You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.
You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.
Blogs
Filters
Show only:
Loading…
I was suprised to see that the Thai building now had two floors, the top being the one used for crossing. There is still a "Foreigner" line but now Cambodians are considered "Foreigners." In border areas all over SE Asia locals from both sides of the border zone are given a different status and not subjected to the same controls as foreigners per se. This had been the case at Aran (the Thai side of Poi Pet). Now there were hundreds on cue.
I was happy to stamp out, especially with all the DHC, Oxy and Diazepam I was carrying. I walked down the stairs, up a concrete pathway and then I saw 5 Thai Borderpolicemen all staring at me just before I saw the Xray conveyor and the sign saying "Illegal Drugs Detection Station." Aaaah, "THAT was new" I thought.
I smiled and didnt break my stride at all but as I came abreast of their Xray I moved my arms as if to place my kitbag down for inspection while asking if they wanted to search it. Smiling surrealy they said "Nah" and then turned away to talk amongst themselves. I played it to the hilt asking how to get to the carpark. One officer directed me and that was that, I was in Thailand.
I was happy to stamp out, especially with all the DHC, Oxy and Diazepam I was carrying. I walked down the stairs, up a concrete pathway and then I saw 5 Thai Borderpolicemen all staring at me just before I saw the Xray conveyor and the sign saying "Illegal Drugs Detection Station." Aaaah, "THAT was new" I thought.
I smiled and didnt break my stride at all but as I came abreast of their Xray I moved my arms as if to place my kitbag down for inspection while asking if they wanted to search it. Smiling surrealy they said "Nah" and then turned away to talk amongst themselves. I played it to the hilt asking how to get to the carpark. One officer directed me and that was that, I was in Thailand.
At Poi Pet I was totally fucked up from that nightmarish busride. They stop about a half a klick short of the infamous roundabout which serves as the approximate border for all the hucksters and shills. From the roundabout to the actual crossing you are besieged by conartists of every type. Taking those types of busses however sort of saves you from being harrangued as a bus attendant- after guving you a laminated badge around your neck- leads you to the bus company office just short of Cambodian Immigration.
Inside the office you hand a bus employee your passport and departure forms, he checks that they are in order, makes a notation that speeds you through Immigration as well as contacting the minivan on the Thai side that will take you to Bangkok. As I said, I was majorly fucked up as in disarray. When the employee in the office asked for my ticket I realised that the driver had never given it back to me after I boarded in Phnom Pemh. The employee tried to be a dick about it:
Hom: "What was your seat number?"
Now, if readers will recall I had boarded the bus at about 9PM just before it departed from a bustling market in Phnom Penh. There is no way I was going to know the number but offered a reasonable guess:
Me: 13B I believe.
Him: I will check...(5 minutes later, long after all others had left)...No, they say that there was noone in 13B.
Me: Look, I was the only foreigner on the bus for its entire trip. If you cannot verify my passage by the manifest then you can simply ask the company headquarters (I then proceded to show him the logo of the travel agency that booked it).
He finally tired of the game and asked for my passport and departure documents. It was then that I realised that my US Passport was missing- the passport I was/am travelling on. I desperately tossed my kitbag with a gaggle of Cambodians staring at me as if I were an insect in a petrie dish, studying me oh so intently. Minutes later I found it and quickly made my way to Immigration. Stamped out I made my way to Customs, received the same and onto Thailand...
Inside the office you hand a bus employee your passport and departure forms, he checks that they are in order, makes a notation that speeds you through Immigration as well as contacting the minivan on the Thai side that will take you to Bangkok. As I said, I was majorly fucked up as in disarray. When the employee in the office asked for my ticket I realised that the driver had never given it back to me after I boarded in Phnom Pemh. The employee tried to be a dick about it:
Hom: "What was your seat number?"
Now, if readers will recall I had boarded the bus at about 9PM just before it departed from a bustling market in Phnom Penh. There is no way I was going to know the number but offered a reasonable guess:
Me: 13B I believe.
Him: I will check...(5 minutes later, long after all others had left)...No, they say that there was noone in 13B.
Me: Look, I was the only foreigner on the bus for its entire trip. If you cannot verify my passage by the manifest then you can simply ask the company headquarters (I then proceded to show him the logo of the travel agency that booked it).
He finally tired of the game and asked for my passport and departure documents. It was then that I realised that my US Passport was missing- the passport I was/am travelling on. I desperately tossed my kitbag with a gaggle of Cambodians staring at me as if I were an insect in a petrie dish, studying me oh so intently. Minutes later I found it and quickly made my way to Immigration. Stamped out I made my way to Customs, received the same and onto Thailand...
Having stayed at "Sundance Guesthouse" on Street #172 I can inly say good words about it. Fantastic digs for $20 US per night, definitely best bang for the buck. Sitting streetside as Black Sabbath, watching a Fench 20-something tourist trying to pull a very pretty French girl as I wait for my bus to Bangkok.
The border crossing at Poi Pet is only open 730AM to 5PM so that when i wake at 730AM I will have been sleeping on the bus all night. As described in earlier entries it is a "Hotel Bus," own double bed, flat screen TV, fridge, but only a curtain around my "room." It has 2 drivers and an attendant and is just what I needed cause I hate that fucken drive. I loved it before Cambodia shut down passenger trains in 2007. At that point I could take a train from the far shore of the Lake and get off in Poi Pet, cross, take a tuk tuk 4 klicks to the Thai station in Ayan and ride all the way to Bangkok.
Now, after crossing, I have to walk to a Thai van that picks us all up for the mimd numbing ride to G-d's armpit in SE Asia, Khao San Road. What a scumbag Disney-type amusement park it has turned into. It amazes me that kids still buy drugs on that terrible street. Only 80 meters long. All ”manner of Thai citizens try to sell all manner of illicit drugs. If someone is foolish enough to buy or really even examines the offered drugs, then BOOM, a cop on a scooter zooms up literally seconds later and makes an arrest. A gramme of Ice ends up costing a few thousand US dollars.
The border crossing at Poi Pet is only open 730AM to 5PM so that when i wake at 730AM I will have been sleeping on the bus all night. As described in earlier entries it is a "Hotel Bus," own double bed, flat screen TV, fridge, but only a curtain around my "room." It has 2 drivers and an attendant and is just what I needed cause I hate that fucken drive. I loved it before Cambodia shut down passenger trains in 2007. At that point I could take a train from the far shore of the Lake and get off in Poi Pet, cross, take a tuk tuk 4 klicks to the Thai station in Ayan and ride all the way to Bangkok.
Now, after crossing, I have to walk to a Thai van that picks us all up for the mimd numbing ride to G-d's armpit in SE Asia, Khao San Road. What a scumbag Disney-type amusement park it has turned into. It amazes me that kids still buy drugs on that terrible street. Only 80 meters long. All ”manner of Thai citizens try to sell all manner of illicit drugs. If someone is foolish enough to buy or really even examines the offered drugs, then BOOM, a cop on a scooter zooms up literally seconds later and makes an arrest. A gramme of Ice ends up costing a few thousand US dollars.
I've never blogged before. So this is a first. Bear with me then.
I have a mind that wanders and wonders about things at breakneck speed. I'm unsure whether this has anything to do with my bipolar status or no. Currently off meds if anyone is interested. If you've read any of my posts you'll know I switch from lighthearted to why am I not dead/is this all there is? type posts.
I'm finding myself wondering at this moment if bipolar influenced my choice to become an opiate user.
I have a mind that wanders and wonders about things at breakneck speed. I'm unsure whether this has anything to do with my bipolar status or no. Currently off meds if anyone is interested. If you've read any of my posts you'll know I switch from lighthearted to why am I not dead/is this all there is? type posts.
I'm finding myself wondering at this moment if bipolar influenced my choice to become an opiate user.
So yesterday as I noted I bought 14 of those street bags of #4. Today I bought 90 of them, my last heroin for a while because although I havent yet booked passage, Im heading down to the Philippines in a couple of days. I have some business stuff to handle in Mindanao, and then will visit with two Filipinas that I briefly mentioned. Sadly, the one in Lapu Lapu might cause me to see Rizza whom I havent seen in almost half a decade.
I still am partiallly in business with Mario, her dad, still have my house in his compound and we are still as close as we always were. It took almost 3 years but her parents calmed down. For a while I expected them to literally kill her for the shame she caused them and had my relationship with her parents been weaker it might have hit them hard financially. In the Philippines you can have an adulterous wife and her lover tossed into prison for 14 years. To avoid that extra shame I could have pressed them for a couple of hundred thousand US but I was friends with them long before I ever considered their daughter.
She has remained with her man all these years, to her credit. One thing I never understood about her is why she always wanted to work. This is a girl who used to summer at Lake Como in Italy and hit Gstaad in Switzerland in the winter, top tenth of top 1 percent in her nation, money and society wise, but weirdly she obssessed about becoming a Home Health Attendant in the West. Just so strange. After the meltdown I became convinced that she has Aspbergers and her parents agreed with me.
If I saw her she would be terrified probably but she shouldnt be. I never loved her so other than the shame she caused her poor family I never worked myself up over the abandonment of our marriage. Well let me clarify. The stress of it is probably what cause my Hep-C regimen of Interferon and Ribavarin to fail. Seeing as how I was closing in on Stage 5 and would be on my last legs now if not for the new treatment, that failure peeved me to say the least. All in all it worked out for the best in the end so alls well that ends well as thet say...which can also be said about my experiment as well but that will be posted soon.
I still am partiallly in business with Mario, her dad, still have my house in his compound and we are still as close as we always were. It took almost 3 years but her parents calmed down. For a while I expected them to literally kill her for the shame she caused them and had my relationship with her parents been weaker it might have hit them hard financially. In the Philippines you can have an adulterous wife and her lover tossed into prison for 14 years. To avoid that extra shame I could have pressed them for a couple of hundred thousand US but I was friends with them long before I ever considered their daughter.
She has remained with her man all these years, to her credit. One thing I never understood about her is why she always wanted to work. This is a girl who used to summer at Lake Como in Italy and hit Gstaad in Switzerland in the winter, top tenth of top 1 percent in her nation, money and society wise, but weirdly she obssessed about becoming a Home Health Attendant in the West. Just so strange. After the meltdown I became convinced that she has Aspbergers and her parents agreed with me.
If I saw her she would be terrified probably but she shouldnt be. I never loved her so other than the shame she caused her poor family I never worked myself up over the abandonment of our marriage. Well let me clarify. The stress of it is probably what cause my Hep-C regimen of Interferon and Ribavarin to fail. Seeing as how I was closing in on Stage 5 and would be on my last legs now if not for the new treatment, that failure peeved me to say the least. All in all it worked out for the best in the end so alls well that ends well as thet say...which can also be said about my experiment as well but that will be posted soon.
Upon leaving Khmer-Russian Friendship Hospital we made our way towards the River, the Mekong and its parallel branch, Tonle Sap, which diverges north of Phnom Penh. He took me to a street I will not mention for the safety of any intrepid traveller who may follow in my steps. That said I fully documented my time there in my Flickr Photo Stream.
I have been in shady places most of my life but have to admit that I had never came close to such an overpowering odor of human urine. It was four floors- though I earlier mistakenly inagined it had 6 floors. Roughly dated to the mid-1960s the structure is cement, a block long, a walk up with huge apts. all manner of junkie was keeping home in the hallways. The floors were catwalks on the lengthway. In the huge blocklong courtyard squatters had built a small village, homes atop homes with now a third level dangerously going up. Again, in my photos I illustrated much of it.
Heroin, smoked and IVd comes in little golden foils- gold as in 24kt orange gold. I earlier estimated that each foil- a single dosage- amounts to about 300mgs. Now I woukd say it doesnt even surpass 100mgs. Still, reputedly unadulterated even 40 to 100mgs at $2.50 US per is a hell of a deal.
In 1992 if I recall correctly, I was living in Tampa, Florida and at that point the city was scorched dry. A tonne of crack at shi**y prices, dirt Mexican weed but again, no opiates/opioids. I remember some Puerto Rican from Brooklyn had his brains splattered during a DEA investigation into his distribution of coke and dope (heroin) but it being a small world the girl I was with then, her brother knew him back up north. That was as close as I got to heroin back then...and then the girl I was with dragged me to a family gathering in Brooklyn.
I hopped a subway up to East Harlem, aka "Spanish Harlem." I had a son with her, still an infant. We got off on E.116th Street. I left her window shopping on Second Avenue and I casually made my way slowly up to E.125th Street. At 122nd I saw a Puerto Rican dealing put of a doorway to a white prostitute. I tried to buy 8 bags but he refused me, thinking I was a cop or whatever. Frustrated I walked back down to my girl and my son. I wasnt thinking of that guy but as we walked past his spot he eagerly called me over saying he didnt know I was OK. I shrugged my shoulders and got my bags.
I have always had a very high opiate/opioid threashhold so I quickly insufflated one and then half of the other. I was happy to feel the warmth back in my body and my mind. We hopped on a downtown train and like within a minute I had waves of naseau come over me and right there began heaving. We got off at 34th Street and had to spend our travel budget on a Four Star Hotel ($840 for a double per night). I was on the floor of the loo vomiting my brains out. I had only gotten down 1.5 bags (~150mgs Beige, "Happyland," a green stamp). The name referred to a Punta disco. "Punta" was and remains the pop music of the Garifuna. The Garifuna were African slaves en route to Brasil whose ship ran aground off of St. Lucia in the Caribbean. The Africans made their way ashore somehow, one presumes they were unshackled after water began rushing through the hold where most would have been chained.
Once on St Lucia they ran for the hills and like so many escaped slaves in the Caribbean became fierce warriors collectively known as "Maroons." After nearly 2 centuries free in the mountains they finally made peace with the English who then shipped them to the Mosquito Coast in what is now Honduras. There some assimilated into the Miskito Native American Tribe. Their descendants became known as "Garifuna." Coal black they speak a unique form of Spanish, their own African-based language known AS "Garifuna," as well as Caribbean English ("Yeah mon").
The Garifuna began migrating to NYC in the 1990s where they tended to settle in the South Bronx. This particular club, "Happyland," was on Southern Blvd near E.180th Street. A woman working the coatcheque room broke up with her Cuban boyfriend after discovering that he was a crack addict just after Xmas of 1989. He continued obsessing about the woman and on March 25th, 1990, convinced she was involved with a coworker the ex set a fire that murdered 87 people!
The bag was VERY pure. Overdosing via insufflation isnt difficult at all if using pure or close to pure heroin. Since those 2 days of incessant puking I have almost always played it safe even when insufflating. These Cambodian foils are deceptively innocent looking. I could easily see a Western addict just doing 4 or 5 as if they are nothing...of course that Westerner almost immediately would start dying.
I have been in shady places most of my life but have to admit that I had never came close to such an overpowering odor of human urine. It was four floors- though I earlier mistakenly inagined it had 6 floors. Roughly dated to the mid-1960s the structure is cement, a block long, a walk up with huge apts. all manner of junkie was keeping home in the hallways. The floors were catwalks on the lengthway. In the huge blocklong courtyard squatters had built a small village, homes atop homes with now a third level dangerously going up. Again, in my photos I illustrated much of it.
Heroin, smoked and IVd comes in little golden foils- gold as in 24kt orange gold. I earlier estimated that each foil- a single dosage- amounts to about 300mgs. Now I woukd say it doesnt even surpass 100mgs. Still, reputedly unadulterated even 40 to 100mgs at $2.50 US per is a hell of a deal.
In 1992 if I recall correctly, I was living in Tampa, Florida and at that point the city was scorched dry. A tonne of crack at shi**y prices, dirt Mexican weed but again, no opiates/opioids. I remember some Puerto Rican from Brooklyn had his brains splattered during a DEA investigation into his distribution of coke and dope (heroin) but it being a small world the girl I was with then, her brother knew him back up north. That was as close as I got to heroin back then...and then the girl I was with dragged me to a family gathering in Brooklyn.
I hopped a subway up to East Harlem, aka "Spanish Harlem." I had a son with her, still an infant. We got off on E.116th Street. I left her window shopping on Second Avenue and I casually made my way slowly up to E.125th Street. At 122nd I saw a Puerto Rican dealing put of a doorway to a white prostitute. I tried to buy 8 bags but he refused me, thinking I was a cop or whatever. Frustrated I walked back down to my girl and my son. I wasnt thinking of that guy but as we walked past his spot he eagerly called me over saying he didnt know I was OK. I shrugged my shoulders and got my bags.
I have always had a very high opiate/opioid threashhold so I quickly insufflated one and then half of the other. I was happy to feel the warmth back in my body and my mind. We hopped on a downtown train and like within a minute I had waves of naseau come over me and right there began heaving. We got off at 34th Street and had to spend our travel budget on a Four Star Hotel ($840 for a double per night). I was on the floor of the loo vomiting my brains out. I had only gotten down 1.5 bags (~150mgs Beige, "Happyland," a green stamp). The name referred to a Punta disco. "Punta" was and remains the pop music of the Garifuna. The Garifuna were African slaves en route to Brasil whose ship ran aground off of St. Lucia in the Caribbean. The Africans made their way ashore somehow, one presumes they were unshackled after water began rushing through the hold where most would have been chained.
Once on St Lucia they ran for the hills and like so many escaped slaves in the Caribbean became fierce warriors collectively known as "Maroons." After nearly 2 centuries free in the mountains they finally made peace with the English who then shipped them to the Mosquito Coast in what is now Honduras. There some assimilated into the Miskito Native American Tribe. Their descendants became known as "Garifuna." Coal black they speak a unique form of Spanish, their own African-based language known AS "Garifuna," as well as Caribbean English ("Yeah mon").
The Garifuna began migrating to NYC in the 1990s where they tended to settle in the South Bronx. This particular club, "Happyland," was on Southern Blvd near E.180th Street. A woman working the coatcheque room broke up with her Cuban boyfriend after discovering that he was a crack addict just after Xmas of 1989. He continued obsessing about the woman and on March 25th, 1990, convinced she was involved with a coworker the ex set a fire that murdered 87 people!
The bag was VERY pure. Overdosing via insufflation isnt difficult at all if using pure or close to pure heroin. Since those 2 days of incessant puking I have almost always played it safe even when insufflating. These Cambodian foils are deceptively innocent looking. I could easily see a Western addict just doing 4 or 5 as if they are nothing...of course that Westerner almost immediately would start dying.
she was so opposed to it that she insulted me, called me a liar, said i was a piece of shit junkie. As I had said before, Russians do not understand moderation, only all or nothing. After we walked out with my scripts in hand, my wife told me she was going to east Jerusalem to buy meds she needed that are not controlled substances here. she speaks Arabic, and so she enjoys the Muslim community here as do I, despite not knowing Arabic.
I walked out into the white-grey-yellow sky and watched the sand and dust blow and my breathing becoming harder and harder. I have poor lungs from smoking and from having asthma as a child; i still get seasonal bronchitis that is harsh for me.The dust storm or sandstorm was harsher than any i experienced in my native Texas.
My wife had angrily left me alone and said she was sick of seeing me high and I should go fuck myself. I wandered the streets of Jerusalem in the storm to a pharmacy and filled my Tramadol and Percocet; taking 400 miligrammes Tramadol and 50 miligrams oxycodone with 275mg of naproxen and 100 miligrammes diphenhydramine for potentiation. I swallowed the handful with a water chaser and drifted along the side of the train tracks to get back to my location. For whatever reason, i always get motion sickness on opiates and last time i was nauseated on the train I vomited in front of the whole passenger car, so this time I decided to walk home.
I was drifting as the hit came on and got me nodding hard as I walked. I prayed to God and asked him to help me please, watching the blotted out sky and thinking of nuclear holocaust as my lungs labored to merely breathe in the thick, dusty air.
I had a gut feeling bad things were coming.
When I got home, I walked in to see my wife walk out. I sent her facebook messages and said i would go to look for her. I did, and she told me when i found her that that if i do not quit; she will quit me. I didn't know what to do. aside from 4 days of heroin use in march, I had gone for nearly 3 months without opioid drugs in Rossiya, and was depressed and in pain from my kidney, but she did not care. She hated seeing me depressed when i was sober, and then hated me being drunk or high every night. I told her that I guess she will have to leave me because I cannot quit. I have tried for over a decade to no luck, and the main thing is that simply stated i love Opioids and hate depression and pain. For her, this was weakness.
She followed me back home insulting me, and was chatting to some guy on FB. A girl who looks like her will always have constant bullshit to deal with, so naturally she can go pick someone else if she so desires. She claimed it was a friend, but i saw her delete all her history for internet and delete all FB messages she had. Several times when she was angry at me for using, she would got to other people like her ex. The conversations were sexual. She deleted it or took the phone out of my hand and then did it. The last time I saw this I dumped her quicker than your first dope shit while kicking. She begged me to stay with her crying, offering anything to make me stay. I relented and said if she stopped we could make it work. It was after this in July that we started to take pills together and she accepted my use.
That all changed last week and i think it is due to her speaking to her ex again, a militant teetotaler who hates all drugs and alcohol and bad food. for an atheist, he is fairly devout to rules and regulations.
After she said she was leaving and not coming back, I got a call from my Dr. and he informed me that my kidney is blocked again and I needed seriously invasive surgery. I felt sick when he said i would need surgery again.... with my kidney condition re-lapsing and re-blocking (not due to anything I have done like drinking though)... my urologist says the last surgeries were failures and now I can choose to re-do the surgery or do a more invasive surgery. Once again, I feel sick just thinking about it. Catheters, uretal stent implants.... penis, ureter, bladder and kidney pain so excruciating it can barely be described... pissing chunks of blood... a sensation like razor wire being pulled through your urethra... it's what I imagine hell is like. And I have to do it again... thankfully my doctors are treating me properly and adequately... but I'm still profoundly apprehensive. I have a good doctor who speaks english very well and who is intelligent and insightful which is good as most Russian doctors are shitheads, but Dimitry has his head on his shoulders. I have to go due a CT scan and I will have contrast dye injected into my arm to create a 3d image of my kidney. Take it from me... renal colic is a nightmare... this whole condition... terrifying... pray you never need to get surgery for this....
In the wake of my wife leaving me I find out I need shit again... again.... after the call I sat staring outside into the yellow abyss and nodded in and out, a lump of snus (Swedish oral tobacco similar to American "dip"), feeling profoundly depressed.
then my wife came back and yelled at me and insulted me saying I was a pussy. I tell her that the Dr. told me that I have a serious issue and my surgery had been botched in the USA. Now I have to prepare for this again....this horrible, horrifying surgery where I pissed chunks of blood and 20-30 norcos barely cut the pain. And my wife's selfishness in regards to drugs with her morally puritanical back ground drove me into even further despair.
The sun had gradually set and I walked out at dusk, praying in Hebrew, hoping for strength to fight the good fight. I wandered around in the yellow abyss, my soul drifting from my body, my mind drifting from my head, profoundly awash in despair and desolation, the abyssic sandstorm seeping into my opiate drenched soul, my black hole of inner self drifting alone, lost, sickly, an utterly black void sucking in all light and never returning, steeped in misery and pain of mind, soul, body. I cannot blame her for leaving me, but things are as they are and I have to accept them, even as I wander around in this nightmarish world wondering what God's plan is for me....
I walked out into the white-grey-yellow sky and watched the sand and dust blow and my breathing becoming harder and harder. I have poor lungs from smoking and from having asthma as a child; i still get seasonal bronchitis that is harsh for me.The dust storm or sandstorm was harsher than any i experienced in my native Texas.
My wife had angrily left me alone and said she was sick of seeing me high and I should go fuck myself. I wandered the streets of Jerusalem in the storm to a pharmacy and filled my Tramadol and Percocet; taking 400 miligrammes Tramadol and 50 miligrams oxycodone with 275mg of naproxen and 100 miligrammes diphenhydramine for potentiation. I swallowed the handful with a water chaser and drifted along the side of the train tracks to get back to my location. For whatever reason, i always get motion sickness on opiates and last time i was nauseated on the train I vomited in front of the whole passenger car, so this time I decided to walk home.
I was drifting as the hit came on and got me nodding hard as I walked. I prayed to God and asked him to help me please, watching the blotted out sky and thinking of nuclear holocaust as my lungs labored to merely breathe in the thick, dusty air.
I had a gut feeling bad things were coming.
When I got home, I walked in to see my wife walk out. I sent her facebook messages and said i would go to look for her. I did, and she told me when i found her that that if i do not quit; she will quit me. I didn't know what to do. aside from 4 days of heroin use in march, I had gone for nearly 3 months without opioid drugs in Rossiya, and was depressed and in pain from my kidney, but she did not care. She hated seeing me depressed when i was sober, and then hated me being drunk or high every night. I told her that I guess she will have to leave me because I cannot quit. I have tried for over a decade to no luck, and the main thing is that simply stated i love Opioids and hate depression and pain. For her, this was weakness.
She followed me back home insulting me, and was chatting to some guy on FB. A girl who looks like her will always have constant bullshit to deal with, so naturally she can go pick someone else if she so desires. She claimed it was a friend, but i saw her delete all her history for internet and delete all FB messages she had. Several times when she was angry at me for using, she would got to other people like her ex. The conversations were sexual. She deleted it or took the phone out of my hand and then did it. The last time I saw this I dumped her quicker than your first dope shit while kicking. She begged me to stay with her crying, offering anything to make me stay. I relented and said if she stopped we could make it work. It was after this in July that we started to take pills together and she accepted my use.
That all changed last week and i think it is due to her speaking to her ex again, a militant teetotaler who hates all drugs and alcohol and bad food. for an atheist, he is fairly devout to rules and regulations.
After she said she was leaving and not coming back, I got a call from my Dr. and he informed me that my kidney is blocked again and I needed seriously invasive surgery. I felt sick when he said i would need surgery again.... with my kidney condition re-lapsing and re-blocking (not due to anything I have done like drinking though)... my urologist says the last surgeries were failures and now I can choose to re-do the surgery or do a more invasive surgery. Once again, I feel sick just thinking about it. Catheters, uretal stent implants.... penis, ureter, bladder and kidney pain so excruciating it can barely be described... pissing chunks of blood... a sensation like razor wire being pulled through your urethra... it's what I imagine hell is like. And I have to do it again... thankfully my doctors are treating me properly and adequately... but I'm still profoundly apprehensive. I have a good doctor who speaks english very well and who is intelligent and insightful which is good as most Russian doctors are shitheads, but Dimitry has his head on his shoulders. I have to go due a CT scan and I will have contrast dye injected into my arm to create a 3d image of my kidney. Take it from me... renal colic is a nightmare... this whole condition... terrifying... pray you never need to get surgery for this....
In the wake of my wife leaving me I find out I need shit again... again.... after the call I sat staring outside into the yellow abyss and nodded in and out, a lump of snus (Swedish oral tobacco similar to American "dip"), feeling profoundly depressed.
then my wife came back and yelled at me and insulted me saying I was a pussy. I tell her that the Dr. told me that I have a serious issue and my surgery had been botched in the USA. Now I have to prepare for this again....this horrible, horrifying surgery where I pissed chunks of blood and 20-30 norcos barely cut the pain. And my wife's selfishness in regards to drugs with her morally puritanical back ground drove me into even further despair.
The sun had gradually set and I walked out at dusk, praying in Hebrew, hoping for strength to fight the good fight. I wandered around in the yellow abyss, my soul drifting from my body, my mind drifting from my head, profoundly awash in despair and desolation, the abyssic sandstorm seeping into my opiate drenched soul, my black hole of inner self drifting alone, lost, sickly, an utterly black void sucking in all light and never returning, steeped in misery and pain of mind, soul, body. I cannot blame her for leaving me, but things are as they are and I have to accept them, even as I wander around in this nightmarish world wondering what God's plan is for me....
The test piece actually was very high quality but at a $150 a gramme he can kiss my arse simply put. He hasnt stopped calling since then and after finding out abput the Cambodian Addiction scene this morning and the astronomical profit made from a $20 to $30 US a gramme being sold to Western tourists at up to $150 per I dont blame him for trying.
This morning I skipped my daily trip to Bayon to be able to appraise the indigenous scene. Yesterday I had a very good meeting with the main Harm Reduction outfit here, Khana, as discussed in an earlier entry. I was saddened to discover that Khana no longer works with IDUs. However it funnels foreign aid to two smaller NGOs and so cadged a referral from Khana's Director, of whom I will discuss more about later.
This morning I took a tuk tuk to the smaller NGO, Khosan. In 2004 American junkie Holly Bradford- an amazing woman now in California- was aghast at the American Returnee scene. After serving prison sentences Cambodian Americans- most refugees from the Khmer Rouge Era- who had never bothered to gain citizenship in the States, were dragged onto planes and summarily dropped off of commercial flights at Phnom Penh's airport.
Cambodia tossed them into gaol without charges unless they could find a local sponsor. Most had no idea where family members lived if they even had survived the Khmer Rouge, an auto-genocide where Communists murdered roughly a third of their countrymen in a decade. Those that did find a sponsor quickly ended up in the street when their sponsors discovered to their dismay that not all Americans were wealthy. Being homeless in a nation where you are despised and treated as a foreigner, let alone being an excon in a society that finds such things abhorrent is beyond terrible. Then, being ripped from your only family in the US and usually being an addict to boot (pun intended), well you can see my point I think.
Holly, extremely intelligent and resillient, founded Khosan. From 2004 onward she dealt with the Returnees and then segued into indigenous addiction services including Needle Exchange. She and her organisation- formerly "hers"- deserve one or two entries of their own and I will get to those. Sufficient for now, I arrived after the tuk tuk driver terrified the NGO by calling for directions twice and saying that an "American" was en route for unknown reasons. Arriving I was ushered into a small office and interviewed the Financial Officer and the Administrator, both ex-addicts., claiming that I was a journalist focusing on Harm Reduction and Drug Geopolitics, both things that are actually partially true though npt as sole pursuits. I then asked for a Ride Along to get an idea of the indigenous scene.
At that point a Returnee arrived, about my age, and mistook me for an Aussie because of my accent. Israelis of my generation were instructed in BBC English (now it is American English), when studying that language. Finding out I was last in NYC we immediately clicked. I will write more about him as well.
He and I went out on a moped, our first stop being Khmer-Russuan Friendship Hospital, site of the nation's only methadone programme. He shocked me when he said that a couple of Westerners were enrolled! I then confessed that I have spent much of the last 25 years on Methadone Maintenance. He asked me how I was sufficing being without it and I explained that I still had 5 bottles of 220mgs each that I was saving while substituting OTC Oxy and DHC. He urged me to enroll! I explained that they wouldnt have my 220.
We took a quick tour where I discovered that for $8 US I can enroll and dose at 220 daily for $1 US per day! I explained that I would soon be travelling a bit but that I had a long term multi-entry visa and am almost certain that I would enroll if and when I returned.
The Returnee then introduced me to a couple of Cambodian enrollees who were lying around on the large veranda of the huge outpatient building which sits to the left of the main carpark. After that it was back aboard the NGO's moped as we went into the inner city not far from my room. I was shocked to be taken into a block long building, 6 floor walkup, with a huge courtyard where an entire neighbourhood had sprung up- with a drug scene that was reminiscent of "New Jack City" but I will get into that in my next entry.
This morning I skipped my daily trip to Bayon to be able to appraise the indigenous scene. Yesterday I had a very good meeting with the main Harm Reduction outfit here, Khana, as discussed in an earlier entry. I was saddened to discover that Khana no longer works with IDUs. However it funnels foreign aid to two smaller NGOs and so cadged a referral from Khana's Director, of whom I will discuss more about later.
This morning I took a tuk tuk to the smaller NGO, Khosan. In 2004 American junkie Holly Bradford- an amazing woman now in California- was aghast at the American Returnee scene. After serving prison sentences Cambodian Americans- most refugees from the Khmer Rouge Era- who had never bothered to gain citizenship in the States, were dragged onto planes and summarily dropped off of commercial flights at Phnom Penh's airport.
Cambodia tossed them into gaol without charges unless they could find a local sponsor. Most had no idea where family members lived if they even had survived the Khmer Rouge, an auto-genocide where Communists murdered roughly a third of their countrymen in a decade. Those that did find a sponsor quickly ended up in the street when their sponsors discovered to their dismay that not all Americans were wealthy. Being homeless in a nation where you are despised and treated as a foreigner, let alone being an excon in a society that finds such things abhorrent is beyond terrible. Then, being ripped from your only family in the US and usually being an addict to boot (pun intended), well you can see my point I think.
Holly, extremely intelligent and resillient, founded Khosan. From 2004 onward she dealt with the Returnees and then segued into indigenous addiction services including Needle Exchange. She and her organisation- formerly "hers"- deserve one or two entries of their own and I will get to those. Sufficient for now, I arrived after the tuk tuk driver terrified the NGO by calling for directions twice and saying that an "American" was en route for unknown reasons. Arriving I was ushered into a small office and interviewed the Financial Officer and the Administrator, both ex-addicts., claiming that I was a journalist focusing on Harm Reduction and Drug Geopolitics, both things that are actually partially true though npt as sole pursuits. I then asked for a Ride Along to get an idea of the indigenous scene.
At that point a Returnee arrived, about my age, and mistook me for an Aussie because of my accent. Israelis of my generation were instructed in BBC English (now it is American English), when studying that language. Finding out I was last in NYC we immediately clicked. I will write more about him as well.
He and I went out on a moped, our first stop being Khmer-Russuan Friendship Hospital, site of the nation's only methadone programme. He shocked me when he said that a couple of Westerners were enrolled! I then confessed that I have spent much of the last 25 years on Methadone Maintenance. He asked me how I was sufficing being without it and I explained that I still had 5 bottles of 220mgs each that I was saving while substituting OTC Oxy and DHC. He urged me to enroll! I explained that they wouldnt have my 220.
We took a quick tour where I discovered that for $8 US I can enroll and dose at 220 daily for $1 US per day! I explained that I would soon be travelling a bit but that I had a long term multi-entry visa and am almost certain that I would enroll if and when I returned.
The Returnee then introduced me to a couple of Cambodian enrollees who were lying around on the large veranda of the huge outpatient building which sits to the left of the main carpark. After that it was back aboard the NGO's moped as we went into the inner city not far from my room. I was shocked to be taken into a block long building, 6 floor walkup, with a huge courtyard where an entire neighbourhood had sprung up- with a drug scene that was reminiscent of "New Jack City" but I will get into that in my next entry.
It was only a matter of time before it happens. Any woman worthwhile to try to be with eventually will leave me due to drug or alcohol use. I don't blame them, because no one wants to be with a junkie.
I woke up from my hangover today feeling something bad was going to happen in the pit of my gut. There is a massive sandstorm that hit Jerusalem this morning and it looks like a post-apocalyptic wasteland here. It was a white-yellow sky and dust was everywhere coating cars. It was so humid in addition one found it exceedingly difficult to breathe. Everyone was coughing outside; myself included.
I trudged into my doctor- my urologist and he asked me about why I left the hospital against the advice of the doctor handling my hospitalization. I had gone to the hospital a month ago because my pain meds were not working; unlike in America where they are loathe to hospitalize people due to lack of health insurance, in Israel they have no issues forcing you to stay in the hospital because hea;lth insurance is universal here, and new immigrant Jews get a full package for one year.
After dozens of pethidine - phenergan injectoins and some cocktails with Tramadol and Morphine administered to me, I spent most of my time sleeping in between vaing an ultrasound on my kidney and a Renal scan where they inject radioactive dye into your blood stream to ceck for renal issues. I had suffered from severe pain for many years without knowing th4e causs and only one year ago I was properly diagnosed in the USA with a congenital obstruction in my ureter; simply put it blocks the kidney from being able to drain properly and leaves the kidney swollen due to excess urine. It is not malignant, just painful renal colic. I had pulled out my IV in the hospital and walked out because i hate pethidine and phenergan. it made me feel dizzy and sick and i slept a lot. if it had been morphine i would have stayed.
anyway, i survived on opiate use carried on from long term addiction, and in march I had 3 surgeries to repair the congenital obstruction. It was a horrifying experience. my toleranc4e was so high that I took 300 milgirammes hydrocodone after my first surgery and my second i stayed in the hospital where they injected me with hydromorphone, morphine and toradol, and they gave me opium suppositories and pills of 10mg hydrocodone for breakthrough pain.
after a couple weeks the pain all but dissapeared. I left the USA and moved to Russia to be with my future wife and start a new life in the Rodina; but as you can see from my last entries it didn't go so well there. my girl is the daughter of a powerful federal judge and due to her family hating me because I was not Muslim (her father is a Sunni Chechen, mother is a Russian), and my wife is a Sunni muslim as well. anyway, her mother told my boss to fire me or else. I even had the immigration service try to intimidate me and get me to leave but i just ignored them and signed their voluntary but unofficial per-deportation notice. it was not stamped however, so I knew it was fake. my whole life was turned upside down.
regardless, after several months there, I left to move to Israel with my wife. we ended up having visions of a an amazing future, but it quickly went downhill. My wife, being from a culture that utterly, utterly hates drugs, my purchases of OTC codeine annoyed her greatly. We began to fight more and more; culminating in eventually agreeing to let me use minor or weak opiates if i agreed to never inject and never use hard and strong opiates like heroin or morphine, so as long as I took moderate or weak opiates orally, the wife allowed this to prevent my use of heroin. It has been difficult, and many times I wanted to just go score heroin and get done with it.
The problem was that I was getting high and the days i did not, i drank at night. She hated this, and despite breaking up with me and then wanting me back several times, she could never get used to it, but one day she did and for weeks we enjoyed it and had fun and she even took some Tramadol with me.
Today however, I went into my doctor and he scripted me my percocet and my tramadol and then said he would review my hospital tests to see if they had confirmed My pain had come back and was increasing; but my wife did NOT believe it was genuine pain but a ploy to score pills. After I saw my urologist, he said he would call me after looking at my records and then decide if i needed a CT scan if my renal scan indicated issues. Regardless of my pain, my wife somehow flipped and began to hate my use again.
(continued in part 2)
I woke up from my hangover today feeling something bad was going to happen in the pit of my gut. There is a massive sandstorm that hit Jerusalem this morning and it looks like a post-apocalyptic wasteland here. It was a white-yellow sky and dust was everywhere coating cars. It was so humid in addition one found it exceedingly difficult to breathe. Everyone was coughing outside; myself included.
I trudged into my doctor- my urologist and he asked me about why I left the hospital against the advice of the doctor handling my hospitalization. I had gone to the hospital a month ago because my pain meds were not working; unlike in America where they are loathe to hospitalize people due to lack of health insurance, in Israel they have no issues forcing you to stay in the hospital because hea;lth insurance is universal here, and new immigrant Jews get a full package for one year.
After dozens of pethidine - phenergan injectoins and some cocktails with Tramadol and Morphine administered to me, I spent most of my time sleeping in between vaing an ultrasound on my kidney and a Renal scan where they inject radioactive dye into your blood stream to ceck for renal issues. I had suffered from severe pain for many years without knowing th4e causs and only one year ago I was properly diagnosed in the USA with a congenital obstruction in my ureter; simply put it blocks the kidney from being able to drain properly and leaves the kidney swollen due to excess urine. It is not malignant, just painful renal colic. I had pulled out my IV in the hospital and walked out because i hate pethidine and phenergan. it made me feel dizzy and sick and i slept a lot. if it had been morphine i would have stayed.
anyway, i survived on opiate use carried on from long term addiction, and in march I had 3 surgeries to repair the congenital obstruction. It was a horrifying experience. my toleranc4e was so high that I took 300 milgirammes hydrocodone after my first surgery and my second i stayed in the hospital where they injected me with hydromorphone, morphine and toradol, and they gave me opium suppositories and pills of 10mg hydrocodone for breakthrough pain.
after a couple weeks the pain all but dissapeared. I left the USA and moved to Russia to be with my future wife and start a new life in the Rodina; but as you can see from my last entries it didn't go so well there. my girl is the daughter of a powerful federal judge and due to her family hating me because I was not Muslim (her father is a Sunni Chechen, mother is a Russian), and my wife is a Sunni muslim as well. anyway, her mother told my boss to fire me or else. I even had the immigration service try to intimidate me and get me to leave but i just ignored them and signed their voluntary but unofficial per-deportation notice. it was not stamped however, so I knew it was fake. my whole life was turned upside down.
regardless, after several months there, I left to move to Israel with my wife. we ended up having visions of a an amazing future, but it quickly went downhill. My wife, being from a culture that utterly, utterly hates drugs, my purchases of OTC codeine annoyed her greatly. We began to fight more and more; culminating in eventually agreeing to let me use minor or weak opiates if i agreed to never inject and never use hard and strong opiates like heroin or morphine, so as long as I took moderate or weak opiates orally, the wife allowed this to prevent my use of heroin. It has been difficult, and many times I wanted to just go score heroin and get done with it.
The problem was that I was getting high and the days i did not, i drank at night. She hated this, and despite breaking up with me and then wanting me back several times, she could never get used to it, but one day she did and for weeks we enjoyed it and had fun and she even took some Tramadol with me.
Today however, I went into my doctor and he scripted me my percocet and my tramadol and then said he would review my hospital tests to see if they had confirmed My pain had come back and was increasing; but my wife did NOT believe it was genuine pain but a ploy to score pills. After I saw my urologist, he said he would call me after looking at my records and then decide if i needed a CT scan if my renal scan indicated issues. Regardless of my pain, my wife somehow flipped and began to hate my use again.
(continued in part 2)
While we stood there for an hour, it came out that D was HIV positive, and i felt sick just thinking about it. I mentally checked a note to never shoot up around her again. After we left the area my wife and I spoke to each other in english and agreed that we needed to go ASAP. We got the call as we were walking and we jumped in a Taxi and headed into one of the most nerve wracking situations of my life.
We went to our pick up location and searched for our drugs. It took over an hour, and at any moment we could have been arrested as we were out in the open and looking underneath a storage container, feeling for it. We kept calling the Tajiki back complaining, and he kept telling us over and over to check the same fucking place. I had visions of doing time in the Butyrka prison, drinking toilet wine and hanging myself with my underwear. (continued in part 2)
Finally, we got it. D put it in her friend's "fanny pack" as it is called in USA, and we made the long trek back. No taxi would come, and "unnoffical taxi" (a driver with no taxi license) would not stop for us, because the junkies were so busted looking. We finally hopped on a bus, and on the bus D started to talk LOUDLY about wanting to suck cock and drink cum and bathe in cum and be fucked by tons of men and feel them jack off on her face. an old Babushka sat shaking her head in disbelief. Russian people hate open displays of sexuality, and older people from Soviet era hate it even more.
This became the longest bus ride of my life, and I was ashamed to be around such a person acting this way in public. Had I not just waited so long to score, I'd have slapped her.
Finally, we got off after another hour and it had now been something like 5 hours since we met them. the day was wearing on and on. When we got back to D's apartment, they took out this massive back of smack and I was floored. It was a light yellowish-tannish number 4 heroin, adulterated only slightly. I cut up half the 3 grams and handed it to them and they smiled as I said "HOLY SHIT I HAVE NEVER SEEN SO MUCH SMACK BEFORE".
They implored me to shoot up; but I refused, and we made the long trek back to Kuurskaya to our Hostel. I kept wanting to stop and shoot up, but my wife was angry and said "after all this do you want to chance it now?" and made me wait. Finally back home, I searched for a vein and an hour later was bleeding all over the floor after not finding one. thankfully no one was at the hostel at the time. i guess 12 years of injecting does some harm to veins....
Finally I found one on the crook of my arm, and pushed it in. I pulled out the vein, and suddenly an orgasm of warmth washed over my chest. my eyes closed. I sighed deeply. The whole day, my employer, the fake deportation notices and corruption, the cops chasing me, it all washed away. The heroin was profoundly strong; not as good as in SEA from what i can see, but it had to be at least 50% pure, because ive never had a matchead sized piece fuck me up so hard and put me on the nod.
I overdosed that night; i woke up to my wife crying. She guilted me. The next four days were a mix of ecstasy and hell, being as i had severe histamine reactions to the injections, and my wife hated to see me high. It culminated with the drunk calling the police on me, and me narrowly missing them show up to search my bag, finding my needles but not my drugs. Russian cops aren't smart enough to know what naloxone is but my bag was a tell tale sign of drug use. The cops searched my wife and I got up to her later across the city, having ran away from her after a particularly bad fight broke out between us.
We decided to make haste and leave the hostel. My wife flushed the heroin down the toilet, and I considered beating her. I spent the next night kicking lightly, sweating and unable to sleep. I drank 2 bottles of vodka to ease the kick but to no avail. Suddenly the world seemed that much bleaker to me without drugs. We went back to our home town of Astrakhan where things were cheaper and there was no heroin, but my thoughts were obsessed of the drug; and my depression increased to near suicidal levels.
It was then that I decided to make Aliyah, and immigrate to Israel.
We went to our pick up location and searched for our drugs. It took over an hour, and at any moment we could have been arrested as we were out in the open and looking underneath a storage container, feeling for it. We kept calling the Tajiki back complaining, and he kept telling us over and over to check the same fucking place. I had visions of doing time in the Butyrka prison, drinking toilet wine and hanging myself with my underwear. (continued in part 2)
Finally, we got it. D put it in her friend's "fanny pack" as it is called in USA, and we made the long trek back. No taxi would come, and "unnoffical taxi" (a driver with no taxi license) would not stop for us, because the junkies were so busted looking. We finally hopped on a bus, and on the bus D started to talk LOUDLY about wanting to suck cock and drink cum and bathe in cum and be fucked by tons of men and feel them jack off on her face. an old Babushka sat shaking her head in disbelief. Russian people hate open displays of sexuality, and older people from Soviet era hate it even more.
This became the longest bus ride of my life, and I was ashamed to be around such a person acting this way in public. Had I not just waited so long to score, I'd have slapped her.
Finally, we got off after another hour and it had now been something like 5 hours since we met them. the day was wearing on and on. When we got back to D's apartment, they took out this massive back of smack and I was floored. It was a light yellowish-tannish number 4 heroin, adulterated only slightly. I cut up half the 3 grams and handed it to them and they smiled as I said "HOLY SHIT I HAVE NEVER SEEN SO MUCH SMACK BEFORE".
They implored me to shoot up; but I refused, and we made the long trek back to Kuurskaya to our Hostel. I kept wanting to stop and shoot up, but my wife was angry and said "after all this do you want to chance it now?" and made me wait. Finally back home, I searched for a vein and an hour later was bleeding all over the floor after not finding one. thankfully no one was at the hostel at the time. i guess 12 years of injecting does some harm to veins....
Finally I found one on the crook of my arm, and pushed it in. I pulled out the vein, and suddenly an orgasm of warmth washed over my chest. my eyes closed. I sighed deeply. The whole day, my employer, the fake deportation notices and corruption, the cops chasing me, it all washed away. The heroin was profoundly strong; not as good as in SEA from what i can see, but it had to be at least 50% pure, because ive never had a matchead sized piece fuck me up so hard and put me on the nod.
I overdosed that night; i woke up to my wife crying. She guilted me. The next four days were a mix of ecstasy and hell, being as i had severe histamine reactions to the injections, and my wife hated to see me high. It culminated with the drunk calling the police on me, and me narrowly missing them show up to search my bag, finding my needles but not my drugs. Russian cops aren't smart enough to know what naloxone is but my bag was a tell tale sign of drug use. The cops searched my wife and I got up to her later across the city, having ran away from her after a particularly bad fight broke out between us.
We decided to make haste and leave the hostel. My wife flushed the heroin down the toilet, and I considered beating her. I spent the next night kicking lightly, sweating and unable to sleep. I drank 2 bottles of vodka to ease the kick but to no avail. Suddenly the world seemed that much bleaker to me without drugs. We went back to our home town of Astrakhan where things were cheaper and there was no heroin, but my thoughts were obsessed of the drug; and my depression increased to near suicidal levels.
It was then that I decided to make Aliyah, and immigrate to Israel.
Sitting in my room, Kikar Denia, west Jerusalem. I drank last night, eating Salo, a Russian cured bacon that is readily edible and pickles as my "Zakuski", as we call it, small bite sized traditional foods that Russians eat as chaser when they "Bukhat" which is a specific word for drinking to get drunk. There are many traditional Russian food stores in Israel, Soviet-style delis that chop huge meats and cheeses up, and stock dozens of kinds of alcohol. I am not fond of Israel food, I prefer Russian style food that I was raised with and so does my wife, who is an "off the boat" Russian, whereas I am Russian Jew by blood only. Russians, we like a specific type of foods, Salo is one of them, which is not kosher, and there are other that are typical we like such as Borscht, Pelmeni(a meat dumpling), Blinchiki (Russian pancakes with various filling, similar to crepe. We like them with caviar and sour cream, which is not kosher either), Open-faced sandwiches with sausage and cheese and butter (not kosher either), Draniki (a potato pancake Jews call latkes), Dried fish jerky and of course we like a large amount of vodka. In Israel this is all not easily found for reasonable prices unless one frequents a store run by Russians, for Russians. Here in Israel are many Russians, all my doctors, the only bar worth going to, and all my preferred food stores are run by Russians. In Israel Russians have their own world. We go to the same places, we drink at the same bars, we go to the same doctors. Because of this we have our own stores even. Israel has 1-2 million Russians.
Despite my Russian Jew soul and my love of Russian culture and Russian food, I am American and Israeli by nationality, though culturally I am Russian in most things except one, and that is drugs. Russians hate drugs. However, like a typical Russian, the only drugs I use are the most addictive and dangerous such as hard opiates.
Today I woke up hungover, and took a small bit of codeine to ease the hangover, it has not helped much. I have not used heroin since I was in the Rodina-Mat (motherland) a few months ago. The Heroin in Russia is exceedingly pure compared to what I am used to. I found a source by old fashion drug detective ways. Trying to street score failed over and over despite Moscow being the largest city in Europe. I knew heroin was there... just didn't know where.
In the USA, you have junk neighboorhoods. You can tell them by the large amount of poverty and non-whites. So we followed this line of thought in Moscow - asking Tajiki guys if they could score for us. They smiled and said no. We tried asking homeless people, who smelled of piss. "No, i don't have it i cannot get it either, it is far." Finally one homeless agreed to score for us. We sat and waited for 2 hours for him and he never came back. We didn't front him.
I was getting desperate. My job fell through (long story), and I was sick of drinking. My long boring, depressing days blurred into one another.... and having one month clean did not help. No methadone clinics or Subutex made the situation harder, and with the recent ban on even weak opiates going into effect, Russia seemed dry.
I then resorted to my last tactic and searched for poppy seeds. In Russia making heroin of this is called Cheronaya, and with basic idea of how to remove opiates with vinegar and vitamin c, it can be made into a crude form of injection, or simply drunk in large amounts. Most Russian addicts inject it however. When it is drunk, i call it "Kompot" as a joke, as we have a juice drink in Russia that is very sweet and good called Kompot, and this poppy tea is bitter and tastes horrible. it's floating seeds resemble floating fruit in kompot as well. I prefer to merely drink it as I have bad veins from many years of misuse of drugs.
Well, I went to some Rynoks, or "markets" in Russian, known for food, and looked for poppy seeds. All the ones that were there were grey. Useless heat treated bullshit... I bought one kilo anyway out of desperation. It did nothing, as expected.
I started to sink into a deep depression and drank more and more. My legal battle against my boss and my being marooned and forced to live in a shitty hostel in Moscow made the situation even worse. I slept next to a drunk named sergei who would slur his words even in the morning, and a creepy Uzbek who asked to borrow clothes. These people were the lowest of the low. My wife slept in the other room with the women, and so we couldn't even have sex.
I did some searching and met an NGO online that is the only one of it's kind in Russia that helps junkies get clean needles and I made a story that i needed get clean needles without suspicion, and pretended to only speak English to reinforce the view of me being a drug using westerner who wanted to stay safe. A longshot, as harm reduction people are usually not going to help out people getting drugs... or people not already on drugs, but i was desperate and turning alcoholic. the question people asked me was "why not go home? go to america?" I hate America. I never fit in because my mentality is too Russian. Russians don't fit in most places; we have our own mentality to things. I can go on and on but you will see this come out.
I met the NGO on Leninskiy Prospekt, where I was told that a corrupt pharmacy sold codeine and Tramadol with no questions asked. The NGO members were.... rough looking. A pregnant woman with a bulldyke cut, a hipster with a mullet despite being female, and a forlorn looking man. After some talking, they handed me a bag of needles and naloxone and alcohol wipes. I finally put it to them, nudging just a bit in my "lost westerner routine" : "look can you help me? ive been scoring from some dodgy people - gypsies, and it is dangerous. I dont want to get hurt or go to jail." (a joke as cops can all be bribed.) The shorthaired woman made friends with my wife and so she said "I think i can help you." you have to understand something about Russian people and our mentality. If someone likes you in Russia, they will help you no matter what. I have had people pay for hotel rooms for me, give me money, and feed me all because we got along well. Similarly, if people don't like you, they will use and fuck you over without second thought. I had people chase me, try to fake deport me, intimidate me and other stupid shit as well. Russians do not have a middle ground so much in this. Eastern European people are polarized bunch. Later back at home, We called a number we had gotten, "Dehlila" and she agreed to meet us the next morning.
Well, we show up at Statsiya Vladikina and see our contact. She was a mullet haired hipster in combat boots. We went to her house, walking around graffitti skinheads had put up "Russia for Russians! Russia for whites only! fuck off the blackasses!(caucasians and asian people)" we got to her room and a legless, toothless junkie who she lived with sat in a wheelchair, laughing with a raspy pirate's laugh. "sorry, i lost this leg shooting up an artery by accident. it was a bad injection." Dehlila went and pulled out some papers of heroin, and we all cooked up. I missed my injection, because my wife was angry at me and seething the whole time i was trying to hit a vein as she hates needles. Fun stuff.
I walked to the train station and we got into a full blown argument about drugs and i just got angry and walked away and she chased me yelling and screaming. In Russia, people ignore this sort of thing, except we were arguing in English so no one could understand us, and instead of it making us less conscicous, it made us stand out MORE.
as we argued the heroin gradually hit, and i relaxed, settling into the warmth. I slept well that night until my wife woke me up asking me to kill her if i cannot stop using drugs. I kept waking up shaking from nightmares.
The next morning we went back to Dahlia, and I tried to go alone but my wife would not let me. So we both went together, and at her place, Dehlila's i mean, we conspired to go score. First the money had to be given - 3,400 rubles, which equated to at the time, about 68 dollars USD. This was for a "cheque", or what we would call an 8ball in the states. 3 grams of heroin.
The money, after being given, was put in an account of some Tajiki, and then we went to go wait for a call. Due to police stings being so common, the way it works is that you pay first, then you pick up your drugs later. We went to some park; our new acquaintances started drinking to pass the time. It was ten am.
Russians, as with everything, are extreme people. You will notice that it is rarely to see a moderate Russian person on most things because we are emotional by nature. When this attitude is taken to drugs or alcohol, it can get bad. I personally love to drink quite heavily, but never during a drug search. In The USA, junkies know to be as careful as possible. Cops can be there at any moment and then you will spend the night kicking in a sell with no methadone. But to a Russian junkie, having to stay sober in anticipation for drugs is horrible, so they use whatever else is around. Since nothing was, they started drinking. (continued in part 2)
Despite my Russian Jew soul and my love of Russian culture and Russian food, I am American and Israeli by nationality, though culturally I am Russian in most things except one, and that is drugs. Russians hate drugs. However, like a typical Russian, the only drugs I use are the most addictive and dangerous such as hard opiates.
Today I woke up hungover, and took a small bit of codeine to ease the hangover, it has not helped much. I have not used heroin since I was in the Rodina-Mat (motherland) a few months ago. The Heroin in Russia is exceedingly pure compared to what I am used to. I found a source by old fashion drug detective ways. Trying to street score failed over and over despite Moscow being the largest city in Europe. I knew heroin was there... just didn't know where.
In the USA, you have junk neighboorhoods. You can tell them by the large amount of poverty and non-whites. So we followed this line of thought in Moscow - asking Tajiki guys if they could score for us. They smiled and said no. We tried asking homeless people, who smelled of piss. "No, i don't have it i cannot get it either, it is far." Finally one homeless agreed to score for us. We sat and waited for 2 hours for him and he never came back. We didn't front him.
I was getting desperate. My job fell through (long story), and I was sick of drinking. My long boring, depressing days blurred into one another.... and having one month clean did not help. No methadone clinics or Subutex made the situation harder, and with the recent ban on even weak opiates going into effect, Russia seemed dry.
I then resorted to my last tactic and searched for poppy seeds. In Russia making heroin of this is called Cheronaya, and with basic idea of how to remove opiates with vinegar and vitamin c, it can be made into a crude form of injection, or simply drunk in large amounts. Most Russian addicts inject it however. When it is drunk, i call it "Kompot" as a joke, as we have a juice drink in Russia that is very sweet and good called Kompot, and this poppy tea is bitter and tastes horrible. it's floating seeds resemble floating fruit in kompot as well. I prefer to merely drink it as I have bad veins from many years of misuse of drugs.
Well, I went to some Rynoks, or "markets" in Russian, known for food, and looked for poppy seeds. All the ones that were there were grey. Useless heat treated bullshit... I bought one kilo anyway out of desperation. It did nothing, as expected.
I started to sink into a deep depression and drank more and more. My legal battle against my boss and my being marooned and forced to live in a shitty hostel in Moscow made the situation even worse. I slept next to a drunk named sergei who would slur his words even in the morning, and a creepy Uzbek who asked to borrow clothes. These people were the lowest of the low. My wife slept in the other room with the women, and so we couldn't even have sex.
I did some searching and met an NGO online that is the only one of it's kind in Russia that helps junkies get clean needles and I made a story that i needed get clean needles without suspicion, and pretended to only speak English to reinforce the view of me being a drug using westerner who wanted to stay safe. A longshot, as harm reduction people are usually not going to help out people getting drugs... or people not already on drugs, but i was desperate and turning alcoholic. the question people asked me was "why not go home? go to america?" I hate America. I never fit in because my mentality is too Russian. Russians don't fit in most places; we have our own mentality to things. I can go on and on but you will see this come out.
I met the NGO on Leninskiy Prospekt, where I was told that a corrupt pharmacy sold codeine and Tramadol with no questions asked. The NGO members were.... rough looking. A pregnant woman with a bulldyke cut, a hipster with a mullet despite being female, and a forlorn looking man. After some talking, they handed me a bag of needles and naloxone and alcohol wipes. I finally put it to them, nudging just a bit in my "lost westerner routine" : "look can you help me? ive been scoring from some dodgy people - gypsies, and it is dangerous. I dont want to get hurt or go to jail." (a joke as cops can all be bribed.) The shorthaired woman made friends with my wife and so she said "I think i can help you." you have to understand something about Russian people and our mentality. If someone likes you in Russia, they will help you no matter what. I have had people pay for hotel rooms for me, give me money, and feed me all because we got along well. Similarly, if people don't like you, they will use and fuck you over without second thought. I had people chase me, try to fake deport me, intimidate me and other stupid shit as well. Russians do not have a middle ground so much in this. Eastern European people are polarized bunch. Later back at home, We called a number we had gotten, "Dehlila" and she agreed to meet us the next morning.
Well, we show up at Statsiya Vladikina and see our contact. She was a mullet haired hipster in combat boots. We went to her house, walking around graffitti skinheads had put up "Russia for Russians! Russia for whites only! fuck off the blackasses!(caucasians and asian people)" we got to her room and a legless, toothless junkie who she lived with sat in a wheelchair, laughing with a raspy pirate's laugh. "sorry, i lost this leg shooting up an artery by accident. it was a bad injection." Dehlila went and pulled out some papers of heroin, and we all cooked up. I missed my injection, because my wife was angry at me and seething the whole time i was trying to hit a vein as she hates needles. Fun stuff.
I walked to the train station and we got into a full blown argument about drugs and i just got angry and walked away and she chased me yelling and screaming. In Russia, people ignore this sort of thing, except we were arguing in English so no one could understand us, and instead of it making us less conscicous, it made us stand out MORE.
as we argued the heroin gradually hit, and i relaxed, settling into the warmth. I slept well that night until my wife woke me up asking me to kill her if i cannot stop using drugs. I kept waking up shaking from nightmares.
The next morning we went back to Dahlia, and I tried to go alone but my wife would not let me. So we both went together, and at her place, Dehlila's i mean, we conspired to go score. First the money had to be given - 3,400 rubles, which equated to at the time, about 68 dollars USD. This was for a "cheque", or what we would call an 8ball in the states. 3 grams of heroin.
The money, after being given, was put in an account of some Tajiki, and then we went to go wait for a call. Due to police stings being so common, the way it works is that you pay first, then you pick up your drugs later. We went to some park; our new acquaintances started drinking to pass the time. It was ten am.
Russians, as with everything, are extreme people. You will notice that it is rarely to see a moderate Russian person on most things because we are emotional by nature. When this attitude is taken to drugs or alcohol, it can get bad. I personally love to drink quite heavily, but never during a drug search. In The USA, junkies know to be as careful as possible. Cops can be there at any moment and then you will spend the night kicking in a sell with no methadone. But to a Russian junkie, having to stay sober in anticipation for drugs is horrible, so they use whatever else is around. Since nothing was, they started drinking. (continued in part 2)
So, continuing from before...
I sat streetside at a cafe named "Fish." For nearly 2 hours I waited. Finally the tuk tuk driver returned. I told him I only wanted a sample. He brought me like a third of a gramme and charged me $80.00. I went back to my room and did a Drop Test. Grind a matchhead amount into powder before dropping it into a bottlecap filled with 1cc worth of room temperature water. Pure #4 will immediately dissolve wirh no heat, no agitation and leave nothing behind. Of course this wasnt pure but honestly put it was damn close to it.
When I was examining it the delivery boy slash tuk tuk driver had wanted me to go to a resturant and use it in the loo. There was no way that I was going to do that. Those days are pretty much over. Then there was the price. It was $150.00 US per gramme!!! The test piece was $80 and that was crazy in my mind. I told him I didnt want to try it. He was real pushy and ended up calling the actual dealer.
The dealer was very fluent with his English which is something that almost never happens here. I told him that I wasnt going to pay $80 even if he pulled it off of a "Unit," the usual wholesale quantity sold at the farmgate- which I will eventually get to. His reply? "My materiel IS that pure and I guarantee it. Use and if not good no pay for test piece." Blah, blah and fucken blah. Back to the delivery boy. They wore me down and so sadly I gave in just to get out of the situation. This made me feel even worse because my inclination is to slap the teeth out of the mouth of any person who perceives me, or treats me like a "Mugu." That is another term I will be explaining.
When the delivery boy had gone to get the test piece I had let him programne my local throwaway phone (Nokia) number into his phone. Preah Sisowath Quay is bumper to bumper traffic by midday and remains so until nearly midnite. This could easily lead to a huge delay and so it was the right thing to do. That said, when I told him that I would use that test piece in my room I had lied to him sbout where THAT room was. The next to last thing I wanted was some pushy tuk tuk heroin delivery boy knowing where I laid my head! I told him that I would try it and that he could phone me in a half hour in case I wanted any more- of course a minumum would be a gramme and that would be at $150. I hopped out of his tuk tuk and made my way though a busteling market area engaging basic counter-surveillance techniques just i case the kid tried to follow me to the Guesthouse (thanks IDF!)...
(To be continued)...
I sat streetside at a cafe named "Fish." For nearly 2 hours I waited. Finally the tuk tuk driver returned. I told him I only wanted a sample. He brought me like a third of a gramme and charged me $80.00. I went back to my room and did a Drop Test. Grind a matchhead amount into powder before dropping it into a bottlecap filled with 1cc worth of room temperature water. Pure #4 will immediately dissolve wirh no heat, no agitation and leave nothing behind. Of course this wasnt pure but honestly put it was damn close to it.
When I was examining it the delivery boy slash tuk tuk driver had wanted me to go to a resturant and use it in the loo. There was no way that I was going to do that. Those days are pretty much over. Then there was the price. It was $150.00 US per gramme!!! The test piece was $80 and that was crazy in my mind. I told him I didnt want to try it. He was real pushy and ended up calling the actual dealer.
The dealer was very fluent with his English which is something that almost never happens here. I told him that I wasnt going to pay $80 even if he pulled it off of a "Unit," the usual wholesale quantity sold at the farmgate- which I will eventually get to. His reply? "My materiel IS that pure and I guarantee it. Use and if not good no pay for test piece." Blah, blah and fucken blah. Back to the delivery boy. They wore me down and so sadly I gave in just to get out of the situation. This made me feel even worse because my inclination is to slap the teeth out of the mouth of any person who perceives me, or treats me like a "Mugu." That is another term I will be explaining.
When the delivery boy had gone to get the test piece I had let him programne my local throwaway phone (Nokia) number into his phone. Preah Sisowath Quay is bumper to bumper traffic by midday and remains so until nearly midnite. This could easily lead to a huge delay and so it was the right thing to do. That said, when I told him that I would use that test piece in my room I had lied to him sbout where THAT room was. The next to last thing I wanted was some pushy tuk tuk heroin delivery boy knowing where I laid my head! I told him that I would try it and that he could phone me in a half hour in case I wanted any more- of course a minumum would be a gramme and that would be at $150. I hopped out of his tuk tuk and made my way though a busteling market area engaging basic counter-surveillance techniques just i case the kid tried to follow me to the Guesthouse (thanks IDF!)...
(To be continued)...
Just got back from vacation to Wisconsin down in the U.S. It's nice down there beautiful meditation spots especially by Lake Superior and well tommorow is back to school so that sucks but it's ok I'll just work it out so then anyway I'm back so I'll be active more
-Streetcow
-Streetcow
I finally went out that Harm Reduction NGO, "Khanah," but I will discuss that in a subsequent entry. The visit went well but sadly it was the only part of my day that didnt suck- well that and one other incident which I will discuss shortly. Leaving the NGO I stopped by the pharmacy where I had purchased much of my Oxycodone 10mg. All they had was 5mg at $20 US per box of 14 capsules. I purchased 6 boxes for a total of 420mgs for $120 US. Then the rest of my day happened.
I next went to the French market-" La Votre"- that I discovered yesterday. The owner, a French expat who appears to be a junkie- was nice but he had nothing that I wanted. He vowed to have it tomorrow afternoon. I bought several cans of "Sanpelligrino" [sic] soda and left.
I decided to do an experiment and see about the retail heroin trade amongst tourists. I am blessed not to have to scrape that pavement here. But, what is the point of my posting here? To brag about my being in a time and place that most addicts fantasise about on a daily basis? To rub it in peoples faces? 99% of people that read this or past blog entries of mine about SE Asia and then use my experiences while spending good money to come here, will almost certainly fail to find what they are looking for...Well, that would suck. So I decided to look a bit into the tourist trade.
I walked to the Tonle Sap River. As I walked a tuk tuk driver asked if I needed a tuk tuk. I of course said no. He then asked if I needed something else. I asked whether he had any "China White," that label serving as local slang for heroin. The middle aged Khmer driver instantly said yes. He then prceeded to call a fellow tuk tuk driver on the phone. That man, in his 20s, strolled up to us and I went with him only to discover that he had to spend a bit of time to get the materiel...
I next went to the French market-" La Votre"- that I discovered yesterday. The owner, a French expat who appears to be a junkie- was nice but he had nothing that I wanted. He vowed to have it tomorrow afternoon. I bought several cans of "Sanpelligrino" [sic] soda and left.
I decided to do an experiment and see about the retail heroin trade amongst tourists. I am blessed not to have to scrape that pavement here. But, what is the point of my posting here? To brag about my being in a time and place that most addicts fantasise about on a daily basis? To rub it in peoples faces? 99% of people that read this or past blog entries of mine about SE Asia and then use my experiences while spending good money to come here, will almost certainly fail to find what they are looking for...Well, that would suck. So I decided to look a bit into the tourist trade.
I walked to the Tonle Sap River. As I walked a tuk tuk driver asked if I needed a tuk tuk. I of course said no. He then asked if I needed something else. I asked whether he had any "China White," that label serving as local slang for heroin. The middle aged Khmer driver instantly said yes. He then prceeded to call a fellow tuk tuk driver on the phone. That man, in his 20s, strolled up to us and I went with him only to discover that he had to spend a bit of time to get the materiel...
I am once again streetside in a wicker chair listening to Wu Tang coming out of the bar behind me and watching befuddled horny Westerners cruising as they walk, excited to be where sex is reputed to be so widely available for so cheap. Of course they are about a decade late but then we live in a world that sees baby-killing terrorist Nelson Mandela to be an icon of peace and reconcilliation...Child molesting homsexual and racist bigot Mahatma Ghandi as the epitome of humanity...Saintly Mother Theresa, the witch who beat Stage 5 cancer patients who requested familial visits...You must get my point by now. People usually accept whatever the media feeds them as if they are blind, deaf and dumb.
Up until 2005 there was a tiny village north of here along the banks of the Tonle Sap River. In the shacks there you could get a gorgeous woman all night for $2 US...or an 8 year old girl...or a 5-year old boy...Me? I have actually never had a prostitute and as for kids? Let us just say that if I saw such things I would probablly be dead cause I have zero doubt that I would flip and start killing. I find it THAT reprehensible. Yet Westerners are still flocking here for such things.
On the other hand there are European-funded and/or based NGOs that are baselessly accusing foreign men of paedophelia. Sometimes it is just overzealousness. They see a white man holding hands with a 5-year old Khmer kid and boom, they plaster the local media with lewid accusations. More times than I can count it has turned out to be a child's father or stepfather. Of course there are no mea culpas despite the fact that such men must immediately leave the country in fear that locals will recognise his face and lynch him.
Up until 2005 there was a tiny village north of here along the banks of the Tonle Sap River. In the shacks there you could get a gorgeous woman all night for $2 US...or an 8 year old girl...or a 5-year old boy...Me? I have actually never had a prostitute and as for kids? Let us just say that if I saw such things I would probablly be dead cause I have zero doubt that I would flip and start killing. I find it THAT reprehensible. Yet Westerners are still flocking here for such things.
On the other hand there are European-funded and/or based NGOs that are baselessly accusing foreign men of paedophelia. Sometimes it is just overzealousness. They see a white man holding hands with a 5-year old Khmer kid and boom, they plaster the local media with lewid accusations. More times than I can count it has turned out to be a child's father or stepfather. Of course there are no mea culpas despite the fact that such men must immediately leave the country in fear that locals will recognise his face and lynch him.
Well I have finally figured out how to illustrate my entries in a kind of/sort of fashion. If you care to see photos, though for now it is all drugs- I will upload more travel oriented photos in a bit. Simply go to Flickr and do a search on site for "Raki1818" which will bring you to my photostream. Im pretty sure there is an easier way to do this but you know us old folks, behind the times.
I went to Bayon as usual today. I bought 3 containers of those green grapes, 7UP, 1 can of Mountain Dew at $1 US per twice the cost of 7UP. I then found a bit of home. "Tamek" is a Turkish brand of fruit beverage. 80% actual juice it comes in Blood Orange + Pomegranate, Sour Red Cherry and other flavours Middle Easterners are fond of. They also make Mint Yogurt Soda. I bought the Lemon combination. Picture raw yoghurt, mint, unsweetened lemon juice and club soda combined.
I bought two 15 gramme slabs of imported Swiss Cheese, some South Korean cherry yoghurt, my usual "Crespo" brand olives from Spain and I was set.
On the way back I bought 2 more boxes of DHC but was said to learn that the accomodating pharmacist I mentioned a couple of days ago, the one who sold me 13 boxes of DHC, couldnt scrounge up the Oxycodone I had requested. I bought another 2 grammes of #4 so that I leave the pills alome (and my 5 bottles of methadone, 220mgs each). I am planning to travel a bit and do not want to end up sick out of a reluctance to muel heroin.
I havent decided whether to go back to the Philippines or to head north into Laos. The former is ultra-cheap now. I think that I discussed "Hotel Busses" previously so forgive me if you are reading this again...A Hotel Bus has a private bed, private flat screen TV, WiFi, a curtain around your bed. From here to Bangkok it is merely $22 US for single bed or $24 for double sized. They leave from here at 930PM and allow you to cross into Thailand just after the border opens at 730AM. After passing through Immigration and Customs in Thailand you board a second bus for Bangkok, arriving more or less 4PM.
In Bangkok Kuwait Air offers a $130 US flight into Manila (Makati). From there I vould fly or take a ferry south.
I bought two 15 gramme slabs of imported Swiss Cheese, some South Korean cherry yoghurt, my usual "Crespo" brand olives from Spain and I was set.
On the way back I bought 2 more boxes of DHC but was said to learn that the accomodating pharmacist I mentioned a couple of days ago, the one who sold me 13 boxes of DHC, couldnt scrounge up the Oxycodone I had requested. I bought another 2 grammes of #4 so that I leave the pills alome (and my 5 bottles of methadone, 220mgs each). I am planning to travel a bit and do not want to end up sick out of a reluctance to muel heroin.
I havent decided whether to go back to the Philippines or to head north into Laos. The former is ultra-cheap now. I think that I discussed "Hotel Busses" previously so forgive me if you are reading this again...A Hotel Bus has a private bed, private flat screen TV, WiFi, a curtain around your bed. From here to Bangkok it is merely $22 US for single bed or $24 for double sized. They leave from here at 930PM and allow you to cross into Thailand just after the border opens at 730AM. After passing through Immigration and Customs in Thailand you board a second bus for Bangkok, arriving more or less 4PM.
In Bangkok Kuwait Air offers a $130 US flight into Manila (Makati). From there I vould fly or take a ferry south.
For supper I went to La Dolce Vita, an infamous Italian-themed cafe that used to sit opposite Simon II Guesthouse on Street #93 at the Lake. Today it sits on Street #172 and nothing is the same except for the name. I bought a Chorizo Chimichanga and a Bluecheese and Chicken Salad. I always get takeaway.
I became a soldier in 1983 when I was 16. The following year I was in a firefight in Lebanon and an AK round hit cement and shattered. Shards- some microscopic- ripped my jaws and sinuses apart and came close to reaching my brain. Since then my jaws have remained with microscopic fractures with almost all teeth on my right side taken out over time in addition to the 2.5 taken out when I was wounded. My jaws and teeth continue to be sources of major pain, though it ebbs and flows. Today and yesterday- knock on wood- I have been pain free. This situation keeps me from eating out almost always, hence the takeaway.
After putting my food in my room I came outside where I am now, sitting in a wicker chair streetside on Street #172 watching the nightlife. Across the street and a bit to the left sits a homeless middleaged woman with a giant cart upon which she stores her worldy possessions. She somehow got ahold of 3 tiny newborn kittens that she uses to fleece naive Westerners. Holding up an adorable kitten and an empty can of catfood she first tries to sell it for $10.00 US, 2.5 days wages here. Failing that she then raises the empty can and asks for $2.00 to buy the kitten some food. No cats here eat catfood except those of expats.
A couple of days ago I was waiting for a friend and she offered me a stool to sit upon. She then attempted to fleece me in a way that would have probably landed me in prison. She pulled out one counterfeit US bill after another and asked me to change it for her hahaha. I laughed in her face. She then asked if I wanted a girl to fuck. I laughed again and told her to piss off which she didnt understand of course.
A day or two before that I had berated myself for not being charitable with her. I never give to beggars anywhere, well almost never. In the Phillipines, one day I had gone to Butuan to pick up a couple of boxes of morphine. An elderly Badjao Tribesman was selling brooms made from twigs but being so programmed against beggars I spoke to him harshly and walked off but then stopped a few meters away. I walked back and I bought one for four times its price which was fair to begin with, something that normally happens when foreigners buy things in the Philippines.
I had thought that he wasnt a beggar at all as he was selling something. It taught me to consider each person on their merits. Having thought about giving the beggar lady $5 US, 2.5 days wages here, I was peeved to have been targetted by the woman as a mark.
As I sit here writing this some hippy who looks to be my age and who speaks American accented English, cursed the woman out. Apparently he had changed one of her counterfeit bills.
I became a soldier in 1983 when I was 16. The following year I was in a firefight in Lebanon and an AK round hit cement and shattered. Shards- some microscopic- ripped my jaws and sinuses apart and came close to reaching my brain. Since then my jaws have remained with microscopic fractures with almost all teeth on my right side taken out over time in addition to the 2.5 taken out when I was wounded. My jaws and teeth continue to be sources of major pain, though it ebbs and flows. Today and yesterday- knock on wood- I have been pain free. This situation keeps me from eating out almost always, hence the takeaway.
After putting my food in my room I came outside where I am now, sitting in a wicker chair streetside on Street #172 watching the nightlife. Across the street and a bit to the left sits a homeless middleaged woman with a giant cart upon which she stores her worldy possessions. She somehow got ahold of 3 tiny newborn kittens that she uses to fleece naive Westerners. Holding up an adorable kitten and an empty can of catfood she first tries to sell it for $10.00 US, 2.5 days wages here. Failing that she then raises the empty can and asks for $2.00 to buy the kitten some food. No cats here eat catfood except those of expats.
A couple of days ago I was waiting for a friend and she offered me a stool to sit upon. She then attempted to fleece me in a way that would have probably landed me in prison. She pulled out one counterfeit US bill after another and asked me to change it for her hahaha. I laughed in her face. She then asked if I wanted a girl to fuck. I laughed again and told her to piss off which she didnt understand of course.
A day or two before that I had berated myself for not being charitable with her. I never give to beggars anywhere, well almost never. In the Phillipines, one day I had gone to Butuan to pick up a couple of boxes of morphine. An elderly Badjao Tribesman was selling brooms made from twigs but being so programmed against beggars I spoke to him harshly and walked off but then stopped a few meters away. I walked back and I bought one for four times its price which was fair to begin with, something that normally happens when foreigners buy things in the Philippines.
I had thought that he wasnt a beggar at all as he was selling something. It taught me to consider each person on their merits. Having thought about giving the beggar lady $5 US, 2.5 days wages here, I was peeved to have been targetted by the woman as a mark.
As I sit here writing this some hippy who looks to be my age and who speaks American accented English, cursed the woman out. Apparently he had changed one of her counterfeit bills.
Yesterday I decided to try forgoing all opiates/opioids for at least 24 hours but hopefully for 72 hours so as to lower my tolerance. At just before noon however I went to the loo. I always suffer from constipation when I did my customary 6 days off methadone in the States. I dosed in NYC at 220mg daily but only went to the climic twice a month with 13 takehomes at a time. I dosed on Thursday and for the next 7 days took my dose. I then abstained for the next 6 days and did this for a year.
On the Wednesday before my clinic visit I would always have an extremely hard and big piece of feces that caused me intence pain and burst blood vessels in my anus where as I never defecated at any other time. Since switching to #4, DHC and Oxycodone upon my return to Cambodia I have had normal movements. Then yesterday I had the worst one of my life. Worse yet it precipitated physical withdrawal. I had chills, yawns and was literally drenched in sweat.
I was in serious trouble and ended up actually physically digging it out. The pain wad THAT bad. The thing is, like so many Jews I have genetic abnormalities, in this case I have my bloodvessels in my anus closer to the surgace than other people. As I dug it put a literal geyser of blood started and painted the entire loo, walls and floor included. I got lightheaded from the loss of blood and was screaming in pain. Im lucky the hotel didnt act on it. By 3PM I got it all out, bathed for a long time and then cleaned the loo.
What did I do next? 1,400mgs DHC and 50mgs Promethazine to potentiate the metabolic conversion to morphine. Im pleased that it not only got me straight but even gave be a glimmer of psychoactivity. Stool softeners and laxatives are next on my shopping list.
On the Wednesday before my clinic visit I would always have an extremely hard and big piece of feces that caused me intence pain and burst blood vessels in my anus where as I never defecated at any other time. Since switching to #4, DHC and Oxycodone upon my return to Cambodia I have had normal movements. Then yesterday I had the worst one of my life. Worse yet it precipitated physical withdrawal. I had chills, yawns and was literally drenched in sweat.
I was in serious trouble and ended up actually physically digging it out. The pain wad THAT bad. The thing is, like so many Jews I have genetic abnormalities, in this case I have my bloodvessels in my anus closer to the surgace than other people. As I dug it put a literal geyser of blood started and painted the entire loo, walls and floor included. I got lightheaded from the loss of blood and was screaming in pain. Im lucky the hotel didnt act on it. By 3PM I got it all out, bathed for a long time and then cleaned the loo.
What did I do next? 1,400mgs DHC and 50mgs Promethazine to potentiate the metabolic conversion to morphine. Im pleased that it not only got me straight but even gave be a glimmer of psychoactivity. Stool softeners and laxatives are next on my shopping list.
I rode my bicycle to the Château de Versailles the other day and spent the afternoon exploring the gardens. Since I have been actively participating in writers' workshops, and making friends with professional writers of all types: novelists, journalists, screenwriters, etc. hoping to find inspiration and hoping that some of their talent might rub off on me.
I've been trying to come up with ideas for stories. I've written a large chunk of a short story and here are a few paragraphs. I don't remember writing it..... I imagine because of the large amounts of morphine I've been taking. That and I write late at night and my ability to form memories is shot by then anyway. The project is that it has to be autobiographical, and the characters are supposed to be based on family members and friends so I thought I would create a character based on that.
What is really keeping me up late tonight though is that I am convinced that I wrote a nearly complete draft of a short story, but I cannot find where I saved it.
(The Garden of Floral Magic)
The Man led me out through the arched window which flung itself open as we approached. We flew into the courtyard below the windows. Though it had been night while still in the room, it was now day.
This was a garden of floral magic. This vast courtyard garden was an exquisite mingling of torture with horticulture, blood with flowers, and agony with sublime delight. Sparkling paths which are sanded with pulverized gem stones wind colorfully through the brilliant green lawns and foliage. Between the emerald shrubs, pansies in their broad range of colors, caladium, anemones, salix, clerodendron, peones, and heuchera spot the grass. Mosses covered with tiny white flowerettes, strange cryptograms, and lichens grow in the shade. Colorful small birds chirp all around.
In the midst of this flowery delight, there arise scaffolds carved and painted with violent scenes, the apparatus of crucifixion adorned with demons’ heads, high gallows for simple strangulation, and lower gibbets mechanically equipped for the tearing of flesh. The chains on the scaffolds tinkle gently in the sweetest of summer breezes.
We continued through an archway into a swampy bower. A towering juniper stands out in black silhouette against the sky. Crows and vultures are destroying the ripe body of a man who has been hanged from this tree. The corpse had been decorated with festive garlands. Heavy intestines hang from the collapsed belly. Dark, greasy fluids run down the crusty thighs and drip to the marshy ground.
Here and there, bright-hued flowering vines twisted around decomposing corpses, tortured to death in place for the amusement of the lord and his family.
My mother stood near a high privet hedge cutting nightshade (datura stramoium - Jimson weed) pods with a stubby pair of powerful, rusty scissors. She watched me for a moment and then went back to her work. She was nearly 60. Her face was puffy and weak, and her eyes were red and irritated; her work with the scissors was as joyless as her face. The stramonium stalks seemed too tough and fibrous for her lack of energy.
Her figure looked ursine and heavy in her costume, a filthy robe whose original color is a mystery and that she has not changed for as long as I could remember. Her toes poked through holes in rotting velour slippers. A trowel and scratcher, a knife, and basket of seed pods were arrayed around her feet.
She brushed some strings of gray hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand, and left a smudge on her forehead doing it. Far behind stood the courtyard wall with its high dark windows. She cast another look toward me. I stumbled as I passed the gallows. She snorted hatefully. Her eyes narrowed slightly. She stuck her hard fingers down into some new green sprouts and looked down among close-growing leaves. Several slugs were there. Her pale fingers pulled their fat bodies from the leaves and squeezed them until they burst against her palm.
The Man showed me the location of a ring (shows it falling from the rectum of the ruined corpse of a tortured king as he decomposes on the gallows. He must have swallowed it when he was captured. A mushroom had sprouted up over it overnight (it fell at night) and hidden the ring from everyone. Tehre it lay for 100s of years.
We emerged from the arbour into a central esplanade for the diversion of the the lord and his family. In the mall were gibbets, wheels of torture, racks, stakes, strange devices.
************************************************** ******************
************** Blog ************ Vacillations, continued ***********
************************************************** ******************
I'm about to do a 2 week trek through the Alps solo tomorrow. I will probably try to taper off the morphine while in the mountains over the next 2 weeks. Little by little. That's better than WDs while going through the customs line in Algeria. I understand that heroin is all over the place there, but I won't have any way to get it safely so it is better to quit here. I can always take it back up when I get back.
Ritzko is on a business trip in Italy so I haven't seen her for a week. Ariadne is finally back from her month long vacation today and just sent me a text message asking if I want to go out and do something. She invited me to a boat party (péniche) Wednesday. I need to hurry and buy the train ticket for the Alps...
By coincidence, a friend, Lucia a Columbian expat, is moving to Phnom Penh in October.
I like movies and watch all kinds of them. A lot of what I pick I really like andl most is good enough to finish. But yesterday, I started to watch something that hurt me. It was Terminator 2015. Immediately it begins with recycled lines from Terminator 1 as though the writers think they are being clever by re-using cheesy Iines in a way I'm sure they think is ironic. And the appearance of Schwarsanegar himself reminded me of Grandpa doing karaoke to 'Bad to the Bone' at the local dive bar. He was pathetic. Not that I hate him. He was great in Blazing Saddles and one of the Conan movies. But this was too much. It's like he's too far gone now mentally to realize what the movie is bad and takes it way too seriously. The pain by the first 20 minutes of this movie was unbearable adn I had to turn it off.
I've been trying to come up with ideas for stories. I've written a large chunk of a short story and here are a few paragraphs. I don't remember writing it..... I imagine because of the large amounts of morphine I've been taking. That and I write late at night and my ability to form memories is shot by then anyway. The project is that it has to be autobiographical, and the characters are supposed to be based on family members and friends so I thought I would create a character based on that.
What is really keeping me up late tonight though is that I am convinced that I wrote a nearly complete draft of a short story, but I cannot find where I saved it.
(The Garden of Floral Magic)
The Man led me out through the arched window which flung itself open as we approached. We flew into the courtyard below the windows. Though it had been night while still in the room, it was now day.
This was a garden of floral magic. This vast courtyard garden was an exquisite mingling of torture with horticulture, blood with flowers, and agony with sublime delight. Sparkling paths which are sanded with pulverized gem stones wind colorfully through the brilliant green lawns and foliage. Between the emerald shrubs, pansies in their broad range of colors, caladium, anemones, salix, clerodendron, peones, and heuchera spot the grass. Mosses covered with tiny white flowerettes, strange cryptograms, and lichens grow in the shade. Colorful small birds chirp all around.
In the midst of this flowery delight, there arise scaffolds carved and painted with violent scenes, the apparatus of crucifixion adorned with demons’ heads, high gallows for simple strangulation, and lower gibbets mechanically equipped for the tearing of flesh. The chains on the scaffolds tinkle gently in the sweetest of summer breezes.
We continued through an archway into a swampy bower. A towering juniper stands out in black silhouette against the sky. Crows and vultures are destroying the ripe body of a man who has been hanged from this tree. The corpse had been decorated with festive garlands. Heavy intestines hang from the collapsed belly. Dark, greasy fluids run down the crusty thighs and drip to the marshy ground.
Here and there, bright-hued flowering vines twisted around decomposing corpses, tortured to death in place for the amusement of the lord and his family.
My mother stood near a high privet hedge cutting nightshade (datura stramoium - Jimson weed) pods with a stubby pair of powerful, rusty scissors. She watched me for a moment and then went back to her work. She was nearly 60. Her face was puffy and weak, and her eyes were red and irritated; her work with the scissors was as joyless as her face. The stramonium stalks seemed too tough and fibrous for her lack of energy.
Her figure looked ursine and heavy in her costume, a filthy robe whose original color is a mystery and that she has not changed for as long as I could remember. Her toes poked through holes in rotting velour slippers. A trowel and scratcher, a knife, and basket of seed pods were arrayed around her feet.
She brushed some strings of gray hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand, and left a smudge on her forehead doing it. Far behind stood the courtyard wall with its high dark windows. She cast another look toward me. I stumbled as I passed the gallows. She snorted hatefully. Her eyes narrowed slightly. She stuck her hard fingers down into some new green sprouts and looked down among close-growing leaves. Several slugs were there. Her pale fingers pulled their fat bodies from the leaves and squeezed them until they burst against her palm.
The Man showed me the location of a ring (shows it falling from the rectum of the ruined corpse of a tortured king as he decomposes on the gallows. He must have swallowed it when he was captured. A mushroom had sprouted up over it overnight (it fell at night) and hidden the ring from everyone. Tehre it lay for 100s of years.
We emerged from the arbour into a central esplanade for the diversion of the the lord and his family. In the mall were gibbets, wheels of torture, racks, stakes, strange devices.
************************************************** ******************
************** Blog ************ Vacillations, continued ***********
************************************************** ******************
I'm about to do a 2 week trek through the Alps solo tomorrow. I will probably try to taper off the morphine while in the mountains over the next 2 weeks. Little by little. That's better than WDs while going through the customs line in Algeria. I understand that heroin is all over the place there, but I won't have any way to get it safely so it is better to quit here. I can always take it back up when I get back.
Ritzko is on a business trip in Italy so I haven't seen her for a week. Ariadne is finally back from her month long vacation today and just sent me a text message asking if I want to go out and do something. She invited me to a boat party (péniche) Wednesday. I need to hurry and buy the train ticket for the Alps...
By coincidence, a friend, Lucia a Columbian expat, is moving to Phnom Penh in October.
I like movies and watch all kinds of them. A lot of what I pick I really like andl most is good enough to finish. But yesterday, I started to watch something that hurt me. It was Terminator 2015. Immediately it begins with recycled lines from Terminator 1 as though the writers think they are being clever by re-using cheesy Iines in a way I'm sure they think is ironic. And the appearance of Schwarsanegar himself reminded me of Grandpa doing karaoke to 'Bad to the Bone' at the local dive bar. He was pathetic. Not that I hate him. He was great in Blazing Saddles and one of the Conan movies. But this was too much. It's like he's too far gone now mentally to realize what the movie is bad and takes it way too seriously. The pain by the first 20 minutes of this movie was unbearable adn I had to turn it off.
it feels like disney world here. alpine tourist towns remind me of the sutters mill old west logging ride or maybe the shops all selling ear mouse hats. crowded hostels at every pass with motorized trollrys carrying the vacationing family from village to hostel. loud claustrophobic not my idea of a remote escape.
posting from black and white nooter-touch hack ebook reader. touchscreen so corrections difficult. 30000 electric books on it. at 10000 feet hostels serve cafe with wifi. I do not sleep at these places ack.
in 5 days I have read 3 books 3 shakespear plays and some of his sonnets. and walked 175 kilometers. tapered to nothing with codeine ethylmorphine tablets. back in paris tomorrow.
posting from black and white nooter-touch hack ebook reader. touchscreen so corrections difficult. 30000 electric books on it. at 10000 feet hostels serve cafe with wifi. I do not sleep at these places ack.
in 5 days I have read 3 books 3 shakespear plays and some of his sonnets. and walked 175 kilometers. tapered to nothing with codeine ethylmorphine tablets. back in paris tomorrow.
I mentioned recently about the mass arrests in a slum where Ice Addiction affects the entire neighbourhood. In Phnom Penh's Sen Sok District there is a commune (neighbourhood) named Toek Thla. It is mostly on stilts in a waste resevoir (a gigantic cesspool, literally). Ice has gripped the entire area. Since it costs $60.00 US a gramme they can only support their habits by selling it.
88 ended up in gaol in the police operation on August 21st, including kids and pregnant women. I pity stimulant addicts since there is no equivalent to the OST (Opioid Substitution Therapy), as enjoyed by Opiate/Opioid Addicts such as myself. Moreover, while substances like codeine, DHC (Dihydrocodeinone) and Oxycodone are OTC here, there isnt even Adderal so that if hooked on Methamphetamine you are up the proverbial creek without a paddle.
Word is that the neighbpurhood returned to business as usual after the police left. Figures.
88 ended up in gaol in the police operation on August 21st, including kids and pregnant women. I pity stimulant addicts since there is no equivalent to the OST (Opioid Substitution Therapy), as enjoyed by Opiate/Opioid Addicts such as myself. Moreover, while substances like codeine, DHC (Dihydrocodeinone) and Oxycodone are OTC here, there isnt even Adderal so that if hooked on Methamphetamine you are up the proverbial creek without a paddle.
Word is that the neighbpurhood returned to business as usual after the police left. Figures.
It is like an inquisition.
In ways I've even understood a "need" to try to control drugs. I've gotten that view. But we have so many drugs. Sugar. TV. Alcohol. Nicotine. Church is legal/accepted as normal, but hearing voices makes you crazy and in need of medications and "help".
But the war on drugs is no different than Moslems not allowing Christians/Jews in places. Or Christians trying to control the population to fit their dysfunction. But at least they have Christ, and not a guy who is accepted as a warrior. It is not bad to model oneself to a degree on, or with in mind another... But I've seen some pretty crazy stuff make sense in ways that makes me think that Muhammad really just rode a wave of sorts. I have no idea.
I have no idea.
In ways I've even understood a "need" to try to control drugs. I've gotten that view. But we have so many drugs. Sugar. TV. Alcohol. Nicotine. Church is legal/accepted as normal, but hearing voices makes you crazy and in need of medications and "help".
But the war on drugs is no different than Moslems not allowing Christians/Jews in places. Or Christians trying to control the population to fit their dysfunction. But at least they have Christ, and not a guy who is accepted as a warrior. It is not bad to model oneself to a degree on, or with in mind another... But I've seen some pretty crazy stuff make sense in ways that makes me think that Muhammad really just rode a wave of sorts. I have no idea.
I have no idea.
SE Asians drug of choice is usally methamphetamine. I cannot say I have never done it but the last time was 1986. I was on leave for the IDF. Careerists get 2 months off a year if a Lone Soldier- a programme for Jews in the Diaspora. I came to NYC to visit my parents and as sometimes happened I ended up staying in Monmouth County in New Jersey. At a party an acquaintance offered me a few lines of methamphetamine. I laid out a line and it was the worst tasting shite I ever ingested. After that I was given a bit but most of it liquified. Back in the days when almost all methamphetamine was derived from the precursor P2P it was extremely hygroscopic.
I dislike all stimulants but view methamphetamine as perhaps the worst substance both for subjective use as well as for what it does to users. In the Philippines Ice has affected probably every extended family in the nation. Known by the term "Shabu," users congregate in what Filipinos call a "Tiangge," a crackhouse. The Philippines has the purest Ice on the planet on average. This is because Chinese Triads have megafactories there.
In Cambodia there are two forms, "Yaa Maa," multicoloured pills that are usually 35 to 40% pure and contain flavourings like vanillin and rosewater. These are usually smoked though some use it orally. Most come from the Wa ethnicity in Mynamar (Burma). However there is a portion that is locally manufactured. Locally they cost $5.00 US per tablet and being a nation where most make $2.00 to $4.00 a day it has crippled the economy. Ice is used alot as well but at $60.00 US per gramme most cannot afford it.
I dislike all stimulants but view methamphetamine as perhaps the worst substance both for subjective use as well as for what it does to users. In the Philippines Ice has affected probably every extended family in the nation. Known by the term "Shabu," users congregate in what Filipinos call a "Tiangge," a crackhouse. The Philippines has the purest Ice on the planet on average. This is because Chinese Triads have megafactories there.
In Cambodia there are two forms, "Yaa Maa," multicoloured pills that are usually 35 to 40% pure and contain flavourings like vanillin and rosewater. These are usually smoked though some use it orally. Most come from the Wa ethnicity in Mynamar (Burma). However there is a portion that is locally manufactured. Locally they cost $5.00 US per tablet and being a nation where most make $2.00 to $4.00 a day it has crippled the economy. Ice is used alot as well but at $60.00 US per gramme most cannot afford it.