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, August 14, 2011

Glewood's foreign language rant


I HAVE just found out that my one book 2 CD Chinese course with its 1000 word vocabulary reportedly takes you to the European Council's Common European Framework Level B2, that's level 4/6 with level 6 as near mother tongue proficiency. Can interact with a degree of fluency and spontenaity that makes regular interaction with native speakers a possibility without strain for either party. That remains to be seen!

1000 words isn't very much. Linguaphone courses teach 2000 words nowadays (it used to be 1500). Rosetta Stone levels 1-3 teach 1500 words (not very much for the £400 they cost). So 1000 words is just a higher basic smattering of day to day topics. Not "A level" (higher school certificate) standard. Which is what CEFR Level B2 is...

In A Level German we discussed nuclear disarmament, environmental protection and general politics. I don't see much of that indexed in Chinese. I think if you discussed politics in Chinese you'd get extradited!!! I've decided to wade through this book very slowly at 1-2 weeks per unit. There are 22 units. By the end I should read and write every word I know in simplified and traditional.

Simplified characters are, in my view, an exercise in fatuous vulgarity; but they are the standard now. So I'd better learn them. I just hope I don't get manic and start thinking of them; I might die of impotent fury. I mean why take the most complex and beautiful script on the face of the earth and DARE simplify it? That really is beyond the pale.

They should have simplified English spelling before they took their greedy talons to Chinese. English requires simplification in my view. I mean why is night spellt with a gh? It shoul be "nite". Or even "nait". Compound nouns sould be run together as in German. "Spellingmistake". "Pricetag" "informationbooth". It looks funkier and makes the language more intimidating for foreigners, who deserve to be confused.

What most English speaking natives appear rarely if ever to appreciate is that speakers of almost any other language can take for granted that a loud personal conversation on a foreign street ~ no matter how overheard ~ shall remain just that: PRIVATE. Not so with English!

Every bloody word you say, anywhere in the world shall be noted down and used against you. Of course this makes communication far easier and I'm not knocking that, but it would be nice sometimes, I think, to be able to converse loudly on foreign soil without the natives eavesdropping.

One tennis pro even got fined for swearing IN ENGLISH on ARABIAN soil!!! Who are THEY to tell us how to speak our language! That is an offence against freedom of speech. Not to mention highly intrusive.

Would a Czech tennis ace be fined for yelling "oh fuck" in his own language three thousand miles from home? I think not.

And here endeth the linguistic rant.

Illustrated: "horse" in traditional and simplified (vandalized) Chinese characters... be honest: which is prettiest? Clue: the one on the left.


I was talking about Mandy Patinkin earlier: here's his duet with Madonna:~~~~~~~
WHAT CAN YOU LOSE

"Mandy is NOT short for Amanda as I had assumed, but for MANDEL... DUR!!

4 comments:

jams o donnell said...

Ah that's the downside of speaking a global lingua franca Gleds.

Shame my fluency in any other language is dodgy

Gledwood said...

I'm glad someone else appreciates that fact though. Usually it's lost on everyone and I'm left self-consciously shamefaced NOT wanting every tom dick and harry to eavesdrop and treated as a weirdo by basically everybody else, who can never comprehend why!

My fluency is very dodgy too. And I'm talking of English!!!

Welshcakes Limoncello said...

1,000 words doesn't seem much but are probably adequate for a survival level. Vocabulary isn't usually the problem . it's the bits that join the words up, ie., grammar! Personally I would hate to see British English adopt Americanised spelling.

Gledwood said...

I didn't mean Americanized spelling but a thoroughly modernized spelling so for example chauffeur would be spelled "showfer" two would be "too" and knee would be "nee"...

It's actually about 1200 words in the English to Chinese section but that's NOT anything advanced is it, it's higher basic, enough to go shopping, introduce yourself, talk about hobbies, have a stab at official documents. Chinese grammar is very easy because Chinese words do not inflect AT ALL. No complicated tenses, verb conjugations, grammatical gender... none of that at all!

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