Does this thread make you want to use?
Is discussing drugs and drug use good therapy, or is it just a bad idea?
Can anyone provide a detailed description of the actual experience of being under the influence of any of the drugs mentioned? Or do you “wake up feeling refreshed”, with no recollection of the night’s events?
If 5 HT has lost interest(or whatever) and fails to return, I can pick up wherever he left off. It sounds like he and I have had a similar experience with drugs. I started off in highschool with weed, LSD, and shrooms, and later coke, ecstacy, meth, GHB, etc. after I was introduced to the rave culture.
I have been clean from drugs(everything except alcohol) for the past nine months.
I was first attracted to the allure of popular drug culture- basically everything I had either seen in movies like Rush, and The Doors or at Grateful Dead and Phish Shows. Isn’t it ironic that even though both those movies ended fairly horribly, with both lead actors being fully consumed by their addictions, I chose to take the same path?
I guess it may have stemmed from boredom. I was rasied in a fairly suburban neighborhood and had always thought that drugs were cool, everything about them. I would love making bongs in my spare time and remember trying to appear as fucked and lost as possible. I would recite those kitshy phrases that I heard like “My body is my temple” but it was essentially a garbage can. Anything I could get my hands on I would take.
My personality didn’t really take a turn for the worse until I started using meth. Up until then I had always been lovable and fun-loving, even when I was snorting six-inch rails of coke at work I would make light of the fact that I had a serious addiction, not necessarily to coke, but to everything. I became unnaturally paraniod and lost sight of the things that I used to love. The simple things like the sunshine, walks on the beach, small talk with my family, and listening to nice, mellow music. I wasn’t happy unless I was jacked to the gills and doodling in a dark corner listing to the constant pulse of jungle- club music.
I love to draw and would love the intense focus and inspiration that meth seemed to provide. It seemed like sufficient justification for grinding my teeth, eating very little, feeling noticably dehydrated most of the time, and staying up for days at a time, even when I could feel my muscles growing increasingly weak.
I love to dance, in fact I feel that drugs may have brought out a bit of ability in me. When I used meth I could lose myself in my own rhythm for hours at a time. Mindless, yes, but it was an escape from the monotony of life, which had come to be using meth on a daily basis.
I’m gonna take a shower. If anyone has any questions I would love to relate my experience.
I have a question about crack cociane - when people are “high” on it they never look like they’re having a good time. They seem really jumpy and excitable as if they’d had too much coffee. Does it actually feel good, and how?
Jesus, I hope not…
Hey 5-HT, you still with us?
yes, i will return. I don’t have musch time during the week and don’t really like posting to this thread from work:). I’ll try to answer a few things now and do some more over the weekend.
1.Addictiveness of coke
Mouthbreather is correct. the main addictive portion is while you are binging. The comedown from coke and even more so crystal meth can be downright horrific. The long-term withdrawal is mostly due to anhedonia(guess who paid attention in rehab). Anhedonia is quite simply an inability to have fun and enjoy life, at all. I understand that it comes from the depletion of dopamine in the brain. anti-depressents help with this, but it mostly just takes time.
while not getting into the actual process(it rather straightforward but could still be considered how-to), the razor is for moving and breaking stuff and the mirror is a flat smooth surface.
I never got paranoid, per se, but i definately experienced many physical symptoms that could easily make someone paranoid. Hearing voices was not uncommon, though it was more of the “did someone just say my name” and "are those people across the street that I’venever met talking about me"kind of voices as opposed to any kind of “I order you to kill your neighbors and worship their dog”. More often is was in the form of hearing “things” rather than speech. The sleep deprivation played a big role in it I think, and when I ran out I ususally got extremely drunk to force myself to sleep. I think that’s why I avoided get the “coke horrors”(to quote Burroughs) too badly.
well, I should get back to work. but I promise I’ll answer more questions tommorow or Sunday.
5-HT the happy neurotransmitter
Ok, I guess I can answer one more. I never did Crack, but I did Free-base meth, which is somewhat similar. The main difference is duration and initial intensity. Smoking meth tends to last hours and hours(especially if some has been snorted that same night) so you don’t experience the quick ups and downs. From what I’ve been told though, they probably didn’t look too happy because the high doesn’t last long and gets increasingly less impressive over time.
also chrome toaster
don’t worry this thread doesn’t make me fiend. Talking to other ex-addicts does sometimes, if it gets into a session of telling “war stories”. But as long as I focus on thinking about the big picture rather than “wow that one night was fun” while ignoring the consequenses, I’m fine.
I did it a handful of times. It is 3 minutes of bliss (I don’t know how to put into words how it feels. – The good part is good, though) followed by an hour of jitters. You probably just never see them in the “happy time”.
What permanent/long term problems, if any, do recovering meth addicts commonly experience? 5-HT, do you feel, or know whether, your usage of meth has changed you in a negative way permanently?
Thanks for sharing your experiences, by the way . .
How much do these drugs cost (ballpark figures)? I hear they are very expensive (tales of draining bank accounts, etc.) Just how much can an “average” drug addict spend on drugs in a month? Or a week?
Just an aside as to while LSD may be some peoples favorite, it isn’t particularly addictive.
The body quickly acclimates itself to the chemical and tripping is hard or impossible to do for the next few days. So while the drug may be great fun, it really doesn’t lend itself to an addictive cycle, e.g. trip, crash, trip gain, unlike drugs where you can get high again right away. And since the drug loses effect for awhile, it’s impossible to get physically addicted. Of course, some folks can get physiologically adducted to anything.
Hope that was helpful and coherent, since I just consumed a fair quantity of one of our society’s most addictive drugs, i.e. a bottle of Asace Timbauch 98. And I didn’t need no d**m razor blade. 
“Physiologically” means essentially the same thing as “physically”, since it pertains to both the physical and psychological nature of the body. Did you mean “psychologically”?
Well, I think the main long-term problem I’ve had from meth is lung damage. The smoke from freebase really tears up your throat and lungs. I get out of breath VERY easily. though if I could quit smoking(cigs) that would most likely improve. Other than that I would say maybe I have a harder time concentrating, but its tough to pin that one on any one thing.
A less serious but still annoying long-term problem is weight gain. when you do alot of meth and coke you tend to get pretty thin. the problem is, its a very unhealthy kind of thin. You don’t exercise or eat good food, you just starve yourself for long periods of time. So when you stop doing crystal, you still don’t exercise or eat right, but now you do eat all the time. the result of course is putting on alot of weight.
I really don’t remember exactly how much things cost. I remember going through several hundred dollars in a night on many occasions. I can’t speak for the “average” drug addict, but I would imagine anywhere from $200 to $1000 a week would not be out of line.
…is psyllioscibin (sp?) addictive? Did you ever take these mushrooms/ Are the hallucinations worth the price?
How is it that people start using heroin? I understand that once you’re addicted you want to keep using. But why do people start up on heroin? Don’t people hear all the stories? Don’t they see the addicts? How can someone look at a junky and say, “When I grow up, I wanna be just like him!”
Is it just denial? “Other people get addicted, but not me”? Nihilism? It just makes no sense to me.
I started because my entire circle of friends seemed to be using causually with no obvious problems. Sure, I’d heard all the stories. But keep this in mind, I’d also heard all the stories about how smoking pot made you lazy and unproductive, how enough LSD would make you crazy, and how madly addictive cocaine is. I had never seen living proof to any of those stories in a large circle of drug-gobbling friends. I had friends with good jobs who were intelligent, responsible and very acive who were doing all sorts of these drugs. So, I knew that you could get too heavily involved, but I also figured that in moderation (like everything else) you could control it. This is why, IMO, that demonization of all DRUGS (as a blanket statement) is so dangerous as far as “drug education” goes. If they were lying to me about pot, why would they tell the truth about H? I’m not saying that everyone will think this way, but to a overly-cynical 20 year old, it really isn’t a reach.
Now I know that the stories of smack abuse are not exaggerated, as two of my friends and another acquaintence are no longer with me.
As for how much drugs cost, this was my experience in the northeast as of 6 or 7 years ago:
1/4oz of marijuana (enough for about 10 joints) $45-$50.
1 hit of LSD (good for one person for 8-12 hours) – $5 to $7
1/8oz of mushrooms (usually good for 2 to 3 people for 6 hours) $30-$35
1 gram cocaine (2 hours of fun for 2 people) ~$100. But if someone was way in over their head they could easily be spending $1000-$1500 a week if they had the money. This is probably half the reason people start dealing. They sell enough that their habit is “free” to them.
1 baggie of herion (good for a beginner for all day, some advanced users were doing 4 to 6 bags a day) $20-$25
While people can get psychologically addicted to anything, hallucinogens, as a general rule, are not addictive. Like acid, tolerance to shrooms builds up almost immediately, making it hard to develop a habit. As far as whether or not they are worth the price, well, I’ve known people that really liked shrooms, but IMHO no, they are not worth the price at all. Their effects are almost identical to LSD.
Well mouthbreather really answered this one already. I’d say the biggest appeal was that, for all the bad things about drugs, they are fun. Especially at first.
I haven’t seen that one. I suppose anything is possible, but I’ve never experienced the bug thing. The first time I did speed, i did do a lot of cleaning, but it didn’t really seem like a bad thing at the time. The only drug that really made me itchy was vicodin, I was scratching like crazy from that.