Perfect description. It’s so entirely accurate I had to check the calendar to make sure it wasn’t 5AM Sunday morning.
Aw bugger, I had a hamster malfunction while composing my post and forgot to include my disclaimer upon rewrite.
So, drugs are illegal and can be dangerous–my preceding post was in no way an endorsment of illegal activity.
Have mercy on me Cajun Man!
I have promised myself to try all this stuff should I ever be given only X months to live.
I’ve never done drugs apart from alcohol, but I just want to say Don’t do it. I’m not going to go into details.
All the drugs I mention in this post are illegal in the US.
Back in my wilder days, I tried the following:
Ecstasy: BIGGEST. RIP-OFF. EVER. I was never one of those “oh, I love everyone” people. I felt very good physically, and was compelled to dance, but this drug is SOOO not worth it. Coming down, you basically feel suicidal compared to how good you felt before.
Cocaine: Soooooo addictive. Makes you feel cool, sexy and active. Also makes you have bloody noses. Ultimately not worth it, but I would maybe theoretically someday do it again, if I didn’t have to pay for it or get out of bed the next day.
Speed: I will never ever do this vile drug again. Feeling of perfect euphoria. Followed by chain-smoking/drinking. Followed by four-hour zit-picking sessions. Followed by intense over-analyzation of my life and everyone else’s. This drug kills. Or gives you abscesses and makes your teeth fall out. Whatever.
Heroin: This drug kills too. But damn you feel good. Mostly I felt like I was drunk and stoned without the clumsiness. Like hearing a perfectly played relaxing note that doesn’t end for hours. Often makes you throw up immediately after taking it. I nodded in a dance club though. That’s embarrassing. The very worst part about doing this drug (aside from the dying) is the people you must associate with.
Crack: Also nasty people to associate with. This drug got me high for 30 seconds (if that), after which I felt completely annoyed. I didn’t even fiend like most people do. I just felt annoyed.
Opium: Didn’t do much but I did hallucinate lovely vines and flowers all over the walls. Won’t do this again, mostly because I don’t want to support the economies it comes from.
LSD: Where to begin? What I came up with on LSD: The Meaning of Life. Why milk is the greatest drink on the planet. Why my parents should let me do whatever I want to do. Why Captain Caveman is the greatest cartoon character on earth. Why did I just hallucinate a giant rainbow lizard in the sky? It turns inconsequential things into Matters of Great Importance. It also makes you extremely paranoid. Strichnine poisoning is a bitch, too. This drug gets less fun each time you take it. I won’t be doing this one again.
GHB: We used to call this The Briny, because you felt like you were drunk and trying to function while on the deck of a rolling ship. GREAT for sex. I saw people do crazy shit on this though, peeing pants, passing out while having sex, convulsions.
Nitrous: I thought this drug was so fun and so cool, until one day I was bitching to my boyfriend about this girl who kept taking a hit off the tank and then near-convulsing and twitching and stuff, and he looked at me funny and said: “You were doing that last night, too.” After that, I didn’t enjoy it quite as much.
Mushrooms: So much fun. Energy 'til you could burst. I felt like I ran 60 mph, leapt ten feet in the air. Great colors and good feelings. IMHO this is not acid-lite, this is better than acid. I would do these again if for example they were made legal and commercially available. Or something.
Mushrooms + GHB: SOOOO much better than ecstasy. Cried with pure joy.
Ahhh, the good/bad old days…
All this shit is illegal as all hell, and with the benefit of years, I can, in most cases, understand why. Even if these drugs were not illegal, I would not recommend the use of the stuff, under most circumstances, especially by people as young as I was when I began experimenting with them.
Marijuana: I can see why stoners like the stuff. If you aren’t used to it, it makes EVERYTHING entertaining as all hell. If you ARE used to it, then it makes everything mildly entertaining, and has the side effect of muffling emotion; you don’t give a damn about much of anything when you’re stoned except for what’s going on right here and now and is there anything to drink in the fridge? How about snack foods? What’s to eat? Basically, a drug for people whose lives suck, or for people who are bored.
LSD: Imagine, if you will, that you’ve had your astral body yanked out and inserted into another body. The body you’re in is VERY MUCH like your own, but juuust unfamiliar enough that you’re a little loosy-goosy, a little out of sync. I wouldn’t try doing anything requiring much fine motor coordination.
LSD also alters your perceptions enough – and your THINKING enough – that it’s very easy to think you’ve just come up with a unified field theory, or figured out what Adam Smith did wrong about economics. Good luck writing it down, or explaining it to the guy sitting next to you, though.
At higher dosages, LSD leads to a sort of suggestibility so powerful that it can cause hallucinations. I still recall one incident where one guy called another “Captain Kirk,” and at that moment, another guy reported that the fellow in question seemed to have sprouted a captain’s hat, straight out of his head!
In short, LSD is not a drug you want to mess with if you have much in the way of committments for the next twenty hours or so.
LSD is also the opposite of marijuana as far as emotions go – using the stuff tends to exaggerate whatever emotional content you were dealing with at the time. Experienced users will warn you NEVER to take the stuff if you’re worried, stressed, or unhappy, and having a bad experience while tripping can cause a trip to go remarkably sour. Remember what I said about suggestibility?
Psylocibin mushrooms: Similar to LSD in most ways, but lacking the screaming intensity. Mellower. Every bit as potent, though; my one classic hallucinogenic experience (having God show up, in person) occurred while I was under the influence of mushrooms. He said “hi,” by the way.
Heroin: My experience with the stuff is quite limited. Near as I can tell, it makes you kind of drowsy, and lowers your IQ to about fourteen, and eradicates any real motivation you had to get up or do anything or go anywhere or close your mouth because you’re drooling into your lap. Causes total emotional sterility. I couldn’t see any reason to do the stuff again, except maybe if my wife left me, my house burned down, my children all died, and my cat exploded, all in the same day, or something. A drug for people whose lives suck so bad that becoming junkies seems like a sane idea.
Methamphetamine: *Ah. Hey, you know, I feel pretty good. Hey, isn’t it a nice day? Hey, I’ve got work to do! Let’s go! Can do! Gung Ho! Ah, all done. Damn, I feel good about getting that done. Time to play! Wanna dance? Wanna boogie? Wanna have wild passionate sex? Hell, no, I’m not tired at all! *
I grew fond of this stuff in college, as it allowed me to pretty much give up sleeping, one out of two nights, which allowed for lots of time to get schoolwork done, earn money, and still have time to party like a rabid satyr on speed. Drawbacks include heavy letdown; coming off of it is not only draining physically, but emotionally. You’ll find yourself depressed for no real reason, which inspires you to take some more speed, because being perky and gung-ho is nicer than feeling like a loser. It’s also physically and psychologically addictive, and I found that out later than I should have; quitting the stuff is quite difficult, and fairly wrenching, if you’ve been using it to fiddle with your circadian rhythms and sleep cycle, like I was. Oh, and staying up on the stuff for TOO long causes actual psychosis, partly due to being strung out, and partly because you’ve gone too long without sleep. Handy stuff in the short term and emergencies, but diddle with it too long, and you’re just begging for trouble.
Nembutal: “Goof balls.” Some guys swore by the stuff. Only thing they ever did to me was make me drowsy, then unconscious for at least six hours. Handy for skipping the “depressed” leg of a speed burnout, though; just eat a couple and wait until you conked out.
Ecstasy: this stuff wasn’t even invented until around the time I gave up drugs. Tried it out of curiosity, twice; I think P.J. O’Rourke put it best when he described the stuff as “St. Joseph’s Baby Acid.” Seems to promote a general feeling of okayness, but this seems pretty thin if you’re used to watching the wall grow purple fur or seeing buildings breathing, or avoiding eye contact with the bathroom mirror because it’s a parallel universe that will suck out your soul if you make eye contact with yourself, if you know what I mean.
Cocaine: Similar to speed, but without quite the “gung-ho’ness” to it; less intense. Snorting cocaine made me feel slightly speedy, perky, confident, sexy… kind of like tequila, actually, but without the dullness, stumbling around, or vomiting parts.
Robin Williams on cocaine: “If you want to know what cocaine is like, take about five or six No-Doz, wash them down with a cup of coffee, get some very fine-grained sandpaper and rub it around inside your nose, and then tear up a whole bunch of money.”
Crack: Invented after I gave up drugs, so I don’t really know. I’ve heard from people in a position to know that it’s a lot like freebasing cocaine, but cheaper, and that worried me; freebasing cocaine is basically a lot like snorting it, except about ten times as intense, promoting ten times as much feeling of well-being, happiness, studliness, confidence, aggressiveness, sexiness, and idiocy. Freebasing cocaine was the only drug that really scared me when I did it, because as soon as it wore off (a half hour or so), I wanted to do it AGAIN! NOW!!!
I never understood why yuppies would buy cocaine because cocaine was like weak speed at ten times the price; coke’s only advantage is that women will have sex with you if you give them some. But freebasing? 'Basing was everything they tell you drugs will BE! Awesomely fun, wildly addictive, and violently destructive if you have too much of the first two. And if crack is anything like that – and I understand it pretty much is – then it’s also everything my old man and the high school guidance counselor told me that drugs are: evil bad things that must be avoided at all costs…
Worse experience I’ve ever had was with LSD. Took 2 tabs of Yellow Felix and tripped for about 18 hours. Peaked for about 5. Ran around thinking I was a robot and had bug vision. That crystalized facetted vision that flys have. I started to freak out about hour 8 and wanted to jump off a bridge because I thought I wouldn’t ever stop tripping. Luckily I had lots of friends with me at the time.
My face became numb and I had this constant feeling that spider webs were landing on my face the whole night. I couldn’t hear myself talk although I could hear other people just fine.
Was addicted to Crank for 2 years. The last year was really bad. People could smell it on me even when I didn’t do any. That paint thinner/turpentine smell. By end of year 2 my hands were constantly shaking and would get horrible withdrawals. Headaches, body sweets, etc… My face developed some pretty bad acne as well. Whenever I was on it, I would stay up for 3 days at a time. God I must of looked just like shit.
Did coke recreationally. Was great for the first 15 minutes, then you would come down. Good coke gave me the shits. Thats how I knew if it was good.
Drugs are bad, Mmkay.
We have a sufficiently large enough sampling of the effects of illicit drugs to answer the OP’s questions. It’s time to close the thread before there’s any chance of it getting out of hand.
Cajun Man
for the SDMB