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 psychic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label psychic. Show all posts

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Drugs Required


I THINK I NEED MORE HEROIN. Surely it's better to be sleeping on the A, S and D keys, producing nonsense, than tapping in adda-gaggas because I'm fully awake and going into Shamanic Heaven. If I could stay in Shamanic Heaven I'd willingly stay there but I always come down down down so why go up. Only other therapy that comes to mind is Glass Therapy but it gets sharp bits all over the floor which I then tread on and that ain't the point. Accidentally cutting an artery, that's the point.

Some bastard is insisting on coming round tomorrow and I just want to go to bed. I need some drugs to push me under. I hate sleeping without pills and I don't see why I should do it. I'm avoiding risperidone on principal it's antipsychotic and I never was psychotic.

Mediums and prophets hear voices, they ain't mad and neither am I. I'm dropping all quasi-medical terminology from now on as it seems to cause gross confusion and make you all think I believe I'm ill. I only think I'm ill when I am actually ill. Which hasn't happened for weeks.

I was watching the Aviator yet another film about somebody the world considered mad. He does what I do, says the same stuff over and over. Nothing wrong with that. I only do it when I'm thinking. Or not thinking.

I wish I could sleep. I wish barbiturates were prescribed. I could do with 30x Seconal 100s. You can take these by the handful if you want deep sleep and you'll sleep into your grave. Only way of suicide I know of involving [benzo] sleeping pills involves a rough sea. Drop the pills while you're at the rocks. Wear multiple layers of clothing to weigh yourself down. Wait long enough that you have trouble moving. Use all your might to get into the choppy waters. It won't feel cold. You will feel nothing ever again. This is advice to self. You wanna kill yourself? Fuck off and go elsewhere this blog is about my life and my death, not yours.

Really I wish heroin were free of charge or at maximum 50p a G H4, then I could take Enough. I'm not talking about a pathetic 300mg a day diamorphine script I'm talking many times that. They know methadone is causing all these problems of mine which is why they prescribe it.

Truth has to be very simple. I'm NOT IN DETOX. Opiate detox makes you sweaty, hot and cold with eyes like saucers. I have none of these symptoms and I've never heard of anybody detox from early December into mid February.

So either: methadone is the root of all my instability
Or: that's just how I am

One of the two. If the first is true then WHAT THE HELL ARE THEY DOING PRESCRIBING SOMETHING THAT PUTS MULTIPLE PEOPLE IN MY HEAD AND THEN WHIRLS THEM ALL UP IN A TORNADO?

Ie they are TRYING TO SEND ME MAD and I'm dropping this methadone script and scoring on the street. At least then the government aren't controlling me.

It's all a con. Everything in life is one big giant con. Don't be taken in or you're even sadder and more lost than I am.

Illustration: top: the cyclone or tornado ~ ask anyone who's been to The Top and they'll tell you about this; black pepper/strawberry icecream ~ these are for Melody


MAMAS AND PAPAS: CREEQUE ALLEY
no point sitting about in a sour mood might as well put on something decent




THIS is how I feel when depressed, look under the second column: hypersomnia etc
http://www.angelfire.com/home/bphoenix1/uni.html

Friday, January 14, 2011

Responsibility

SO WHAT AM I MEANT TO BE DOING NOW? That I'm taking responsibility for my own life, at last.

For years I never took responsibility for anything. All I took was heroin first, drink second, crack third, Valium when it came my way. My four drugs of choice.

All in all I got in a mighty mess. I haven't opened any mail in months, except when someone phones me to say mail is coming. Why bother? it only ever contains threats and I was not together enough to deal with the council tax or anything else. The solicitor wants to put me down as Severely Mentally Impaired. This just means mentally ill. I don't want to be mentally ill so that one never got anywhere.

You know I even got criticized just now for having looked up the symptoms of my own illness! How can I take responsibility for anything if I don't know what I'm dealing with?

As I said, I do regret having seen that NutNut dr a few weeks ago. What happened was, on Tuesday the week before I started hearing voices. I thought this was dodgy heroin and laughed it off. On Thursday I stopped taking heroin and switched to methadone. I was in no way withdrawing as I had enough methadone at home to take in divided doses, so I never felt the slightest cluck at all. Add to the fact that the heroin had gone pitifully weak due to a drought (though it was full of ultra-powerful downers) and methadone held me well. On Friday I woke up feeling absolutely vile. I couldn't summon energy to get out of bed for four hours. Then when I did I forced myself in the shower and to the methadone pharmacy. Someone sent me an email that afternoon and I was laughing my head off, I thought "that's good I'm not depressed any more". By midnight I really felt tired as if I hadn't slept in years but my head was beginning to race quickly and more to the point I was now hearing voices loudly. I didn't sleep at all. In fact I went two and a half days without any sleep it was absolutely impossible. My hearing went incredibly loud. I could hear every thing in every room of my house and on the street. People were babbling at me everywhere. Music. words. When I opened a door, the door said "hello!" and told me to buy some peaches. By this time I was getting very paranoid. I had to go out the next day to get methadone and everyone was spitting and swearing at me on the street. When I got home I tried to sleep but could see the most vivid pictures behind my eyes. I felt euphoric one minute, suicidal the next. At one point I couldn't tell whether I was thinking or hearing because all I heard was voices voices everywhere saying different things. I was negative of all drugs by this point, I wasn't even drinking. Eventually I did have 2 cyders, just to prove this wasn't DTs. On Sunday I did eventually sleep for what felt like years, but it was only four hours or so. I woke up with a fascinating radio programme on. Got up and the radio was still playing in the bathroom. Then I realized it was just another of those voices. I got an hour's sleep on Monday then angrily phoned my Mum, who had seen the state I was in 2 weeks before and been horrified (high on heroin and benzos). So she was in touch with my worker. I didn't even know my worker's name so my Mum did the phoning. A while later I was rushing off my face on crack which I was convinced the drug service had spiked me with. I hadn't taken any coke at all. By that afternoon I was catatonically depressed, curled up in a ball and more disoriented than I've ever been. A few hours later my mood went rushing back up and I was on top of the world. The problem with all this apart from the confusion and paranoia was that I just could not function. It took over an hour to decide to go out, get keys together and actually leave as I was distracted by everything. In shops I couldn't handle change. The action of moving my hand, counting money and handing it over within a few seconds was too much. I eventually used the laundrette but again had to be helped with change, filling the machine etc I was cabbaged. I wasn't on drugs, I wasn't in drug withdrawal. I was on methadone which kept me fine. This stuff was mental. On Thursday I saw the psychiatrist as I knew something had gone very wrong. Even though I felt good most of the time at the peak of the madness I've never been so terrified. It's one thing to be tripping because you've dropped acid, quite something else to be hallucinating on nothing. Acid lasts 12 hours or so. This went on for days on end. When I saw the doctor I thought I was OK. This is not what the dr thought. His questions revolved around antipsychotics, schizophrenia and whether I wanted to be in hospital. I almost regret saying no. So this weird state happened and took a good ten days to wear off. Afterwards I was just confused. I banned myself from looking up anything to do with mental health and stuck by this until the weirdness had receded. Then I did go Googling and matched time and again "bipolar disorder: mixed psychotic mania". Lovely. I'm not saying this is what was wrong with me, I'm saying I matched the descriptions. Every time.

The same symptoms started coming back a week or two ago but they were nowhere near as intense and I plummeted into depression which is where I am now. I spend a lot of time online as it's the only thing that distracts me from how I feel. No I am not looking up mental health shit. Psychiatry is the most boring of all subjects to read on unless you're looking for a specific answer.

So now I don't know what to do. I'm drinking only 2 cans 1 litre. No heroin today. I only crave it because I feel miserable and that's how I fixed misery for years on end. I don't feel motivated to do anything exciting. I've decided to do a bit of cleaning as it's 4am and I'm wide awake.

I can't do this voluntary work yet. As it was tactfully pointed out to me, it's a very nice idea but I do need to be a bit more together before I try something like that.

I haven't just been lazy, I've gone to such an extreme I was almost paralysed. I never engaged with anything or anyone. The ONE thing I kept going was my blog. But being able to tell you something doesn't mean I'm doing very much. I started shoving myself in the shower again, but before that I'd gone weeks without bothering to wash properly or wash my hair. I didn't care what anyone thought and was glad to have people stay away from me.

So there we have it. Yes I am self obsessed (and who isn't). At least when I do that I don't know who I'm obsessing about. I feel like a glassfish. Almost invisible.

So apart from this giving up drink and not taking heroin, what do I do? My head is distracted by random words coming in. They come in from outside, I can point to the direction they come from. The last phrases I heard were "give it a mole" and "Orla Geerin" (BBC Middle East correspondent). I also hear my name coming from the London buses.

No I'm not saying I'm mad, but I AM sane enough to realize this isn't strictly "normal" to most people. It never happened to me till I was in my 20s. Maybe I'm psychic.

The guy downstairs, the one I DO get on with is on exactly the same wavelength as me and he says I should stop dressing like a tramp (that is a hobo, not a prostitute). But I like my cigarette burned clothes. At least I don't have to worry about messing them up.

I suppose I ought to go to bed as I need a sleep pattern back. But what do I do when I'm awake?

Here are my own suggestions:

1. Keep drink to a max 2 cans (1 litre) a day. That's 7.5 alcoholic units.
2. Don't use heroin
3. Keep self and clothes clean
4. Clean house, it's still not finished
5. Eat properly
and one last one, I didn't think of till I got a comment just now at 1:30pm from the Mistress of Mischief GO TO NA/AA!

That's about all I can manage. When I was doing that cleaning blitz I got so exhausted I slept 17 hours at a stretch. If there is something physically wrong I'm not getting treatment anyway. I'm fed up of doctors. I still have very mixed feelings about having seen that psychiatrist. I thought I'd had a 2 day breakdown and was basically OK by the time I saw him. Looking back, I was not OK at all. I spent the waiting period pacing the entire length of the building; once inside the consulting room I was so hyper I was bouncing off the walls. I barely stopped talking the entire time I was in there. I dread to think what they're going to do to me next time. Have you seen Michael Caine's evil doctor character in Quills? I think the nice doctor will go and I'll be confined to a lunatic asylum under the auspices of somebody like that. I don't trust doctors.

Now I've got to go it's 4:30am I'm supposed to be cleaning up or sleeping or something. I can't remember what.

Illustrated: unanswered mail; an Afrian pygmy hedgehog which I'd quite like as a pet (they're more popular in America where you don't get wild hedgehogs); a glassfish; smoking; the Marquis de Sade, played by Jeffrey Rush in Quills

URBAN SHAKEDOWN: SOME JUSTICE
This was one of my favourite tunes of the early 90s.
The sample is actually a man speeded up. It comes from an old garage track:
War and drugs are everywhere and it's getting so hard to breathe the air....
Now-eeeeeee, we live as one family




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