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!

Monday, December 12, 2011

Insomnia

I HAVEN'T BEEN SLEEPING at all well since the end of last week.

I had met one of my old drug dealers who gave me a sample of the most shyte hot heroin I had tasted in a long time. I could actually FEEL it. And so I was scoring off him every single day for over a week. Blew loads of money I'd saved up. I felt like I did in the early days of my addiction: too scared to stop. Scared in an indistinct, distant type of way and not knowing what I was going to do with myself without this wonderful heroin. My veins even started to behave, meaning I got 90% of my hits straight in. The warm buzz of yesteryear was back.

Then the dealer started taking the piss with timing. Leaving me waiting 4.5 hours one particular day. All he said was that for another £5 I could have another bag so of course I got one more. The next day he answered and promised to come right round but it transpired he had no driver and to add insult to injury he'd picked up a new batch of "B" ~ call me cynnical but it was probably nowhere near as good as the old stuff. Which is just about the only B of normal quality I've had this year. All else has been cowshit and how junkies can queue up on street corners for the crap most people sell is beyond me. They must have seriously low tolerance. I'm only on 70mg of methadone and I literally cannot feel most people's heroin AT ALL... just the vaguest opiate tinge, which could be imagination. Then nothing. Even this good stuff made me feel good for all of a minute or so then I was just tired. But not in the cross-eyed nodding out semi-conscious state heroin is supposed to put you in.

I was terrified of stopping because I was terrified of withdrawals from the extra tolerance I thought I had built up over my week and a half of using. On the last day I scored some B that was so weak I couldn't feel it (ie it was the rubbish most people buy and convince themselves they're getting some sort of buzz out of). I got my weekend methadone so I could at least take my doses when I felt I really needed them. This helped a lot.

Another issue was that I was fighting off a particularly nasty bout of depression that just made me feel my life was over. On heroin life felt OK. Without it, life was intolerable. Please please let my mood switch. When I'm manic I go vehemently anti-drugs (why waste money on illegal chemicals when you're high already?) ... It's not mania as such, but my mood did switch from exceptionally sour, down and ill to normal, up and interested. Suddenly life seems full of possibilities. Life has meaning and the meanings are beautiful. The downside to this has been pretty bad insomnia. For a couple of days I can't have slept much more than 2-3 hours. I remember one day I huddled under a duvet on my chair and just slept a while as BBC News blared away. I was taking Valium which took the edge off my ragged mood but did very little to help me sleep. Eventually on Sunday daytime I slept and slept all day. I did sleep about 4 hours on Sunday night but something's going on. I know it's not depression. When I'm down I nearly always sleep hours longer than usual. In my brief periods of "euthymia" (that is "normal mood" to me and you) I sleep almost exactly 8 hours. I am not sleeping eight hours. I feel like I've been out clubbing all night on illegal stimulants that will not wear off. Not drugged out of my head, but buzzing enough not to want to BOTHER wasting the time and effort involved in putting my head down. I dropped a sleeping pill last night and still spent longer reading The Andy Warhol Diaries than I ever did sleeping.

Good news: I've thrown out on SCART-less television, one microwave, one foodmixer. The charity shop won't accept electricals. I've given them maybe as many as 40 classical music albums on vinyl. People who should know better, people like Deshane, my Jamaican support worker, say to me "vinyl's worth money man! Don't give it away! You should sell that." The last thing a compulsive harder like me needs to hear. The ONLY records I have kept are Mike Oldfield's Tubular bells on vinyl and UB40's Signing Off. Which I very nearly gave away, thinking all the writing on the cover meant it was a Brahms concerto!

I've got to go and take my computer to the shop it came from but I'm not relishing the experience. This store is well known for having the worst customer service in the business. On the two occasions that I ventured in the staff were uninterested and dismissive and one didn't even appear to know what "dual core" meant. There's a problem on my hard drive. Not with the drive itself (so it seems) but with the cable. Unfortunately the cable is integral to the drive. I know this as I've removed and reinserted it on several occasions in my attempts at getting better connections. So they're almost certainly going to insist that I pay for a new drive thus leaving me with a totally empty computer. No Norton. No Microsoft Word. Both of which I paid extra for. What am I going to do? Does anyone know if/how the shop can reinstall these products for me. I only use my computer for blogging and wordprocessing. Oh and it MUST wordprocess in Chinese and Japanese, like the old one did. Yeah man I'm a true citizen of the 21st century. I can input in Mandarin Chinese!

Which reminds me, I really must get back to my Spanish course. Unfortunately I rapidly realized that Spanish is inferior to French. Not linguistically, but culturally. French literature, for instance, is the only modern literature that can seriously vye with English as the most superior body of writing of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. French is spoken in some amazing places. Example: I made Friends I never would have been able to talk to without the French language when I spent a couple of weeks in Morocco over Xmas/New Year 1991/1992. It was hardly a glamorous vacation. We spent new year's eve sleeping with the homeless at Fez station in bitter bitter cold mountain weather. I woke up in the very early hours seriously worried that the local man next to me, shrouded as he was in a peaked ethnic hoodie really was dead. Then the railway station master came out at 6am to loudly shoo us all away. He piped down when he saw me and my Japanese friend. Gave us a funny look. And we got on the next train to wherever. I still think back to Morocco, the most evocative place I've ever been. Even more so than India. Berber coffee, North African cigarettes and tangerines on the trees in December. I wandered the perimiter of the royal palace at dawn watching the king's trees bathed in golden light thinking: WOW, I'M IN AFRICA. Africa! How cool is that. I'd so love to go back. And I got there from West Wales taking trains and boats the entire way. It took three days but it's only a three hour flight. I can't think of anywhere else in the world, apart from the crossing from Spain to Morrocco, where two entirely different universes come so close. The one European and "Christian"; the other Berber-speaking and Muslim (Moroccans aren't really Arabs, they're Berbers. The Arabic language is mostly used in government and by the media. We got to stay in this doctor's house we met on the train and he had satellite television. Now I always think you haven't truly seen a country unless you've watched their television and I spent a couple of days glued to Egyptian soap operas and the Moroccan version of "songs of praise". The doctor could not understand my fascination. I really wish I'd known Arabic, but as I say, French is just as useful as Arabic out there and English (at least in 1991-2) was almost exclusively used for tourism (and probably international trade).

The weirdest thing that happened to me in Morocco came when the official guide joined heads with the manager of a carpet shop then came up to me and offered me a kilo of hashish on credit card!

Ho-hummm... such is life. I'd really like to go back to Morocco if and when I ever get myself 100% opiate clean. I'd rather do my healing in a faraway place... and Morocco does feel a LONG way from home ~ except it's only a 3 hour flight back to London! I could reinvigorate my French. Hashish is no temptation to me; I absolutely despise the stuff. And I doubt there's much heroin in Morocco. Morocco was the only place I could think of that I'd really like to go to that ISN'T a notorious production or transit country for opiate narcotics. So maybe I will go. One day... one day... one day.

And how are YOU today?

PS Reading Andy Warhol has inspired me to become a great pop artist in my own right. My Mum sent me an art easel for my birthday which I'd really like to get some 2x2ft canvases for, so I can paint cartoons in acrylics. Cartoons are probably just about all I'm capable of producing art-wise... I'm going to save up and blow £100 in an art shop. I'll try and slap up the results online... (dont' hold your breath until this gets done...!)


Andy Warhol ~ diarist extraordinaire; the mysteries of the "east" (actually the West (Morocco is just as westerly as the UK)); hashish ~ it is exactly what it looks like

7 comments:

Gattina said...

So you have seen quiet a piece of our world although not in the best conditions. In Morocco you still speak more French than English, for tourists they make an effort speaking English but as they learn French at school it's far easier to communicate with the locals. In Tunesia it's the same, while in Egypt everybody speaks English.

Syd said...

Sorry to hear that you are back on heroin, but it appears that you didn't quit. Gleds, things are okay here. I went to a great Christmas parade last night, had some steamed oysters which were delicious, and got a good night's sleep. All is well.

Akelamalu said...

I'm sad to hear you're back on heroin Gleds. :(

bugerlugs63 said...

Sad as it may seem that you are back on Heroin . . . It has re-ignited your enthusiasm for . . . well everything really. Travel, art, languages, reading, clearing out rubbish . . . etc.
It's a shame methadone doesn't do the same. I know if it did you, me and many others would be more inclined to stick with it.
Do you go to your parents at Christmas? Or just not "do" Christmas?
Do you ever go on your local Freecycle? There was a laptop on ours the other day. People give away some amazing stuff. I'm waiting for a reply on; An ikea rug 6' x 4', A three peice suite (as new), a shoe rack and a flat screen tv/dvd player. Then again maybe if you're prone to hoarding you best not go there.
It's good to "hear" you interested in life again. Would love to see a painting on here.
Take care, with love x

Tori said...

I am sad too that you are back on it too! Be careful and please take care.

Sleep problems said...

Nice blog. Thanks for such a great share.

Gledwood said...

I WAS on it but was already off it by the time I wrote this post. The good mood was just me being hyper because I hadn't slept properly in days. A rebound from being heroin'd and depressed. I wrote another post which hopefully explains...

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