DOSE:		smoked	Cannabis	(daily)
		oral	MDMA
		insufflated	Cocaine
		oral	LSD

BODY WEIGHT:

51 kg

When I was young I heard so much negative talk about drugs. Parents, family, the media...all saying how drugs fuck up your life, how when you start you don't realise you're getting addicted to them and then you end up in fucked up situations in the blink of an eye. Thinking about it now, in retrospection, those stories sounded like they were very far from me, a distant reality that I would most likely never encounter throughout my life.

I can therefore hardly describe the horror of realising, at 21, the partial reality behind those extreme assumptions and warnings. The same horror of realising that for the past three years, which passed at an insane speed, I had undergone a striking and sad transformation and became a person with hardly any control over herself, with no or little moments of lucidity and awareness, no ambitions and goals, just the ghost of a little girl who permanently lives in a 'bubble' world made of 'easy' illusions.

My story with drugs starts when I was merely 18 years old, and moved from a relatively small town in Italy to a big and crazy city like London, more specifically into student accommodation. At the time I had only tried weed in a couple of occasions, and had no intention of trying anything else. I moved to London with what was my girlfriend at the time, and in halls we were staying in the same flat. Four months after living together, we started having more and more problems and eventually broke up. I had a major breakdown and was left alone, in a huge city, far from family and with no close relationship nearby.

That's when I started making friends with an older guy from my halls, who I soon started considering like a brother. With him we met more people from halls, all from different countries and all of different ages and backgrounds. The bonds started strengthening and I found myself surrounded by friends that were closer than I would have ever hoped for, the kind of friends you can be yourself with 100% all of the time, who expect nothing from you and are open-minded, accepting and understanding. A few months later, for the first time in my life, one of these guys (who still is one of my best friends), proposed that we took MDMA all together. I never got offered drugs before that moment, and I strongly rejected the idea. Nevertheless, I felt a strong connection with my newly found friends, and trusted them blindly. They decided to do it regardless of whether I would do it or not, and in the end I decided to try with them too. It was an amazing weekend, for 3 days straight we stayed in our accommodation, dancing, talking about our lives, cuddling, sharing what surprisingly felt like 'love' to me. The weekend after that we decided to do it again, and the weekend after that again, and so on and so forth. At the time though, we all believed blindly that we were doing it with a low frequency, and that it was just a 'once in a while thing'.

Looking at the facts though, we were soon taking it every weekend. We had already been smoking weed every other day, and after the MDMA experience this became even more frequent and there was not one day in which we were not smoking up. Plus the weekends on MDMA. Soon after came the first experience with coke as well. Most of my friends were failing their course, I wasn't failing mine but I was not attending lessons either. Yet we didn't care, we were living for the here and now. We had amazing moments, of an infinitely 'young and careless' beautiful nature... We were living together 24 hours a day, people brought their mattresses to my flat, and my girlfriend would come home from University finding all my friends over all the time, and us permanently laughing, dancing, enjoying ourselves, and, obviously, high. I didn't know at the time, but what was actually taking place has some sort of a name to it within the drug community, it is referred to as 'nesting'. When Uni finished, all of us asked our parents to stay in London for most of the summer, and having nothing to do all day, the situation seemed to get 'better' to the day. The environment became more and more free, we felt free doing anything in front of each other, couples started forming and no-one had problems going round half naked, hugging or kissing each other, having sex with respective partners in front of everyone else, whether heterosexual or homosexual, didn't matter. There were no 'rules', no 'limitations' and no 'taboos'. Absolute freedom, acceptance and love from everyone. Now this may already sound fucked up to some, but believe it or not at the time it felt so amazing and 'natural' that none of us felt like we were doing something wrong. Contrarily, it was like our bond was growing to the day, and we saw each other as a family, a community, some sort of 'brother-hood'.

In september, having failed their courses and having others finished theirs, most of my friends moved out from halls and some back to their native countries. I stayed and rented a studio flat with one of my friends. We continued doing drugs, and soon not only he failed his course but he was also kicked out of halls because of abusing drugs and organising parties that got wayyy out of hand with new people who had moved into halls. He was sent back to Spain very shortly after, and that's when the problems started coming out of the closet, and the mental situation in which I had gradually gotten myself started coming to the surface. All of my friends whom I had these experiences with had now left England, of the only ones who hadn't two were living far from me and one had been put into mental hospital for a while cause they fell into psychosis.

Now, seeing how so many of my friends had either failed their course, had mental health problems, etc. I should have probably realised by now that the mind set I was in was not of a productive or healthy one. Yet, for my experience, strangely enough, when you find yourself in this type of situations, until you actually smash your face you struggle to see whats going on. Anyway, continuing with the story, this is when I met a guy that I perceived as the 'love of my life'. This guy, strangely enough, was also very involved in drug-taking, and was particularly fond of LSD, which he had taken over 200 times in his life. Up to here all good, we started getting closer, took LSD together. In the beginning all was good, then he started asking me to cut contacts with all friends I had sexual relationships with and one especially, the first friend who had taken care of me when my girlfriend and I broke up ages before. Useless to say that I didn't want to cause of the bond I felt, but he threatened to leave me if I didn't and became more and more obsessive about it.

The year and a half that follows was a constant fight and a constant problem, a constant emotional and psychological roller-coaster, with him owning passwords to my everything, me hiding when I was talking with the friends in question (even 'how are you?' type of messages), and him coming in and out of my life continuously, creating inside me the terror of him leaving and a constant feeling of fear of abandon and rejection. In all this, add the fact that every time he left he would heavily insult me and words like 'bitch', 'drug-whore', 'simpleton', 'you are nothing', and so on and so forth. I had never been told this type of words from someone whom I had feelings for, and believe it or not before I started using drugs this would have made me very wary of the person I had in front of me. Yet I accepted it, and went on with this fucked-up game in which communication was near inexistent, in which I was always anxious, never making lucid choices but living on emotions, sensations, continuous ups and downs. All this, obviously, on drugs, smoking weed every day and having the (not so) 'occasional' MDMA, coke and LSD experience. All this until the situation got out of control. I 'finally' made the bullshit and one night secretly sent promiscuous messages to the friend in question. The guy found out and lost it. He started doing anything he could to make me feel awful about myself, playing all kinds of psychological tricks, always being with one foot in and one out. But the foot in was in merely to humiliate me, spit on me and destroy me verbally and through actions. It was when I actually did the bullshit and cheated, that my survival mode kicked in. I asked myself, why on earth, when I knew very well that (even if he was obsessive) I was in love with this guy and I was not intentioned in having my friends as a boyfriends instead of him or anything like that, I would cheat on him and not even lucidly realise what the fuck I was doing. That's the moment in which I was finally alone, in front of the mirror, and realised the fucked up situation my mind had been in for the 3 past years of madness.

I stopped taking drugs, from one moment to the other. I told my family all about the double life I'd been leading in London, where they had sent me to study and build a future for myself. I closed my facebook account and changed my phone number, took all my energies and started putting pieces back together and getting back into a lucid mind-set, step by step. Ironically enough, many of my friends from the halls days were going through similar situations and stopped doing drugs as well , cause they seemed to be adversely affecting their life or their minds, in different ways. We supported each other, even if from far away, lucidly this time. I cannot even begin to say how grateful I am that I got to that point, and found the strength to cut once and for all with that mentally unhealthy lifestyle, as well as started taking responsibility and awareness in everything I do, getting my self-esteem back despite my ex still finding ways to contact me and tell me how shit a human being I was and how I was bound to either fail or kill myself. In that moment I realised who my true dear ones were, the ones that stayed and stuck by me without drugs, parties, fun, not in 'easy' times, but in very damn hard ones. In addition to this, I also started putting much more passion into my course, going to all lessons, loving what I was learning, reading more, nurturing bonds with my family, having more and more interests and building my own 'adult' personality and attitudes. Had all this not happened, I wouldn't have realised all this nor gotten to this point.

If I am writing my story here today, its because I hope that it may somehow help people who may be in similar situations to realise that they can get out of it, and it just takes very easy steps.
1) Realise what situation you're in
2) Face the fact that life can not always be 'easy' and with others always around.
3) Stop doing drugs.
2) Spend time alone, get to know yourself and learn who you truly are despite of anything else.
3) Recognise who those people are who will stand by you in both good and bad times, support you and cherish you regardless of your faults or problems.

If there is something I learned from this experience its that when you're permanently not lucid situations can spin out of your conscious control very easily. And when they do, they become irrational and distant from who you are or would like to be as an adult human being. Do not get me wrong, drugs can create very nice and chilling environments, and when one is young I guess having some crazy and sensation-wise amazing times is fair enough, but I am aware of their limitations. I also learned that moments with no drugs involved can be equally amazing if I'm with the right people and in the right state of mind. This said, I don't judge anyone for doing drugs, and I might occasionally try again myself one day if the time and place is right, who knows... Yet, I know I don't need them anymore, and I am loving life without them so much now, that I feel if that day ever comes its far from nearby ;).

Peace and love everyone!!! With or without drugs, I wish lucid and tender happiness, as well as freedom of mind to all!

Exp Year: 2011-2014	ExpID: 102674
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: 21
Published: Mar 19, 2021	Views: 337
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