DOSE:

Methamphetamine

BODY WEIGHT:

160 lb

Let me start off by telling you a little about myself. I was always athletic as a kid. I played soccer, baseball, football, and all that good stuff. I always did very well in school and I seemed to excel in math and science. High school was a breeze for me. Except for one small detail - I got hooked on drugs very early.

I starting smoking pot and drinking in about 7th grade. I always did it with my friends every weekend. I have an older sister who did the same, so naturally, I thought it was ok to do this. By the time I was in 11th grade, I had consumed nearly every drug I could get my hands on - crack, ghb, MDMA, acid, ketamine. I had a little bit of experience with cleaning pharmies. I would clean the amphetamine out of a bottle of dexadrine, or the DXM out of cough syrup. I even began shooting heroin. I would take any drug at any time of the day, no matter what it was or what I had to do. I would shoot smack right before soccer practice. I was even coked out of my mind at my grandfather's funeral! My secret was that I was able to hide it very well, so not many people, even most of my close friends, knew what I was up to.

I never spent much time at home, I was usually in the city scoring dope. I've been to countless amounts of crackhouses. I've had guns and knives pulled on me. But I always came away unscathed, which boosted my false confidence that I was invincible even more. I graduated high school with a 3.8 gpa, despite my constant drug use. This was very bad for me, because what serious addict would think they had a problem if they managed a 3.8 over 4 years of heavy drug use? I sure as hell didn't.

I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with my life after school so I took a year off before going to college. During this year my drug use actually calmed down a bit. I would sometimes go maybe 3 or 4 days without even smoking weed. And weed was the base of my life for a loooong time. I never thought I would ever quit smoking weed, ever! But this hiatus would not last very long.

In April, of that year, I began using heroin again. Through a dealer, I ran into this kid, Matt, who I had known in high school, but never associated with much. We had chatted at parties and stuff, but never really hung out. Our friendship started out as just drug buddies. Our sole bases for seeing each other was to share whatever drugs either of us managed to score. But after a little while, we became very close. He was just as much of a drug addict as I was, except he made his drug use very public, so he had a much worse reputation that I did.

Matt soon introduced me to my poison, crystal meth. I had never tried it before, being from New York the drug is almost unheard of there. We only knew 1 dealer with it. The first time I did it was snorting it. It was the most amazing experience. The tingling in my body, the energy, the motivation. It was great and I was hooked from the start. I soon began shooting it. This led to all my money being drained. So Matt and I had a novel idea. We began cooking it outselves.

It sounded like a great idea at the time. but this turned out to be the worst decision of my life. I moved in with Matt in his apartment. We acquired all the ingrediants and cooked our first batch. It was the best meth either of us had, I guess because of the satisfaction that we made it. Also partly because it was 100% pure. We started dealing a little bit, but we mostly cooked to support our own habits. We both even kompletely stopped soing every other drug. I went 1 year with doing only meth.

Both our lives were going downhill faster and faster. I dropped down to about 125 lbs, from 160. I would stay up for 6 or 7 days at a time. We did this for almost a year and a half, constantly consuming rediculous amount of meth. It was my life, and that's all I cared about. There is about a 2-month perioid around the next winter that I really can't recall a single detail of. But I do remember waking up while walking down the street, my jacket on me, upside-down, and backwards. I was a wreck.

Eventually, old friends of mine began telling me that my mind was slipping and I was going crazier and crazier. Matt too. But still, neither of us cared. Until one binge that finally ended it all. Matt and I had been up for almost 14 days. Our minds were far gone 5 days before this point. The apartment was trashed. I was covered in dirt and blood. I couldn't even tell where I was bleeding from. I was home, and I didn't even know where I was. And to top it all off, the last batch was fresh out.

Matt began yelling at a pile of clothes on the floor, thinking that a demon was hiding under it. This scared the hell out of me. Not because he was losing it, but because it awakened my fears as well. Finally after a brief screaming match at the laundry, he reached into a drawer and grabbed a gun, that I had no clue he ever owned. He began firing at the clothes, and finally turned the gun around and fired it into his mouth. I was in shock. I didn't know what the hell was going on around me, much less what to do. The gunshots soon attracted the police who arrested me and took Matt's body away. I checked myself into rehab instead of going to jail. I stayed there for almost a year.

I still haven't regained my full sanity back yet. And I don't know if I ever will. I'm convinced that crank was the major cause of this. I've been clean and sober for 2 years now, I got a decent job, and a great girlfriend. I take things one day at a time. But not a day goes by that I don't picture that scene in my head in the apartment. It scares me enough to never want to take another drug for the rest of my life. Hopefully others can learn from my experiences before choosing to go down that road. And Matt, if you're listening, I love you, man.

Exp Year: 2001	ExpID: 20633
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 18
Published: Jan 13, 2007	Views: 29,390
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Methamphetamine (37) : Not Applicable (38), Multi-Day Experience (13), Post Trip Problems (8), Addiction & Habituation (10), Train Wrecks & Trip Disasters (7), Health Problems (27), Retrospective / Summary (11)