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!
Showing posts with label ocd. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ocd. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Frisbee Day


I TOSSED A PIZZA OUT OF MY WINDOW EARLIER LIKE A FROZEN FRISBEE. It had fucking pork in it and I don't eat pork. It's dirty. So I stormed off down the corner shop for another one. This one was Margherita with red peppers and mushrooms of my own. It's in there now.

WAS IN A REAL STEW about Deshane, the mental health personnage coming to my house. I very naerly walked out and scored heroin instead of doing the meeting. I have never been so wound up over a thing, an actual thing. Not for a long time.

Deshane is VERY perceptive he recognized that the mess I live in is Obsessive Compulsive Disorder turned on his head. How on earth did you realize that? I asked. It took over a year of counselling for me to see that one. He said he has seen it before. But he sounded very surprised when I laughingly described my "symptoms" to him. All my life all my experience is now a "symptom". How horrible is that.

But Deshane says it's healthier to see myself as sick than to pretend Im OK (as I do to the world at large, of course). But I get confused on that issue. I think it's all a conspiracy to make me helpless and in desperation yet undiagnosable. And on meds that don't work. The pills weren't really working last night. My head was lit up and I was hearing voices a bit. I know hearing voices is meant to mean I'm cuckoo but honestly thats the least of my worries. It's the weirder stuff I get troubled by.
I took my 4mg risperidone as prescribed. It doesnt make me feel ill anymore so that's good. Sorry there's nothing good to report. Except I'm taking up swimming (see below).

All the best to everyone

G
xx

Monday, April 21, 2008

Howard Hughes and I...

WE ARE CUT FROM THE SAME CLOTH... I have never seen anybody in a film who was so similar to me and the way I might have lived if I had vastnesses of money and the time, power and inclination to follow my own whims to a fault...

Readers who've followed my blog for a while and read my From Depressed Oaks childhood post will know that I grew up with pretty full-on OCD of the contamination-handwashing variety for a couple of years in late childhood (around the last year of primary school into the first year of secondary school; that kind of time...)

So viewing Scorsese's film on Howard Hughes last night I saw an awful lot that I've done. Not locking myself naked in a room full of films and peeing into specially aligned milkbottles (though I DID end up stashed in a room a metre deep in rubbish and rubble, convinced people were spying on me and listening to nonexistenct voices through the wall). No: what I'm getting at is the milder, earlier stages when he got the first fear of germs and contamination and had to wash hands over and over. I washed mine until ~ in wintertime ~ they chapped and bled. I couldn't pick up money from off the floor. Particularly copper coins with their dirty appearance and strong smell. Just like in the clip I could not leave a public bathroom unless someone else first entered (public toilet doors are the most filthily contaminated of all)... many doors at home I used to open with my elbows, causing, of course, lots of amusement. But better to be laughed at and remain clean than to be contaminated.

Many of Hughes's subtler moves I can't help wondering whether the average viewer even noticed, let alone got. E.g. when the senator serves him a glass of water; he has to edge it round and round so as to touch with his own hands those parts untouched by the servants' ... would YOU have got that?

Sometimes in days of ambition yet misery, I envisage myself, too, in a huge house cut off from the world. Though I wouldn't tape up strips of red tape all about, I CAN see myself turning into something of a recluse away from the nasty old world... and really, knowing how nasty and full of spite the world really is, who can blame anyone for doing so?



Oh I don't know. Having had this "cold" for a week, I spent the weekend feeling dismally low and tired. The most negativistic thoughts have been circling my head. I missed Sunday lunch at Mother Hubbs' yesterday, not because I was avoiding her but because I was so exhausted I simply retired to bed and missed everything until approaching 8pm when the most dreadful television impinged on my sorry consciousness... "you MIGHT be Nancy!" exclaimed Graham Norton... on a dreadful BBC "reality" casting show... putting together a West End re-run of that classic done to death my my own thirtysomething generation (we all sang the songs at school)... poor wannabes and hopefuls, full of varying talent being told useless factoidal advice like "you don't want this enough" (in other words you don't jump up and down like a slavering fool as much as I'd like to see, you keep your energy for performance like any professional with half a measure of nous)... and other such nothingnesses sayings...

... what was ON TOP of the television caught my eyes... yes! My mirrored roborovskery! They were all so lovely and so cute, little gremlins last night. Allowing me to rub their shoulders in sleep (they love that)... even Spherical did so... SO unlike the paranoid-pinging Spherical...

... then they woke up a bit more and took to pinging about like a tubby horse-race. I put them in the diggery for three hours and their fur's now sublimely well-tended.

On that note I'd better go. Valium Marilyn's threatened visit is taking place as we speak... her vivacious voice is hollering up the hallway!... and the longer you leave her, the louder she gets!!... Have a pleasant day everybody!!

;->...

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