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 film. Show all posts
Showing posts with label film. Show all posts

Friday, March 25, 2011

Boogie Nights


I WROTE PAGES AND PAGES last night because I went "up" (on nothing) now I'm down to "normal" I feel like a human rollercoaster. Or more to the point, like a beach with constant tides grinding me into sand.

The weather has been beautiful. I wasn't sync'd in with the sunshine yesterday, so I didn't appreciate it.

Then I watched Boogie Nights which is about a waiter/kitchen assistant with an abmormally large xxxx who gets a job acting in porn. And he changes his name to Dirk Diggler. It's really funny. What I remember was my [2 female] friends watching it and coming back telling me about the cocaine! They loved cocaine. Barely ever took it, loved leeching off a man for the night being called "Princess" when they did. One of their cousins owned a West London very posh nightclub so she'd go up every now and then to be called Princess and get free coke. So I watched this film and I'm waiting on a refill of my medication anyway so I had none, so my mood soared quite nicely and I couldn't sleep, so I watched the film again in German! It's really funny watching tacky porn actresses doing coke and yelling at one another in German!

Then they go nuts on the coke and decide to rob someone by selling him a half key of baking soda for $5000 (was it really so cheap back then?) He's freebasing and letting off firecrackers in his house it's mental.

So I watched all these mentalists going mental on drugs and wasn't impressed by any of it. I hate drugs now. They steal happiness away and leave misery, emptiness and destruction behind them. Often when that seems not to be the case, it's just that you don't know the case well enough to comment.

So that was me yesterday now I have to ping off before I get terminated. I get an internet refill on Monday. If not then, then Tuesday. Wahey!!

Friday, March 04, 2011

Tea and Sympathy

I MET SOMEONE I KNOW who also happens to be labelled schizoaffective. That is Pinxx. She bought me an alcoholic lemonade, but she drank tea. She said when she starts drinking she can't stop. Not like me. I can. I stopped drinking after 3. We smoked Sterling and Pall Mall cigarettes. She says she sees faces in the floor like I do. I see little furry animals everywhere, kind of like patterns you see in clouds. And no, not every second of every day. Occasionally. Even when it is happening it only happens a few times per day. I had an extra-lovely dose of methadone in the night so I was extra woozy in the morning. In fact I didn't get up until past 11am. I met X and Y my 2 friends who are sometimes helpful. I told them I had schiz-affective. I only tell people the full name who I think might understand it. They didn't. X said only 1 in 1000 people is bipolar. This is nonsense, it's one in 50. Or one in 100 each of type 1 and type 2. Schizoaffective is 1 in 200 so I'm rare!

What was I ranting on about yesterday "showing 2 fingers" to the methadone clinic?..? This is because I hate them having one up on me. At least I'm motivated to get off the green gloop. Most people seem to want to stay on it as long as possible. I don't. I just want to be OK and drop the crap as quick as I can.

So Pinky and I had tea. There isn't much else to tell. We talked about mental hospitals and drugs. The secretaries on the next table seemed to find our conversation fascinating but I didn't play up to that. I don't think P would have approved. She is still using heroin, which pisses me off. She's not a heroin addict and never has been fully addicted. She's done cold turkey 3 times but can't have been fully addicted. She would have gone crazy if she was. Remember the time I clearly met diagnostic criteria for bipolar first was when I detoxed cold turkey. I was manic-depressed (both). I've seen tired mania (no physical energy but the mind seething over) and that was me when I came off the heroin. Full mania means you're shining out energy like an electric fire. Others can warm themselves on your heat.

I used to be very in tune with psychic emanations when I was younger. Heroin gave me the luxury of psychic sleep. Now I'm wide awake again and that's why I got diagnosed nuts. Everything flooded back at full strength. You have to bear in mind I went "mentally ill" ON the stuff that blocks mental illness out, so without that stuff of course I need risperidone to be OK.

I'm back taking the meds once more. It's very boring, but I do it.

Cleopatra is playing on TV. What a luxury to have afternoon films in the evening thanks to shiny digital discs. I nearly had a flaming row (yes I was manic) in the shop when I bought it about my reasons for buying that film. In the end I just dropped it and stalked out, film in hand. Why should I explain the fact that Cleopatra is very good but very long and a challenge to the attention span. You need lots of hot tea and cigarettes to get through it. In years gone by I'd have needed heroin too, least I don't need that any more. I haven't taken heroin since the start of the week. What a waste of time that was. I don't even recall why I wanted it now. Now I've proven, yet again, that it's crap ~ I don't need it any more.

Anyway that's today. I'm off. Take care everyone. Be safe.

Wednesday, March 02, 2011

Deer Hunter Music


MOOD SWINGS. I nearly had a panic attack in Sainsbury's. But I have decided panic attacks and me are NOT going to share a bed. Absolutely no way. I went out and scored 3 Valium blues (10mgs) now I feel all zonged. But way more with it than I was on meds last night.

I have been sleeping really well. Didn't want to get up at 12:30 today but I had to.

Problem with anything antimanic; it's liable to make you a bit depressed. Today I felt manic inside my skull but not outside it. Which meant my head was clanging. Saying the same syllables over and over in my brain. I'm glad I didn't have access to a computer: knowing me I would have posted them.

There is nothing else to put up. No positivity as I have done no positive things. All I want is to run away and hide from life. It's all too too much. Today I had to go home early I know when I have gone to my limit. When I push myself past it I just end up as a nervous wreck so better NOT push too far. See I am mentally disabled now. Not in principle; in practice. If I can talk and move hands I can type. I don't drive so I don't know whether I'd be able to in this state. If it's too much to do the basics it's too much to move pedals, steering wheel and gear stick. It just is.

I was googling stuff to do with death and came across someone who has said "there is no quick and painless way to die so I am going to pick up the pieces of my life and carry on; maybe you will too". You have to get out of your head that death is negative. Death is positive. I just hate being left behind. I would be very nervous facing eternity but I would still go through with it. If I could dive into a pool of infinity and execute a perfect dive, I'd do it. Then again I was too inept to do it when I really wanted to. Poisoned myself and felt really bad. Now I'm too pussy to try again. So I'm still here. Don't worry about me. Still here. Always will be. I will probably outlive you all knowing me. So worry about yourself before you worry about me.



This is what legal medication does to me:~

DOES ANYBODY KNOW THE FILM THE DEER HUNTER? This is the tune Cavatina, that makes such haunting music. I love that track. Although the film is supposed to e about PostTraumatic Stress Disorder and how it affects one character, eeen Robert DeNiro who pays hard" first and only Iie Ill see that and they were masquerading... see this is what medication does to you. Makes you forget.

Earlier on Tuesday I felt so low and depressed (physically exhausted as well as mentally "ill" I nearly went to bed. My phone kept ringing but I wouldnt answer it. heroin doesnt work. Now my mood has risen anyhow. Far more rapidly than heroin ever works. I spose Im a rapid cycler, in psychiatric termonology.

DEER HUNTER: CAVATINA

Monday, February 14, 2011

what's up: monday morn

I SLEPT LIKE A BABY last night I don't remember how long maybe 6 or 8 hours i don't recall what time i went to bed (maybe around 4am) I got up after 10. Next thing I knew the stupid alarm was going off. All I wanted was access to my own money from that ridiculous Second Class Citizen Card (ie not a shiny one with Visa Wings you pay money INto because you're rich; one you take Govt money OUT OF because you're poor that rubbishy post office card I had to get because I withdrew £700 I didn't have from my former bank account. I had a real nice heroin/crack binge on that £700 it has to be said. Unlike America you won't get arrested for that over here. In fact I'm considering suing THEM for negligence. They allowed me to overdraw. No fraud was involved. I only went into supermarkets, bought cheapest sparkling wine and asked for £50 a day in cashback (cashpoints wouldn't give this money, neither would over-the-bank-counter) once I realized this was a ready sauce of unending cash I spend away. Shit only hit the fan quite a while later and now they're one of some number of people trying to sue me over these debts. I'm not exactly losing sleep over it. Why do you think I enjoy being crazy so much? Nothing to come back TO.

Well this nonbipolar thing is still going nicely when I get walking I hear lovely voices saying "fuck up" "call a doctor" "oo that's mental" etc. This does have something to do with having watched Angelina Joelie being Mentalist Chic in Girl Interrupted this morning. Those voices don't upset me. Takes far more than THAT to get me upset (no heroin used to do it big time). The drs think I have a real healthy attiude by considering "auditory hallucinations" (ie Reality Plus) as "free entertainment" (which it is) the best one happened yesterday after Valium Marilyn who wasn't half banging on about her problems poor woman anyway I heard my own voice doubled and out of sync in my own head. It was really poetic. [Hearing 2 of me thinking. That was cool.] And the cars on the street start doing this thing where they either speak random words (not so much nowadays as it's piss weak nowadays) but they also sound really whoosh-oosh-oooohhh!! rather than just boring like cars normally do. A bit like a car sounds after a nightspent at a particularly funky hardcore rave.

So I'm sleeping for ages. Oh yeah! My bowel problems! I knew y'all would want to hear this. I feel like I've swallowed a giant jellyfish whole and it's blocked me up. Terrible inconvenience. How will I ever shit again? I'm eating a breakfast cereal wtih cocolate hazelnut inside called Kraves. The kind of stuff us Brits used to look down at Americans years ago over "how CAN you eat marshmallow for BREAKFAST"? Mcdonalds have it all wrong the number of times I've been refused Big Macs before 10:30 or whatever ridiculously late hour a HAMBURGER JOINT actually starts serving up HAMBURGERS I hesitate to recall.

Well I must go I feel fine now. I was all dull, drab, dysphoric etc a couple of minutes ago. I wanted to cry earlier. I had Better Not be coming down. If I am I can just feel it, I'm going to feel really SHIT. Well best not consider that option. Also Naomi will really love it if I'm down next Nutter Club she'll think it serves me right for having had a Personality last week. Well I'm off have fun!

ps i'm watching the aviator or did i say that? very slow moving but quite good. i want voices talking about aeroplanes and hollywood movies, not boring psychiatric crap. i hate psychiatry why did this have to happen to me? only good thing about psychiatry is the other patients they're really funny

oh yeah i had some nutter links but they are somewhere else, here's one that proves a desperate person is capable of speaking plain english (do nurses really believe you have to get to the jib-jib-jib phase before you need help? oh yeah they call that "acting" so just ignore 'em. that's what i do. except when you wanna go outside in which case it's first name terms and lots of flirting. best nurses are always female so be male or a lesbian if you want to go outside

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100402182556AAQgrJZ

can't recall why this came up but it wasn't what i was looking for. why do they close answers down so fast? i'd have said try sulpiride

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Still flying

MAN I AM DROWNING in DVD cases. It just took a psychological half hour (ie about 3 mins 20 seconds) to locate the case for Dr Zhivago which I tried to watch last night but just cannot concentrate on. I like the music, I like the snow and I like Lara.

Oh I can't even remember what I was going to say. Oh yeah I actually have my glasses. Which I usually lose for days on end when I go mental. I also lose money, the cards to get the money and keys, which just vanish in my house. Keys being the priority and because I never put them anywhere too stupid, I always find them within the hour. Everything else goes walkies for days on end.

I slept for hours and hours last night and don't feel nauseated any more. But I do feel physically tired whenever I sit down. When I go walking down the street I get brought right up into a beautiful high. Talking on the phone, anything else brings me up. Other times I think I'm normal, which is bad. Because normal leads to depression and I'd rather be high as a kite to be frank.

No not on drugs high on my Higher Power. I'm really into this Higher Power thing it's fantastic way better than drugs. Ask anyone in NA. Though they don't seem to get intoxicated by theirs. Which makes them all the poorer than me, to be frank.

Well not much doing except Mamma Mia which plays round and round because I like to sleep with Abba blaring in the background and meet the Fockers which I actually watched twice, I caught about a quarter of the actual film each time, so another 2 times and I'm done.

Syd asked why I don't hire them from the library but I'm in deep trouble with them for having taken out books last summer which I still have and having lost one on a bus and not told them. When you take books back the weirdos who work there seem to feel they have to calculate what is owed. I do not want or need unnecessary information but they won't listen. Actually they might if I come in blazingly hyper I will ensure I don't get told anything I don't want to hear. People visibly back off from me in this state. It's fantastic.

[Also our library charges about £2 for DVD hire and you can buy 'em new for £3 without the hassle of having to return them so I buy. With my grated cheese style attention span I have to watch everything x5 these days so I pretty much need to own it to get the story...]

Oh man I'm so exhausted it's unreal my body feels like I've gone skiing nonstop for 3 days. Bloody hell this French film is so boring I'm changing it. Why don't French people just learn to speak English? It would save so much time and trouble reading fucking subtitles. Yeah I can read Paris Match but actually following the crap they spout in real life: that's hard. Way harder than Real German. French people speak about 60% "argot" (slang) 40% proper French. Germans speak about 98% proper 2% slang. English people use more slang than Germans but far less than the French. Also Germans speak very distinctly. English are in between. The French, as y'all know speak as if they're eating something too tasty to bother opening their mouths properly. Plus they run all their words together.

I once met a French maniac who tried to speak to me dans le langue superieur (francais) mais je suis desole je comprenais rien! Can't find the accents for French. Sorry. And French keyboards go AZERTY not QWERTY which is the biggest headfucker {several other letters are in different places}. German goes QWERTZ ie Y and Z are swapped round and the cuckoo clock umlauted vowels are were ;'and[ are.

Well I'm off I don't know what the point of any of this was really I'm just saying hi and I wish I had a decent film to watch. I mean one that's either VERY FUNNY or FULL OF GOOD MUSIC. That I haven't watched at least twice in the past 2 days. I do have Young Victoria but it's far too ponderous for my frame of mind. The Queen was very good. Helen Mirren certainly seems to sum up the Queen's character which is quite witty, pragmatic and level headed but not boring. I noted nobody played Princess Margo. She was only referred to. Adding characters to fiction adds a lot of length so that might be why Margaret's not in there.

Well I'm off I'm totally skint I thought I had money in the bank but it's absolutely bare till Monday and I'm not even on heroin I don't know what I did {apart from buy a DVD player, a digibox and only 35 or so DVDs} but I fucked up somehow. OK over and out.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Nutter Club Entertainment


I SAW NAOMI the kindly American Nutter Club lady again today ... it's Thursday, NUTTER CLUB DAY!!

Only one other nutter turned up.
I really like this nutter. She was so ill she looked like she was about to fall over and faint. This was side effects from a medication she's taking for a physical problem, not her bipolar meds.

So she was feeling ill. Naomi could see I was amping with energy so I had to go second. Then I did 90% of the talking, calling the drug service an ineptly run dump and slagging off the nurse I partiularly hate, who isn't the one who wanted to label me on the "anxious-avoidant personality disorder" and "dependent personality disorder" axis. Dependent in this context means somebody who is a real white mouse of a person who kind of obeys everything some stronger character thinks they should say and do. Which is yeah so much like me. I really hang my self-esteem on other people. Honestly!

[She came up with this bucketload of shit because I was depressed during all 3 interviews and because she thinks too much. Most of her theories are really intriguing and perceptive but she does go over the top. She's a WAY better nurse than Judgemental Bitch Features who I really loathe.]

As for anxious avoidant I may have anxiety, but if I do it doesn't come with the worrying, obsessively turning over negative thoughts to do with things that won't happen style of thinking. My way of coping is to smack anything negative out of my head. And I don't need the drug smack to do that. To give her credit she did say I'd "satisfied" the diagnostic criteria for mania during my yummy cold turkey detox. But as I EXPLAINED TO HER there's a little proviso in italics under that one saying "not initiated or maintained by an organic aetiological factor" ie you're not manic if you're in heroin withdrawal.

I am going a bit nuts on these DVDs I'm buying. I got another four last night and three today. I FOUND YOUNG VICTORIA. It's Scorsese-directed and A1 though my poor attention span had me losing the plot within 15 minutes or so. The only film I can really tolerate is Mamma Mia because I like the tunes. I got Chicago which is DIRE and I have to say Renee Zellwegger getting fucked by some random man in scene one does NOT make for a certificate 12 in my opinion. I wouldn't want my 12 year old kid watching that.

I got a 3-pack for "only" £7 of Dr Zhivago, Ben Hur and Gone With The Wind. It's Gone With The Wind I hate out of that lot, the other 2 are really cool, especially Ben Hur. Dr Zhivago is more like filmic wallpaper. Anyone who truly has the attention span for that really has my respect. The music is fantastic.

Today I got something called Role Models which is about someone who goes on an Energy Drinks bender (comedy) and a twin-pack American Dreamz (X Factor piss-take) and Intolerable Cruelty (both comedy) and Case 39, which I misread as Case 69 and thought it was about an orgy but it's "supernatural thriller" but disappointingly only certificate 15 ie probably not scary at all. I like STRONG SUPERNATURAL HORROR. Only kind of action film I can tolerate. Ghosts and ghouls! Action films just have me staring at the "action" forgetting what I'm doing, what's going on and on a DVD I'd press eject. They don't excite or impress me.

Apart from GOOD costume drama and GOOD musicals what I really like is COMEDY. Laughter, as they say is the best medicine. Bounty Hunter with Jennifer Anniston was good. Though why on earth it came in a bright pink case I haven't a clue. Hopefully it put lots of people off buying it so I could have it. That's my theory. I love Jennifer Anniston. I'm looking for Bruce Almighty because I like the bit where he makes her boobs bigger.

Well that's today. If you wanna hear more about nutter club there isn't much except me being banged on at by Naomi for not taking my medication (I'm not going to lie). She did aske me why I originally wanted it. NOT TO BE DEPRESSED was the main reason. And going so incredibly fast and hyper high I couldn't even think in English. If I start going that fast I'll take it again and it works QUICK so no worries there. If I crash badly I'm going in the nuthouse. I'm not sitting at home staring into space. Last time the aerial fell off the TV and I didn't notice for 2 days.

Well that's me I'm off. Take care everyone ;-) :-)



dunno exactly what this video is, but if it's trance it's good
o it's a bit slow, ho-hum, tunes are ok though
actually now i've heard a bit some of the tunes aren't bad
LISTEN TO IT




ok sorry about that chillout music this is a bit better
GATECRASHER was a northern club where grown men put sticky stars on their faces
all in the name of trance
my trance was hard hippietastic Return To The Source trance
this is what's called Eurotrance, but it's still OK




OK THIS IS RETURN TO THE SOURCE
proper Goa trance
the parties I went to were way more bangin than this but it's a good start
bear in mind a good dj would cut out the "musical chronic fatigue syndrome" beginning and get straight to the "mother ship is landing" proper psychotrance bits
there's a good bit of tune about 3 mins 50 into it: THAT is banging trance!



20:38 I'm watching that Club 69 "supernatural horror" thing in the dark to try and make it more scary. It stars Renee fucking Zelwegger but hopefully she'll be demonically possessed or something. She's really fucking annoying that woman I won't go into why it's something she said in an interview that made me think "you uptight selfish cow". She's very good as Bridget Jones it has to be said. OK it's been going 5 mins and not a ghoul to be seen...

20:52 lights back on; can't see punctuation marks on computer keyboard
no way am i watching a film without surfing the net at the same time, i do not have the focus to give anything my undivided attention these days

Monday, February 07, 2011

Shame

I GOT THREE MORE FILMS for a £10er today. They are to go with my 5 war films. I like to collect books/films/etc that make me look like a divorcing couple. So with Desert Rats, Farewell to Arms etc goes Girl Interrupted, The Queen and Paris je t'aime. I wanted The Queen or Young Victoria. Young Victoria wasn't there so it had to be The Queen for £3, Paris je t'aime is in French with English subtitles. Lazy buggers couldn't be bothered dubbing it into German (don't care about English).

Girl Interrupted is my favourite mental hospital film. Next time I go crazy I am going in the nuthouse. I now despair about my mental health so I'm going in the nuthouse. I don't care about anything any more.

Anyway I watched this one as it's about Borderline Personality disorder, which Angelina Joelie's character DOES have, Winona Ryder's character doesn't. In fact Winona Ryder doesn't have anything conceivably wrong with her. When I was TOLD to look up personality disorders to see which one I had (my family had SUCH a laugh about that one, if I do have a personality disorder it certainly ain't anxious-avoidant or dependent the crap the thinks-too-much nursie posited.

Those are diametrical opposite to me. She was picking up on my general misanthropy, the fact that I liked locking myself away and not engaging with the world and called that anxious-avoidant, NOT LISTENING to me when I hammered the fact at her ~ quite hard enough for even a stupid person to get it ~ that this was a NEW THING. Ie not a personality trait. As for dependent I'm INDEPENDENT.

At heart I don't give a shit for anybody's opinion of me. Of course I like to be thought well of, as does everybody. But I wouldn't exactly be keeping a blog like this if your High Opinion of me was my be all/end all in life, now would I? My blog would be far more "cool" than the neurotic confessional ramblings you get each day. Anyway the only personality disorder I flagged up bam-bam-bam-bam-bam was BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER. Which is kind of invalidated if you have a mood disorder causing these mood swings. I also think the DSM authors' idea of "impulsive" is exceedingly patronizing and judgemental: promiscuity, drug-taking and self harm are acts of desperation; all three become habits. Impulsiveness is surely by its very nature not habitual repeated actions but random actions belying a lack of self control.

Impulsive is being unable to resist stealing. Or licking cream off a cake. Those things are impulsive. Being in desperate pain and trying to salve it ~ that ain't impulsiveness. I also scored high on obsessive-compulsive and schizotypal and schizoid. Obsessive compulsive yeah I am. Schizotypal just means you're eccentric and coin your own words. Schizoid means you don't NEED people to be there, which I don't. I like people, I don't NEED people to validate my existence. If I woke up tomorrow and the entire world was empty ~ just me ~ I wouldn't cry. I'd break into houses and listen to other people's record collections. And I'd steal a boat and ride to Burma, find a China White refinery and get high.

Most true Borderlines are women but I knew a man with this personality disorder. He, like many others, wore it like a Jim'll Fix It Medal (which put me off the idea of psychiatric diagnosis until True Desperation intervened). And he jumped in front of a tube train about a year ago. And caused a hell of a mess in his friends' lives as ANOTHER one killed herself not long after (Perky).

I rang Pinky, Perky's former girlfriend today as I'm filling in a Government Fuck Ups Form for people who are a total mess. This is the Form of Shame and I've filled it in twice and had extra money. But I have to tell them all about what a complete loser I am, which I hate doing. I was too depressed, paranoid and guilty to fill it in before. So I'm doing it again.

I rang Pinky with my answers. Pinky [who has paranoid schizophrenia] says I sound hypomanic. Hypomanic means "mildly manic" (in other words in a perfectly proper and right mental state. Mania is normality. It's normality that has something wrong with it in my view.) Anyway we spent half an hour on the phone and she gave some good pointers but I'm not sure I wish to slant my answers the way she suggests. The ugly truth is brutal enough. The fact that I sleep in a chair or on the floor, that I've set fire to my bed by accident, that I never cook proper food and live on takeaway, that my clothes are covered in cigarette burns, that I sleep every day in the same clothes I spend the day in, that I find it impossible to keep my house clean, even when the landlord is after me.

All this crap has to go down. That's why I call it the Form of Shame. I absolutely hate it. My ambition is to either win big on Euromillions lottery or to write some bestsellers then I answer to no-one and can be as high/low/sideways as I please without having to answer for my mental state to any government doctor. They wanted a diagnosis so I could only write down depression/psychosis/mania/drug addiction. Doesn't it make me sound wonderful. Psychosis does NOT mean being permanently mad. It means having episodes where you're paranoid, hear people talking about you [eg on the bus, where they normally don't], are scared to leave your house, and find public transport a huge challenge, that's psychosis.

The rest of my crap comes under moods. Being a drug addict doesn't figure on this form, in fact I don't think you can claim for drug addiction. My parting shot on this form will say I'm a 38 year old man who wants a normal life. Ha! That won't get to them, but I feel like being expressive. And I MUST fill this in now before my mood drops, as it no doubt will. Because if it does I won't want to be bothered submitting it. I'll feel as I felt before. Guilty, unworthy and fraudulent. Even though I'm telling the truth. Most people lie to that shrink at the druggie service, I'm sure they do. That must be why he looked so taken aback to see me off my tree on "mood disorder" the time before last. He asked whether I was me, which seriously confused me. I thought at one point he believed I was somebody else. Then I thought he believed I was faking.

I know TWO people who fake schizophrenia which makes me too angry for words, considering how desperate I was feeling and NOT GETTING HELP, considering I had suicidal thoughts every day for months on end and NOBODY EVER ASKED HOW I WAS. Considering I was in truly desperate straits at some times and NOBODY EVEN NOTICED. This is the druggie service I'm angry with. I had a mental health nurse as Worker. Apparently I should have gone in all mumsy simpering away about "mental health problems" when my problem was depression with paranoia ~ hardly a recipe for heart-on-sleeve.

This bitch never once asked how I was. It was always drugs drugs drugs with all of them. Recently they've changed their tune now I come in bouncing off the walls on my own energy. All that stuff about mood swings I repeatedly told them about is now seen as True. At last. Now it's got so incredibly bad I fit criteria for a Severe Mood Disorder. I would like to get those two nursies and bang their wooden heads together. Probably they'd make a resonant xylophone noise.

Well I don't know where this rant is going. Yeah I'm hypochondriacking yet again because YET AGAIN I have to Account for my own life in horrible gruesome detail which I absolutely hate doing. So I scribbled it all out in half an hour. Then Pinky told me it was wrong. I have to add this that and t'other. So I will. But I'm very annoyed. The only thing I'm looking forward to is NA at 7:30 tonight. So I'd better go. I just wanna switch off. I've had enough of everything for today. I never slept at ALL last night. My antipsycho pills are disagreeing with me. I'm giving them a break for a few days to see if I can get a bit higher. I wanna get high, man. High on my Higher Power which blazes inside me.

Gotta go, else this will never get down. See y'all later.


GIRL INTERRUPTED: END OF THE WORLD
Anna this is for you:~~~~


Wednesday, February 02, 2011

Dodgy Chinese/Ghost

I HAD HEARD staff-members at record shops could be a bit sniffy according to what you bought. I never had that problem with Sly and the Family Stone limited edition CDs or even years back with my Ultimate Rave/Reactivate II compilations. Maybe I was in a touchy mood, but I did appear to notice a slight smirk cross Mr Dweeb-Glasses' poker-face when I handed over my £3 for Whoopi Goldberg/Patric Swayze/Demi Moore in Ghost!

I took it home and watched it. I know this is old hat to y'all but I've never actually owned one of these DVD machines before. I was amazed how superior the picture was to video.

Then I glanced through Further Options and saw I could have Ghost speak to me in German. So that's what I did today. Watched Ghost in German and followed nearly all of it!

(Big wow, considering how terrible my German was just over a year ago...)

*******


I also went to NA. Crowded out. Heard the life story at the beginning, which is called the chair. Couldn't sit still longer than that. Had to go out for a cigarette and a walk home.

Majorly sweaty palms; hearing voices but the antipsychotics block most of that out.

*******


I bought a horrible dodgy undercooked Chinese chicken curry mix vegetable fry rice. Not going there again. Nearly raw onions. Chicken too soft. Microwaved the second half; instincts say don't eat it. I'm saving a sample (not reheated) in case I get ill. So I could prove what caused it. I've never in my life reported a restaurant or takeaway and I don't intend to start now. I wish they'd just cooked the food properly. Ruined my favourite meal. Nearly £8 down the drain...

*******


Here's a poem I started writing years ago. I still remember it in my head. I only have one stanza and a bit I'm afraid. It recalls me staring into the River Thames from a boat and seeing fantastical shapes in the shimmering water:~~

Glance and gleam the fishes in the sky,
sun has streamed them the strong river's course,
one by one they wink into my eye,
mud-and-blue flashes of fish-force,
darting each rippling willow between ...


*******


THE ORB: LITTLE FLUFFY CLOUDS (CUMULO NIMBUS MIX)



*******


THE ORB: LITTLE FLUFFY CLOUDS (DEEP DUB)



*******


GHOST: FINAL WALK TO HEAVEN SCENE
i nearly cried when watching this. y'all know a big cry baby like me would just fess up if i did actually weep, but i didn't. that was a close nearly though. i love things that take you away from ordinary reality; things that are sublime



*******


Illustrated: pottery scene from Ghost starring David Hasselhof and British comedian Allan Car; hopefully not a countdown to being sick on that Chinese ..(!)

Monday, November 08, 2010

After the cyder ...


THIS MORNING... oh I am sorry; this AFTERNOON when I eventually woke up I was aching all over as if I'd fallen off a galloping horse the night before. What happened to me? I wondered. Then it came back to me: cyder happened!
I went to the chemist's and got my methadone.
Before that, I bought some more cyder: hair of the dog. (And it worked!)
After the chemist's, I went to the cheapest supermarket in England, Iceland, and purchased frozen Chinese takeaway ~ satay chicken (in spicy sauce, not mingy stringy bits of chicken on glorified toothpicks) plus chicken fried rice ~ £3 the pair. Back at home I slammed 'em in the oven. And with a couple of generous pinches of MSG on each they tasted wonderful. Worthy of my local Chinese but at half price!

Very moving: Trainspotting overdose scene ~ Soundtrack: Lou Reed ~ Perfect Day.
Yesterday, while my two friends were arguing, this tune came on television. They were talking about dead friends. And this tune and the subject matter and Tanisha's overwrought voice made me so emotional I nearly cried ...
The Susan Boyle version you can see beneath my yesterday's post. This is the Lou Reed 1972 original (from the year of my birth!) ~ as introduced to a whole new generation in the film Trainspotting.

LOU REED ~ PERFECT DAY ~ TRAINSPOTTING OVERDOSE SCENE...



The heroin in this clip is too cloudy, there's far too much water in the hit and he's blowing the vein and/or partially missing it ~ you can see that. He shouldn't be bruising up so quickly.

Trainspotting: full scene from the film "visiting Mother Superior":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgCprJPSlpA">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgCprJPSlpA">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgCprJPSlpA

Monday, July 19, 2010

Michael Jackson: dead genius

HE WAS SO TALENTED. Not just as a dancer, but as vocalist: his voice was amazing. If you compare some of the few recordings where he sings genuinely sweetly with his normal style, you hear how ANGRY he was... At what? Who knows.
One talent we don't ordinarily associate with Michael Jackson was his ability to act in a totally naturalistic manner.
Yes, perhaps he was playing versions of himself, but haven't legions of Hollywood actors, who neither dance nor sing, made long careers doing the same ..?
Apparently in his 20s, when he was still goodlooking, Michael wanted to make a career in the movies but was put off by his music management, who perhaps thought they would lose their cut to film agents.

Here's a complete Michael Jackson actor's filmography

1979: The Wiz 136 mins. All-black remake of The Wizard of Oz costarring Diana Ross. Michael plays the Scarecrow, but most of the time you can barely see him under a half-tonne of ridiculous makeup...
1983: Thriller 14 mins.
1986: Captain Eo ~ 17 mins. Originally shot in 3D and shown in Disney's theme parks in California, Florida, France and Japan to packed houses. It's now available online (you can watch it here). But don't expect much. The script is seriously dire.
1987: Bad. Scorsese-directed. Like Thriller the video falls into two parts. For the first 8 mins he plays a late-teenage student from a rundown neighbourhood in New York being taunted by Wesley Snipes about his "posh" school and for not being "bad" enough. Second part is an extended performance of the song, with acapella ending...
1988: Moonwalker 89 mins. Opens with "isn't Michael amazing!" retrospective, then Michael has to rescue three children from the evil Mr Big (who threatens to inject one with heroin ~ ironic, considering how MJ died). Includes songs Badder (parody of Bad), Speed Demon, Leave Me Alone, Smooth Criminal, Come Together. Was cinema-released in UK and Europe. Straight to video in USA.
1996/7: Ghosts 40 mins. Considering his squeaky-clean image MJ had a weird obsession with all things creepy. MJ plays a "weirdo" living alone in a creepy mansion and the town Major, who wants rid of him. He performs 3 songs: 2 Bad, Ghosts and Is It Scary
... and that's it. Such a shame he didn't do more...

Here's BAD. The part you haven't seen is probably part one. Now tell me Michael Jackson can't act!


FULL 16-MINUTE VERSION OF THE VIDEO

Directed by Martin Scorsese:

Part 1
Here's an 8-minute self-contained short film. No music (that's in part 2). Michael playing schoolkid named Darrel...



Part 2



Link: Michael Jackson List of Unreleased Material (fascinating...)

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Not too tired to tell you...

I SLEPT FOR NEARLY FOUR HOURS, from late morning into early afternoon slumped in a chair at the back of the public library today. What the staff thought of me, I've no idea. But I wasn't drugged or drunk, so who cares what they thought. I was exhausted.
I slept most of yesterday through. And the day before.
I had an appointment at the druggieservice which I dragged myself down for. My worker, who is a mental health nurse, noticed the change in me at once. All I could think was: how am I to fill half a gaping hour of blank blank time?
The Personality Disorders Specialist has offered me an appointment for assessment. Being as I do not consider myself personality-disordered, especially on "axis C" as Nursey was suggesting (the anxious-avoidant-dependent axis ~ full of snivelling, simpering shy types, burdened by terror of social situations and irrational worries. This is not me.) I thought I would go 1 for a laugh and 2 because I am desperate and it's an untrodden avenue.
If I did have some such disorder, I actually have more in common with type A, the schizotypal personality, with their off-the-wall view of things coupled with a linguistic jamboree of trotterdonkey self-coined phrases, pinging like the tiny tits on the trees when they spot tubby roborovski hamsters scurrying near their nests (ahem...)
Yeah so anyway... I've got schizophrenia, not.
The other personality disorder I could be shoved towards would be the borderline type. Two of my friends had this condition. I say had because one threw himself under a tube train and is now dead... I don't really think I'm borderline at all.
The nurse did admit there's "definitely a mood thing going on". I didn't tell her my "not sleeping" had basically involved not bothering to go to bed for days on end, feeling pretty wonderful ~ I had an amazing perspective on life. I was refreshed as a granny smith apple is refreshing to a desert explorer's palate. I didn't want Nursey to assume I might have been "hypomanic", which it is my position that I am not. I am just prone to mood swings that occasionally sweep up high only to plummet me down. And I felt so so down yesterday. People kept asking what was wrong. Today I am avoiding human company and have had excessive hours of sleep so I feel sour on my own. But as you can see I'm chatty enough with my important friends... ha-har!
Now, you English speakers, let me probe you with a question: is all this German getting too annoying and should I post it in another blog?
I haven't the energy to post exhaustively in German every single day. On the other hand, I do need to practise my language otherwise it'll become as rusty as it was during the 20-year "hiatus" from study. You wouldn't believe the amount of courage it took to rustle up, having said I would like to do a BA degree in translation into and out of German, with French and Dutch on top ~ then to show how flabby my German had actually become it's humiliating. And if it does look impressive, trust me that is the lure of the exotic. If you only can sees how many I much not good grammar make, trust I would you know excellently how much very I not good can do it. See?
Now I've got to go. One last PS on the birds: I've yet to mention the SPARROWS who have returned in chirrupsome profusion to my neighbour's bush. There seem to be about twenty of them cheeping endlessly away to some more sparrows across the road (perhaps they are deadly sparrow rivals, having a rapper-style showdown about whose porch roof is theirs~?!) Sparrows had been largely absent from our towns for nearly twenty years. Sparrows and pigeons it always used to be. Pecking about in vast numbers in our parks and squares. The BBC shot an excellent documentary: The Sparrows of St James's (the park behind Downing Street and Parliament). Then they disappeared!
O and one last PS regarding my leaving the country. I know Britain has looked after me very patiently for too many years, but Britain is tinged with bad memories now I expended such a lot of time and effort trying to learn German and French and yet I've spent not spent even a month in a pays francophone and I've yet even to set foot on German-speaking soil! (German-speaking soil, die kleine Wurmchen sagen "Guten Tag!" und "Auf wiedersehen!"!) So you see, having been trapped here with an addiction for far too long, the very first thing I wish to do, if I ever CAN break free ~ is to flee!


If you want to see some good birdie-videos have a look at my tiny tits, the cutest of all British birds, posted earlier today in German (English translation below)... and these:

BTW, the quotation, by the Swiss writer Alfred Polgar, across those other tiny tits says: "I command the German language, but she doesn't always obey..."

VIDEO 1
HERE'S some chirpybirds, rather than songbirs: SPARROWS!



VIDEO 2
ON WITH THE SONGBIRDS THEME ~ HUMAN SONGBIRDS...

... this Jewish girl, I think, has one of the best voices ever recorded.
I mean, can you think of anybody at all whose vocal timbre sounds "like Barbra Streisand"..?
This performance of Evergreen from the 1976 remake of A Star is Born (Chris Kristofferson adding minimal harmonies) was shot in one take and it's one of the best vocal performances of any Hollywood film from any time:



Her sister, Roslyn Kind, has a deeper (some might say richer) version of the same voice. I posted her up on Sunday, but I don't think anyone heard her ...

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Sopranos Dairy-Mouse Tune ...

NOT A HUGE AMOUNT to say today... my actual post is trapped somewhere cyberlike half-done until tomorrow... I was writing about the future of the English language so you can either sigh with relief at being spared THAT one a day longer, or piss your pants in anticipation. Ooer!!

Here's a video from Marianne Faithfull ~ I really like this tune, it is from the "ovular" (non-un-a-politically-differently-incorrect (is that arcane enough? surely I'm PC now!!) contemporary way of saying "seminal"... it's from Faithfull's seminal 1979 LP BROKEN ENGLISH...

TAKE A WALK AROUND TIMES SQUARE...

MARIANNE FAITHFULL: TINES SQUARE
Set to videomontage...






I WAS SHOCKED, in a 4am rerun
of Sopranos on Channel 4 (why did no-one tell me how good it was ~ I thought that show was daft comedy which is why I never bothered watching 1st time round, I mean what else can a man be, whose name is "Mr Soprano"..? Not a father, for one thing... I mean, surely, a male soprano is by rights a EUNUCH!!...

Anyway I was watching the episode where Tony Soprano's associate gets married and can only attend his own daughter's wedding on bail if he pays $400,000 for US Marshals to be at the reception with metal detectors and all...

... when I heard strains of one of my OWN SONGS being sung to the cutting of the wedding cake!
I don't think Andrew Lloyd Webber will be shaking in his boots, but this IS one of my most famous Hamster Songs ~

This is the song I used to sing Baby Itchy Roborovski when she was pinging up the clingfilm tube, popping out the other side looking "surprised" ~ as hamsters are so wont to do ...


Itchy's covred in fur
Itchy's covered in fur
She's a tubby dairy mouse ~
and she's covered in fur..!


How on earth did Hollywood TV producers get hold of my work?!?







IT'S ALL GONE PETE TONG
rhyming slang: "it's all gone wrong"...
Pete Tong was a BBC Radio 1 DJ, famous for his Friday Night dance-music round-up...
I've seen the film ~ the story is too true ~ set on the "British" party isle of Ibiza, it tells what happens when it really does all go "Pete Tong"....



GREGORIAN: VOYAGE VOYAGE
Here is a Gregorian chants version of yesterday's top tune by Desireless...
... ever so French!!



A no-nonsense video-edit of the same:



DJ YAHEL: VOYAGE (TIESTO REMIX)
This is a bit chilled out for my taste... and it's another tune entirely... but it's quite nice





What a charming little ro-ro!



Stop Press: $1800 for a baby Norwich terrier?... What planet are these people on?...
The United States of America!

PS: No Norwich terriers to be found this side of the Pond, but Norfolks are about £400, which would be $600. Look at this tiny trotter! Is it because American breeders are trying it on..? Or are the tiny terriers cheaper here because they're indigenous to this island and thus more widely available..? What do you think..?




THE HUNGARIAN MUDI
A rare Central European herding dog...
Anyone ever seen one of these? They seem even rarer than the elusive Norwich terrier!

Here's a blue-eyed huskie named Thunder having a little bay on his 4th birthday... and even doing some tricks!

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

The Tale of Hachi


Chūgen Hachikō
忠犬ハチ公 means the faithful dog Hachi. Hachi means "eight" in Japanese.

This true story is famous in Japan. In the 1930s. Hachi, who later research showed to be one of only 30 pure-bred Akita dogs in Japan, was a puppydog in transit from the Northern Japanese farm where he was born to a new owner in the city. The crate in which he was travelling fell and sprang open at Tokyo station and the dog escaped and was found trotting the streets by a kindly professor from Tokyo University.

Unable to trace the dog's new owner, Ueno Hidesaburō
上野 英三郎, professor of Agricultural Studies at Tokyo University, took Hachi home and devotedly looked after him. Each morning the Professor would walk to the local station with Hachi in tow. There they said goodbye and Hachi trotted back home to re-appear each evening at Shibuya Station in time for the Professor's train.

One day Professor Ueno was stricken with a heart attack while at work and died. Hachi was rehomed but continually escaped, trotting back to the Professor's old home. This went on for months until the dog realized that Professor Ueno didn't live there any more.

From then on Hachi showed up at Shibuya Station
渋谷駅, the third-busiest railway station in Tokyo, every evening on time for his master's train. He became a fixture at the station, ever watching and waiting in hope of his master's return.

Regular commuters grew to recognize the dog, and kept him well-fed with tasty treats as he continued his vigil.

The Faithful Furry continued to show up every evening on time and to wait patiently for the late Professor. This went on for NINE YEARS.

During his lifetime Hachi became a cause célèbre and a national symbol of faithfulness and hope. When he died his body was stuffed and put in the National Science Museum in Tokyo, where he remains on display to this day.

Hachi's story was filmed in Japanese in 1987 as Hachikō Monogatari
ハチ公物語. In 2009 a Hollywood version was released starring Richard Gere as a caucasian Professor Ueno.

This screen is a montage of clips from the Japanese original, set to music and telling the complete story in three-&-a-half minutes.





You can watch the complete 1987 film Hachiko Monogatari on my Animals Crackers pets blog by clicking here.

Photos 1: the actual Hachi; 2 bronze statue outside Shibuya station; 3 Hachi's stuffed body at the National Science Museum of Japan, Tokyo.

In Memory of Hachi
Tribute montage. I think those doggieharnesses that fit on their back like a bumblebee wings holder are really cute:
BTW doesn't the cover image look just like a little shiba-inu. Shiba-inu, BTW, means "brushwood doggie"...


Monday, March 15, 2010

A Hachi Type of Dog



I MET A HACHI TYPE OF DOG in the park this morning. (After the dog in the film Hachi, starring Richard Gere.) I had a good idea this breed was probably Japanese, because of the cute face. Apparently they are called Chūken Hachikō 忠犬ハチ公 which means "faithful friend". The friendly dog came right up to me. His fur was incredibly soft ~ the nearest doggie fur can come to chinchilla. I said "hello you furry old swine". Then the owner saw me and smiled. And the doggie ran off...

I wish I had a dog like that. (And about £1200 to pay for a puppy.)

What a furry entertainer!!



HACHI TRAILER Japanese subtitled:
the dog is found at the 駅, the eki ~ the railway station.
Doesn't the furry swine look all "wise" in this still..!

PS hachikō doggies are better known as Akita Inu 秋田犬



HACHI longer trailer, in English



HACHI III: how they aged the furry dogs who played the part:




PPS: I love Carol Jackson (for those of you allergic to soap operas or residing on far-flung shores, that's Bianca's mother (pictured here as scruffy mother of the bride) on EastEnders... Played by Lindsay Coulson... she reminds me of my flirtatious old English teacher at school...


Sunday, December 27, 2009

Paulie the Parrot


PAULIE

I SAW THIS 1998 film
(that I would have assumed was by Disney but actually it was Dreamworks) on BBC1 this morning. So entertaining:

A trotterdonkey green parrot flies all the way to Los Angeles looking for his long lost owner, finds self in a parrot donkey derby along the way, then finally comes home (coooooo!!)

Apparently Paulie is a "blue crowned conure" by the way, technically not a parrot, if you look at the lorikeet-like bill...

Paulie Trailer:



Taco Stall Musical Performance



PS: The proper name for a Parrot is POLLY. "Paulie" is pronounced with a long O ~ quite a different sound. How on earth Dreamworks managed to mix this up is beyond me... It caused me a LOT of difficulty Googling, that's all I say...



And talking of entertainers, here's a hyacinth macaw talking... look at that fearsome beak! They can apparently crack coconuts unassisted!

Friday, December 04, 2009

Jay



I SAW A JAY today. They are supposed to be incredibly shy birds, but mine was sat on railings about two yards or so away. When it flew off it landed barely ten feet's distance on the grass and started pulling at some worm or something... whatever jays eat.

They do look peculiar birds... I always thought God must have designed them during his teabreak... "well I'll take a magpie and make it dun coloured, except for a peach bit... o! and bright blue!"

The blue-all-over jay you see bottom right must be an American bird, because you don't get jays like that here...

THE PAGE TURNER
la tourneuse de pages...

I SAW THIS last night.
A very prim-looking girl goes to a lovely country house to act as maid-cum nanny to a buttoned-up family. Simmering passions evolve. Soon she is turning pages for the concert-pianist lady of the house... I don't get the end of the story, but the lead-up's very good...

You can read a review better than I could ever give by clicking here...

Monday, August 03, 2009

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 ...


Monday, July 27, 2009

My Halloween Nightmare

EVERY SINGLE DAY last week I had to get up extra-early for some reason or other. Which means feeling sleep-deprived for hours. Then not being able to sleep. Sleeping deeply. Then getting woken up too early and feeling sleep-deprived again. You know the pattern.

So come the weekend and no need to get up, of course I slept in, dreaming for hours. And because I ever so intelligently watched a Halloween horror film on Friday night my night was full of ghouls and demonic terrors.

What makes this a hundred times worse is that somehow, when I was younger, I learned not only to speak in my sleep but to yell and scream. Which means one single nightmare can wake the entire house. Yes, lovely business. I'm only posting this because I've nothing else to say. O yeah: and it's raining...

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Berlin

I TOOK MY FRENCH HOLIDAY IDEA and looked a little closer at what I actually wanted out of it. That is, to escape. And where I really want to go isn't France at all but Germany. And you can't go to Germany and not go to Berlin. So that is where I have decided I wanna live. As I said, I did years and years of German so I shouldn't have TOO much trouble filling in forms, reading things, etc. I will just need to get a really good dictionary.

I would love to say, "I'm going there forever. Never again shall I set foot on British soil." (I am very much tired of Britain. This country is sinking into a morass of doublestandards. Modern Britain deals with nothing until crisis is reached (who does that remind me of?) Problems are swept under the carpet: out of sight = out of mind. Civil liberties are being eroded here perhaps quicker than anywhere else in the "civilized world" and that really gets me. The "mother of all parliaments" is utterly corrupt; the home of free speech and all that is losing free speech. Spy cameras are everywhere. The populace are rude and violent. Immigrant communities rule over us and are full of attitude. Foreigners always seem to be first on the housing queue.

Having said all that, Neonaziism is what puts me off Berlin (and Germany in general) the most. But you can't have everything. And I never said I thought the grass over there was any greener. I'm just so sick of Britain. I want to live with a different set of problems.

And I intend to run away from my drug addiction.

I was already aware there are NA meetings in English in Berlin and that little link made going there seem a little less forlorn. I'm not "emigrating", just "migrating" for a while with 2 objects in mind. These being: 1: to get references/experience so I can actually go out and get a JOB ~ wow!! and 2: improve command of German enough to have usable skill rather than semi-useless semi-fluency.

I have never been to Berlin in my life. Neither have I set foot on the soil of any German-speaking country. My mind was oriented towards the region by years of language study at school, so it seems utterly ridiculous not to have gone. Also I long had a fascination with life behind the iron curtain ~ East Berlin of course was the gateway to all this. So when the wall came down without my having ventured behind it I was secretly rather miffed. There is something oddly romantic about former Soviet bloc chic. Giant alienating concrete architecture. Cold wind from the East ...

What really sealed all this was when my Mum said at the weekend: "well if you want to go voluntary work over there I'll help you out". And I thought: Yippee! Then I'm going!!

"BIRD HOUSE" COMMERCIAL
They're selling orange squash, not that I think anybody would remember it from this... but the advert is amazing. The bird is a canary in natural coloration...
I think this is classic ...




Oh and while we're at it, here's a McDonald's ad from Thailand
Note how the English word "spicy" comes through loud and clear:



OK I promise: last one
I love this piri-piri Thai lady:

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