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!

Saturday, August 13, 2011

Valium Marilyn and the Miaos in Laos





VALIUM MARILYN noticed I was very nervous today. She somehow can tell the difference between manic and nervous, which I'm not sure most people could because both make me hyperkinetic. Difference being I keep blanking out in nervousness. Manic goes on and on and on. So I'm not a maniac any more. I keep getting letters from bailiffs trying to push me into suicide. I haven't opened a single one by the way but I know their attitude. They try and hack and hack away at you until you give in and do one. Ingredients: antiemetics, a bellyfull of medication (which won't kill you, just knock you out) and a swirling river or violent, lonely stretch of sea. Or a plain old railway. Or a posh clinic in Switzerland. I don't want to commit suicide I want to become a children's author instead. If only I could marshall my thoughts into a book. I did write a short story but stories start and stop too quickly. I prefer novels, which gain momentum from themselves. I have written 3 in my time. 3 buckets of pigshit, but 3 done. I only know where the last one is. I know what's gonna happen: still I will have the council tax on my back even after one billion sales. Agatha Christie had tax problems her entire life. Something to do with having been resident in the USA and no treaties against double-taxation in her day. Which meant she sold rights to half her income to Booker for not much more than one million in today's money. Which cleared the debt. She lived in a very nice house near the sea. I would quite like to live in the 1930s with parlour maids and skullery maids and butlers. If you want to know about that world, read A Woman Of Substance by Barbara Taylor Bradford. The first half of that book is exceptionally well written. In the second half the heroine somehow goes from servant to multimillionairess department store mogul without ever borrowing money, losing money or having the slightest glitch in her glittering business success. Barbara Taylor Bradford should do The Apprentice. With business acumen like hers she'd be bound to win.



Why do they always put Barbra's voice too far back in the mix? I would have been 3 when she made this performance. And I don't drink alcohol any more!!

You know how I stopped? Same way I always used to give up cigarettes. Just remind myself of everything I loathe about alcohol. And there's a lot to loathe. That technique never worked on heroin as I loved the image, loved the drug, adored everything about heroin. That's me and heroin. Not heroin that kills kids in magazine articles. I mean heroin that made me beautiful inside. Heroin that made the lassitude and meaninglessness of life melt away. Heroin my lovely lovely heroin.

Now I think of old junkies and me not coping. I think I got mentally ill because heroin gives you a stress-free life. Making you more susceptible to stress. Making me get sideswiped by psychosis or bipolar or whatever it is. I no longer care for the title: it's not like a diagnosis makes me Duke of Norfolk now, is it? Or that the title distinguishes me from a mere marquess? I never did understand people who wear mental diagnostics round their necks like Olympic gold medals. What for? Probably to justify living on DLA for ever and not committing suicide.

Oh I was going to say something about suicide YET AGAIN but notice how in that clip Barbra Streisand gets such an ovation ~ and that early in her career.

By the way Valium Marilyn is dying her hair exactly the same shade as mine. Schwarzkopf 00A or A00 Absolute Platinum. Still photographs the colour of nicotine stains even though it looks near-white under stark light. I'm leaving it on longer next time. My hair looks crap now with horrible roots lurking near halfway along it. I thought that look might look superior, but I don't really like it. I'm buying another pack next week. Schwarzkopf do a tomato red which I was thinking of saving for a manic episode. If I died it that colour normally I'd just wear a hat until it grew out. If I was manic I'd thoroughly enjoy striding about looking like a lightbulb in a brothel.



This song is awful, so awful it makes me laugh out loud "Extra extra! I'm in luuurve... I gotta thank my lucky stars a-ah-buuurve! Hurreh, hurreh don't be late!" Funny grandma is throwing a partay...



What actually are bluebirds? Are they like the tiny tits we get in European gardens? (Bluetits?)

Yellowbridge Chinese dictionary: http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/wordsearch.php?searchMode=P&word=zuo&dialect=M&select=whole

Valium Marilyn was pilled out this afternoon. Bloody hell. I slept for hours on end when I got back. Like an old pensioner. I'm too tired nowadays. Hey you know those photochromic glasses I got, they only darken properly in the sun. Not like the old Reactolite Rapides that went dark the minute you stepped into daylight, whatever the weather...

I think I should get a job as a poet. I wanna be the Barbra Streisand of literature. Not perfect, but unequalled. Yes I hear you yelling WRITE WRITE WRITE but I can't even clean my house. How can I write. And bailiffs wanna take away my computer, the bastards. Then I will HAVE to commit suicide. Even though I shouldn't be PAYING the council tax. I'm thinking of going to my member of parliament. Then he/she can straighten this out. I bet my local MP is a tory. Tories should be shot between the eyes (I say even though if I were tied down and forced to vote I'd vote tory ahead of Labour any day! In America I would probably be a death-penalty loving Democrat. It's easier in America as everyone appears to be pro-rich and pro-low taxes. I want to be rich and pay low taxes, y'see, so that's my one political view. Low taxes for the rich and for me. Especially once my fortune surpasses one hundred million...)

the end of the world is coming, which means a lot of us may never die because we will live through the end of the old world into the birth of the new one...

Marilyn was laughing when I tried pronouncing Chinese down the pub garden. She said "is that what you do in your room" I said "yeah at top volume" that made her laugh even more. And do an impression of a cat being strangled. Which reminds me: did you know there's a group called the Miao-Yao languages? Which made me want to go and see the Miaos in Laos. Unfortunately Laos was the original source of Double UO Globe heroin, best in the world. So I can't EVER go there...

It's 2:02am I have to go... cheerybye...

Illustrated: bluetit; baby bluetits; bluebird; Chinese ethnic Yaos

PS Miao-Yao languages are also known as the Hmong-Mien group

4 comments:

Janice Seagraves said...

I wish you wouldn't talk about suicide. It makes me feel sad.

One of my daughter's friend used to want to kill herself.

I asked her why? She said it would be easier to be dead.

I told her, once you dead then what? You can't get out of there. Where ever you end up, you'll be stuck there--Forever.

Do you really want that?

Keep writing, Gled.

Or become a poet.

Wear your dark shades and read your poetry in the park. Then you'll be famous as the mad poet of London.

Janice~

Gledwood said...

I keep thinking of how useless I am and how worthless life is, then I try and make a joke out of it by talking of getting my roots done. I wish I didn't feel that way; maybe there are some magic pills out there?

Every day I wander about feeling like a bird with its wings clipped. I should be flying yet I'm wandering around lost on the earth. It's awful.

Anonymous said...

You just gotta get through each day, and hope that the next one might be better. All you can do is survive sometimes.
Barbara gives me goosebumps, and I love the audience in that 1975 clip, especially the couple of black fellas with the awesome afros!
Kiwigirl.

Gledwood said...

I love the old lady pensioners with witchy 60s glasses!

I wrote another post apologizing for all the suicide bollocks. It's up now

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