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!

Friday, April 30, 2010

Olga, Paul O'Grady's stoic Cairn Terrier

THIS clip is so hilarious I laughed out loud for the first time in ages... it's not the dog who's funny, it's Paul O'Grady reading out viewers' letters...
Paul O'Grady, used to do the best teatime show on TV... until Channel 4 inexplicably axed it... now we have to put up with ITV1's dreadful Alan Titmarch Show on ITV1, which Alan Titmarch seems to think is amazing.... The best thing about Paul O'Grady's show was his dogs, Buster the shitzu cross (too posh for me) and Olga the cairn terrier, who sat on the desk like weary balls of fur, oblivious to most goings-on... Here we see Olga sniffing a knitted poo as Mr O'Grady reads out letters from the viewers to the audience's uproarious giggles and guffaws...





MARIANNE FAITHFULL, interviewed in 1978 when she was still bang-on drugs of many descriptions, talks to a British TV interviewer about her wayward existence, "low boredom threshold and dilettanteism" and admits her life had been (to that point at least) a disaster:



MARIANNE FAITHFULL, ANITA PALLENBERG ON ROBERT FRASER
Famous art dealer to the "smart set"who lived in the fast lane and died when "only" 49..!
And doesn't former 1960s "actress-model" Anita Pallenberg (whose career highlight was a longrunning affair with Keith Richards) look rough!?!..


9 comments:

Gattina said...

OMG ! that's a very long time I haven't heard from her, wasn't she involved with Mick Jagger ? I thought she was dead !

Gledwood said...

Marianne Faithfull was with Mick Jagger from the mid-60s till around 1971.
She spent much of the 1970s homeless in Soho, central London, addicted to heroin...
In the 80s she moved to New York, where the drugs got worse and worse until eventually she tried to kill herself with an overdose and only succeeded in falling down the stairs and breaking her jaw. Around 1985 she went to rehab for the final time and has remained clean via the 12-step NA programme ever since.
She and her "whiskey-soaked voice" have done a lot of touring over the years... she recently released her 22nd album!

Akelamalu said...

We used to watch the Paul O'Grady show every day - great TV.

I always thought Marianne Faithfull was so beautiful when she was young and her hairstyle was copied by practically every girl I knew, including me. She's not aged very well. :(

Syd said...

A hard life for Marianne.

Gledwood said...

Anita Pallenberg aged worse. The picture on the second video is Anita not Marianne... Marianne Faithfull said in the 1990s that lots of young supermodels wanted to meet up with her, they considered her the epitome of cool... turned up to lunch mashed, but were astonished to find her not even drinking alchol and noticed they were shocked every time by the damage to her face from razor-cuts (to release "maggots" from under the skin on too much coke) and having broken her jaw and been trussed up with a handle, like a human guitar for 6 months... She always said she had been killing her own life force because she was somehow afraid of it... I think I know how she feels!

Sarcastic Bastard said...

I love the name Alan Titmarch. It makes me laugh. And yes, I have the maturity level of a 13-year-old.

Have a grand weekend!

Gledwood said...

OK I have a confession, the name is SUPPOSED to be Titmarsh, but I think he's a tit so I accidentally misspelled it...
this man has only been on teatime tv for a month or two and already has the temerity to refer to his own show as "the AT show" ~ I mean how pretentious can you get. Hopefully he will be marched out, the tit...

Baino said...

Anita may not have aged well but Keith Richards is hardly an oil painting now! Funny clip.

Gledwood said...

Keith Richards looks like man crossed with withered crow!... certainly puts paid to the myth that heroin somehow keeps you looking "younger"..!

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