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!

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Punished for Nothing

I haven't edited this wondrous stream of consciousness. It's all I thought in the past 24 hours...

IT'S 4:59AM I am too excited to sleep. I feel this constant low grade HAPPINESS in me. I am INSPIRED. My book is brewing up like a cup of tea with a charming Chelsea bun at its side. My Chinese is coming on better than Japanese ever did. I scored 10/10 on the last test. When I do make mistakes I can see where I went wrong. Instead of being bemused. I'm only on lesson 3 of 22. But it's quite remarkable I got anywhere. Mandarin Chinese sounds more bizarre than any langauge on earth. Far more foreign than other tonal languages like Cantonese (as heard in most Chinese takeaways worldwide), Vietnamese (as heard in war films) and Thai (as heard in Thailand). Thai is one of the most beautiful langauges on earth. Chinese of course has the most beautiful writing. I am learning the names of animals. So far I only know two: a 蓝山雀 lánshānquè is the "tiny tit" that flutters from birdtable to birdbath (a blue tit bird); a qiū or 泥鳅 níqiū is a loach; is another loach or mudfish; a 平鰭鰍科 píngqíqiūkē is a Borneo sucker or hillstream loach (I used to keep one as a pet). I love loaches; they are my favourite aquarium dweller. They skulk around the background of the tank and claim the bogwood as their personal lair. I always identified with our sucker loach Doover. We also had a stripey khooli loach, but that one died.

Talking of stripey nasties: Japanese hornets, at 2" long, the world's largest wasps, have been invading Norfolk! Hornets are called 虎頭蜂 hǔtóufēng "tigerhead bees" in China.

Polyglots of the past; polyglots of the present...

UKH I SLEPT IN IN IN so long I got up at 4pm today. This is the first major sleep I've had all week. I got up angrily stamped down the post office then crowded up the methadonery for my dose. I retired to the library and felt cold wet and paranoid for an hour as I waited for the nonexistent effects of methadone to come on. Anna Grace alwys says 140mg methadone made her feel lovely. Lovely enough to do coke on top. Well I've been on that dose and I can tell you to me methadone does absolutely NOTHING. You literally cannot feel it. Take it away and you'll feel the lack of it. But like marriage to a limp and sappy person with a good job, its presence is not noted though its absence is.

I'm not in a very good mood today because the drugs service are persecuting me yet again. Insisting that I go to their crappy drugs group which is nowhere near as good as NA. Nearly everyone is in there to be punished for committing a crime. And I who have done nothing wrong are made to suffer too. I'm really looking forward to saying this tomorrow. My big problem in groups is learning to SHUT UP. Last time I went I did 95% of the talking on the "client" half. I consciously tried to say a little as possible and yet still dominated every aspect of every topic under discussion [because I was too manic not to talk]. This pisses me off because I know the rest of them ~ who are in there to be made to suffer for raiding Sainsbury's, trading in stolen smoked salmon and other drug-related crimes ~ are tolerating my outbursts only because they have no option but to be there or sent to prison for non-attending. And they all probably think I'm a wanker, a twat, a dork. Stuff like that. Because I dare answer back with statements like "they only give us methadone because they know it doesn't work". This bloke who thinks I'm so perceptive an refreshingly frank will soon realize I'm actually like a stuck record. I WILL not accept a life on methadone as any kind of normality. It is compromise of the worst kind. I would rather be on a proper script, or failing that street heroin. Methadone is worse than either of these because it's MORE ADDICTIVE my habit is now WORSE than ever, more entrenched than ever. I'm only motivated to use heroin because they insist I drink the methadone under supervision, like a big baby. So the day that I'm not Supervised (Sunday) I take it late and do heroin early instead. It's more a fuck you to the clinic than anything else. And I will not "behave" myself just to make some lazy arsed worker look good on paper. All the progress I have made has been despite, not because of, the half-witted efforts of the druggie servies I have been plagued with.

21:42 hrs. WHAT WAS I ranting about there? Something very involving, no doubt. I'm so glad not to be DEPRESSED these days. My mood is just very slightly hyper, pretty much all the time, and I really like it like this. Of course I enjoy going higher and higher, but the consequences are surprisingly inconvenient. I get memory loss. Cognitive deficits. When I'm really high my thoughts run away from one another, like quicksilver exploding on a workbench. So I'll take a mild high any day over a severe one. If I ever get severely high again I'm going in the nuthouse. I'm not looking after myself like a frantic three year-old doing a trolley-dash in a toyshop ever again. I "know" I'm ill when I'm ill. I might not like to accept it, and I might view the situation very differently, but I'm aware that something is radically changed about me and that to a psychiatrist this is clinically significant. Of course when I'm manic I believe psychiatry is like a bullshit mystery religion where the doctors are high priests, medication is the sacrament. Nurses would be like deacons in a church. And the volatile masses, seeking relief from their emotional wounds come piling to the temple day after day, seeking absolution, resolution, evolution and a revolution. I think one reason some sections of the public have become disillusioned with psychiatrists is because they have gone to them for the wrong reasons, not to mention wildly unrealistic expectations.

Just seeing a psychiatrist is not any kind of medical treatment in itself. The psychiatrist prescribes treatment, which may be one of any number of talking therapies. Psychiatrists treat psychiatric conditions. Some such conditions cause mental pain, suffering or discomfort. But this is not to say that anybody in psychological pain, suffering or discomfort is in need of a psychiatrist or can be helped by them! In my experience, psychiatrists are pretty useless when it comes to "emotional problems". They're only truly in their element when dealing with psychotic illness that can respond to medication.

I'm so sick to death of talking therapies. What right has any professional to my personal feelings? Last time I had counselling I deliberately turned up late every time, in order to cut down our time together. Some days I just didn't go, as I resented having to declare how I felt when what I felt was SHIT and there was no explaining it. I don't believe the cognitive theory of depression explains all depression by any means. I vividly remember coming out of a depressive episode and being able to think "I'll go down town" without a sinking feeling coming over me. That is, when I was depressed, anything, any emotionally neutral thing that might excite, inspire or enthuse a happy person, gave me a sinking feeling, a feeling of dread, or desperation, or gloom. Or just despair. Going back into the depression these feelings returned. So it wasn't self-fulfilling prophecies, or predicting the future, or anything else cognitive therapists claim to cause depression. I felt depressed over the pettiest and most basic things. The feelings I had were independent of my thoughts, and I felt depressed over things that ordinarily bore no emotional charge. I'd love a cognitive therapist to explain to me how my thought process was making me depressed when I clearly remember the depressed feelings coming on their own. I didn't think "Oh I'll go to town" and then "but it will be a horrible experience; it's not worth going". That might be how I felt, but I never ever put my depressive feelings into such words. How can a therapist specializing in cognition battle something that wasn't cognitive? Depression is a feeling, not a thought. It's true that depressive thought patterns can become engrained. I once went nuts in a Nutter Club Meeting where this girl I liked complained that her counsellor had demanded she explain why she was having suicidal ideation when not depressed. I exploded that such ground-in thoughts are extremely common in recurrent depression and that any mental health professional should know this. This was another of those meetings where I dominated every discussion. I'm not looking forward to being punished FOR NOTHING tomorrow, forced to sit in a room full of surly shoplifters who are sorry only for being caught, who are victims of a repressive government that once prescribed heroin to addicts as a matter of course and now insists onn methadone treatment, a therapy that is unsuccessful in the vast majority of cases. When you're addicted to heroin, heroin is the only thing that makes you feel OK. Addicts aren't being unusually selfish in funding their habits; they're merely engaging in the fundamental human instinct to self-preservation ~ and yet they're being punished for this and forced to sit through sessions of brainwashing. Well I'm calling a spade a spade. The guy who does the sessions is very nice, so I will tell him what he is: a very nice brainwasher. There's no atmosphere of recovery in such "lessons" because nobody really wants to be there. Just as nobody really wants to be in rehab. They're only doing rehab because they got caught yet again and it's cushier than a prison sentence. Either that or they're just trying to get their kids back. You know ~ when the kids have been abducted by interfering social services. Probably because they didn't arse-lick or kow-tow to the social worker enough. So I'm off to be severely punished tomorrow. I'd much rather go to prison for 3 days than do weeks of these awful meetings. I think I'll tell that to the doctor. It's only fun when someone gets over-emotional, resents being told to switch their phone off, falls asleep, falls over, swears, gets into an argument with the invigilator or otherwise misbehaves. The actual content of the "course" is utterly predictable. That your brain is telling you that taking drugs is good because your brain feels good. That you can alter your habits and thinking patterns. That drug addiction is a cycle. Blah blah blah. All this is only of use when you have a genuine willingness to abstain. And then you're taking second best by going to these classes and not NA which is a hundred times better. So I'm jeapordizing my recovery just because I'm capitulating to an ignorant bullying system that doesn't care for my mental wellbeing one jot. Just wants to keep its own job and tick boxes on forms. THEY get promoted because of MY good behaviour. Eg not drinking. I'm angry enough with the clinic to drink on principal, to inject miniscule quantities of heroin and cocaine just to dirty up my tests and to give a breathyliser reading so I look dirty. I'm never ever going to act like a good boy for those patronizing bastards. See how they destroy everything that's good. By bullying me they only make me want to rebel. I don't trust them. I don't like them. I'm in safer hands with a heroin dealer on the street. Heroin dealers respect their clients more than methadone clinics ever do. Heroin dealers need their clients alive, to keep making money out of them. The methadone clinic just wants me out of their hair. Well they can spit on my grave. I'm totally sick to death of them. Ridiculing me. Patronizing me. Telling me lies. I can't wait to move out of this God-forsaken shithole I'm stuck in. To be away from this particularly noxious service. Even as drug services go they are particularly coercive and intrusive. Valium Marilyn warned me never to open up to them as they'd only use my own words against me and she was dead right. I have to get the hell out of this situation. I'd rather be in the nuthouse than attending brain-rotting meetings like this one I'm forced into going to. Any more of this crap and I'm making a formal complaint. My psychiatrist said that counselling wasn't a treatment he was recommending. Probably because he knows how much I hate it. Yet this place insist on it. I can't wait to get there and let rip with some home truths...


Illustrated: kuhli loach, one of my favourite tropical fish, though they always die; mass bullshitting session; furry entertainers; one-to-one bullshitting session ~ note the look on the therapist's face; the Hazelden Dual Disorders Recovery Book ~ I really wanna get hold of this... Something that might actually work FOR me not AGAINST.

SEND IN THE CLOWNS
... a really appropriate song...



5 comments:

Syd said...

Gleds, you are ranting about all manner of injustices that you perceive. Resentment after resentment is noted here. What is your part in any of this? That is something to consider.

Gledwood said...

Being on methadone!

I'd rather be scoring on the street and have nobody manipulating, controlling or bullying me. That is what the clinic do. I am convinced they are trying to erode my mental health as badly as possible because that's what they do. Thank God that Bitch Worker is a thing of the past I have a quiet SEEMING new one. But the quiet ones, as they say, are the worst.

I want the hell OFF methadone and the bastard clinic refuse to reduce me!

Anonymous said...

Can you wear your dark glasses to the meeting, and have a little nap while every one else rants around you. They might be able to make you go but they can't make you participate.
Maybe if you fart like a trooper they will ask you to leave.
Kiwigirl.

Anonymous said...

hes fuckin right, the rolleston report was recommending that addicts be treated with their drug of addiction in 1928! nineteen fucking twenty eight! we had what was known as the british system of treating addiction, the most humane and advanced in the world...unfortunately then we went down the bullshit american failure war on drugs path and its been nothing but misery for hundreds of thousands of fucked up souls ever since...throw in the people who were over prescribed and sold their scripts, should have been monitored better, harold shipman etc....also rolleston was strictly predicated on a 'better class of junkie', the aleister crowleys and flapper girls...once the great unwashed got into it it was time for the big stick, pretty much par for the course in the uk, read it if you dont believe me...

Gledwood said...

Reason I couldn't shut up in the last meeting btw was I was too manic to keep my mouth shut. So I REALLY don't want to go back.

KIWI: I think I will wear dark glasses. It will cover up my pissed off expression a bit.

By the way I didn't go. I slept in instead. Until 4pm. Ha ha ha.

ANON: yeah methadone is an American idea. America illigalized heroin in order to demonize it. American medical texts still apparently claim "no medical use" for the drug my gran died on, because she had desperate need of painkillers for terminal cancer.

The fact you can switch from just about anything on to Subutex EXCEPT methadone says everything about how shit methadone is. I've found somebody who sells DFs ~ at last ~ which I'm going to use when the time comes. Otherwise it would be 4 days on street heroin. No way on earth am I doing 72 hours clucking in order to switch methadone to Subutex. No way on earth!

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