I “almost” died a while back. From an overdose. How? I was shooting cocaine, and I shot too much. Why? Well, really, because it’s fun and I was careless. It allows me an escape from my reality for a brief, instantaneous moment. It lets my mind do crazy loop-to-loops, seeing things in an entirely different way, at an entirely different angle. It gives me a brief impasse on my feelings of depression and loneliness. And, did I mention, it’s fun? Recklessly fun.
This drug, in this fashion, creates an altogether alternate universe for me (if for just a small sliver of time). Did I know better than to do what I did? Absolutely, no question. Did I recognize the immediate potential danger while I was doing it? Absolutely, no question. Did I do it anyway? ABSOLUTELY, NO QUESTION. Why? Um, I can’t tell you that. Shit, I can’t tell ME that. I don’t know. I guess I just pushed the envelope a little farther yet again (something that IV drug users know about all too well) and I almost made a serious, permanent mistake. Did I want to die? Hell no (not this time). Did I want to have my heart and breathing go into strange arrhythmic patterns, scaring me so bad I almost called 911 out of blind fear? No. Did I want to feel a sense of paranoia and panic that was beyond coherent description? No. Did I want to enjoy 6 or 7 minutes of total bliss each time I shot up, only to have to settle for hours of depression and anxiety after I quit? No. But did all that stop me?
No. No, it didn’t stop me at all. And the real kicker? I had 14 months clean up to that point.
I’m a professional with a great job. I have a nice house and a good car. I pay my bills and am able to afford nice toys. I have joys and experiences that are wonderful and beautiful. I have all the things that go along with the classic middle class professional. I also have an on-again/off-again drug problem. No, scratch that. I have an on-again/off-again REALITY problem. I get bored. Really bored. I get wrapped up in the mundane patters of how I live my life and how I experience emotions. And, through past actions, I know where to turn to for instantaneous jubilation. I KNOW that if I purchase this certain thing and introduce it to my body in a certain way, that I will feel a certain emotion. Or I won’t feel a certain emotion. Or a certain emotion will feel a different way than it usually does (my main reason for distorting and abusing my mind). This is very powerful knowledge. This is a very strong mental argument. This is a real feeling and a real factor in my choices. Whether those choices are bad or not (and yes, I agree that they are “bad” on a normal society level), they’re made with reasoning and forethought, however “cloudy and idiotic” those two things may seem to you to be for me. I choose to do the things that appear to be the best (and easiest) way to achieve my end goals, which, when I’m using drugs, are escape and temporary bliss. I want to feel a certain way right now, damnit, and I seem to be able to rationalize the risks down to a level which allow me to go ahead and make myself feel that certain way, right now. I think about it and I rationalize it. I may come to a foolishly “wrong” conclusion (to you), but it’s right to me.
So, am I a moron? Maybe, but not how “moron” was described earlier in this thread. Life is very hard and very complicated, especially for some of us. Mental pain has been mentioned several times, and I guess that would be what I’m trying to relieve, along with the boredom (although they seem to be fairly intertwined). How we deal with that is a personal choice. And some of those (as you say “piss-poor”) choices are actually well thought out and reasoned, even if you don’t happen to think so or like the outcome.
I don’t condone drug use in any way, shape or form. Let me get that straight. But I also don’t have the audacity to think that I know exactly what another person is thinking or choosing when they make the decision to use drugs. And I certainly don’t think I have the right to blanket them all with words such as “dumb”, “moronic” and “crazy.”
He most definitely was… a quick google search came up with this A lot of pro-drug sites will repeat this claim, which often doesn’t really mean much on the web, but along with the event I was talking about i also read an article in the ithaca journal (ithaca being the town in which he lived for so many years during and after his years as a professor at cornell university) in which they published a tidbit of a journal he had kept. in it he talked about getting high in the shower and writing a sudden flash of insight on the shower wall w/ soap
I wish i could find this article now… but i don’t know up to date this small town paper is on archiving… haven’t had much luck with searches.
drama queen? please, hardly. Geez isn’t this the place to vent about something that really urks you… that’s all I did. Did I NOT state that they were MY opinions, I said nowhere that they were facts. I don’t go around protesting drug use or whatever. When I see someone doing some kind of illegal drug (or even legal) I don’t go and hit them upside their head and tell them not to do it. Why? Because you are you own person and you are going to make the decisions you want to make, regardless of how I feel about them. I just get tired of hearing when something goes wrong because of the decision they made. And yes, when it comes to a situation involving drugs, from what I can think of, that was the worst thing I’ve encountered. It was just crazy. Envy me all you like I really don’t care.
I agree with someone else who said there might not have been too much they could have done (I agreed because I probably wouldn’t know what to do if I just came in), but they were encouraging him in the first place which I think they should not have done. If you’re going to do drugs, don’t try to encourage someone else to do it, endanger your own damn life.
Why is it when you don’t agree with something it’s automatically “horseshit”?? Did I ask anyone to agree with what I said?.. so don’t go around calling everyone else who may agree ignorant, arrogant, self-righteous fucks… and with no explaination why at all… geez
yeah i thought you knew… hehe ok really, alright i gotcha… but still at least give us a reason why instead of just coming out of nowhere saying that.
Which brings me to you js…
I don’t understand but how am I on my high horse?? When I said “I don’t mean aspirin” I meant I didn’t want to hear some wise crack about “but what about taking an occasional aspirin” or some other over the counter drug that I doubt will kill you unless you overdose. <sarcasm>BTW thanks for quoting my entire post up there, I surely did forget everything I wrote and I’m sure others did also.</sarcasm>:rolleyes:
Mad Dog 20/20, thank you so much for sharing your story here. I honestly feel better having had a bit of insight into the mind of someone who uses drugs at a potentially lethal dose. You’re so very, very right though. None of us know what was going on in his head that morning. From what his mom has told us, he brought a nice girl by… introduced her, they hung out there for awhile, they took off… he came back alone but happy. It honestly seemed like he wanted to enhance what was a really good moment in an otherwise bleak turn in his life. I cannot condone this behavior… it doesn’t make him any less cremated and missed and gone forever. But I know he had his reasons, just as you had yours… and it’s just so sad when we think we know our limits but really, we have no idea just how fragile we can be.
We all deal with things differently. I smoke and eat unhealthy foods. This is what I do when things stress me out. These things will probably kill me in 30-40 years (possibly less). I understand this and yet I do it anyway. Who the hell am I to point a finger?
But it doesn’t change the fact that when you’re 21, your parents shouldnt have to make your funeral arrangements and your friends shouldn’t have to cry night after night wondering how they could’ve changed what happened.
I love Brandon and I have to admit, a large part of me respects him for always doing what he wanted to, regardless of the backlash. But now I’m learning an all too expensive lesson on WHY we need to heed consequences every now and again.
Wanting to escape is one thing, taking drugs in order to escape rather than dealing with your problems in other ways (i.e. non-destructive ways) is another entirely.
and if you aren’t sure what exactly your problems are? what if, for seemingly no reason, you became so depressed that life loses it’s appeal? all your aspirations and goals, your ideals… all these things lose their meaning and once a person comes to the conclusion that life is not worth living… well, then what reason does that person have to not do drugs? what life does that person have left to destroy?
when your every waking hour seems torturous the brief reprieve drugs offer can seem like the only answer. often the only thing you want to do is feel different. you say ‘other ways’… what if you’ve tried all the other ways and they don’t help? there are reasons people become addicted to drugs, and it’s not because drugs are so magically addictive that all it takes is ‘one hit’. a person totally satisfied with life is not going to become a drug addict. likely everyone has different reasons for abusing drugs, but i think one overriding factor is that they are trying to dull their psychological pain. drugs are excellent for that purpose.
I don’t think that this study is an unbiased, relaible study. For one thing:
If you’ve paid for it, you can have a study done that “proves” anything. A good example is the chocolate company’s “study” that showed that chocolate is actually * good * for your teeth. You see these kinds of things in the media all the time. In five minutes, or so, another study will be relesed debunking the first. It’s just another example of junk science.
There are some negative aspects to marijuana. I think the best argument against it was in * South Park: * “It makes you feel okay about doing nothing.” True for some: marijuana can capitalize on lazy tendencies that you already have. But it will not take a capable, motivated, and hard-working person and turn them into a couch potato. Pot is not so great for the lungs, and possibly reduces sperm count (which some might see as a positive thing.) It’s illegal, and given our draconian drug laws, getting caught with it can ruin your life.
However, marijuana is not a demon weed ala * Reefer Madness. * It impairs your judgement no more than alcohol (and some would say less) and, unlike alcohol, will not destroy your liver. It is not addictive, except, for a small minority, psycologically. Most pot users can quit, and never look back.
Brilliant. Let’s see, you call people stupid for having different preferences than you, and then you get bent out of shape when someone calls you an “ignorant, arrogant, self-righteous fuck.” Yep, sounds like a high horse to me. Your style of argumetation is stunning. Did you compete in NDT or LD?
Drugs don’t help you escape your problems. That is a myth. I’m drunk right now, yet all my problems remain. Every problem I had I still have. Only, I’m drunk. I’ll admit that I haven’t done that many drugs. I’ve done some. Mostly legal, and I won’t admit to anything else. But the fact remains that the world is still the same world no matter what the mental impairment (sp?).
Drugs are not a moral evil. They’re a thing (well, they’re things, but you know what I mean). There is nothing inherently evil about chemically messing with your head. Everything chemically messes with your head. Literally! From what you think, to what you say, to what you hear, to what you eat, to what you drink, to what you smoke, to what you inject affects your head chemically. The idea that there is some sort of qualitative break between conversation and smoking pot is a fiction. Your brain is electrical-chemical. That’s it. It’s all a matter of preferences. We all take risks. Should I be more sympathetic toward a woman who marries a man who hits her, or a woman who gets hooked on crack? They both made stupid decisions. As humans we should be kind and sympathetic to both. Period.
Yo nothingnoone, that’s all well and good and everything, but my point is you can’t say maybelze has never wanted to escape her life just b/c she’s never turned to drugs. I think we all have at some point or another. Even I have and my life ain’t too shabby. You also say stuff like
which makes it seem like everyone who reaches such lows turns to drugs. They don’t. Look, I’m not making any statements about drug users or anybody. I’ve never used any, I don’t judge people who do, but just b/c maybelze or others have never turned to drugs does not mean they’ve their lives haven’t become a little less than desirable. And js, okay call it a myth. I dunno, I don’t use drugs. But according to a lot of people (people on this board, in particular), including nothing, who I was addressing, people do use drugs in order to escape reality. My response to which was not all people choose to “escape.” Some deal with their problems in other ways. Tis all.
I love drugs. I have done most everything, marijuana, cocaine, LSD, ecstacy, mushrooms, even crystal meth once.
Some drugs are better than others. Marijuana is a good drug. Mushrooms is much better than LSD because when you get tired of the experience, you can sleep with mushrooms, unlike the strung out feeling of LSD. Cocaine feels wonderful, but one can get an ugly addiction from it (I DID). Cocaine addicts will spend all their money and steal yours for that high. Ugly. I have never done herion but I have known people that has, and they will report that smack is heavenly, but that withdrawl is painful and maddening.
Ecstacy is a wonderful chemical, you feel warm and you are in love with the world. LISTEN STUPID RAVERS, you only take ONE pill, they are not M and Ms. You also do not dance your ass off on it because it affects body temperature. Smoke a joint, drop a pill, and kick back. The reason that there are ODs of XTC is that the stupid kids eat 12 of them and do the disco hustle.
I haven’t gotten high in over two years because I am an American living in China and I just can’t risk getting caught. I have been offered hashish in Shanghai (hashish yummy!) but I am married to a local here and I just cannot risk going to prison here and worse, being deported.
I may possibly go to Laos next summer because there is a lot of killer bud there, for like $2 USD a POUND (not a mistype).
