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, June 29, 2009

Hard-Won Sobriety: Too Hard to Win?

NOT ENOUGH TIME ~ and far too many things to do in it!

I am very annoyed with "Maple Syrup", my drugs "worker" for nagging at me to go daily antidrug seminars. It's not that EVERY single day there's one she thinks I ought to attend. But two or three times a week there are "relevant" ones on. And she appears to assume I'm doing nothing better so I HAVE to go.

I don't see why I should make excuses for being busy in my OWN LIFE. So I never explain to her why I miss them. Often the reason is I was doing something essential e.g. signing residency documents for where I live now at the council.

I am learning two foreign languages and those alone have me exhausted. Ploughing through that German novel, dictionary in hand, I think: just two more pages. Two more means one more hour. And yet I have to do it. My comprehension has risen from about 90% to over 95% so I know I'm doing something right. Spanish I play on the CDs round and round and yell out the answers: Una cocha para diez dias por favor! et cetera! And Spherical, who I try to address in Spanish thinks I have gone even crazier than before and squeals back to me in her chipmunk tones: ¡Déjame en paz! What do you think that means?

I am also permanently exhausted half the time. This being a medically diagnosed problem they call Chronic Fatigue Syndrome crossed with depression (you see, nobody knows what anything REALLY is... I have symptoms of something like hepatitis C or Lyme disease... though my last hep C test came out totally negative. And I also got tested for other bloodbourne viruses: Hep A, hep B, HIV and syphillis. All negative (thank God).

And of course my crash-course in sobriety (so to speak) has crashed into a wall. And I'm still using. Just a little less obsessively than before. And (somehow) eyeing that goal of CLEAN AND SOBER a little more closely. It seems a little more achievable, despite my having failed yet again to get there.

Am I any nearer? Am I better equipped to reach that sought-after "place"? Am I simply bouncily turgid because more full of bull**** than ever before?

ONLY TIME WILL TELL...

12 comments:

kellylebelly said...

Keep your tests negative and yourself positive.

Sobiety is very elusive. I'm not convinced that I want it but might lose my script if I was honest and said for the time being I want maintenance not long-term detox.

All you can do is take one day at a time. At least you're reducing. I tend to go on then come off, take a break (for my finances and to bring tolerance back down again ££). Then back on again for a few days and so on. I had managed to stick with my script for a year but those were happier and more fullfilled times. I had a career, lived in a swanky apartment, loads of hobbies, loads of pals. All that helps cos I at the time I saw using as a threat to all the good things I had.
I'm not so happy now and no I'm not sitting on my arse feeling sorry for myself. I am doing something about it but in this climate (recession) I'm really doing it all against the odds. I despise those fat cat bankers. They're still ok. Maybe just lost one of their villas or extra car.

You can only take one day at a time were everything is concerned. Try not to worry about the things that are out of your hands.

As regards drug worker, can't you tell her that you're job-hunting. That takes up a great deal of time. Although saying that, when I was on benefits I seemed to spend all my time filling forms etc that I didn't have much time to look for jobs - it was a full-time job being unemployed and surviving on their flimsy payouts.

xK

Syd said...

I hope that you can get off the junk totally. I'm impressed with the language skills. Good for you. Take care of yourself.

Akelamalu said...

Well learning two languages is very positive Gleds. Hope you eventually manage to be as positive about getting off drugs m'dear. :)

Bimbimbie said...

Hi Gleds ... maybe Maple Syrup is going to be the one to get you through - we all need a little nagging sometimes*!*

Janice Seagraves said...

Hi Gled,

Keep trying to get off the stuff. I imagine that it'll get worse before it'll get better, that's why so many fail.

But you don't seem like a failure to me, not with learning two languages. That's tough and your doing it. Kudos to you.

Like someone posted; "take one day at a time," or failing that one moment at a time. All we have is this one moment anyway, so make the most of it.

Take care,
Janice~

Baino said...

Oh Gleds stop making excuses. You should go to these seminar things. Even if they're not relevant, they keep you focussed. Seriously! You can't possibly be THAT busy. Build your other activities around your anti-drug seminars. You know you can, you just don't want to.

Gledwood said...

VERY BRIEFLY:

KELLY: AYE I totally agree, thanks. PS did you email me? I couldn't find one. If you tell me your email I'll email you off mine then finally we have the: c o n n e x i o n ! !

SYD: thanks and cheers

AKELAMALU: aye! ta!

BIMBIMBIE: she's very clever... v clever indeed!

JANICE: I'm trying to do all that wise stuff... not always successfully. Hmmm...

%-/...

BAINO: no it's not the business it's the compulsion to spill I resent... know what I mean?

Hopefully I'll get INDIVIDUAL counselling soon...

kellylebelly said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
kellylebelly said...

Oh, got a minor claim to fame and might get published too!

I you want to know more you have to email me. Like I said, I'll be deleting that comment to keep the undesirables, racist and anti-drug fascists away.

x Kelly-le-belly

(oh, the '-le-belly' tag on end of my name is cos up until last year, I was a semi-pro belly dancer, working in the evenings in restaurants. Loved it. Need to train back into it again).

PS. You're Great!

Baino said...

Sorry hun I didn't realise they were open your heart kind of things!

kellylebelly said...

Hey Gleds,

I deleted my comment with the email address so I hope you got it - I didn't get an email from you yesterday. I didn't want undesirables to get hold of me so had to delete it.

Hope I didn't freak you out by saying 'You're Great'. You put yourself down a lot and apart from being a nice person you also have a lot of skills and talent, more than the average person. I wasn't just saying it to be nice, it's just true whether you like it or not.

Anyway, about Christiane F. I've got the film (not dubbed, I couldn't bear that). I really want the book but it seems to be out of print and I've seen it sold for daft amounts of money!

Here are excerpts from the book. Enter the site then click on the numbers on the right hand side for whatever chapter you want to read:
http://winonacentral.tripod.com/unrelated/christiane-f/home-e.html

As you can speak German why don't you check out 'Stern' - who ran the original article on her.

Here's a link to a story about her last year:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,571323,00.html

Here's photos of the REAL Christiane (too many are of the film):
http://christiane.hurz.at/chrispics.html

xKelly

Gledwood said...

THE book is probably out of print in English. I looked for it in German and it seemed to be churned out year on year. It was a huge hit out there.

Thanks v much for those links. I never have time to find stuff like that...

Can we try the email thing tomorrow. I will try and get on tomorrow morning between 9 and 11. And also probably later on. But I'll definitely be on the earlier time.

Aparently you can give out an email address something like this "freddyflintstone at bahoo.com" replace b with y then it confounds the spammers. Also the lack of at sign confounds them.

!

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

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