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!!!
I LAID IN BED ALL DAY TILL 5PM then defrosted for an hour (ie smoked cigarettes in front of the television) then HAD to go out to the bloody methadone chemist. Strangely the methadone made me feel much better. Yesterday I was manic in the morning, depressed in the afternoon. So depressed I had to go to bed I felt lousy. Couldn't even eat, so I had to buy a shish kebab. I get the couscous version in the box with salad. A full meal of smoky lamb chunks for £6. The shop that does the less salty salad is shut over Xmas. Lazy bastards!
I nearly had a big row in the library just now for phoning a friend. Some Asian guy kept coming up to me asking me to keep it down. Then he told me to stop talking when I was trying to LISTEN to a very involved story so I yelled I'M NOT TALKING then the rude woman who tells the homeless man not to sleep in the library said "well I can hear you" so I deliberately spoke as loud as possible as I gathered my things and left. Amazingly I didn't feel the biting cold that had me in sweats of misery walking down. That's because my methadone is finally working.
The poor girl in the room next to me has bought an LCD TV and expected to get Freeview channels out here in the twee suburbs where we get the worst TV reception I've ever experienced. I said you'll be lucky. Then she asked me how to tune it in I said highlight analogue tuning and she got 4 channels of snow, just like I get. The other night Gladiator came on ITV. I slammed in the DVD and compared scenes. The DVD was normality. On ITV it was snowing in Rome!
I'm feeling ill. I don't know why. Is it just manic depression again? I don't know. I feel like I want to puke. I have an abscess on my right foot. The abscesses on my legs have gone down after I stuck surgical blue needles in each one and drained them but this one on my foot is too painful to mess around like that so I might have to go to casualty (that's the ER to you Americans) to get flucloxacillin, which is the normal antibiotic for drug abscesses. Yes I'm afraid I was using every day over the Xmas break (and what sane person wouldn't?) but now I'm back in the routine of knocking back methadone like a 40 year old baby in under the chemist's "supervision" I somehow find it easier to keep the old nose clean.
I'm fretting about what I'm going to eat tonight or should I just get drugs instead? I don't really want to do anything. I wish I could have general anaesthesia. I wish I could have £10,000 to put my magazine together. I worked out start up costs would be a mere £1000 for computers and phones but several grand to pay the printers to knock out the things. In this country WH Smith are the main distributors of periodicals but I need more information about how you persuade shops to order more copies. Can you do offers like buy 20 get 20 free? Please if anyone knows anything about the magazine industry please help me. I really need a detailed book on the subject that goes into the mathematics of print run costs and advertising revenue. Websites and links please. BTW I have looked into the idea of publishing online and for various reasons it's a non-starter. The entire point of this magazine is that you take it home and read real words on a real page. Even Dickens published a magazine "Household Words". Not a website. Did you know when American newspapers went online they garnered a mere TENTH of the advertising income from the internet as from paper. Please someone who has edited or better still been advertising or circulation manager on a magazine get in touch and tell me how it's done.
Well I've got to go else I'll get terminated. Happy New Year to one and all. (Just in case I'm not in the mood to post between now and then....)
Illustrated: the standard of technology in my house (except you can't even have a set-top box in my house) ~ the landlord who takes in over £200 PER ROOM per week ie SIXTY THOUSAND POUNDS A YEAR income from this house cannot even be bothered to fit an operational high gain television aerial to our chimney!
I spent the £20 that could have gone on gear on a Royle Family DVD box set. “Princess Anne: the Divorce Years” is particularly good. Nah, I’m just kidding. The Royle Family, as all Brits will know, is a sitcom about four people who sit around watching telly, smoking cigarettes and eating chocolate biscuits. You get series 1, 2 and 3, three Xmas specials and a documentary all about the making of. That’s every second of the Royle Family ever broadcast. Now there’s a complete 30-film Carry On box set. The Carry On films, for those of you on foreign shores, are ancient British comedies full of very repetitive innuendo. Carry on Doctor, Carry on Nurse and Carry on Camping are the three all-time classics. Last night Carry On At Your Convenience, set in a lavatory factory, was on BBC2.
Well my mood was on an even keel pretty much all day. I had terrible trouble sleeping on Wednesday night. Suddenly, as I was pinging around Morrisons I started feeling hyper. Stayed hyped up all day. Like an idiot I went and bought gear, as I posted. But that’s the last gear I bought. It was really weak and did nothing to chillax me. Not that I really wanted calming down. By two In the morning I was in a really psychedelic mood. Loud psychedelic trance was banging out. I even did a spot of cleaning.
Suddenly I realized it was light outside and I hadn’t been to bed. I got to bed by sometime after six, but the glaring light kept me awake. So I hid under the covers and still got no sleep. It took me something like five hours to actually start sleeping properly. Then I got up after three.
Nearly all my depression has evaporated though I can never be sure how long it’s gone for. Today I felt totally normal until this evening when I suddenly got dog tired. I was watching the Royle family and chain smoking and didn’t want to go to bed too early (I want a sleep cycle back). I’ve had trouble sleeping for some days. I wake up again and again and again in the night.
It’s currently 3:10am. I did go to bed over an hour ago but my head was too full of random thoughts pipping and popping in all directions. Sometimes it can be really entertaining listening to them all, but I’ve been feeling a bit ill. Full of fluctuating energy. Sudden whooshes of energy. Sudden exhaustion. It just means I’m having mood swings, but sometimes I really don’t feel well.
I’m feeling a lot calmer than last night so maybe I’ll be able to get some shut-eye if I have a lie-down around four.
I hope this stuff isn’t too boring. If I actually had a private diary I’d write all this here. I know my sleep-cycles probably aren’t a source of fascination to the world, but I’m supposed to be keeping a mood diary, so I keep it in my blog for ease of access. Least I know where my bloody blog is. A journal in book-form I’d mislay all over the place. I hope the mood stays up and doesn’t fall down yet again. I was starting to feel desperate enough to submit to the dreaded Mood Stabilizers. I’m going to have to tell this doctor of mine about all this depression I’ve just gone through. I’ve had depression for most of my adult life. Not always full-blown extreme depression; maybe unhappiness is a better term for it. But whatever it is, it’s become a way of being and I’m fed up of it.
I decided a few days ago to focus myself on more positive things. Which was well nigh impossible when I was back on heroin and just wanted to curl up and die. Now I’m in my right mind it’s up to me to seek out some new interests. Can’t think up much apart from my Valerie book. Valerie has lifted me from the depths of despair on several occasions. She’s the only person who can make me laugh when I’m in depression. Apart from Anna Grace in Wisconsin.
Anna had an appointment at the methadone clinic on Thursday and I don’t know whether she went, thanks to Blogger being down. Anna got herself totally clean. Came off Suboxone. Then relapsed back on heroin and some of those strong pain pills American junkies jack up: oxycodone and Dilaudid (hydromorphone). Anna has a real thing about Dilaudid, it seems to be her favourite drug. I’ve never tried pain pills. Over here the only opiate commonly available to addicts is heroin. And if you’re in treatment, methadone and Suboxone.
I hope Anna manages to get herself on an even keel soon. She purloined an entire month’s supply of her Dad’s oxys and replaced them with aspirin. Apparently he hasn’t noticed. And she blew all her money on gear. She’s been depressed for as long as I remember, with the odd hyper phase chucked in. She doesn’t ever seem to be truly happy. Who does that remind you of?
Well I’m ploughing on with Project Life. Don’t know how the hell I’m going to do it. Has something to do with repeatedly putting one foot in front of the other, from what I know. My house is still a tip. My housing manager person (at least I think that’s who she is: the Stern Council Lady) tells me just to chuck out a couple of black bags full a week. I’m aiming at one bag a day, if not two.
As for other plans, there’s nowt but a gaping hole. I got so badly disoriented by all the crap that’s gone on since the end of last year, what with psychiatrists and methadone and all, I don’t even know what I want any more. I wasn’t living in the same world everybody else seems to live in. I went into a parallel universe. Now I’m relatively OK it’s time to decide what I am doing.
I was going to write a little book called Little Trotter Donkey Goes Away With The Fairies. About a little horse who accidentally grazes on some magic mushrooms, swirls into a psychedelic vortex and meets some gnomes, trolls, imps, sprites and fawns. I’m not sure WH Smiths will want to put that in their children’s section but hey…
I WAS IN A SOUR MOOD EARLIER; I'M IN A FAR BETTER ONE NOW. I was so exhausted I went back to bed. I'd woken up at five freezing cold and longing for heroin (such cold reminds me of withdrawals). I took no heroin, only methadone, and I'm feeling OK now. Ma Famille phoned me up and cheered me up earlier. See my instinct that outside things like swimming and comedy work for depression is absolutely right. My family say I should focus on positives and that my talk has somehow become full of psychobabble like "coping mechanism"; stuff that I didn't previously used to come out with. Then again coping mechanisms are things I need (though that's not to say I need be aware of them). I think my schizziness is a coping mechanism. It might be an "illness" but it's a way of coping too. Personally I think anyone who manages to live in today's diseased world without being on hard drugs or crazy or both either has something wrong with them (or is just kidding themself)... Or is such a remarkable person I want to meet them.
Everyone thinks my swimming idea is a good one. Hey I found my swimming trunks earlier; the baggy ones I actually want to wear.
I weigh 14 stone 4 3/4 ie 14 st 5 lbs. I have no idea how many pounds that is... oh yes I do I just looked it up there are 14 lbs in a stone so that's 201 pounds I weigh. That's heavy man! And it's very approximately 95 kgs. I wanna go down to 11 stone (77kg).
Now I have to buzz off I'm at an internet cafe; my broadband stick has run out and I thought it might be an exercise in interestingness, putting off posting to the evenings anyhow. (I felt so sour earlier I truly thought I was going to post nothing at all!) Well I'm better now and I get a new £40 stick next week...
I have the film Boogie Nights and some donuts to cheer myself up. Nobody tell me please Boogie Nights is no good; I spent £3 on the DVD!
I NEED ANTIDEPRESSANTS. But they don't work. They make me cuckoo (high). I have a great big crispy purple £20 note that could buy antidepressants in brown form. That one doesn't get me cuckoo. Crack and mirtazapine belong in the same category. Difference: mirtazapine (ironically) = more manic-depressive (I went DOWN on mirtazapine after going UP how crappy is that from something that's supposed to level you out?!) crack makes more paranoid. Extreme paranoia. I once thought people were climbing up the walls of the house and hid inside a home-made tent... the one you use once you're fed up of flashing at hidden cameras. That's nutnut for you. I never thougt I was a nutter despite all this. If I'd been a bit more naive I'd have blurted loads of this to psych staff years ago but I knew what paranoid/suicidal ideation meant. Knew what implied what and what they might eventually diagnose from what pattern. Because it's like joining dots. Akh I hate doctors. All I'm trying to do today is join dots of happiness. I have what they call a rapid cycle. That means I confuse myself because I don't know when Im up or down except when it's so extreme... I mean yesterday despite the nerves I was dunking biscuits while I shared at NA. All casual-like. (Manic-casual.) Not one person said anything except someone laughed knowingly. I'm not offended by THAT if I was I'd not have shared to start with. I didn't expect Absolution. Hey it would be funny if that person thought I was lying, would give me something to play up to. Sometimes I annoy myself by doing this; if somebody gets an idea of me that I don't agree with I'll show them the idea is true in the most ridiculous, eventually pantomimic way. When another person is there I never break eye contact with the first to shoot a look over. That gives you away. I do it like a professional actor, never once breaking stride, despite the ridiculousness. Usually I am pretending to be naive or stupid, my 2 favourite things I love to show people. I wear soft on the outside! Just like a tiger. All furry and cute. Nobody sees my teeth unless they rile me to it.
Did you know the lifetime "risk" of developing a substance disorder in type 1 bipolar (severe type) is 61% according to one study. I thought 50% sounded ridiculously small. I would estimate the true figure to be around 85 or 90%. 50% was supposed to be the number of bipolars who ever used drugs. Type 2 bipolar means mostly depressed with manic blips that never amount to full mania. I never got full mania until this year it's the only "up" I would recognize as illness because my head starts saying "power hour shower power shower" that's literally what I think and I say a mixture of things (incoherently, so I'm told that is with the topic jumping all over the place). I have every single diagnostic category among the 7 or so including reckless buying sprees (DVDs) I have so many they fill an armchair and they were bought mostly in 4 days. Great thing is EVERY SINGLE ONE is one I'd ring in the TV guide, so they're shit I WANT. Ben Hur I might not be in the mood for every day. Or Cleopatra. Or Dr Zhivago (a triple £5 pack) but they're there for when I do feel like watching lots of beautiful music and snow (Dr Zhivago) or Burton-Taylor (Cleopatra) or ancient stuff (Ben Hur). Shit no Gone with the Wind was the third in the treble pack, I hate that one but it came essentially free.
Does anyone care about any of this I can't think Up anything to say now so I'm going now.
Illustrated: famous people supposedly with bipolar. Vincent Van Gough is a maybe. Virginia Wolf definitely. Britney Spears absolutely no idea. Kurt Cobain: writing a song called lithium and then shooting yourself does not equal bipolar!
Plum Tree by Van Gogh, Japanese lettering even worse than mine
23:22 Schizoaffective Link. I still don't know what bloody disorder I'm meant to have or what the hell it actually is. [I got diagnosed schizoaffective.] I'm just NOT COMPLAINING that my main symptom is ELEVATED MOOD despite the fact that I had pretty full-blown melancholia this afternoon: exhaustion, Siberian low mood, suicidal thoughts, a feeling of intense guilt and wrongness and the idea that I would never ever feel any better about anything, by mid-evening I was fine by ten o'clock I felt a bit manic even..... PLUS I have "schizophrenia"..! Only fucking disease that made me cry just thinking I could have it and I fucking have it! No-one can ever say I was blowing things out of proportion again because I wasn't I was keeping something so fucking intense it was like a road drill through the head (psychotic mania) and keeping that like it was a little furry hammy in a nest, keeping that inside me head... ukk. How did all this happen?
SINEAD O'CONNOR: REBEL SONG this is a traditional Irish ballad; despite the title it's more a lullabye than anything else
MAN I AM DROWNING in DVD cases. It just took a psychological half hour (ie about 3 mins 20 seconds) to locate the case for Dr Zhivago which I tried to watch last night but just cannot concentrate on. I like the music, I like the snow and I like Lara.
Oh I can't even remember what I was going to say. Oh yeah I actually have my glasses. Which I usually lose for days on end when I go mental. I also lose money, the cards to get the money and keys, which just vanish in my house. Keys being the priority and because I never put them anywhere too stupid, I always find them within the hour. Everything else goes walkies for days on end.
I slept for hours and hours last night and don't feel nauseated any more. But I do feel physically tired whenever I sit down. When I go walking down the street I get brought right up into a beautiful high. Talking on the phone, anything else brings me up. Other times I think I'm normal, which is bad. Because normal leads to depression and I'd rather be high as a kite to be frank.
No not on drugs high on my Higher Power. I'm really into this Higher Power thing it's fantastic way better than drugs. Ask anyone in NA. Though they don't seem to get intoxicated by theirs. Which makes them all the poorer than me, to be frank.
Well not much doing except Mamma Mia which plays round and round because I like to sleep with Abba blaring in the background and meet the Fockers which I actually watched twice, I caught about a quarter of the actual film each time, so another 2 times and I'm done.
Syd asked why I don't hire them from the library but I'm in deep trouble with them for having taken out books last summer which I still have and having lost one on a bus and not told them. When you take books back the weirdos who work there seem to feel they have to calculate what is owed. I do not want or need unnecessary information but they won't listen. Actually they might if I come in blazingly hyper I will ensure I don't get told anything I don't want to hear. People visibly back off from me in this state. It's fantastic.
[Also our library charges about £2 for DVD hire and you can buy 'em new for £3 without the hassle of having to return them so I buy. With my grated cheese style attention span I have to watch everything x5 these days so I pretty much need to own it to get the story...]
Oh man I'm so exhausted it's unreal my body feels like I've gone skiing nonstop for 3 days. Bloody hell this French film is so boring I'm changing it. Why don't French people just learn to speak English? It would save so much time and trouble reading fucking subtitles. Yeah I can read Paris Match but actually following the crap they spout in real life: that's hard. Way harder than Real German. French people speak about 60% "argot" (slang) 40% proper French. Germans speak about 98% proper 2% slang. English people use more slang than Germans but far less than the French. Also Germans speak very distinctly. English are in between. The French, as y'all know speak as if they're eating something too tasty to bother opening their mouths properly. Plus they run all their words together.
I once met a French maniac who tried to speak to me dans le langue superieur (francais) mais je suis desole je comprenais rien! Can't find the accents for French. Sorry. And French keyboards go AZERTY not QWERTY which is the biggest headfucker {several other letters are in different places}. German goes QWERTZ ie Y and Z are swapped round and the cuckoo clock umlauted vowels are were ;'and[ are.
Well I'm off I don't know what the point of any of this was really I'm just saying hi and I wish I had a decent film to watch. I mean one that's either VERY FUNNY or FULL OF GOOD MUSIC. That I haven't watched at least twice in the past 2 days. I do have Young Victoria but it's far too ponderous for my frame of mind. The Queen was very good. Helen Mirren certainly seems to sum up the Queen's character which is quite witty, pragmatic and level headed but not boring. I noted nobody played Princess Margo. She was only referred to. Adding characters to fiction adds a lot of length so that might be why Margaret's not in there.
Well I'm off I'm totally skint I thought I had money in the bank but it's absolutely bare till Monday and I'm not even on heroin I don't know what I did {apart from buy a DVD player, a digibox and only 35 or so DVDs} but I fucked up somehow. OK over and out.
I SAW NAOMI the kindly American Nutter Club lady again today ... it's Thursday, NUTTER CLUB DAY!!
Only one other nutter turned up. I really like this nutter. She was so ill she looked like she was about to fall over and faint. This was side effects from a medication she's taking for a physical problem, not her bipolar meds.
So she was feeling ill. Naomi could see I was amping with energy so I had to go second. Then I did 90% of the talking, calling the drug service an ineptly run dump and slagging off the nurse I partiularly hate, who isn't the one who wanted to label me on the "anxious-avoidant personality disorder" and "dependent personality disorder" axis. Dependent in this context means somebody who is a real white mouse of a person who kind of obeys everything some stronger character thinks they should say and do. Which is yeah so much like me. I really hang my self-esteem on other people. Honestly!
[She came up with this bucketload of shit because I was depressed during all 3 interviews and because she thinks too much. Most of her theories are really intriguing and perceptive but she does go over the top. She's a WAY better nurse than Judgemental Bitch Features who I really loathe.]
As for anxious avoidant I may have anxiety, but if I do it doesn't come with the worrying, obsessively turning over negative thoughts to do with things that won't happen style of thinking. My way of coping is to smack anything negative out of my head. And I don't need the drug smack to do that. To give her credit she did say I'd "satisfied" the diagnostic criteria for mania during my yummy cold turkey detox. But as I EXPLAINED TO HER there's a little proviso in italics under that one saying "not initiated or maintained by an organic aetiological factor" ie you're not manic if you're in heroin withdrawal.
I am going a bit nuts on these DVDs I'm buying. I got another four last night and three today. I FOUND YOUNG VICTORIA. It's Scorsese-directed and A1 though my poor attention span had me losing the plot within 15 minutes or so. The only film I can really tolerate is Mamma Mia because I like the tunes. I got Chicago which is DIRE and I have to say Renee Zellwegger getting fucked by some random man in scene one does NOT make for a certificate 12 in my opinion. I wouldn't want my 12 year old kid watching that.
I got a 3-pack for "only" £7 of Dr Zhivago, Ben Hur and Gone With The Wind. It's Gone With The Wind I hate out of that lot, the other 2 are really cool, especially Ben Hur. Dr Zhivago is more like filmic wallpaper. Anyone who truly has the attention span for that really has my respect. The music is fantastic.
Today I got something called Role Models which is about someone who goes on an Energy Drinks bender (comedy) and a twin-pack American Dreamz (X Factor piss-take) and Intolerable Cruelty (both comedy) and Case 39, which I misread as Case 69 and thought it was about an orgy but it's "supernatural thriller" but disappointingly only certificate 15 ie probably not scary at all. I like STRONG SUPERNATURAL HORROR. Only kind of action film I can tolerate. Ghosts and ghouls! Action films just have me staring at the "action" forgetting what I'm doing, what's going on and on a DVD I'd press eject. They don't excite or impress me.
Apart from GOOD costume drama and GOOD musicals what I really like is COMEDY. Laughter, as they say is the best medicine. Bounty Hunter with Jennifer Anniston was good. Though why on earth it came in a bright pink case I haven't a clue. Hopefully it put lots of people off buying it so I could have it. That's my theory. I love Jennifer Anniston. I'm looking for Bruce Almighty because I like the bit where he makes her boobs bigger.
Well that's today. If you wanna hear more about nutter club there isn't much except me being banged on at by Naomi for not taking my medication (I'm not going to lie). She did aske me why I originally wanted it. NOT TO BE DEPRESSED was the main reason. And going so incredibly fast and hyper high I couldn't even think in English. If I start going that fast I'll take it again and it works QUICK so no worries there. If I crash badly I'm going in the nuthouse. I'm not sitting at home staring into space. Last time the aerial fell off the TV and I didn't notice for 2 days.
Well that's me I'm off. Take care everyone ;-) :-)
dunno exactly what this video is, but if it's trance it's good o it's a bit slow, ho-hum, tunes are ok though actually now i've heard a bit some of the tunes aren't bad LISTEN TO IT
ok sorry about that chillout music this is a bit better GATECRASHER was a northern club where grown men put sticky stars on their faces all in the name of trance my trance was hard hippietastic Return To The Source trance this is what's called Eurotrance, but it's still OK
OK THIS IS RETURN TO THE SOURCE proper Goa trance the parties I went to were way more bangin than this but it's a good start bear in mind a good dj would cut out the "musical chronic fatigue syndrome" beginning and get straight to the "mother ship is landing" proper psychotrance bits there's a good bit of tune about 3 mins 50 into it: THAT is banging trance!
20:38 I'm watching that Club 69 "supernatural horror" thing in the dark to try and make it more scary. It stars Renee fucking Zelwegger but hopefully she'll be demonically possessed or something. She's really fucking annoying that woman I won't go into why it's something she said in an interview that made me think "you uptight selfish cow". She's very good as Bridget Jones it has to be said. OK it's been going 5 mins and not a ghoul to be seen...
20:52 lights back on; can't see punctuation marks on computer keyboard no way am i watching a film without surfing the net at the same time, i do not have the focus to give anything my undivided attention these days
I GOT THREE MORE FILMS for a £10er today. They are to go with my 5 war films. I like to collect books/films/etc that make me look like a divorcing couple. So with Desert Rats, Farewell to Arms etc goes Girl Interrupted, The Queen and Paris je t'aime. I wanted The Queen or Young Victoria. Young Victoria wasn't there so it had to be The Queen for £3, Paris je t'aime is in French with English subtitles. Lazy buggers couldn't be bothered dubbing it into German (don't care about English).
Girl Interrupted is my favourite mental hospital film. Next time I go crazy I am going in the nuthouse. I now despair about my mental health so I'm going in the nuthouse. I don't care about anything any more.
Anyway I watched this one as it's about Borderline Personality disorder, which Angelina Joelie's character DOES have, Winona Ryder's character doesn't. In fact Winona Ryder doesn't have anything conceivably wrong with her. When I was TOLD to look up personality disorders to see which one I had (my family had SUCH a laugh about that one, if I do have a personality disorder it certainly ain't anxious-avoidant or dependent the crap the thinks-too-much nursie posited.
Those are diametrical opposite to me. She was picking up on my general misanthropy, the fact that I liked locking myself away and not engaging with the world and called that anxious-avoidant, NOT LISTENING to me when I hammered the fact at her ~ quite hard enough for even a stupid person to get it ~ that this was a NEW THING. Ie not a personality trait. As for dependent I'm INDEPENDENT.
At heart I don't give a shit for anybody's opinion of me. Of course I like to be thought well of, as does everybody. But I wouldn't exactly be keeping a blog like this if your High Opinion of me was my be all/end all in life, now would I? My blog would be far more "cool" than the neurotic confessional ramblings you get each day. Anyway the only personality disorder I flagged up bam-bam-bam-bam-bam was BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER. Which is kind of invalidated if you have a mood disorder causing these mood swings. I also think the DSM authors' idea of "impulsive" is exceedingly patronizing and judgemental: promiscuity, drug-taking and self harm are acts of desperation; all three become habits. Impulsiveness is surely by its very nature not habitual repeated actions but random actions belying a lack of self control.
Impulsive is being unable to resist stealing. Or licking cream off a cake. Those things are impulsive. Being in desperate pain and trying to salve it ~ that ain't impulsiveness. I also scored high on obsessive-compulsive and schizotypal and schizoid. Obsessive compulsive yeah I am. Schizotypal just means you're eccentric and coin your own words. Schizoid means you don't NEED people to be there, which I don't. I like people, I don't NEED people to validate my existence. If I woke up tomorrow and the entire world was empty ~ just me ~ I wouldn't cry. I'd break into houses and listen to other people's record collections. And I'd steal a boat and ride to Burma, find a China White refinery and get high.
Most true Borderlines are women but I knew a man with this personality disorder. He, like many others, wore it like a Jim'll Fix It Medal (which put me off the idea of psychiatric diagnosis until True Desperation intervened). And he jumped in front of a tube train about a year ago. And caused a hell of a mess in his friends' lives as ANOTHER one killed herself not long after (Perky).
I rang Pinky, Perky's former girlfriend today as I'm filling in a Government Fuck Ups Form for people who are a total mess. This is the Form of Shame and I've filled it in twice and had extra money. But I have to tell them all about what a complete loser I am, which I hate doing. I was too depressed, paranoid and guilty to fill it in before. So I'm doing it again.
I rang Pinky with my answers. Pinky [who has paranoid schizophrenia] says I sound hypomanic. Hypomanic means "mildly manic" (in other words in a perfectly proper and right mental state. Mania is normality. It's normality that has something wrong with it in my view.) Anyway we spent half an hour on the phone and she gave some good pointers but I'm not sure I wish to slant my answers the way she suggests. The ugly truth is brutal enough. The fact that I sleep in a chair or on the floor, that I've set fire to my bed by accident, that I never cook proper food and live on takeaway, that my clothes are covered in cigarette burns, that I sleep every day in the same clothes I spend the day in, that I find it impossible to keep my house clean, even when the landlord is after me.
All this crap has to go down. That's why I call it the Form of Shame. I absolutely hate it. My ambition is to either win big on Euromillions lottery or to write some bestsellers then I answer to no-one and can be as high/low/sideways as I please without having to answer for my mental state to any government doctor. They wanted a diagnosis so I could only write down depression/psychosis/mania/drug addiction. Doesn't it make me sound wonderful. Psychosis does NOT mean being permanently mad. It means having episodes where you're paranoid, hear people talking about you [eg on the bus, where they normally don't], are scared to leave your house, and find public transport a huge challenge, that's psychosis.
The rest of my crap comes under moods. Being a drug addict doesn't figure on this form, in fact I don't think you can claim for drug addiction. My parting shot on this form will say I'm a 38 year old man who wants a normal life. Ha! That won't get to them, but I feel like being expressive. And I MUST fill this in now before my mood drops, as it no doubt will. Because if it does I won't want to be bothered submitting it. I'll feel as I felt before. Guilty, unworthy and fraudulent. Even though I'm telling the truth. Most people lie to that shrink at the druggie service, I'm sure they do. That must be why he looked so taken aback to see me off my tree on "mood disorder" the time before last. He asked whether I was me, which seriously confused me. I thought at one point he believed I was somebody else. Then I thought he believed I was faking.
I know TWO people who fake schizophrenia which makes me too angry for words, considering how desperate I was feeling and NOT GETTING HELP, considering I had suicidal thoughts every day for months on end and NOBODY EVER ASKED HOW I WAS. Considering I was in truly desperate straits at some times and NOBODY EVEN NOTICED. This is the druggie service I'm angry with. I had a mental health nurse as Worker. Apparently I should have gone in all mumsy simpering away about "mental health problems" when my problem was depression with paranoia ~ hardly a recipe for heart-on-sleeve.
This bitch never once asked how I was. It was always drugs drugs drugs with all of them. Recently they've changed their tune now I come in bouncing off the walls on my own energy. All that stuff about mood swings I repeatedly told them about is now seen as True. At last. Now it's got so incredibly bad I fit criteria for a Severe Mood Disorder. I would like to get those two nursies and bang their wooden heads together. Probably they'd make a resonant xylophone noise.
Well I don't know where this rant is going. Yeah I'm hypochondriacking yet again because YET AGAIN I have to Account for my own life in horrible gruesome detail which I absolutely hate doing. So I scribbled it all out in half an hour. Then Pinky told me it was wrong. I have to add this that and t'other. So I will. But I'm very annoyed. The only thing I'm looking forward to is NA at 7:30 tonight. So I'd better go. I just wanna switch off. I've had enough of everything for today. I never slept at ALL last night. My antipsycho pills are disagreeing with me. I'm giving them a break for a few days to see if I can get a bit higher. I wanna get high, man. High on my Higher Power which blazes inside me.
Gotta go, else this will never get down. See y'all later.
GIRL INTERRUPTED: END OF THE WORLD Anna this is for you:~~~~
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.
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?
Here's the 4-methylmethcathinone molecule. This is the "cocaine plus ecstasy"-style "legal high" I took that time and didn't even know what it was... After a brief but intense craze for meow, it was eventually banned in the UK in April 2010
If you wanna see what manic looks like, watch this. If this is the mood she stayed in all day she'd be moderately manic (severely manic is literally all over the place verging into complete incoherence)... I have been known to yell the same stuff over and over, which is why I like this:
Ferry Corsten remix. William Orbit performance. Samuel Barber's Adagio
DJ Seduction: Starlight August 1992
I love this style of music and WHY do kidz today call it OLD SCHOOL? MAKE ME FEEL ANCIENT WHY DONCHA! I really like that ting-ting-tong tune that comes into it about 3 mins in "release the spirit" yeah....! Respect goin' out LizzyD Yeah ;-)
Angelina Joelie: Crazy Chic
Girl Interrupted: best scenes
Mozart's Requiem Tranced Up
I like danced-up tunes now that I'm "OLD". Like this one... The actual name of the tune is "lacrimosa" which means sad. Which is weird it actually sounds uplifting. but there ya go:~~~~~~~~
Click herefor the Drought Post, news is in the comments.
Because there's more than 200 comments, look closely at the bottom of the form for for "Newer/Newest" - THAT is where you click to find most recent comments.
PETITION THE GOVT FOR PROPER PRESCRIBING TO ADDICTS: CLICK HERE
FERRAGOSTO AND THE FRIDGE THAT HATED ANGURIA
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As long-term readers will know, *Ferragosto* (Assumption Day on 15th August
and the two-week period surrounding it) is not my favourite time of year:
When ...
In which inspiration strikes
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I was listening to the radio in the car on the way to Mumbles this morning.
It was the short daily service, and the priest was talking about the legacy
o...
Sweet Summer....
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Its now May of 2025 and I came here to write about Mothers Day, and found
this draft of my end of summer post from last summer. We are about to head
o...
Blog Updates
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To all my faithful readers:
It's been a while since I posted a new essay. However, I still check and
read any new comments. Plus, I know people still fin...
Blogging Break
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I'm taking a break from blogging, for two major reasons :a. I find it
hard to concentrate on chosen topics, while there's war and tragedy going
on in m...
Just a Thought for the HBO Execs
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I want to rename Game of Thrones, “Two Crazy-Assed Bitches.” Mail me my
check, motherfuckers! Actually three crazy-assed bitches if you count
Sansa. The me...
Souls of the Goldhawk Road
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It was one of those tawdry summer evenings and all I could think about was
the heat. It was everywhere, stuffy and humid and crucifying even at that
late...
Yeah
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No, I am not returning, just updating out of boredom. Plus writing on my
phone sucks, so it won't be a long post.
Yep my book sucks, makes close to no mon...
The (complete) rainbowrain
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Today is the last time I'll post blog-photos from my work as tomorrow, the
last day of this blog is a Saturday. So you can enjoy this view one more
time ...
Twelve Months
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I can't believe it's almost 12 months since I posted anything on my blog!
I confess I've been spending a lot of time on Facebook - I know you think
I'm a t...
Graphic Wisdom to Begin 2016
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*By three methods we may learn wisdom: *
*First, by reflection, which is noblest; *
*Second, by imitation, which is easiest; *
*and third by experience, wh...
Obat Herbal Stroke Berat dan Ringan
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*Obat Herbal Stroke* - Penyakit ini terjadi karena peredaran darah didalam
organ otak mengalami penyumbatan atau gangguan. Penyakit Stroke ini adalah
adany...
Iboga- A Magic Bullet?
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Thoughts and random musings
I get the feeling, that this blog and therefore, my own thoughts and
behaviours are, to the average reader, quite controversi...
The People You Meet
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Not saying this is a come back of any type, but after farewelling my
darling friend Jeffrey today, I felt the overwhelming need to blog. Met a
weird Japan...
Despair and Dissolution
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I haven't written partly because I was confused by the new setup. Took me
ages just to get to my blog. Frustration.
Everyone can say "I told you so". Hate...
A long time coming....
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I cannot believe I have neglected this blog for so long.
Just to let you know I will be uploading a post in the next couple of days.
Things are good.
My hea...
Gone but never forgotten
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Hello everyone....
Saturday the 24th May would of been Merle's 80th birthday...
Unfortunately she is gone, but never forgotten...
I just thought I would...
Everything in it's place
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Yum.That people are reading this in Israel and Indonesia, as well as so
many other places around the world that I never would've expected is pretty
fuckin...
How to Negotiate With Used Cars Dealers
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Car traders have excellent discussing abilities. They know how to deal with
their clients with their methods and methods to make sure that they shop.
Amazi...
starry starry night…
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Ho Ho Ho! Hope everyone had a merry fucking Christmas and will enjoy a
drunken orgy of pleasure on New Years Eve. I had a nice Christmas Day with
Melinda(a...
byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
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.....I think the time has come to acknowledge that I'm not actually
blogging any more.....
PLUS
I'm off on Sunday for a Big Adventure Down Under, with L...
Drug Law Reform - NZ Show Australia How it's Done
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It seems that our New Zealand cousins are finally taking some much needed
action on drug law reform. Australia should take note of this and consider
caref...
Daze of Summer
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Her mentor is one of the most gentle people on the planet. He catches flies
in his hands and sets them free outside his studio, and he flicks
mosquitoes a...
Musings
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A week has passed since my last post and it's been a week of contrasts.
Right smack bang in the middle of week, Wednesday, was Australia Day, a
public holi...
Who buys CRACK without Brown ?
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See these F.cking dealers up here they cant get the brown sold cause its
shite so lots of people are just buying Whisky and im thinking to myself No
For Me...
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Would you trust someone who was never sure if they loved you?
I want to be held (or posses a large amount of drugs)
I want to be skinny and pretty
I want...
The Neighbour's Gun
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I remember those lazy summer nights. In my light, light dress, I would open
the window and gaze at the moon in the night. I would look and almost feel
th...
THIS is classic slice-of-life video; filmed from a sushibar conveyor belt in Japan. You don't need sound for this one (unless you speak Japanese...)
Never Mind The Balearics...
LOST WEEKENDS... Lost weeks... Lost lives...
THE SPANISH ISLE of Ibiza is the "spiritual home" of much British dance music...
Eva Cassidy: Autumn Leaves
I wonder if Autumn is as miserable your end as it is here..? This song wonderfully reinterpreted by Eva Cassidy (I think) brought tears to my eyes when I first heard it. See what you think ...
Christiane F
Christiane F
("Wir Kinder vom Bahnhoff Zoo")
Berlin has long been a centre of "alternative" living, attracting the artistic and dejected. And of course heroin rushes into such a void:
You can see the film in its entirety by clicking HERE.
These are my 3 roborovski hamsters!
(And now there is one...) Itchy, Bashful and Spherical... Itchy, the scruffy, dopey (and tamest one) died a few weeks ago. I was very ****** off (no swearing on this blog (or I'd be effing and blinding all the time...)). Spherical and Bashful were the remaining "Trotters" aka Hamsta MCs, Carrot Nose and Trotter Donkey ... until Trotterdonkey died and now poor Spherical Carrot Nose remains alone ...
What name should I give to my fictional slavering English mastiff hellhound..??
Name the Uncooth Doggie...
NOW I'M PUTTING UP A NEW POLL...My forthcoming fiction shall feature a giant, ill-tempered slavering hellhound of an English Mastiff who spends her time savaging pram wheels, dolls, etc; pulling soft toys apart... growling at houseguests, baying at the light fittings etc etc. She has a total personality change, however, when she gets "raped" down the park by a local rottweiler... leading to a howling, baying, snaggle-toothed litter of puppies!Anyway, which of these three names do you think fits best?(In alphabetical order)GwendolinaPansyTinkerbelle???Vote now ...!!
London Time
GMT (aka "Universal Standard Time"):
ahead of the Americas; behind everywhere else...
Trisch & Jen on the phone
Real life spooky phone call. Trisch Li is speaking to her friend Jen, who has a stalker sneaking round the side of her house. I Love the film exposure. I love the funky background. And I love Trisch. She had bipolar. She died. She left some amazing stuff behind ...You can see Trisch manic here.
Moby: Go
Anyone who was a Twin Peaks fan will know this tune: the in-sequence floaty tune played in-episode (not the theme tune) that made that tellyprog so dreamy.
This tune is something else:~~~~~~~
Future Sound of London: Papua New Guinea
THIS tune is transcendently beautiful.
Thank you to Lizzy who reminded me:~~~~~~~
The Orb: Little Fluffy Clouds (Danny Tengalia)
Archetypal triphead/herb-tokers' tune ...
Urban Shakedown: Some Justice
One of my all time favourite "hardcore" rave tunes. The "woman" singing "we live as one family" is actually a man speeded up. The primal line "Now eeeee-yeah-oh-eeeee-yeah we live as one family," sounded to me like the sun rising at psychedelic dawn. For a long time there was forever a part of me left from this 1991-1992 era, still out there, tripping in a certain corn-on-the-cob field at dawn...
Praga Khan: Injected with a Poison
Sums up what my attitude used to be and is once again to gear. That because, "There's a rainbow inside your mind ... Injected with a poison.... we don't need that any more."
Scott McKenzie: San Francisco
I really used to believe all this crap with all my heart. Peace and love and chemical dreams. If you've ever tripped out high upon higher and sublime upon sublime there is no way of bringing the beauty of the experience back with you... I once had a friend down who brought some cocaine. I did some lines and was soon stuck to the ceiling. I had tickets for a rave in south London. He was too wasted to go. So I had to negotiate an hour and a half nightbus ride all the way down. By Trafalgar Square I was eeing out on 2 pills as well and my eyes such massive discs I couldn't read the bus time tables and had to tell passers-by I'd "forgotten my reading glasses" (how embarrassing)... then I arrived around 3pm. DUR! Not pm (wasn't THAT late 3AM): though these pills didn't wear off till well after 11am which made them superstrong... anyhow... Security let me straight in I'd obviously taken all my drugs (indeed I had: felt like I was flying by this point)... first person I encountered was a middle-aged woman in a ball gown swaying back and forth in the foyer (Brixton Academy: a venue for 5000) I told her: "you are so cool". We subsequently made friends. Watching this video and seeing how stuck in the neverending moment of bliss some "flower kids" are I remember this lady having to tell me: "there's the party. Then the party's over. You have to accept that." But I never could. I wanted happiness to last for ever...
SCOTT MACKENZIE HAS GONE (copyright reasons)
HERE'S JOE BELTRAM 1990 ENERGY FLASH
Who is the superior writer? (From... in no particular order...)
Itchy's "Windy" Face
Not because she has the "farts" but because she "runs like the wind on a windy day" this is Itchy's look when she is nervous...
Bashful and Spherical look like this
(Itchy is a bit smaller)
Bashful's Lookie-Lykie
Hello you Tiny Tubby! Roborovskis are the tiniest of all hamsters, being a mere 5cm/2" fully grown... "Bashful" is pulling a bit of a grumpy face here; but hey!
Should my daily videos stay giant on the top or go mini on my sidebar? (You can only vote once.)
Doggie or Kittie?
You Are: 50% Dog, 50% Cat
You are a nice blend of cat and dog.
You're playful but not too needy. And you're friendly but careful.
And while you have your moody moments, you're too happy to stay upset for long.
38 year-old guy, 6 blogs (the main one is gledwood vol 2 so go there for new postings: blogs are linked via my sidebars), I also have 3 video blogs. One mainly music vids, the other random "novelty" clips from Youtube/etc. The third is my Fabulous Celebrity Blog for fans of trash culture. Unfortunately addicted to drugs - yes it was my own fault but what can I do about it now? Addicted means trapped & can't stop. That's how addicted I am. But that's not ALL I blog about. Apart from drugs I love drink. Apart from drink I'm into little furry animals like Pingpong, my Chinese hamster, and my 3 roborovski hamsters: Itchy, Bashful and Spherical... and ... er, food. Lately there has been a drought of the substance that enslaved me for so long. Will I clean up? Only time will tell...
Fun, comforting, and friendly.
You are a true classic, and while you're not super cutting edge, you're high quality.
People love your company - and have even been known to get addicted to you.