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, May 24, 2011

Clean Clothes


I WENT TO THE LAUNDRETTE TODAY ~ at long last. The trip was over 2 months overdue. I've been handwashing and wearing out my dwindling supply of clean clothes for the longest possible time. I trudged my huge tartan bag all the way there, loaded it in the £3 machine quick enough to avoid the uptight assistant who seems to take great joy in telling me I'm overloading the machine. Piled the stuff in. Door shut money in and... It wouldn't start. The surly assistant had to shimmy over and press the door in for ten seconds. With my clothes safely whirlig round I went outside for a cyder and a fag.

Instead of taking my clothes home wet, like I used to when I spent every spare penny on heroin, I actually paid £2.50 to dry them.

I've been in a much better mood since yesterday's outing and encounter with the tiny tits and sparrows down the park.

I had a psychic interlude yesterday that made my head go a peculiar. I felt ill when I posted last night. As I said, I felt like I'd been abusing crack (though I haven't touched crack in a long time). When I did eventually get to sleep, I had vivid dreams about bursting through think ice at the top of the world and falling down from my old school through a crack in reality to the North Pole. I had incredibly vivid dreams until I woke up four hours later at 8am. I didn't want to get up that early. It's Money Monday. I used to get up first thing when I got paid, so I could take my money straight to the heroin dealer. I don't want to be on heroin anymore...

... But I screwed that one up by hitting up £20 in the morning and then another £15 this afternoon. I decided I really need Narcotics Anonymous.

My travels through the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book have taught me that I'm full of what they call "Resentment". In my recent bad mood I've felt resentment regarding just about every aspect of life. I think NA would say this is the bitterness of the addict who's unwilling to live life on life's terms. My thoughts have been full of anger that the one substance that makes me feel OK is not freely on sale from every corner pharmacy. I'm angry at having given in and opted to stick to prescribed oral methadone therapy. As I just might have mentioned before, I loathe being on methadone.

I feel I have cause to feel unhappy about this: medical officials like to say that methadone brings stability to the chaotic lives of addicts. Far from bringing stability, methadone brought me insanity. I was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder when I was on methadone. Surely you need to be pretty UNstable and far gone to warrant that label..?

Here's another point where my experience is at odds with NA's philosophy. NA call active addiction "insanity". But I found madness on methadone therapy, trying to go clean! Though I was unwilling to admit it at the time, my heroin use was a type of self-medication. To me, my drug of choice was a mood stabilizer and antipsychotic ~ and it worked. Opiates do have recognized antipsychotic effects; it's just taboo for the mainstream medical establishment to recognize this fact.

So anyway I've been drowning in this bitterness, which you could label a symptom of depression, or a feature of my drug-addiction. Or both.

Tonight I don't feel bitter at all. Tonight I feel pretty much OK... then I remember I'm stoked up on £35 worth of gear. Maybe I won't feel as good as this tomorrow... who knows? Tomorrow I've decided to go back to NA.

I could have gone to NA tonight, but I found myself trudging back from the carpark where I met my second dealer and hanging outside the venue for tonight's meeting in the rain half an hour before opening, thinking "I've got gear on me, and the meeting won't be over for two hours..." So I took the bus home and decided to leave NA until tomorrow when I'm clean. Tuesday night's meeting is the one I ran out of last time because the room was too crowded with people smelling of bodily secretions.

My life has to hit a turning point sooner or later; only I can do the manoevring to turn it around. I decided I wanted a better life, if I can have one. Problem was, I was depressed enough not to see any future at all. I've decided endless times to push through, "doing the right thing" no matter how bad I feel... But these resolutions were invariably made when I was high on gear. Once the gear had faded and I had only methadone holding me, depression had me powerless in its grip once more and I was too weak, too paralysed, to move on anywhere further than my drug dealer's.

I had a lot of Resentment against NA for having been treated as if I was high on drugs, when I was high on my manic episode. Of course anybody who turns up at an antidrugs meeting hyped up, agitated and very wiry is going to make people think they've been using. That was not the issue. I'm upset with NA because I made it abundantly clear that I was NOT using, yet I still got a slew of comments about "once you drop the drugs..." etc etc.

I hadn't been listened to, hadn't been believed.

I came to NA expecting to find understanding and acceptance. But I don't feel understood, and I feel rejected by them, because THEY could not accept the truth. I brought up NA at a dual diagnosis Nutter Club meeting I used to go to (before it got closed down). Nobody else from Nutter Club ever went to NA. There was one woman who was so depressed the first time I met her that she'd been sitting down the park at midnight thinking it was midday. She had been told she felt that way because she "wasn't working the steps". Another person had been advised to stop taking his schizophrenia medication as it was "using". I caused uproarious laughter by declaring if anyone from NA told me to stop taking my meds, I'd retort "yeah: as long as I come off it in your house". Naomi thought that was hilarious.

NA have definite shortcomings around the mental health issue and the more I pondered them, the angrier I got. In the end I told myself you just have to accept a group like NA for what they are and what they do. They do Recovery very well. Recovery and "learning to live life on life's terms". NA members describe themselves as "clean and serene" and it's their serenity I'm after. They say "if you want what we have..." and I do want it. So I decided I would be wise not to chuck out the baby with the bathwater. And besides, I don't like harbouring resentments.

I'm just annoyed that a "normal" person is allowed to come in and describe their depression or their anxiety, their mood swings or their anger at life. But my mood swings are too "psychiatric", too extreme, to be acceptable to a group like NA. If I were to talk about them in any detail I know I'll be labelled a nutter and subtly pushed away.

If I can't be accepted for who I am, I don't know that I could ever be happy there...

Well I'm still going tomorrow... so I'll let ya know how I get on...


HEROIN AND PSYCHOSIS
Severe dependence on cannabis and psychostimulants is associated with a higher risk of psychosis and is in contrast to severe dependence on heroin, which has a negative relationship with psychosis.
http://bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/full/181/5/393




illustrated: a tiny tit like the ones in my local park ~~~~~~~~ this one's a blue tit; great tits are slightly bigger (like colourful tubby sparrows)


16 comments:

Baino said...

You know what's really sad, that you make so much sense when you're well, smacked out . . .it's so hard to make that same sense clean. Doesn't seem right does it. Good luck with NA, it can't hurt and might do some good, persevere dear boy, persevere.

jams o donnell said...

I know it is so easy for me to say Gledwood but you can do it.

Akelamalu said...

Clean clothes should go some way to making you feel a little better. x

Sarcastic Bastard said...

The main thing is you are trying to do better.

You know I love you.

Welshcakes Limoncello said...

I think you are making great strides, GLeds. I love sparrows, too.

lizzydripping said...

helloooooo! just wanted to say i am still reading just in a bit of a bad place myself at the mo.
big lovex

Gattina said...

There was one sentence which stroke me in he comment you left on my blog "remind me very much of the townhouse i used to live in when i was a fully paid-up member of the bourgeoisie (some years ago)" What the heck happened that you fell in such a deep hole and hell ? You don't even have the excuse of an unhappy teenager.
and now you complain that you can't be accepted for who you are, but that's difficult, because you don't know yourself who you are at this moment.

Janice Seagraves said...

Keeping trying, Gled.

You can do it. I believe in you.

bugerlugs63 said...

"I dont want to be on heroin anymore . . .
but I screwed that up by scoring"

I can so relate to that and i know its not nmeant to be funny . .but it made me howl ;-) only because its so familiar . .and so honest.
you seem to be "engaging" a bit more recently, and dare i say , taking advice?
so I gonna repeat all my advice . . not really ;-)

but the park , yes, yes and thrice yes!!!
voluntary work, yes Gardening, gardening and more gardening!!
I wont go on (much as i would love to)
boy next door has taken 2 robos ;-(
only got 16 now!! best get rampant reggie on the case LOL
bless him (the boy next door , not reggie) he came round with his cage all ready with toys, wheel boxes, cardboard tubes etc (as advised)
and they only next door so i can still spy on them! and listen for the wheel at night! (not really, but i did tell him, he must never stop the wheel)
Shit, im going on again innit? ok im off cus i wont stop otherwise, yes asda r brill. Box of 20 mixed bhajis, pakoras ,samosas £2. like they are £3 for about 6 in sains & no where near as good!
I really going now . . .going ,going , gone man
real gone ;-)
with love
di
x

bugerlugs63 said...

ps, my sodding son has put a picture on my profile when i comment . . i wouldn't know how to!, and he has changed it . . .swine! unfurry swine!

bugerlugs63 said...

pps.
Yes would love to put all robos in bath but every female would prob be x 5 with Reggie the stud in there.
and "your" strategy:-) of cleaning small bit at time is spot on.
think i suggested (before u were listening) do just one corner, one armchair, one shelf, one anything a day even, but do it with all your might, till it fit to eat off, then do another when u feel the mood take you. I just cant fucking shut up can i?
hey word verify on last one was prolog (ha ha) now its dertivil!
dirty ville love it.
MUST go
x or anagram of dirt evil
which is very telling x

Spindrift said...

word up dear fellow:o)

Gledwood said...

Baino: I decided to go to NA and I'm not keeping my own story a secret, but I'm not sure it's a good thing to make madness sound like my identity, else they will identify me as crazy and that's it. Most of them know what psychosis is like because they've either experienced it or seen it via crack. The major difference with mine off the crack was much lower paranoia and higher euphoria and much more random hallucinations and confusion. Crack psychosis is paranoia. But they should still get what I'm saying. I just feel alienated from them because they don't seem to understand it or me!

Jams: aye; I might even go back to NA tonight, if I can find a meeting...

Akelamalu: yes! They mean I can do stuff like go back to NA without feeling really crappy in there

SB: trying, yes....

Welshcakes: the sparrows all sat in a bush on Sunday, one with really springy branches ~ and just chirped at one another. I'm not sure what they were doing or what they were saying, but they seemed to find it really exciting in this bush!

Gledwood said...

Lizzy: I hope you clamber out soon. Get some antidepressants if you're depressed. They might help you sleep better if you're not sleeping. Mirtazapine is good for sleep and gives psychedelic dreams ;-)

Gattina: my teenage years were OK but my childhood wasn't. I was v unhappy after my parents divorced. It wasn't that anything particularly bad happened, my reaction to it was bad though :-(

I was fascinated to try heroin because it was forbidden fruit, but never hung out with addicts until I made friends with some and even then it took 2 or 3 years to turn into one... which is really ridiculous I know I don't know why I did it, except that I was unhappy and the addicts accepted me for how I was (not happy) and the drug definitely made me feel better, which no other drug had ever done. Other drugs tended to make me feel worse in the short term so it was obvious they were no answer.... heroin was much more deceptive (unfortunately)...

Janice: thanks, I will :-)

Buggerlugz: I used to think pakoras were called Pakrits. But Pakrits mean "modern Indian languages derived from Sanscrit" as in Hindi, Gujurati, Bengali etc..!

I don't know v much about gardening though I do know someone who does it as a hobby...

yeah I was wondering how you wold tell which robo was who after they'd all pinged in the bath together... it's a shame as they do look really entertaining doing it, just like Furry Scalectrix...!!

To alter your profile picture you need to go into profile with either a url for one (like I did) or one inside your computer... which I don't know how to do I'm afraid...

If Reggie is the stud hamster, who is Anchovy??

Spindrift: should I word up or wise up..???!!!

;-/

sri @ Scaffolding chennai said...

I saw all article its really reasonable good keep it up. The article is good reasonable fine. Nice posting am in the field. I happy to say this you are good to update your blog keep it up. All the best for your all successful project

Gledwood said...

I've been to Chennai and must say the quality of the scaffolding out there was exemplary. I'll keep your company at the TOP OF MY LIST next time I have scaffolding requirements in Tamil Nadu.

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