After seeing the thread “What does being stoned feel like,” (or something similar) I decided to post this one. I want to know what it feels like when you are on methamphetamine. I’ve had two friends that do it, and both were very different when on it. One of them never ate, the other one did. One of them could watch tv and be chill, the other was far too anxious. I guess it’s just like any drug where it affects all parties differently.
theonlytimeitookiticouldn’tstandthesensationofbeingsoeasilydistractedandunfocusesandspeedyandparanoidandjusteverythingwasabluranditwasthemostunpleasantfeelingi’vereverhadandiwasverygladwhentheeffectsworeoff
Sort of like that.
Only moreso.
Well, it’s been a few years since I dabbled in that particular vice, but I’ll do my best. The main effect is energy, lots and lots of energy. You feel like you could pretty much do anything. It kind of feels like you have pure pleasure running through your veins, and your hands, feet and scalp get all tingly. Then you stop(either through good sense or because you run out), at that point you feel pretty much opposite of everything I wrote above. Also, the effects I listed are pretty much in line with early use. When you develop a tolerance, the amount of energy you get is much, much less and you do end up spending more time sitting around and watching TV.
Lets see…overall it is not what you might consider entirely pleasurable, and certainly not a relaxing experience. Your skin can feel electric, lots and lots of nervous energy. Your mind races, thoughts are coming in and going out, mostly half-baked, at an alarming rate. You can feel empowered. Definately nervous and paranoid (this is the mental cost of most mind-altering drugs). You may experience guilt, especially if its the first time. The total experience is memorable and very, very different than ordinary consciousness which is why so many people use it. It is also very unlike drinking and smoking pot, complete opposites in some ways. I got in, did a few harder drugs like that, then got out. The best way to summarize the lasting feeling of those kinds of drugs for me is that they wore down my soul a little. Its like a cut hits the bone and starts to wear away at it a little at a time. I had enough and now stick with mostly pot and the occasional beer. Its a weird balance between being glad I know what those kinds of experiences are like first hand, and a little surprised that I didn’t die a horrible death while experimenting, not necessarly from the drugs directly but my behavior under the influence. Its a safe bet to say that a huge swath of the population should not under any circumstances deal in those kinds of mind altering drugs, its just too “heavy.”
Moderator’s Notes:
Let’s keep this thread to a discussion of the perceived effects of the drug. Talk of methods of ingesting, suggestions for “enhancing” the experience, and/or sources of purchase will get it closed immediately.
Thank you.
I hooked up with a young woman for a bit who was right into meth, and I got right in there with her for a bit.
I loved the apparant freedom from fatigue that it engendered. Work a crappy 9-5er and still dedicated fourteen hours a day to personal projects? No problem! (For a while.)
I liked it for research and writing, although everything needed to be carefully vetted for outlandish wrong turns, afterwards, with a clear head. While it sometimes helped me to produce decent work for hours and hours, other times I’d waste a whole night on something that was obviously completely harebrained in the cold light of day.
The obvious downside is that it makes it really easy to stay awake for long enough to go off the deep end.
It also made me more irritable and mendacious than I am by nature. During that period I often felt horribly persecuted and wronged by my best and truest friends, over things that were either utterly trivial, or over incidents in which hindsight makes it clear that I was completely in the wrong.
More troubling than any of that was the blow it dealt to my sex-life. Trouble getting it up or maintaining it? I don’t miss that at all.
I don’t miss the clammy sweats, either.
Sometimes, when I have a stack of tedious work to get through, I still think “a little bump right now would make this go a lot smoother.”
Maybe so, but it’s not a substance which, in my experience, lends itself well to moderation.
I think Larry Mudd nailed it–that was my exact experience with it.
Well, except with the troubles of getting it up, since I don’t have that particular set of equipment.
At higher doses, you get odd flights of association. You’ll actually think in very loosely connected chains of thought such as:
Los Angeles Raiders of the Lost Arkansas
… All run together as one thought instead of discrete, seperate thoughts:
Los Angeles Raiders->
Raiders of the Lost Ark->
Arkansas
As mentioned preciously: If you’re a guy, you do a little speed, and you are likely to be, er, very amorously inclined for several sweaty hours at a stretch. A little more and you’l be even more so inclined but unable to do squat about it…
The horror… The horror…
Don’t forget to tell the OP about “speed bugs.”
I never got that on meth. I did on coke, but speed never gave me that feeling. for the op, what he’s talking about is the feeling that you have bugs crawling on your skin. basically a tactile hallucination. To be honest, the drug that was worst in this regard for me was any perscription narcotic(I never did any heroin, so I don’t know about extra-perscription ones). I should mention one side effect of meth I did experiance though. Crazy auditory hallucinations. I’d be walking down the street and keep hearing people laughing or talking about me. Everyday sounds would turn into music and yes, sometimes I’d even hear voices. Amphetamine induced psychosis is almost indistinguishable from schitzophrenia, though thankfully in most users it’s temporary. If you really go overboard though, it can damage you permenantly. and that would really suck. I’m so glad I don’t put that shit up my nose anymore.
What do methamphetamines make one feel like?
They generally make one feel like taking more methamphetamines.
They can appear as visual hallucinations, as well. I’ve watched heavy duty speed freaks show each other the nonexistent “bugs” they’ve pried off their skin. They had many little scabs where they’d dug those little buggers out (Ouch! And, eewww!)
As to amphetamine psychosis, a friend of mine came and stayed with me when he lost it. I hadn’t seen him much in about a year. His band had finally had a couple of minor hits and toured Europe.
I guess the drugs were plentiful and nonstop. When he showed up, I recognized what was going on. He appeared to be having a psychotic break. He stayed with me for two months and when I finally found a halfway house that would take him, his symptoms had not abated at all. He was pennilesss and totally dependent on me (the only one around who could even barely communicate with him), and I’m sure he was not taking any drugs while he stayed with me.
Why do I believe that to have been an episode of amphetamine psychosis rather than a naturally occuring psychotic break, considering the conditions are symptomatically indistinguishable? 1.) Up until the day he showed up on my doorstep, by his own account, he’d been doing a lot of crank. 2.) He did finally touch down after a few months at the halfway house, with no psychiatric treatment at all.
My main point in offering that is that an episode of amphetamine psychosis can, apparently, IMHO (IANAP or a P or an MD) last long after the drugs have left the body.
I never experienced anything like that first-hand, but GF was convinced that doing meth for extended periods made “crystals” come out of the pores in her skin, which led to damage from picking. Mostly her forearms and ankles. She remained certain that these exfoliated mineral formations had a tangible reality, even when quite sober. She rationalized no-one else seeing them, and not being able to collect them, by attributing an unstable nature to them – they supposedly sublimated when exposed to air.
And Qad makes a good point. As with cocaine, amphetamine, as used by many, is a rapid “up” drug, whose crash is the hard part. Man, if we can just get some more. Yeah, we haven’t slept in 3 days, but another gram or two will give us all the way until tomorrow before we have to worry about it.
Wow, Larry, your description jives well with what’s been described to me. Speed bugs were generally perceived as tiny, light or white, crystalline shaped buggers.
That is pretty similar, Ringo. (Your second post wasn’t up yet when I hit submit.)
I wonder how much of the commonality of the “speed bug” experience is pharmacological, and how much of it is a sort of nightmare-meme amongst speed freaks?
For me, it’s hard to hear any mention of them without thinking of the first paragraph of amphetamine- and horseflesh-fueled fiend Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly. (Like a lot of his writing, it’s an exposition about his personal experiences with a micrometer-thin science-fiction veneer.)