hear this, but mood stablizers would be your best bet. I'm on them and I still have episodes. I may not medicated properly. Yet when I don't have a habbit I have even moods.

Thanks for those videos. Very informative. Your always very infomrative.

All my love
x

Gledwood said...

I don't want to be psychotic, just in a good mood. The only way I'm going to get into a good mood constantly is if I'm manic, and my mood keeps changing anyway. So I suppose I accepted going all over the place was a high possibility. Like I said in the post, psychosis scares me. When I went really really hyper my brain went past overdrive into a state where it was like letters of the alphabet flying all over the place but no words and it was ultra, ultra intense. Not even enjoyable just intense.

Thats why I feel stuck. Either go on meds that make me feel flat and dull. Or what?

I'm glad I found the video of that guy talking. It's a really good illustration of the nonsense people seemed to be talking to me. Weird how it works the other way round though.

I now feel a bit hyped up, my mood keeps swinging. I drank alcohol not even a whole can yet, just to try and calm down. Eventually my goal is to stop drinking altogether. I don't feel in the mood for opiates now so at least that one's out the window, for now at least.

Syd said...

I like it when you say that you are not going to do drugs. I wish that you would really mean that.

Gledwood said...

I do mean it when I say it. The overwhelming reason for using has been dysphoric moods that I'm trying to self-medicate. Of course I picked up this jargon from mental health services but reluctantly found out it's true. I'd rather just think I was using to get high but it's not as simple as that at all. If I didnt feel lousy I'd never feel any need to use. Which is what put a wedge between me and the teachers and the other students on the latest drugs awareness course I went on.

"I use drugs:
A because I enjoy wasting money
B because they make me high
C because life is lousy

We were supposed all to answer B because they make us high but that ISN'T what kept me using heroin for ages it was most definitely answer C because I hate the world we live in, because the end of the world is coming and I felt no reason for doing anything anyhow and because I was so bleak and full of despair without them. It had everything to do with feeling tolerably OK and far less to do with a "high". That's why crack was so easy to drop. All it gives is a shortlived "high". Heroin makes me feel markedly better all day when I take it. Anyway the high I got naturally when I was manic was way better than any crack high I've ever experienced. It seems crappo to run out speending money on something I felt blessed to receive: MANIC EPISODES. That natural high must've really bent my mind as afterwards I never felt the sae way again to using anything at all. I didn't need heroin and crack, which I'd given up anyway, seemed hopelessly sad. Just PAYING for something I was getting powerfully and free anyway. why on earth I accepted risperidone to take me down I'll never know. It did feel better being half manic on risperidone than full-blown uncontrollable mania which is just as irritable as it is euphoric. Highly intoxicating and very very hard to get one's head round that I'm not supposed to be that way when it actually felt better than any drug.

I was so vehemently against heroin when Naturally High it was unreal. That's why I want some of my mania back. Enough to feel good and be full-on anti-drugs would be fine by me!

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