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!

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Riot News... etc

RIOT NEWS: it's all gone back to normal now. It was back to normal last night in fact. All the shops open. Some rumour had gone round the night before that gangs would come and trash the place,
which meant nearly everything was shut. The big 24-hour convenience stores stayed open world war ii style ~ ie you had to squeeze in past 6 East European bouncers, nip into the partially lit shop (blueberry live yogurt was in stock but they always buy far too much of the apple flavour. No British person buys apple flavour yogurt and everyone knows that so why stock up? You can tell a man has done the ordering in these places. They'll have 5 brands of butter all priced the same. No spreadable, no unsalted. As I say EVERYONE knows these places are fronts for drug money. The most obvious ones have partially empty shelves and yet have remained open for years...

The riots have spread to some northern towns but nobody knows what's happening up there, it's too far away. (I mean too far away to know the word on the street.) I can tell the atmosphere here is far more relaxed than 2 days ago and that's about it.

Oh crapping hell the internet connexion keeps going down. I'm using my neighbours' to get Barbra Streisand crooning free of charge. Stingy old T Mobile have stopped letting me watch Youtube all day except between 4pm and midnight after day one when I bust out my data allowance watching documentaries on Hiroshima etc. One big reason I want to speak fluent Japanese is to read some good books on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I have a real thing about atom bombs. I also like the poetry of Matsuo Basho.

I'm doing Chinese first because I happen to have the CDs as well as the book. I was too addicted to heroin when I got into Japanese to bother buying the discs as well. A Japanese accent is FAR easier to master than Mandarin Chinese. You do have tones, but only as Yoruba has tones. That is the sentence inflects in a certain way and some words are distinguished by high or low pitched syllables. Just as we say "I record a record" altering tone and pitch to distinguish "record" the verb and "record" the noun. I always had an ambition to learn a language that was as different from English as possible. It absolutely had to be nonIndoEuropean (so Hindi was out). Had to have funky writing. Ideally had to have tones. So I picked Thai and chose to go to Thailand. Then I went to India instead. Long story. I do find it irritating that people go "oh that's such a hard language" and yet expect all the Thais to understand English! It's probably easier for an English person to learn an East Asian language than a person from there to learn English because English has torturous grammar compared to Chinese or Thai, which are like pidgin English "today I go shop buy chicken, go home cook chicken eat dinner!" like that. The words are unchangeable, there are no plurals, no inflected tenses (teach/taught). All is simple. And the lazy English claim such languages are exceedingly difficult, just because they sound a bit like a cat being strangled ~ well they do when I try and pronounce them!

Having these yummy zopiclone pills I now don't need sleep. I'm sleeping like a baby all hours of the day. My mood is still a bit elevated and I'm still very excitable compared to normal but I can sit still and don't find myself pacing endlessly at 3 in the morning. I had horrible nightmares last night about heroin and crack. I am sweating like a swine. I was so disorganized last week my house looks like a bomb's hit it (yet again) all my clothes are dirty. I am living on biscuits because I just cannot bear to eat proper food (can't afford it for that matter). The less I spend on drugs the LESS money I have not more!! I was doing OK on heroin. Now I'm in chaos. I'm really glad I gave up alcohol though. Noxious stuff. I'm not one of those people who turns into a psychopath after half a glass. Or one of those who has one drink then won't stop until the bar is dry. Or they're lying unconscious under the bar. For one thing I never drink in pubs; I hate them. The formula of loud music and lots of young people crammed in never made sense. Nowhere to dance. Wrong drug for dancing (Ecstasy doesn't mix with drink at all and E was the only drug that really made me wanna dance. Drink just makes you sway then fall over.) What I really loathed about pubs was not being able to hear a word anybody said for all the loud music. If you want loud music go clubbing ~ then you can dance and do as you please. Ukh I loathe pubs. I never even liked the taste of booze. What other people call a "warm glow" was to me a burning stomach. Alcohol does not give any kind of high, let's face it. It just blanks bad feelings to an extent. When I was manic I barely felt drink at all. When I was depressed it made me feel better but not better enough. Just because it's a CNS depressant doesn't follow that it exacerbates melancholia. They say IN SOME PEOPLE and I don't think I was one of them. I felt just as depressed off drink as on it and I gave it up for weeks at a time just to prove it. This is years ago, when giving up was easy. I only found it hard more recently because the habit of a can in the morning (first thing) and another in the afternoon was so entrenched. Now I can go in the shop and buy the drinks I used to fantasize about but couldn't afford: Coca Cola/Pepsi, chocolate milk, ginger beer (nonalcoholic). Cloudy lemonade. I far prefer soft drinks to yucky old beer, which I avoided on principal. Uptight men drink it because they're too scared to drink anything else. That's why I drank cyder mixed with fruit juice. The fruit juice made it look like a soft drink for the benefit of people in waiting rooms, on buses etc.

By the way my doctor is MONUMENTALLY FUCKING THICK. What kind of an idiot gives someone they know is bipolar an ANTIDEPRESSANT when they're not sleeping because they're MANIC. Fucking idiot. That's how you put someone in a mental unit. That's more negligent than smoking crack. It makes you higher. She really is stupid. The methadone clinic want an ECG. Some bullshit to do with "prolonged QT-intervals". Dr Schoopid went and filled out a bloods form and said "no we'll order the ECG after these tests come back" so I repeated another three times that the methadone clinic want an ECG because my dose is over 100mg but the silly cow would not listen. How the hell this woman manages to practise medicine without killing her patients I do not understand.

Hang on a minute my dr is foreign. I bet her medical degree is a forgery. Wouldn't surprise me at all.

Maybe I should get her investigated by the general medical council...? She brought up the issue of mirtazapine (Remeron) yet again. Mirtazapine that made me so out of it I was stood outside my house in awe at 3am watching lightning course down the walls constantly then dropped me down so low I was hallucinating dead bodies. That drug. I know what she wanted: to fob me off with that crap instead of a true sleeping pill. I'm getting an Indian male doctor next time. They dish out sleepers like sweets.

I've gone long past that prissy stage of believing sleeping pills are bad. My attitude is if ya can't sleep zonk yerself out or just don't go to bed. But don't complain about it. I only get insomnia when I'm too hyper anyhow. When I'm too depressed I sleep all day and all night!! Which is a good thing. I don't WANT to be awake when I feel like that.

Has this gone all boring? Rant rant rant. How did I get myself such a THICK doctor? She even asked WHY she was prescribing risperidone if I don't hear voices. I said to keep me sane. Fucking idiot. I dont' hear voices all the time, only in phases, which she SHOULD KNOW if she knew anything about psychiatry. My consultant sent her a letter which she obviously didn't bother reading ~ the instruction to set up a rispeidone script would have been enclosed, so she can't claim to have received one and not the other. Silly cow. Right I'm off:~~~~~~~

O man I've really gotta do something about my feet. They smell like a dead toad!

And that reminds me: what do frogs drink?
Croaker-Coala!

LAZY AFTERNOON
this is one of Babbsie's best vocals. and a highly intellectual song about beetlebugs zoomin' and there not being another human in view...



THE LOVE INSIDE
the BeeGees recorded a demo of this song for Barb, ruining it with their horrible voices. Hers is much better; she reaches a high E6 in this song...



Illustrated: zopiclone (Chinese version); eszopiclone (Lunestra) nearest equivalent available in the American market. Eszopiclone was refused a licence in Europe for being too similar to zopiclone which was already there... Zopiclone might have been turned down in America because it does cause memory loss. Eg if someone phones you when you're on it you might tell them you've moving to Holland then forget all about it the next day... LIKE I DID!!

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ha ha, you are never boring! When my Dad died he had a drawer full of lovely Zopiclone, his lovely Dr. had let him stock-pile them. That lot kept me going for 2 years! Now I get my sleeping pills off my 84 year old Mum, she gets enough for the both of us, bless her!
But her Dr. is starting to question her use, he thinks she might be developing an addiction. WTF! She is 84 years old, she should be entitled to be addicted to whatever she wants at that age. She asked me what I will do when she dies. I told her I will just have to find another drug dealer!
Cheers from Kiwigirl.

Gledwood said...

Hi Kiwi. Never boring? That's good. I feel dull as an old dishcloth some days and I know when I get depressed my talk of suicide and being shot dead sounds like a stuck record... know what I mean.

Bloody hell be careful with your old Mum.

Her dr should just fuck off who cares what their patients take. A GP's JOB is to dish out pills like sweets. Tht's his purpose in life. Tha's what I believe. I'm getting an Indian dr soon as I can; one who will dollop liberal amounts of zoppies onto my script every single week. Did you know risperidone CAUSES anxiety?! I started having panic attacks on it, had NO IDEA it was the pills, which were making me crave Valium as it is. So I'm off them yet agian and the mood is plunging down. Oh isn't life fucking shit but hey ho!

PPS I klsd

have't a clue what I was gona say. Bye!

Natascha said...

Doctors are strange. Well not all doctors, but enough of them... They rather give out countless unhealthy crap medications that do not help the patient, rather than prescribe the one thing that he/she needs (like a sleeping pill). That is so stupid really! I don't get the "Sleeping pills are bad!"-attitude. But that other chemical crap they give out is healthy or what? I hate antidepressants, all of them.

They never helped me, they only ever made me feel much worse. For example, they made me feel so empty (in my mind) and that emptiness made me anxious, because i couldn't think clearly. So i got paranoid that i forget important things in that kind of state.

I wasn't bipolar, just had depressions. Since i'm on opiates, the depressions are gone completely. But as soon as i'm clean, they come back in full force. So i stay on methadone and live a normal live. My feelings are now in perfect balance.

I also have a thing for atomic bombs and like to read about them. Also about nuclear disasters (chernobyl) and things like that. This topic fascinates me, but also scares me. I really hope i'll never see a atomic bomb in real life and i hope life wont be destroyed by radiation (no matter what caused the radiation).

Anonymous said...

If you have plenty of time to surf the www, my new favourite website is 'documentaryheaven.com'.

I have learnt all sorts of strange and unusual useless/useful information from all over the world.

Kiwigirl.

P.S. useful if you can't sleep due to lack of Zopiclone!

Gledwood said...

Best advice I can think up is that if you reduce your methadone literally 1 or 2mg at a time as slowly slowly slowly as possible, you could be off it and clean within 2 or 3 years. I think they reduce people far too quickly (in rehab) even outside there really is no need to come from 10mg to 0 in less than a year. I want to get off the majority but stay on a tiny amount. To be honest I'd rather be opiate clean and pop benozos instead. If my dr won't prescribe I'll just buy them on the street.

Janice Seagraves said...

I'm glad the rioting has ended.

Take care, Gled. You're never boring.

Janice~

Natascha said...

That's exactly right Gled. They reduce people insanely fast in rehab, here too. I think that's the same for every rehab in every country on earth.

My friend reduced his dose like you said. He went down 1 or 2 mg every month. Sometimes he took a break and remained on dose for 2 months. That went on for a long time, until he was down to 1 mg. Then he jumped off it with no WD's at all. But i have to say, he was never someone who had bad WD's in the first place. He always did better than anyone else. He's off it for a year now, without any relapse.

Doing it like that is the best way.

PS: That's right, you're never boring ;)

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