DOSE:

Repeated lines

inhaled

Methamphetamine

(powder / crystals)

It was supposed to be my last bag of meth. But I had been making the same declaration for over a year. I really wanted to stop, it was time to stop. And yet, always -- just a month or two after the time seemed ripe -- there was this little craving, a quick and hardy whim to get another bag. Just one more go with Tina.

Then one day, the whole world seemed to change by the flash of a global pandemic. It was the Coronavirus that convinced me it was really important to stop my perpetually expanding foray into methamphetamine, if only to catch up on world events. I was so far tuned it into tweaker counter-culture that I didn't even know there was an outbreak of a novel virus until I saw supermarket aisles emptied of Lysol and paper products, two items that were never in high demand when I needed them. For two years, I had been using Lysol faithfully to clean my house at the end of long meth binges. And then in 2020, the whole world was hording paper towels and disinfectants in some communal frenzied movement to fend off infectious disease.

Tweaking did not mesh well with pandemic life, I reasoned. Looking bemused at the empty store shelves, and hearing my cell phone alerting me about new governmental shutdowns going into effect, I took the initiative to rejoin normal society. I needed like everyone else, all around the world, to think about the virus, think about the riots breaking out across the country, think about the New world emerging. Think about it all after just one more night, one more rush dream with Tina. A dream I had been chasing for four years.

I got an eight ball, a mix of whitish shards and crystalline powder that later tested to be the much sought-after d-meth. I would slowly discover that this was some of the best meth that would ever rush through my body. On the glass counter top of my living room table, I eyeballed 100mg of rock and crushed the chunk into powder, then split the pile with an expired credit card into two fat lines. I closed the blinds at my windows in a hurry. Then picked up the stub of a drinking straw that had been cut off with scissors to serve as my snorting tool. This was my normal ritual.

I snorted. Felt the burn. Sipped some Gatorade. Got amped up. Tina was my longtime companion and I did her that day with a mix of melancholy and passion, like I would never see her again. But she behaved in her usual manner — bitter, intense, cold and aloof, but steadfast in giving me what I wanted. Daylight faded into night which skipped over into day again. And again. I had been crushing rocks and cutting lines. My girlfriend came over and no one else really because everyone was keeping safe distance during the pandemic. I think the superintendent came once, fully masked, to check the radiator that was clinking. And I walk into my bathroom one of those evenings to look at my face in the bathroom mirror -- when just from the corner of my eye I notice three reddish-brown droplets of still water on the toilet seat. My tweaker brain began processing the image like a computer code: red dribble; where did that come from; came from my body; might be blood; I may be bleeding inside; somewhere: I may have missed the toilet and three drops of bloody urine landed onto the seat.

And all of this is processed with the utmost calm and clarity of thought. No feeling. My heart is pounding from the stimulation of the amp but there is no fear, not then. The water in the toilet is so crystal clear I can see my reflection. Restless and wired but cool like a buzzing bee, I go and snort another line of meth because at that point I reasoned that I didn't really know if it was blood on the toilet seat, it might have been dark colored urine because of something I had drank or something I had eaten. I held in between my fingers the sweaty straw stub for snorting lines, for a long while, much longer than usual, just to ponder. Thinking. Reasoning. Those droplets, though darker than blood could very well be blood. Or they might have been sweat or bile. I didn't know. Did they come from somewhere outside or from the inside of me? I couldn't think about it then, I would think about it more later.

Then later came. I ventured into my bathroom to relieve a new, much anticipated urge to urinate, and I am peering down at a dark stream of urine that seems to hiss like a serpent as it plunges into the toilet water. And I know before I read about this phenomenon on the Internet, that I am pissing what is aptly termed: 'coca-cola colored urine.' But I feel no pain. My mind is clear. And there is still no fear. Because well – I immediately reason that this strange spell may pass, like a fluke of some kind. It would all pass. Better to wait and see what happens the next go to the bathroom, rather than start panicking.

With cold calculation, I start researching on the Internet the implication of pissing blood. And here is where I face a grave dilemma. I am dead tired, about to crash from days of doing meth and the only clear thought I may have had at the time was that I could not go to sleep. Even as my brain is shutting down, ready to mount an insurrection against my deprivations, there is another part of my body that is clamoring for attention, this I am sure of. I cannot sleep until I see and develop a clear understanding of the extent and the intent of that red color which has invaded my urine.

So I drink as much water as I can tolerate as my stomach and the muscles of my abdomen seem deathly tight from vasoconstriction. All of my muscles are tight. I am famished, can't drink enough water. And I sit on my couch in a daze, heart pumping, eyes wide open but the lids starting to slip and fall shut in a jerky rhythm. I wash my hands and my face. Take a seat on the couch again, this time tapping my fingers near that last line of meth powder, and I wait. Just sit there and wait.

The next stream of urine is another coca-cola spout, more ominous, a longer straight shot, longer in duration as it pours, glinting a little in the bright light of my bathroom. All the lights in my apartment are on now. I'm looking at the dark, purulent pool of water in the toilet and here my heart does seem to accelerate just a little. Because my brain and body are pleading for sleep and seem to be divorcing themselves from my mind which is telling me to keep drinking water, you cannot sleep, child, until I see your urine start clearing up, at the very least.

Who was that angel of reason speaking through me, as the blood was pouring out in novel streams? And I really hate this part, but I must confess: I went and did another little tiny line. The tiniest and sweetest of little lines of meth powder. Dripping down bitter and sweet at the back of my throat. In part, because I needed to stay up and also because I wanted to salvage my rush. I was still tweaking. And it was some fine meth, one of the best batches I had ever had. And I never waste a rush under ordinary circumstances. This night was in no way ordinary but I wasn't feeling any pain so it seemed okay if I did just a little tiny line. It couldn't hurt what was already in some way messed up. And if it did worsen things, I couldn't think about it, I would think about it tomorrow.

After four or five trips to the bathroom, my urine did clear up considerably. It was a pale, watery pink instead of red. I was too exhausted to call anybody. I would call my girlfriend tomorrow, I decided. Lying in bed, my eyes slammed shut and I crashed. But instead of the deep restorative sleep I was accustomed to relishing when coming down from meth, I suffered through a hostile, ragged and jagged sleep, waking up at intervals, tossing and turning from aches and pains, head throbbing sensations, and a general sense of distress that made me murmur out loud into my pillow. At times, I wanted to sit up and grab my pillow and just scream. And while I was waiting for things to get better, I only felt worse. Gradually, I became aware of the gentle but definite rise of a fever and feeling weak and listless, I started taking great pains just to get up out of bed.

I crashed like this for two or three days until finally my girlfriend convinced me I had to go to the hospital. Even though she could no longer see any blood in my urine when she checked in the bathroom, it looked crystal clear to her naked eye. In the hospital, after several tests and scans and urinalysis, I was diagnosed with a kidney infection in both kidneys. Doctors asked me if I'd ever had a problem with kidney stones or STDs. My girlfriend said yes, that she had given me an STD because we did not want to tell them I was a meth head. And I didn't think that information would add anything useful to their treatment plan. Everyone was really nice. I was shivering from fever in what is aptly termed “the rigors.” My teeth were shattering though I was wrapped in three or four blankets. Like I was standing in a T-shirt in the dead of winter. But it was one of the hottest days of the year and I was covered in layers of blankets. I had high fever and a racing pulse which are signs of sepsis and during that rigorous shivering spell, the doctors were scrambling to ascertain whether or not the infection was potentially poisoning my blood.

I spent seven days in the hospital receiving antibiotics by IV during which I experienced all kinds of pain including a dull ache at my flank side, a pulsating throb in my head and the agony of a catheter inserted into my private member, persistently rubbing and chafing its sensitive head. I hate catheters. I felt like such a con when friends and family called wishing me a speedy recovery, saying they were praying for me. Only my girlfriend knew I had been using meth for four years and it was my striving to reach an artificial paradise that had gotten me laid out on a hospital bed, naked and catheterized under the gown. Sighing, feeling like I would go crazy from fever. But despite all the good wishes, privately it felt like I didn't deserve anybody's prayers, that prayers should be spent on people who were blameless.

When I got home, I threw out the remainder of my eight ball, around three grams of d-meth that my girlfriend had tested. It was good, it was real, some of the best we'd ever gotten. But I threw it in the garbage and this gesture was quite profound. It elicited a long moment of sentimental silence. Because I had never, ever, in all my four years thought about throwing away a speck of meth. Just the thought of losing a shard somewhere in the couch would normally send me into a pitiful frenzy.

I look back now and realize the true pity and horror was that right when I was ready to quit for good, meth showed me her cruel, wicked, and reckless power. It felt like she saw and knew I could quit her, that I had the strength and my good reasons, and like a scorned lover, she made sure she would leave me with the indelible mark of blood. It was her way of laughing spitefully on her way out. Or maybe not.

I have grown from my experience with an appreciation for Harm Reduction and a conviction that the only role for me in any type of anti-drug movement is as an advocate for Temperance. Instead of spouting the slogan: "Dont ever do meth," which feels like what I should be saying, what the doctors at the hospital where I was treated would expect me to say, what therapists waiting to take me on as a client would train me to say — if I ever went to rehab — I won't say that. Standing politely to the side of them, I have chosen to tune into a more complicated lesson, which is that if someone chooses to do meth, they should think about setting limits on dosage and duration. Meth is a drug of excess and if you know that from the start, she can and will never exert any detrimental power. The only way to meet and handle excess and is through Control.

I still don't hate meth. I miss her intensity. I still believe she was some kind of friend to me during unhappy times. I believe she kept me company and gave some kind of comfort to my soul. I know it sounds crazy but she was there for me.

I still want meth. Even as I remember the blood pouring out of me, painlessly and unannounced. How sick it was for me to go and do yet another little line knowing I was bleeding inside. I think of this and feel ashamed, guilty, pathetic and foolish. It's strange when you are sorry and have no one to apologize to. It feels like I want to write a letter to my body, telling it how sorry I am for abusing it, taking it for granted, for poisoning it, acknowledging it was trying to alert me in its own ways that all was not well. But I did not understand. I want to promise my body, with strength and courage and humility that I will never push it to any extremes. I will love it. But I may falter at times. I will try to respect it with the sheer astounding revelation that it is the only body I have, and thus I must faithfully aid it, my strong and limber body, in its inviolable endeavor to sustain my life. But what I want to also tell it as well is that I am not perfect. I may falter and seek the artificial paradise once more. Maybe once or twice, and if that, then never to any great extent.

This I can promise. That if I stumble, I'm never gonna fall. Ever again. From this tangle of hurt and injury I've described, there's this tiny thread of wisdom I want to hang on to, that I want to believe is not in some form a lie: which is that pleasure only turns to poison by your own hand and striving. It was not meth that made me bleed. It was me. Maybe she really was a companion for a long while, a detached escort, the kind of friend with the unmovable expression that sits back and says nothing as the relationship turns toxic. I couldn't expect anything more. And still I cherish what it was like with her in the beginning.

Exp Year: 2021	ExpID: 115171
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jun 29, 2023	Views: 127
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Methamphetamine (37) : Retrospective / Summary (11), Health Problems (27), Addiction & Habituation (10), Multi-Day Experience (13), Various (28)