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, May 20, 2011

Asparagus Cup A Soup



IT'S nearly half past seven in the morning. I got up at 5. Drank the methadone which came on about half an hour ago. I don't feel freezing cold anymore. I'm trying to hold out for another hour when Morrisons will be open for 8x Asparagus Cup A Soups for £1.50 (with croutons). You have to be so careful when selecting Cup A Soup varieties. Not every single one has croutons in it, which could spell tragedy if you're planning to watch lots of television that night.

Well I went to bed at 3pm yesterday. I don't remember much about yesterday because I was stone cold sober and not taking drugs (nothing to remember, you could argue). I remember talking to the mental nurse about insomnia and she says "yeah it makes you feel wiry and hyped up" and I thought WHAT?? Not sleeping used to just make me irritable and drowsy. Ever since I went nuts in December, it does make my mind race, which is really good fun. I was humming tunes all up and down the High Road yesterday.

I got some new pills. The chemist was quibbling that the address on the anti-psycho pills is different from the one on my methadone. That is because the antipsycho pills come from my GP. I live outside the GP's catchment area now. So I can't inform them, otherwise I'll get chucked off their books and have no doctor (yet again). The trainee girl at my chemists really hates doling out methadone. It's a class A drug, same as diamorphine (though nowhere near as exciting, at least diamorphine comes in injectable amps; these days methadone is nearly always a nasty thick syrup).... Methadone either comes pre-mixed, or else the pharmacist must sully a gram of beautiful shiny white powder by tipping it into a litre bottle of nasty gloop. I heard in the olden days some chemists would just give you your methadone dry so you could inject it at home. That doesn't happen now. (I wish I had an old-fashioned chemist though.) The younger generation hate even handling it. The slightest spillages must be written up. Every dose must be signed and countersigned. It's a real pain. She keeps checking my address and date of birth even though I've been coming in for over 2 years.

Well I used no heroin yesterday and drank so little alcohol it was nearly all sat on the side untouched this morning. The yearning for gear is diminishing as we speak. I wish they'd at least prescribe injectable methadone amps at my clinic. If they did, I might have had a chance to give up years ago. The clinic don't really care how anyone's doing. As long as their jobs are safe, that's all they care about.

Once I'm stabilized back on the crappy gunk I need to get off it as fast as possible. It's still my goal to go on to Suboxone, but I wouldn't trust the clinic to handle the switchover. I'd rather do it myself, using Suboxone I've bought on the street. You can cut down buprenorphine at a rate of 1mg per day without feeling any untoward effects. But the changeover from methadone to Suboxone is traumatic. They should really switch you to something short acting like dihydrocodeine for a week first. But they don't. They tell you to stop taking methadone for 2 or 3 days and get really ill. So what people actually do is go on to heroin for a few days without telling the clinic. Then you let the heroin start to detox out of you and take the Suboxone somewhere between 12 and 18 hours after your last dose. With methadone you have to go 48 hours which is too long to feel ill. And you have an inept titration nurse supervising the torture. I'd rather be shot through the head than go through that.

Well there's no news. It's 10 to 8. Morrisons will be opening in about half an hour so I'll be sorted for Asparagus soup before we know it. I could do with one of their cheese and red peppers breads to dip in it.

I wonder if they do currant flavour Club biscuits? Those are really nice with a cup of tea. The Royle family eat Club biscuits, you know. They also eat Waggon Wheels, which are yucky. And Kit Kats which I was never that into. A health food nutter once told me Kit Kats contain blood from pigs' brains. I'm sure they had a source high up in the factory keeping them informed.

There's nothing else to write so I've got to go. More bloody methadone to collect. I hate that stuff. See ya later.

7 comments:

bugerlugs63 said...

hi,
you know if you walk round your flat with a fag on, do you find ashtrays for the ash, or just let it fall on the floor?
don't answer if this is too personal ;-)
not had much time to comment recently as got 18 furry swine roborovskis now, I kid u not. can i post a few to you? next day delivery on the train, they would be fine ;-)
still reading you, totally agree with the insistence on croutons, I like tomato with croutons, cus im common as muck!
with love as always
di
x

Gledwood said...

Morrisons Value canned tomato soup is really good. I doesn't taste of just sugar and salt like Heinz... more like what you'd expect from the Covent Garden Soup Company.

Sometimes I just tap the ash on the floor then sweep up afterwards. But I do try and use ashtrays these days (for years I didn't even own one, at least not one I could ever find when my fag had 2 inches of ash on the end).

I now have about 6 or 7 ashtrays. I emptied them all out this morning and put my dirty washing in a big bag in the corner, cleared a load of DVDs off the floor. The room looks slightly different.

I was too paralysed in some kind of lazy despair to do anything before. I remember looking around not having a clue what to do. It took 2 days of musing on the subject to realize what I have to do is instead of clearing up bits and pieces, to clear each bit totally right down to nothing, as if the Queen were coming round. So thats my strategy from now on...

You have 18 robos? Wow. Have you ever tried emptying them all in the bath to see them ping around? They look really funny if you do that. Like furry Scaletrix. You need to put the plug in as my old Itchy used to shove her head down the hole, one day she nearly vanished down it (through the hair-catcher!)

PS I wish there was an Asda near me. Their stuff seems to be really good value... or is it just their advertising?!?!

Anonymous said...

Man you and your crutons. Its as if you live and die by them. LOL!

This post made me laugh hystarically, pigs blood in Kit Kats. She sure does have a source high up in the company.

Anonymous said...

I sent you important email. I need help with the book, and I thought of you immediatly. Your the only one I trust who has read the book, or part anyway. If you need the rest please email me, and email and tell me if you can do what I ask of you in the email. Its super important. PLEASE!

Anonymous said...

hey

Syd said...

Glad that you had a reasonable day. That asparagus soup sounds great. I have fresh asparagus as much as I can.

Gledwood said...

Anna: I'm just about to check the email NOW at long last!!

Yeah man CROUTONS are the new love of my life.....

..... (apart from you (only you're not on sale at 12 sachets for £1.50 own brand chicken and vegetable flavour in Morrisons..!!))

Syd: yeah the asparagus soup actually has cut through chunks of dried up REAL asparagus~!!!

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