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!

Thursday, December 02, 2010

My train-wreck life trundles on and on ...

I NEVER KNOW WHAT TO SAY when I feel the way I do today.

On the one hand, scores of people read this blog, some barely know me. I assume they will think I'm being a dramaqueen. Or writing "performance diary" ~ more about posture and pose than anything I'm actually feeling.

On the other hand, this site is the nearest thing I have to a diary. It's for that reason that I won't post personal pictures. You know me far better as Gledwood the hamster than you ever could know of my "real" image. If I posted up my face I'd be too self-conscious to reveal even half the stuff I actually do. So you're better off with Hamsters and Double UO Globe logos than my face, trust me.

Let me tell you my reality.

During the deepest pits of the drought I did three weeks on pretty much methadone alone. I continued trying to use, getting almost nothing for my money on four particular days in a row, and so over this time, and the subsequent week, when I did give up scoring and spent my money on books and socks instead, I was taking fewer opiates than at any point since the late 1990s. Yet I felt empty inside, and miserable. Barely showered. Late at night when I was tired, I chatter of crack-voices came back to my head, even though I have barely touched crack in two years.

I pray that God, who understands my mind and motives won't condemn me for not coping. Because I am barely coping at all. I haven't done any washing up except single plates, spoons, mugs, in months. My clothes desperately need laundering. They stink, as do I. I wish I could care enough to bother, but I can't be bothered. My floor is a melange of dirty teeshirts, odd socks and jeans that won't button tangled with empty pizza boxes, newspapers, carrier bags, intermingled with sacks of rubbish where the urge to tidy up has seized me, but not for long enough to make any meaningful inroads into the chaos.

My drinking got so bad last week that I was having blackouts again. I lost half a gram of gear ~ in my own house! ~ I hold out no hope ever of finding it. I was so out of it the other night I actually flushed a £20 note down the toilet.

I need glasses for reading. In some troubled corner of this fleapit they lay safe and undisturbed. But though I can barely see without them, I can't trouble myself enough to bother looking for them.

The thought of suicide haunts me every single day. Knowing that people come here in desperation to find out the latest on the Great Heroin Drought 2010 and that although I hate the Mean Green, I am at least lucky enough to be scripted methadone. Entirely at the mercy of street dealers, some have spent £100s on stuff that has little else in common with low grade Middle Eastern heroin except that it is brown. As those in the thick of this drought will know, the strength of even the best heroin has fallen to a tiny fraction of what it was some months ago. Some street gear is so bad that long-term addicts have been testing heroin-negative. A fantastic achievement, if only it could last longer than present circumstances dictate.

Last week especially people were becoming increasingly frantic and desperate. I tried to do what I could, which wasn't that much. But I did try.

Of the two gears I have been buying, one looks cloudy, like orange juice with black bits floating on top. The black bits can easily be fished out. The remaining " orange juice" contains a little B and a lot of benzos and possibly some other types of downers, too.

The effect is the same every time. The miniscule drop of B I feel instantaneously. A big part of heroin's addictive potential lies in how it almost instantaneously crosses the blood-brain barrier, creating what journalists like to call a "rush". Cocaine also crosses this blood-brain barrier very quickly, hence the super-compressed two-minute "flash" experienced when a large amount of crack is piped.

Not all drugs have such rapid effects. Good example: a cannabis bong. The paranoid schizophrenia and alzheimers that cannabis smokers call a "high" keeps climbing and climbing for a good five-ten minutes, a trickle more than a rush. Heroin and crack by contrast smash into the system like a tidal wave.

Yesterday I found some better gear that looked at first glance like crushed up paracetamol. It sparkles because it appears pre-cut with vitamin C. This stuff cooks up the colour of dilute whiskey, has about three times as much heroin as the "orange juice", but ALSO contains so many sedatives that although I started trying to post around one pm, I kept waking up having to delete screensful of ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzs.

Like an evil cannabis-bong, this mysterious sedative creeps up slowly. So I didn't even know I'd inadvertently taken it till 20 minutes later when I suddenly felt heavy-limbed and buzz-eyed and dropped off so sleep till half past five.

I think I've caught up on several days' lost sleep. I even have a crazy scheme where I'll stick to methadone 100% yet again. Because if at first you don't succeed, as the saying goes ...












PS If you want lots of confessions, methadone and Suboxone (formerly heroin) and the most luridly intimate accounts of the author's "booty calls"; Anna Grace I Hate My Face, I Hate This Place and I'm Strung Out Again from Wisconsin (nr Chicago) cannot be bettered: I particularly like the blue wig shot.

11 comments:

Lady Anon said...

Hi Gledwood...did you read my comment on yr post a few days ago about heroin & cleaning???

I can't be bothered to write it again (of course...I'm on green)

but the gist was that without heroin scheduling our moods like clockwork...we find it abominably hard to do anything 'normal' & repetitve....like washing clothes/showering...because what IS the point when you have to keep doing it again & again?

But I think we really need these new cycles to replace heroin rhythm....

...But anyway...I put it better last time...the point is that its normal to be feeling like this...............we don't want to give up on having our days scheduled by heroin....but we have no choice in the end......its an either/or situation....we can't be HALF normal...we be shadows then...!

Ahhh..I can't type today (my normal sister & normal friends are staying here, my dealer crashed his car into a lamp-post then ran out of the only okay gear in the area...I'm down to begging green from junky friends, its snowing & I have to work again tomorrow....)

er....rant over

sorry...have gone mad

XxXxxxxxX

.....

........

Akelamalu said...

This makes worrying reading Gleds. Could/would your mother help you get your place and yourself cleaned up? It can't be good living in such a mess.

I'm glad you are at least thinking of trying to get clean. I'm sending you positive thoughts m'deario. x

Anonymous said...

Sounds like your going through hell.How far along is your pregnancy?Do you have a boyfriend? You didnt get pregnant alone. Get the father involved.Make him help.All that cleaning is to much during pregnancy.Make the childs father do it.

Lady Anon said...

Hi gledwood...I sent you an email with the science of quitting!!!


(not really so exciting..but I did send you an email)

XXx

My verification word was rangst (raaaa...angst!)

Anonymous said...

Hope you get back on track soon Gleds. Take the shortage as an opportunity. I want to be able to read your book one day when it's published knowing you're clean and safe and that you've achieved everything you want to achieve (non of which will happen on H!)

Take care,

G xx

Lady Anon said...

Hey,

Should have emailed sooner really..like should have done so many things!...(violins please!)

Sorry....couldn't listen to the music.....one of my shitty methadone symptoms is that I can't stand to listen to music....music is too....too everything!

Will listen when more capable....

XxXxXx

Lady Anon said...

Gledwood...Can I also say that Anne Marlowe (spel?!)...a philosophy graduate & junky thought you could learn a lot about yourself & society from heroin addiction...

....BUT only once you stop using...

...when you are an addict...you can't see any of these 'truths'...

...Useful idea for a junky writer maybe??? The moments of intellectual clarity waiting for you when you stop using heroin??

...if we stop

XxXxXX

Gledwood said...

ANON: the shortage seems to be ending, worse luck. But in a way I'd rather have heroin there to use but not use it. that way my motivation is intact. i heard the naltrexone implant is good because "you can't crave what you can't have" but i met someone who showed me the bruise where the implant was. he was using on top of it, feeling nothing and looking utterly miserable. utterly horrible.

LADY A that's what has put me off writing about heroin to any great degree. i wouldn't want to make a career out of something I just want to forget. so I wrote some silly children's stories instead

I do want to write one thing about addiction bc I've got an idea that has not been done before

i never realized heroin would basically make me so lazy

do you know i just realized this benzo downer stuff in the heroin might be making me feel weird. but i've had enough of drugs

tomorrow i get to do a methadone day and i can't wait, for once

i have this daydream about a day when i will never ever need to touch another drug again. that day feels sooner, to me THANK GOD

Syd said...

I hope that you get cleaned up and off the stuff soon. I too would like to read your book. I don't want to see you go further down.

Liz Hinds said...

I know I can speak for god (me and him are like that - she holds two fingers crossed!) when I say he won't condemn you. Only you will do that, gleds. God is for you every step of the way, cheering you on on your good days and carrying you on your bad.

As you say, try, try and try again. x

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the shout out. So sweet. So you don't post pics because you think we as in all your readers will judge you more harshly. I rarely if ever see a negative comment on your blog.
When you get an asshole comment does it hurt your feelings?
If you off yourself I'm offing myself so you hold my life in your unstable, fragile state of mind and hands.
Ic you let me come visit you I will clean your apartment. Take all the rubbish out, find the H and C you lost. Finders keepers, but it sounds like I don't want it any way.
I have the money for a holiday. I would take photos of you and me naked, and post them on my blog.

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