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, June 12, 2011

Bees and wasps and Japanese hornets

I'M STILL SLEEPING hours and hours: all night then half the day as well. I'm fighting against depression. When I wake up my head is full of horror: I cannot imagine anything that would make life worth living. I keep telling myself to take one thing at a time. My house is more of a mess for my attempts to clean it. Recently I lost an important piece of paper and tore the place apart searching for it. I still have no idea where my old passport has gone. I need that passport. Even though it's out of date, it's the only proper form of ID I have.

I keep telling myself I ought to get off my arse and get a job. There was a programme on telly only the other night telling how all the sick and disabled are to be thrown off benefits and forced to work. What job could I possibly do? I'm qualified for nothing. I used to enjoy working with people but that would be very hard now. Ever since I went psycho I can't bear to be in crowds, can't handle looking into people's eyes. They make me too paranoid. Sometimes I feel the government is trying to hound me into suicide. Nothing makes me want to live more than knowing somebody wants me to die! Yeah: sheer bloodymindedness will see me through!

I tried to do some research on whether or not methadone works as a mood stabilizer. I suspect that in many people it does. Heroin certainly does on me and far more than methadone ever did. And this is where I ran into problems. With methadone not stabilizing me, my mood plummeted. During the worst period I couldn't even handle my fortnightly appointments at the methadone clinic without first dosing myself up on heroin. I couldn't handle the pain.

When I feel the way I do now, there's almost no subject that doesn't put me in an angry or negative mood. Even the Chinese language annoys me, because they simplified their characters after World War II. The whole joy of Asian langauges is that they are complicated. So simplified Chinese is a sheeer offence against nature! The Japanese simplified many of their characters too, but they strayed nowhere near the vulgar excesses of the Chinese who, for example, hacked horse from 馬 into 马. Whoever's responsible for that travesty should be shot between the eyes.

Anything that remotely impinges on politics annoys the living crap out of me. London annoys me because it is too small, underpopulated with irritating compromise-skyscrapers: tall enough to be a blot on the landscape and totally out of character with traditional London; nowhere near tall enough to be internationally impressive. Anything to do with addiction treatment annoys me beyond the pale because addicts should be offered injectable diamorphine prescription (or else shot dead). Something drastic should be done and methadone is just a toxic compromise. Blah blah blah everything's bad. It should all be done differently and the laxness, the mediocrity, the uncaringness of everyone in society appals me.

My only joy in life, apart from Hammy from Tales in the Riverbank, is the Japanese langauge. The people who write the textbooks should be shot between the eyes, because they teach you to read in European characters! It took me MONTHS to figure out how Japanese sentences are actually composed in Japanese script (which is not entirely phonetic). By learning the script I now have a vocabulary far in excess of anything I ever knew in French or German at this stage. I know the names of 25 animals. I can talk about atomic bombs, volcanos and elements. Traditionally Japanese formed its technical vocabulary by compounding Chinese characters, so manifold new words can be formed just by slamming them together. Even there you have the issue of irritating homophonous words. Example the syllable shi し can be represented by no fewer than 56 Chinese characters: 市,詩,氏,詩,師,死,史 and so on. Sushi is written 寿司 but you could spell it out phonetically すし in hiragana or スシ in katakana.

I can't explain why I find the Japanese langauge such a source of enduring fascination, but I do. Somedays I have found myself thinking: I wonder how you say this? And I wonder how you say that? Which is how I learned the words for bee 花蜂, wasp ワスプ and hornet 雀蜂. A hornet is onomatapoeically named a soo-zoom!

Well I haven't said anything new today have I? Here are the 2 links I dug out:
1: methadone treatment for bipolar disorder
2: methadone and morphine as antidepressants

I've gotta go. It's late: past 3 in the morning and I must keep up with the Joneses. Sorry the Anna Grace Youngs and compose my memoirs!



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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