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!

Tuesday, June 07, 2011

Back from NA (ears open)

NARCOTICS ANONYMOUS was packed out. I kept my ears open and my mouth shut. I heard a lot about Resentments. I have realized from reading the AA Big Book that I'm full of Resentment. The more depressed I feel, the angrier I feel; the more resentful I feel towards nearly everything. Then I start to wonder whether I'm clinically depressed at all and not just a plain old Junkie, mired in self-deception, overflowing with Resentment in all directions. Now I realize I'm probably resentful and depressed at the same time. If I am self-deluded, I cannot by definition know that, can I?

What Resentment do drug addicts cultivate? Resentment at not being able to live life on life's terms. That phrase came up a lot tonight. Life on life's terms. Not something I'm at all good at.

One reason I'm keeping my mouth shut at meetings is that I'm afraid that anything I do say may be half listened to and used against me.

Example: self-medication.

Warning: to avoid yet another Junkie Rant, skip the italicized section... If it seems badly written, btw, it's because not even I am willing to read it back. So it stays as it was...

On a bad week people will assume I'm on drugs when I'm not. Then when I do use, they would seem pretty taken in if I claimed to be drug-free. Because when I use heroin I feel happier, calmer, less paranoid and my mood doesn't swing all over the place quite so much. To me this is the meaning of self-medication. It means using nonprescribed drugs as medication. It doesn't mean using drugs to chase a euphoria; it means using drugs to cope. Totally different thing. When I mentioned self-medication, a concept I took a long time to accept, at Intuitive Recovery, the group leader said "yeah I self-medicated with crack after my sister died". And that annoyed me. I've never ever seen anybody self-medicate with crack because crack doesn't have the effect of any medication. People who abuse uppers tend to burn themselves out pretty early. What goes up must come down; so they're chasing an impossibility, and most addicts realize this pretty quickly. Heroin always made me feel better all day, even when I just took a tiny bit on top of my methadone. It stabilized my mood for a long time. It doesn't seem to do that any more, which is why I think I'm wasting my time by taking it. There's a mood stabiizer called lamotrigine (Lamictal) which works better against depression than mania. That's the one I'd be willing to try. A mild state of mania isn't a mental illness at all. I need the energy of mania without psychosis or uncontrollable excitement it gets to at its extreme. Then I'd be OK.

The phrase "self-medication" by the way came from the same nut-nut-nurse who seemed to think I had some sort of personality disorder. I told her, eventually, how lousy I felt on methadone and she said "maybe you're self-medicating" ~ then did absolutely nothing to try and rectify the problem. The way she nurtured the idea I was somehow an anxious-avoidant or dependent personality is ridiculous. That's mistaking me for somebody who gives a shit. People with those types of personality tend to be unduly hung up on others' view of them. If I were like that, I'd hardly be keeping a blog like this now, would I?

I'm still in 2 minds whether or not to write an autobiography. I never wanted to be a memoirist. I don't really want my experience published. I suppose I'd be willing to prostitute myself in a literary way for the money. And to put into the world a cautionary tale that might hopefully put off at least one impressionable unhappy person from ever following in my footsteps. It's true the idea only came to me in a fit of despair. I wanted to leave behind a suicide note that might make my family some cash, and of course if I were to die, the manuscript would be many times more saleable. If I don't die
[oh bloody hell shut up will you. I'm not intending to die! I won't die. I won't!} then I'll use any cash I get to pay for private treatment. That means an injectable script, tapering down down down to Subutex. I wouldn't go to rehab, I'd go travelling instead. I'm not at all convinced that whittering on and on about my drugs problem is any way of staying clean (which is why I'd write the memoir while still dirty (methadone-dirty, at least). If I did ever manage to come off all opiates I think once I got 100% clean, I would want to stay as far away from them as possible ~ in thought as well as deed. Anyway maybe I should write my own misery memoir: I can't think of any other constructive thing to do...

Another reason I want to write my own memoir: I'm not convinced there are that many good ones. Certainly not drug-memoirs. I couldn't sell mine on the strength of my nutter credentials because my nutter-credentials are weak. While there's no question I'm a full-blown heroin addict I barely score a 2 on the nut-nut richter scale. I think in publishers' terms (and publishers do like to put things in categories) I'm more of a drug-addicted lost soul than a proper madman.

I did have all manner of ideas of how to promote my book, which I can't give away here because nobody's ever done them. But couldn't do them now. Because if I did try and publish my story I'd most definitely want to remain anonymous. Some of the worst details are just too awful to put my name to. I mean, at one point I just gave up on life so completely I was like a walking shadow. All I wished for was that I might die in the night, and I never did. Which angers me to this day when I think about it. There's so much that I don't want to think about that I'm going to have to, simply to be able to put it down in roughly chronological order, one self-inflicted misery and misfortune flowing from the next. But I'm willing to torture myself if I can get some cash out of it. I honestly can't see what proper job I'm ever going to be fit enough to do. So I'm willing to try my hand at writing. I always wanted to be a novelist when I was younger. Maybe I should write Valerie's memoirs too... Now we come back to the issue of drugs. I don't want to make a name for myself as a drug author or drug addict. Which is why I think I'd wish to remain anonymous. For a long time I didn't want to write a drug-memoir at all... Then I realized I wanted to leave behind at least one thing after I died... So maybe I should just write the fucking thing and leave the reasoning-out till afterwards.

Well I've gotta go. It's late.

Electroboy review. Knowing the outline of the book, despite not having read it, this review encapsulates many of my own reservations about Andy Behrman's story... Is he really a manic-depressive, or just a drug addict?
http://www.amazon.com/review/R3UX8FSBM70MWR/ref=cm_cr_pr_viewpnt#R3UX8FSBM70MWR


TALES OF THE RIVERBANK
To any of you of Christian bent, I do apologize for the Drought story yesterday btw, in which Hammy consults a wicked guinea pig witch in order to bring downpour to the riverbank....

LITTER BUGS
A hamster, a rat and a guinea swine go off in a hot air balloon...



GP'S MEDICINE

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi,I think you should really write a book,either a memoir or fiction or both!You might have more fun writing fiction,your enjoyment of writing spills over into your writing making it fun to read!Seriously Gledwood,I really think it would help you and give people pleasure,especially your humourous pieces....You need an outlet for all that energy and creativity,innit?
Annie x.

jams o donnell said...

I agree with Annie above. I have no doubt that you are capable of writing something people will want to read.

I'll be on hand for publicity shots of cpurse!

Gledwood said...

Annie: thanks. I would far rather write fiction. I never grew up wanting to be a memoirist, though I did want to write down the story of my childhood. Not necessarily for publication. I suppose I will write my life story down, just so it's there. Then I have the option of going or not going for publication....

Jams: yeah you can definitely do my author photograph. If I ever put my name to my book. Not sure I ever would want my memoir published in my own name.... but there you go!

I'm still writing the bloody thing down though.

Frankly I'd rather write Valerie, but Valerie can come 2nd...

Janice Seagraves said...

My brother got hooked on cocaine after our father died. I'm wondering now if that was his way of self medicating.

Write whatever you want to write, Gled. If you love what your writing it will come through.

Janice~

Gledwood said...

Well the idea for writing a memoir hit me, even though I never wanted to be a memoirist I thought if it's straightforward and easy then I'll do it. By "easy" I mean that I've got used to telling my own story - here for example. So I'm pondering it first then I can do it. Wow. Me actuallz doing something. Unhear of!

Furtheron said...

Good post.

the Living Life on Life's Terms thing - used to do my head in in early recovery. Main problem was that I had no flipping idea what people were talking about but slowly it started to come clearer to me that is was something I'd never done.

I'm better at it now - if I start to rise to anger about something or whinge or moan that is ok to a point but I have to either turn it to a constructive thing I will do to improve that situation - if not I have to let it go and accept it.

I love the phrase "living rent free in your head" I can allow people, places, things, situations all do that if I don't watch myself

Wish you well as ever...

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

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