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!

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Thought for the day: 7am

IT'S just before 7am. I've been up since 10 to 5. Terrible trouble sleeping. I keep waking up again and again in the night. Even when I try and get my head down my brainbox is chattering shite at me. Random words and phrases pinging about. It's like listening to a deranged band of nutters chatting down the mental hospital bar. Radio GaGa.

When I woke up the second timme I watched an episode of the Royle Family and had a fag. Then I pondered on why I had been so depressed. A lot of it had to do with me having a breakdown that turned everything upside down, then finding out I was labelled a schizo. My parents think I have taken it to heart too much. But what would you do if you found out you were a schizophrenic. Hearing voices and all. I haven't heard any lately, apart from the odd murmur. The walls don't talk these days. Point being: all my hopes for a future had instantly vanished. All I could see was myself half mad and overweight, off drugs but terminally lazy. Watching television for the rest of my life. Basically the life I've got now going on for ever. When I was young I had dreams and ambitions. I wanted to get in the Guinness Book of Records. I never thought I was a schizo. Even being bipolar was bad enough. I kept those mood swings hidden from doctors for years. Until they got so extreme I was just annoyed at having to accouht for why my life was a mess (on forms etc), writing "depression and drug addiction" in the medical box and knowing that was far from the entire truth.

I'd just about got my head round the fact that I appeared to be a type 1 bipolar (that's the nutty sort who hear voices); Katherine Zeta Jones is bipolar II which means horrible depression and hypomania which is an exaggerated good mood. Anyway I'd just got my head around the idea that I might actually be a manic depressive, when the doctor tells me I'm schizaffective! Manic depression and schizophrenia at once! I was totally stumped. Despite my persistent elevated mood that one really shut me up. I'd been jabbering away in that office not caring that I was mad. I was really careful not to give an overblown impression of the hallucinations. Left all the best ones out (parking meter turning into a really fit police woman; spectacular full-colour Northern Lights type display in my own house; Barrack Obama talking to me; fantastical psychedelic movies popping out of the walls etc) I never told him any of that. In fact I was quite careful to underline that nothing nutty happened all the time blah blah blah. I couldn't lie. I wasn't in a state to discern what was relevant from what wasn't so I just told all...

Loads of successful people have been bipolar. Ted Turner, founder of CNN; Beethoven; Lord Byron; Vincent Van Gogh; Virginia Woolf to name just four. Bipolar disorder is really trendy. Nobody's scared of it any more. I could still be a successful writer and be invited to lots of bourgeois dinner parties with bipolar. Schizophrenia is a totally different kettle of fish. How many famous schizos can you name? Apart from that bloke from the film A Beautiful Mind?? Yeah don't tell me: I'm going to have to be the first.

Well this is what was on my mind. And all I could think was how schizos are fat and slobby and lazy (basically what I am now). And how, even when I kicked heroin, I was never going to be OK. And how I would live the rest of my life on corned beef, methadone and daytime television. And how I might as well end it all now on the railway line. And how even if I didn't do it now (British trains don't run in the early hours) my lifetime odds of death by suicide were running at around 80%. I wasn't depressed when all this came to me. Just thinking clearly.

So I don't know how to fix my problems. But I'm still not taking heroin and I am cleaning my house.

Anna Grace is clucking off heroin. She actually wants to detox, and the detoxing has given her a manic episode.

I'm neither manic nor depressed. Just undulating. I get really excited over nothing. Then really depressed and want to cry. Then really tired. Then I can't sleep. You know: an in-between stage.

I hope Anna Grace is going to be OK. I thought she was going back down the methadone clinic. She said the local one wouldn't take her on because of her bipolar issues. They insisted on a 90-day rehabilitation sesh before they'd consider her. Anna was all set for a stint in a dual diagnosis place when she bottled out. I'm no-one to talk about bottling out of rehab. I was in twice in one year and ran out the door within days of entry, both times. I wouldn't mind a rehab full of nutters as much as one full of criminals. The criminal type all look down at me these days for having mental problems. Having been in both rehab and the nuthouse, I can vouch that nutters are far easier to get on with than crackhead junkies. At least nutters go mad in different ways. Addicts are so same-same-same they're frankly boring. I couldn't handle going nuts again in front of a bunch of junkies. That's what happens to me in rehab. So I'd have to go to a dual diangosis place, wouldn't I?

I hope Anna does manage to sort her problems. She never seems happy without drugs. Never was happy on them either. She's done far better than me as regards sticking to programmes. I never gave in a clean urine test until literally this year. Anna actually reduced her methadone, switched to Suboxone, which is an excellent treatment for anyone genuinely ready to be clean. She actually followed through on Suboxone until she was 100% clean and serene and sober. Still was miserable afterwards though. I don't know what Anna wants in life. She's been writing memoirs.

I wanted to be a writer too, but I much prefer fiction to fact. That's why Valerie flows from my pen so much more easily than my boring old self. As well as Valerie there's Boomer and Bruce and a new character I've invented but I'll let this person speak for themself when the time is right.

I know this post says nothing knew. But it's what was on my mind tonight. It's half past seven now. I don't know whether or not to go back to bed. I can get to the methadone chemist in the hour. Then that's today over and done with.

WISHING Y'ALL A FANTASTIC WEEKEND!!

3 comments:

Z said...

Hope you have a good weekend too, Gledwood.

Gledwood said...

cheers. its been OK

Syd said...

Take care Gleds.

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