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, August 10, 2009

A Fruity Story

If the proverb is true, this post saves 13,000 words:

Today I found a



OK ~ a



in the



a



had left it by the



I knew it was hers because she was from



Her



said



in



She was so



when I



and



Aren't I a goody



?!

Saturday, August 08, 2009

Raccoons!

FURRY FRIDAYS ON SATURDAYS.

This is specially for Kat'rina Sweden ...





YOU don't get raccoons over here. They're totally a North American critter. Sometimes I think my hamsters look like raccoons, because of the cute furriness and beady eyes ...



In some ways they're equivalent to our foxes, because they sneak into gardens, root through the trash ... etc. But they're much friendlier and less sly ...



... most of the time! But even when they're peeved they still look cute:



As well as snaffling our food, they love to climb "our" trees ...





... and get in places they're not "supposed" to be ...



Raccoons have a wide, varied and versatile diet, and this brings them into contact with humans. Just like (some) people they like to wash their food before eating it. This is called "dousing":



The raccoon breeding season is in late summer. Females carry their babies all through the winter ... finally giving birth to an average 2 to 5 young in the spring ...





Baby raccoons are tiny ...





... and cute.





And grown-up raccoons do entertaining things sometimes as well ...




Raccoons love catfood. Cats don't always love raccoons:



HAVE A CHEERY WEEKEND, Y'ALL!




Friday, August 07, 2009

I Love Disney-Dogs!

I was glancing through a friend's blog, when I saw a really cute dog called Jake.

I love dogs like these, with shaggy beardy bits round their nose:



Just like the Pal With Marrobone Dog:


Thursday, August 06, 2009

Tubby Bum-Bum Roborovskis Say Hello

BEFORE I forget; from yesterday: this is how you write Yiddish in Yiddish:
ייִדיש


THE MAIN THING I wanted to do but got timed out from doing was to illustrate Spherical Roborovski and kin saying "hello!".



So here goes:



When I do get some more (I don't know when), I will probably try breeding. The babies are called "pups"



Don't they look tiny?






... and cute ...



Wednesday, August 05, 2009

A Stab In The Daylight

STEAK-KNIFE IN HAND, my assault on life's possibilities goes on.

Modern and Biblical Hebrew handbooks (and a few other languages besides) tower beside my TV like a modern-day Babel. I have Hebrew CDs coming out of my ears.

Add to this the Yiddish primer I borrowed "out of interest" (bear in mind Yiddish is a Hebrew-lettered Aramaicized offshoot of mediaeval German as spoken in Poland and Eastern Europe through the Ukraine and into Russia and I'm already quite good in German) ~ and this overflow of Hebrew symbols is spilling out my ears together with elementary dialogue about hotel reservations in the Holy Land.

Here's a comparison of Yiddish and German as transliterated:

Yiddish: Zey bleybn nit.
German: Sie bleiben nicht.
("They aren't staying.")


Spanish had to go (temporarily) by the wayside. No I've not given up on it. I've always wanted to speak Spanish and still do. I just had to re-prioritize. The library's restrictions on CD language borrowing put limits on my resources.

(Evidently the idea of studying more than one language at once is beyond their expectations (this is, after all, modern Britain)).

Apart from all this, the furry Mongolian Tubby Bum-Bum ~ aka Spherical Roborovski ~ perks her ears and says "hello!" from her Italian hard cheese tube where she's plonking her newspaper-chewed bedroom. Sometimes she up-ends the entire tube whilst nibbling on it, like a miniature polar bear with trashcan-on-head, which is hilarious to behold ...

All is fine with me, (I should say). But I don't feel very fine. Life feels gapingly void and fruitless. I always feel I'm doing something wrong ~ something ineffable, abstract... something I can never put my finger on.

I want to do things right. For once in my life.

I'm aiming (if I possibly can manage this) to give in a totally clear drugs screen next week. And that means pretty much no heroin between now and then.

And of course, if I could manage it voluntarily (that is, having money to pay for it and yet abstaining ~ that would set a vitally new slant on my entire future ...

Wish me luck!

DRUNK SQUIRREL VIDEO
This one's a classic...
... ever seen a SQUIRREL this rat-arsed? ;->...
... the furry entertainer's been bingeing on autumnally fermenting pumpkins ...


Tuesday, August 04, 2009

Shortest Ever Hair

I'VE BEEN (INTERMITTENTLY) AT MY HAIR with a pair of nail scissors all weekend; and the result ~ my shortest hair for 20 years! All the long bits, the crap bits, the straggles are gone!The remaining crop's uniform just-over-1" long and deliberately styleless. No dreadful parting anywhere to be seen. It stands up readily ~ electroshock mad professor-style with a hint of fledgling birdie chick chic.

Because it was cut with nail scissors, you can still see where it was chopped off in clumps. A look I was hoping to achieve.

THE RAZOR-BLADED EXPECTORATIONS of last week's non-piggery-influenced Common Cold are cruising smoothly to oblivion. My last cold post ~ you know the one exclaiming something like "Better Already!" ~ was, I now confess, a little over-enthusiastic. The fiery worst was over, but my airpipes were and still are cobwebbed in choking, membranous rattling phlegm. I have coughing fits an ancient pensioner would be proud of.

But it's not a rattling old peabag cough ~ and that's the point. Nothing coughs up. I just feel like five thousand grains of half-buried itching-rice are semi-dislodged by my hackings. Yet still: nothing ever comes up.

Here's Britain's "socialist" National Health Service (o yeah what a commie idea ~ not to demand a dying man's credit card before he's out of the ambulance! ) ... Pandemic Flu Service site. Do have a non-public hysteria whipping peek.

I read that last sentence back and read it wrong. But I won't tell you what I read. You can read that into it yourself...

ANYWAY I FEEL we're in the 21st Century now. man: I really feel it. WH Smith, Britain's biggest stationers, no longer sell bottled writing ink!

So now-a-days you get 6 or 8 Parker cartridges ~ containing about a bottletop full of ink ~ for £2.60 (I ask you!) ~ which is far more than a 2 fluid oz" (is that 56 mls?) bottle of Quink ever cost me.

Not to be deterred, I'm Harrods-bound ~ Harrods being my favourite shop in the world: the food halls in particular are amazing. And their downstairs stationer's dept. sells every brand and colour of writing ink imaginable. Last time I got Montblanc (click and see), which comes in a shoe-shaped container; the "heel" being reserved for a pen-shaped filling-reservoir while the toes house the swilling year's supply of ink...



Montblanc's Mickey Mouse-style Meisterstück is theee fountain-pen of choice for treaty-signing world leaders. Tradition being that upon signing, statesmen swap "Stücks" as a nod to international harmony. (Then swap straight back as soon as the eyes of the world's media are off them ~ Meisterstücke cost $800-$1000 or more depending on whether you go for gold-nibbed or platinum...

HAVING SAID ALL THIS I'm in an emotional fight for survival (again!). My mood is down on the floor. (Perhaps Harrods might sell something to lift it. But I doubt it. Their heroin dept. closed down in the 1920s ...

PS Gledwood Volume 2 got 355 hits yesterday!

I can barely believe it. Perhaps my hit-counter is wrong ...

Just who from..? I'd love to know ...

Monday, August 03, 2009

Abide With Me: 2 Best Versions

THE HUNT FOR ABIDE WITH ME is over and here's the 2 best versions I could find.

1. James last. Best visuals. No vocals but he brings out the best in a best tune



2. This courtesy of Mizpeh is probably the best choral version. I looked and looked and clicked around but nothing truly outstanding ever came out from anywhere. Which is sad as I think this is a pretty outstanding tune...
Sorry; this doesn't start till about half a minute in:



PS this is the BEST THING about being OLD. Means I can post "best hymns" stuff on my blog without giving a flying **** what anyone else might think about it...

My Beautiful Dream


LAST NIGHT I SAW a film that truly gripped me. (For once.) And it starred Jennifer Lopez!

She played some kind of high tech forensic psychiatrist chick, dangerously voyaging into the mind of a catatonic schizophrenic.

The dream scenes were beautiful.

If you watch this and think it appears drug-influenced; it is (right down to the odd banging and humming noises) ~ it's quite a good evocation of the ketamine state.

Watching it reminded me how, when I used to work nights, every night at work at about 1 or 2 am I would (fully awake) revisit some far outpost of my dreams... an abstract type of place that was scarlet red. And eternally peaceful...

PS: in response to a couple of comments here's a little addendum. I changed the title to MY beautiful dream because my dream was beautiful. The film is weird ...

Baino (whose Friday ****wit posts are particularly good) said ...
Sorry, doesn't look very peaceful to me.

Eeeuww the Damian Hurst horse thing. Gross.

Akelamalu said...
You took ketamine whilst you were working nights?? :0

Gledwood...
Baino: no I was saying MY abstract (which is why I cannot explain it) dream was beautiful. This isn't technically dreaming but supposedly the inner consciousness of a schizophrenic she is voyaging into via a neural implant computer gizmo... which maybe I should've explained in my post...

Akelamalu: no no NO! Never had even tried it back then. My mind just wandered to my dreams and I relived them awake in a waking-subconscious type thingie... every single night at around the same time ...


Saturday, August 01, 2009

Abide With Me... Westenra version

WHAT do you think of this? Love it or hate it?

I love the tune~ but the vocal's a bit... "sharp"~ don't you think~??




If anyone can find me a better version off youtube/whatever I'd be much obliged.

Siberian Chipmunks!

A FURRY FRIDAY ON SATURDAY POST...

No type of chipmunk is native to the British isles. But Siberian chipmunks have been in the news this week because as well as being popular pets indoors ...



... they are frequently being found outdoors, where they most definitely should not be, either having escaped or having been thrown out by idiotic owners who take them on then don't feel able to continue caring for these tiny critters...

It is illegal to release any non-native species into the wild in the UK.



Britain is on full-alert after a "plague" of feral chipmunks was "discovered" around Paris. The stripey "vermin" are said to be heading to British shores (and the Channel Tunnel) at a pinging pace...



The feral chipmunk plague is causing great concern because these animals can carry Lyme disease and it is feared chipmunks from France could even be carrying RABIES! Lyme disease, incidentally, was not endemic on these islands till very recently ...



Smaller than squirrels, chipmunks are VERY agile, VERY fast... (so almost impossible to recapture from the wild and not at all easy to cull)... and (fascinating to me) have cheek-pouches just like hamsters!



They breed like rabbits...



... and of course the furry babies are really cute ...



Siberian chipmunks how-to taming/looking after site ...

Come and see this gaggle of baby roborovskis ...

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