What do drugs "feel" like...

In My Humble Opinion
21

Lessee… how did the drugs make me feel… I’ll divide it into 3 categories, mood-altering, MDMA, and psychedelic. Most of these are one-time experiences since I have never had a lot of drug connections. I’m a good boy and I neither know those naughty people nor seek them out. But when opportunity knocks, well, I have a scientific nature.

Mood-altering:
cannabis: When I was younger it made me feel floaty, giggly, hungry, and lose all ability to remember things from one moment to the next. It is a godsend for repetitive inane music which probably explains a lot of modern culture. At some point in my mid-30’s it stopped working and it now only sends me into an immediate but troubled sleep.

meth: I felt like the smartest, coolest person evar… I felt a slight increased effect of bonding with people, I was able to stay up all night, I had a big teeth-grindy thing. Next day was delayed payback for lack of sleep, very emotionally fragile. That rollercoaster was too scary, I never went back to it.

cocaine: Like meth, except I also got this manic streak, like I could do anything if I liked. Also the rollercoaster went up so fast I was afraid I’d fly right off the top. The evening I first took it I was all fastidious and cautious, the next morning I found myself licking the bag for leftovers and idly wondering how long I could afford coke if I mortgaged my house. Fortunately it was saturday and the banks were closed, so I never did coke again.

percocet: When I tried percocet for the first time, I had a feeling of simple, uncomplicated happiness, and a sense that everything was going to turn out OK. I have always tended toward depression, so I was thinking “wow, so this is what undepressed people must feel like”. If I had a regular supply of this or any other opiate, I know would be hooked on it, and no thanks, please don’t tell me where to find it.

ecstasy, AKA MDMA: This one’s rather hard to explain and I put it in a class by itself. Whereas some drugs enhance the effects of color, sound, or taste, MDMA gets you off on human interaction or even the suggestion of human interaction. Touching people and being close to people creates an explosion of pleasure in your brain, it may be marginally sexual or entirely nonsexual. Even the presence of affectionate pets is highly gratifying. You remain fully oriented and aware while doing it. Doing it alone is like glorified speed, completely pointless. Doing it at a dance festival with 10,000 people is… well… ecstasy.

Psychedelics:
mescaline: When I closed my eyes I had 2-dimensional fractal patterns, and occasional dreamlike sequences. When my eyes were open, any light or edge would “drag” like a computer without enough memory. I was conscious and fully oriented the whole time. I felt cold and I got giggly from time to time. It lasted 7 hours. After 3 hours I’d had quite enough, it was like having a TV in my head that I couldn’t turn off. Overall not bad, just a bit too long for my taste

mushrooms: My experience with mushrooms was very low-dose and much like ecstasy. Except instead of feeling the presence of just people, I could sense presence of trees, animals, even the stars themselves as if they were some kind of universal consciousness. I actually hugged a tree. At this low dose I remained fully aware and oriented, without any visual effects. I understand mushrooms can get a lot more intense and interesting at higher doses. But as far as I’m concerned, a single mushroom is the best 6-pack of beer ever invented.

ibogaine: I could write a thousand pages about this experience and never really capture it. Long story short, it rung my bell in a major way and changed my life forever. Superficial story… I had great sensation of euphoria and happiness, a perception of the interconnection of all things. I saw a lot of 3D graphics… well maybe 4D, 5D and higher… I had elaborate dream sequences and visions, a great number of personal insights. I was barely oriented and frequently entirely dissociated, I was unable to use my legs, breathing was agony, I threw up repeatedly, I could not even form coherent sentences in English. But I’d do it again in a heartbeat. It had an amazing antidepressant aftereffect that lasted a good solid 5 months after. It’s a really fascinating substance.

22

Marijuana makes me energetic. I’ll go for a 10 mile hike if I take it. Or I’ll clean my apartment, or put new brakes on my car. There is no way you can get me to sit still while high on THC. Most people who smoke weed just want to sit around, and act like morons. Which is why I don’t smoke it. Often in order to get it most pot heads will expect you to share a joint, sit around with them and act like a moron too. Bleh. Not worth it.

23

This is SO TRUE; it’s what I was trying to say. After you’re all the way over it, you’re like, whoa, what a bad idea, but when you want it… it’s all consuming.

Also, what you said about ecstasy. The full body orgasm thing isn’t actually terribly sexual (I realize that makes no sense, but it’s true) and the desire to be with other living things is very strong. My pets probably love when I take it, because I cuddle the heck out of them. Also, a lot of guys are unable to get an erection while on it (but certainly not all). I’ve never known anyone who could orgasm on it though; you can ride that just-before crest for as long as you want, but it never gets all the way there.

24

I never pass up an opportunity to link to [thread=38764]this thread[/thread], if you want a first-hand account of what mushrooms do.

25

I’ve had it less than ten times in my life, but fuck yeah. This description is absolutely spot on.

(Except, I got the effect on the first hit - I was lucky/unlucky, I got 100% pure Columbian marching powder, first time I ever tried it. And the same night ended up in a nightclub toilet with my buddy licking the toilet seat for that last little hit. Grim.)

26

Collection of more information and experiences than you would EVER want to know. I’m sure you’re a smart enough chap to figure out how to navigate the site.

27

Actually the “first hit” effect is notorious for cocaine. You get it once and never again. The second time you take coke you’ll be chasing that first-time feeling, and you’ll get close, but not quite. The third time you’ll be chasing that second-time feeling but again coming up a bit short. Repeat until bankruptcy or criminal charges, whichever comes first.

Cocaine is probably the most distinctively addictive thing I ever had. Although I had it only once, 10 years ago, even today I will start salivating just from seeing someone snorting a line in a movie or TV show. It cries out so obviously “get addicted to me” that I stay far, far, far away from the stuff. Oh, who am I kidding, it’s just never happened to cross my path again.

28

Want to know what doing cocaine is like? Read posts #13 & 14 of this thread

29

I must be missing a receptor on my neurons or something.

The 1st Time:

Someone: Oh, are you in for a treat! Here you go. Your first lines! Take this straw, yeah, no lean over and snurfff it…

Me: ::snurfffs up cocaine from mirror::

Someone: ::huge big eyes, huge big grin, waiting for me to light up or something::

Me: My nose just went numb, like my mouth when the dentist does me up with novacaine.

Someone: Yeah, that happens.

Me: Uh, is anything else supposed to happen?

Someone: Do you feel it?? Do you feel it yet??

Me: I don’t feel anything, my nose is numb. How long does this last? I want my nose back.
And Also…

Someone Else: OK, now this stuff is a whole lot stronger than rock. This is gonna blow your mind. You ready to rock your world?

Me: So this here ‘crack’ stuff is a lot stronger than cocaine, fine. Because cocaine doesn’t do anything for me. Maybe I can see what the shouting is all about…

Me: ::smokes from glass pipe:: ::smell akin to burning hair permeates the room::

Someone Else: Is that not the most fan-fucking-tastic feeling you’ve ever had?

Me: Umm… ::inhales, stretches:: I feel more awake. It’s kinda like coffee.

Someone Else: ‘Like coffee’? You don’t feel 10 feet tall and like you could kick a rhino’s ass?

Me: I feel about 6 feet tall and feeling neither interest in nor aptitude for kicking a rhino’s ass or any other part of the rhino.

20 minutes later…

Yet Another person: Hey, AHunter3!

Me: WHAT?? :mad:

(still not feeling 10 feet tall or like kicking rhino butt, but antsy and jumpy and very very short-tempered)

30

I’ve done a fair share of experimenting with drugs and I’d say opiates are my favorite class of drugs. I feel very mellow, relaxed, and without a care in the world. But unlike marijuana, I still feel motivated. It also can take over an hour for me to come, if I do at all. But as much as I love opiates, I’m glad I don’t have easy access to them.

With marijuana I’ve found that it just makes everything so much better. Food tastes better, sex feels better, music sounds great. But it also seems to enhance whatever I’m feeling at the moment which isn’t always a good thing. For example, if I’m worried, depressed or paranoid beforehand, smoking weed will make those feelings more intense.

31

I’ve tried marijuana only once, when I was in the Netherlands. I didn’t really get the relaxed feeling people are describing. To me the main effect was that everything (as in every fucking thing) was funny. And not just giggling funny, but screamingly hysterical. I was sitting on a couch with a friend who was also smoking, and we’d say things to each other that wouldn’t have been the least bit funny under normal circumstances, but now they were hilarious. And if we stopped laughing for a moment, you could kickstart yourself simply by willing it. Just start laughing at nothing, and in two seconds flat you’d be guffawing at nothing, feeling just as good as when you’re laughing at something.

Then, halfway through my first joint, I came down really quickly. I finished that joint and smoked a whole second joint, and felt nothing. So I guess marijuana isn’t the drug for me.

When I was in the hospital, I got morphine. The first few times I took it, it did nothing except take the pain away, which it did excellently. Some say you still feel the pain but don’t care about it. I didn’t feel it at all. No pain. Then there were a few times when the morphine took the pain away and made me… strange. It’s hard to describe, but there was nothing positive about it. I couldn’t do things I can normally do. I got dizzy. I wasn’t able to get out of bed or up from a chair.

And then it got good. When I took morphine, I got high, which felt like all of my problems had just disappeared. I didn’t care that I was stuck in a hospital and had no idea when I was getting out of there. I didn’t care that I had got an ileostomy and would have to live with the thing. I didn’t care that I couldn’t eat and had to live with tubes in my arms. I was calm, at ease, at peace, like I didn’t have a care in the world. That was great.

Usually I got a shot of morphine when I needed it, but there was a period when I got one every three hours. Morphine has side-effects that are very bad for someone with my condition. I’d get a shot, be high for two hours, come down and start thinking “Should I really be doing this much morphine?” but then I’d get another shot and think “Oh yes I should!”.

I can totally see how you get addicted to that.

32

I haven’t tried any but there’s a very good depiction of the effects (during and after) portrayed by Benicio del Toro in the new flick, Things We Lost in the Fire. You can also see it in The Man With the Golden Arm, with Frank Sinatra.

33

That’s what’s so insidious about opiates, I think. There’s none of the intense, orgasmic euphoria you’d expect from a hard drug (at least not in my experience) – you simply feel good. For hours on end. Relaxed, comfortable, and cheerful. No worries, no boredom, and no motivation to do anything except sit and stare at the wall with your eyes half closed. You become a sort of reptile for awhile, basking in the warmth of your own inner glow.

I’m glad I don’t have access to them. I’d be too tempted to take a pill and watch all my problems just fade away. I am glad these drugs are available for pain control, though. Dying from cancer or some other terminal illness doesn’t seem so bad as long as I know I’ll be pumped full of morphine or demerol.

34

Similarly, the book (and to a lesser extent the movie) Trainspotting has a very convincing description of what it’s like.

I had to have morphine at hospital once for a twisted intestine, the most pain I’ve ever experienced, and it was unutterably beguiling. They kept on injecting me and asking if the pain had reduced, and after the third shot, I allegedly said: “No, but I’m soooooo happy!!!” and conked out.

35

I’ve used very few illegal drugs; smoke pot maybe a dozen times or so when I was considerably younger. Giggly, mostly. But I don’t like the way it seems to make every-freakin’-thing last forever. On maybe my second trip on pot, the song “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” was ruined for me, because it lasted for at least nine hours, maybe more! Haven’t been able to stand it since. Still, if it was legal, I’d probably use it to chill out once in a while.

Cocaine: only tried it once, unimpressed. It did seem to enhance the effect from the couple of drinks I had that night (it was actually my 21st birthday).

Acid: only did it once, and without my knowledge or consent. It’s very disturbing and disorienting to start hallucinating when you don’t even know you took drugs! Never had any desire to do that again!

Morphine: I got my first kidney stone at age 15; I went to the hospital, they gave me demerol. That’s when I found out that demerol makes me puke like a mad bastard. After that, I started telling the ER docs I was allergic to it. So, the next time they gave me morphine. Took about 10 minutes for it to hit, and the very first thought I had was “I can see how people can get hooked on this”. Oh, it was nice. First off, I was insanely grateful to have something take the pain away. Then there was the euphoria. Like nothing could ever, ever be wrong with the world. What pain remained seemed quite inconsequential.

Dilaudid: Like the morphine, I’ve had it for pain control with kidney stones. The first time was probably six or seven years ago. The ER doc ordered it. I was amazed at how fast it hit. I don’t think the nurse had the needle out of the IV joint yet, and wham it hit me like a speeding train. A speeding train wrapped in gauze. All of a sudden, things got really fuzzy and. . .nice. Just nice. I still prefer morphine for pain control, though, because Dilaudid wears off very quickly. Oddly enough, though IV Dilaudid hits me quick and is effective, oral Dilaudid does very little for me, pain-wise or otherwise.

Fentanyl: Every doctor who’s tried to give it to me tells me “This is 10 times stronger than morphine!” and yet it does nothing at all for me. No high, which is fine if all I want is pain relief, but no pain relief, either. Now, when I have surgery (I’ve only ever been prescribed it post-op), I tell them right up front: don’t bother with the Fentanyl, it does nothing for me.

Versed: Commonly used as an anti-anxiety pre-op. I’ve heard that for people it works for, it’s very pleasant; I seem immune to it. I usually tell the anesthesiologist to just skip it.

Percocet: I’m glad I don’t have access to a steady stream of this stuff. Yes, it’s a very effective pain reliever. In fact, I’m on it right now (kidney stone; due to be removed Tuesday). Things just get. . .soft. It’s a lot like morphine, in fact. It’s a pleasant high. I’m certain that if it wasn’t prescription (and pretty tightly controlled, at that), I’d take way too much of it.

I haven’t done any illegal drugs in years, and likewise, haven’t used legal drugs illicitly in years. I’m not all upstanding and everything. I’m just afraid of what would happen if I let myself go down that path.

36

Yeah, that’s been my experience. When I get high I go between curled up in a corner like a cat or giggling uncontrollably. The thing is that I can never achieve a “mild” high - I go from sober to high as a kite, so I usually don’t smoke unless I’m with close friends and I know I have nothing to do the next day.

37

I’m the opposite, LSD is like being the higest (on pot) you’ve ever been, times 100. With all kinds of crazy visuals. The visuals for me arn’t strange though. It’s not that I’m sitting in the corner have a converstaion with the fridge, it’s lots of patterns showing up, moving around, disappearing. Things filling in with color etc… Pretty cool. Shrooms on the other hand, are similar to acid, but it’s more of a body buzz type thing.
But those last couple of hours, after the buzz goes down and you can’t sleep, and you just think and think and think and think for hours and hours and hours, I always wished that part would go a bit faster.

38

Looks like the drug biz was pretty good about 10 years ago! :smiley:

39

Marijuana did this to me. Unrelated things would connect in ways that made people look at me like :dubious: when I tried to explain it. It was under the influence of weed that I formed the idea that corporations and government were the next step of life form – from single-cell organisms to multi-cell organisms to multi-organism organisms. I tried to explain it to my friends, but was too stoned to explain anything, and the feeling left me. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what the hell I was just thinking about that seemed to explain everything.

I would get dry mouth, and really really want something to drink, but even though the fridge was 10 feet away, I couldn’t get up and get something. I was stuck.

Did shrooms once. It was fantastic. No hallucinations or anything (except the walls having a pulse), but I was extremely happy for about eight hours. The euphoria was like nothing else I’ve ever experienced. I was sitting outside at Fresno State just talking about how freakin’ awesome the trees looked in the sunset for about an hour. I think I giggled for about five hours straight. When I went to bed, my alarm clock looked evil, and I had to sleep facing away from it.

40

I’ve done my share of drugs, but pretty much all of them have been covered adequatly already.

I do have one that hasn’t been mentioned: salvia divinorum. It’s a very powerful psychotropic, at least equal in intensity to LSD or mushrooms, though much shorter-acting (if smoked, as I beleive it usually is). Surprisingly, it’s also legal in most countries, including most of the U.S. I ordered some online while in college. It was interesting, and not specifically unpleasant, but there’s really no way at all you could describe it as “fun.” Unlike most of the LSD, mushrooms, pot, etc., salvia greatly impairs one’s motor control and coordination – you ought to smoke it while sitting on the floor, because there’s a 50/50 chance you will fall over involuntarily before you sober up. It also led to the sensation of being uncomfortably warm, so use it in a cool room.

More interestingly, it led to . . . let’s call them “thought hallucinations.” That is, I would inexplicably think that absurd things were true – in particular, I’d hallucinate rules. For instance, I might suddenly and sincerely believe that I was not allowed to move past the right edge of my desk. Questions regarding the nature and origin of these rules would not occur to me. Or at least not right away.

Also, I once used salvia in the middle of an acid trip while we were watching Star Wars. There is no way I could begin to describe that experience, except to say that, for 20 minutes, I was Star Wars. (That’s 20 objective minutes, mind you. Subjectively, it was a matter of hours or weeks or seconds.)

I’ve still got some, I guess, sitting in a drawer seven or eight years after I first acquired it. This drug has no addiction potential whatsoever.