DOSE:

repeated

smoked

Methamphetamine

(powder / crystals)

BODY WEIGHT:

120 lb

This story is pretty long, but it's pretty serious in nature. Meth is a fun drug, but I've seen it destroy people and I want to share my own personal story as a caveat to anyone thinking of experimenting. That kind of destruction can't be explained in any small number of words, nor should it.

Last summer [2002] I wasn't in school, I had quit my hellacious job to find another, and I had just recently broken up with my emotionally tyrannical boyfriend. Around that time I began experimenting with drugs again [I had used hallucinogens heavily in high school]. Until that point my experiences had been limited to E, LSD, K, mushrooms, and pot. I had stopped doing all drugs for a few years, but resumed smoking weed daily a year previous to help with my insomnia, extreme indigestion, anxiety, and boredom. Over the course of the summer I tried any number of things including coke, heroin, 2-CT-2, 5-MeO-DiPT [foxy-methoxy], and resumed use of E, K, and shrooms [although the use remained light]. I also abused any number of pharms including insane doses of xanax, ativan, klonopin, vicadin, propoxyphene, percocet, etc.

One day I was hanging out with a close friend of mine and he took me over to see an old friend of his who had called wanting us to come by and do some glass. I'd actually been extremely curious about the drug and was pretty excited to be getting the chance to try it for free.

I had already taken 5 percocet, half a quad of xanax, free-based coke, and smoked some bud that nite before getting invited over to try speed, so needless to say I was already borderline wasted before arriving. when we came in he had the lines cut and set out on a mirror for us to admire and then consume. I was kind of nervous at first because my heart is sometimes sensitive to stimulants and I'd already done coke and smoked bud [the combination upsets my heart a little], but with a little coaxing curiosity overtook my hesitation and i blew a line.

3...2...1... burn!!! Whoa, it felt pretty cool burning up inside my nose, it was a lot different than I expected. After a while our host busted out with some high purity coke and just threw it our way saying he didn't wanna do any and that we could keep it. Needless to say we snorted it up pretty quick in between lines of E and more glass as the nite progressed. The glass blew my mind... it felt like strong coke but with a stronger euphoric feeling and [seemingly] unbelievable mental clarity. I loved it. and I didn't come down for 3 days because the guy who had invited us over was a dealer, and really enjoyed our company.

From that day forward I began using glass frequently, and usually for free. I was always around hanging out at that apartment because I'd made a number of close friends [many of whom didn't do glass] and since there were always tweekers around, that meant lots of free speed around. I even ended up dating the guy who was pushing the shit because he was a pretty bad ass person. Little did I know, I was setting myself up for heartbreak. My boy had been trying to get with me for months, but I resisted having just gotten over my previous long-term relationship. Eventually I gave in because he seemed to actually care more about me as a person than anyone else who had ever shown interest in me, and we dated.

At that time we both snorted our fair share of glass, but we weren't living as addicts. I did significantly less speed than most people I knew, and he didn't binge for more than a couple days if at all himself [usually]. He didn't fret when he didnt have any shards on hand either. There had been a lot of raids and other problems so the glass had been in short supply for a couple months, but it was no worry because it was just something fun to do on the weekends. No one was seriously addicted. Yet.

I had decided to slow my consumption at that point because I'd had more than one or two 3-day binges, and after a 5 day stint I realized I was tearing up my body. I slept for like 6 hours probably the whole 5 days, didn't eat one single thing, and was drinking maybe 8-16oz. [of the recommended 64oz.] of water a day. I'd lost 10-15 lbs. over the course of a few months which isn't good news when you only weigh 125 at 5'8' to begin with, and I was tired of having hollow, sunken eyes all the time.

Well the shards had run out for a few weeks a while after I wanted to stop anyway, which is when my boy and I talked about dating and the possibility of a relationship. About a week after we began dating however, he got his hands on some glass and decided to smoke it. Then came the big fall... I knew he was gonna fall apart if he started smoking that shit but what could I say? He woulda just blown me off. Once he started smoking it he didn't stop, and I watched him sit in his room for hours smoking out of a lightbulb. One day he was so anxious he gave up on the ghetto stand he'd rigged for the bulb and decided to just burn his hands and hold onto it himself. He came out of the bedroom with blackened hands a soot covered wife-beater, completely spun dizzy.

In a matter of days he became so consumed with smoking shards that I became less and less important to him even after he'd spent months trying to win my affections. One night I crawled into bed with him after having been up for 3 days, and he was shaking something awful in his sleep. It scared me knowing he'd smoked so much he spent the whole nite shaking involuntarily in his sleep, and I felt my impending loss as I held him before falling asleep myself. We stopped dating pretty quickly, and I ended up in a psych hospital over some bullshit [not relating to speed] for a few weeks. When I got out, I avoided seeing him or talking to him because I knew I wouldn't like what I saw. I was scared to see him in fact knowing he'd already started down that dark path of meth addiction, and I knew I couldn't handle watching him self-destruct while I was trying to rebuild my life and deal with my own problems. I did stop by once 2 weeks after I went to the hospital, and he looked so unhappy and lost that I avoided him for another 6-8 weeks.

After a few months I dropped by his place to see him, and he was actually doing better. We talked that nite and were friends again, and life was good. He said he wanted to quit smoking speed, pull his life together, and be happy again. At this point he'd already lost his job, and he had just realized that shady tweeker friends really aren't friends till the end. He and I still smoked regularly for a couple weeks before he got serious about quitting, but then we both abstained so he could stop. He was still selling to make money, but was holding back from smoking any himself with my support.

A few weeks later though, his roomate caused them all to get evicted and he fell apart again. now he had no job and no place to live, so what did he do? Reached for the pipe. The nite the power went out due to his roomate's failure to pay the electric bill [goddamn addict], I watched him smoke in sadness. When he was finished I asked

'So did you solve any problems?'
'By doing what?' he asked.
'Smoking.'
'I wasn't trying to solve any problems!' he snapped 'I know smoking doesn't solve anything!'
'Then why did you do it?' I asked.
'Because I *wanted* to!'
'What happened to *wanting* to quit?'
'I dont need this shit right now!'
'No. This is EXACTLY when you need to hear this 'shit' or else you're never gonna get clean. Life sucks a lot of the time, and if you keep reaching for the pipe every time shit happens you'll stay an addict.'

That last remark was met with a near-hateful silence, and I dropped the issue altogether.

I continued hanging out with him as he sobered up and fell back in a few times, using glass regularly myself. It might seem kind of messed up to keep using after having previously been his support, but I gave up on supporting someone who was seeming to care less and less about being helplessly addicted. I wasn’t screwed up so why should I let his problem rain on my parade too? So we continued smoking sometimes, and I did glass with any number of others outside of his presence even more often.

He's been through severe withdrawals twice that I've seen, both times sleeping for almost 5 days straight except to eat or drive to someone else's house to sleep. His addiction has been getting worse, and he doesn't even try anymore. He's even started doing hot rails which are FAR more addictive than even smoking. I rarely even see him anymore at his new apartment, and when I do it's usually to visit his pothead roomates to smoke some bud and hang out with them. His personality is so distorted that I don't even recognize him most of the time. He's lost like 40+ lbs now, and he went from being the sweetest guy to the meanest jerk I know.

It sucks when your twacked out friends are sincere and warm one minute, then cold and harsh the next. It was even worse for me because he is one of the most incredible people I've ever known, and I know how he used to be before he lost his soul. It's so difficult when he sends off signals implying he feels something for me still only to have him turn around and say something cruel the next. He's not even a friend as of late, he only calls to sell glass or when he needs a favor. The only friend he really has left is named Crystal.

I remember how I admired his temperance in personality, and I adored how happy he was with his life a few months ago. It's been a long time since I've met someone so content, but now that's been replaced by severe paranoia and anxiety. There are parts of town he won't even go to, people he won't call, things he won't do, all because he's so paranoid. Even when he cleans up for a week the paranoia, self-declared magnificance, and terrible temper remain. I wonder how long after he gets rehabilitated until he's back to normal inside... it still breaks my heart to this day knowing someone I love is just a dark and unhappy shadow of their former self because of some stupid drug.

He's not my only junkie friend either. I've hung out with a few people who experience schizo-effective symptoms such as audio and visual hallucinations as a direct result of their extended use of meth. I watch friends fight over petty shit because they haven't slept in 5 days and hate the world. I watch shady dealers fucking people over so they can scrounge up enough money to re-up after consuming too much merchandise themselves.

I got to talk to a few people in rehab, one of which I knew before I ended up in the hospital who had started mainlining. She was up for 30 days at that point in her life, and she came completely undone before admitting herself to a rehab center in a secluded area. The other girl I talked to in a rehab clinic had also mainlined heavily, and now she's on about 7 different medications including anti-psychotics, mood stabilizers, and anti-anxiety meds. She didn't stop seeing the 'shadow people' or hearing meth-induced voices even a month after coming down... I watch people hang their heads in defeat while they blow lines knowing they don't believe they'll ever quit. Most of the people doing it are broke if they aren't dealing, and have almost nothing to show for themselves except a deteriorated septum and vicious cough.

I myself don't have a tendency toward addiction, and in fact I'm probably lucky to be in the position I am. I've smoked glass quite heavily, yet managed to remain addiction free. As I watched my close friends falling down I decided to separate myself from the drug almost entirely so that I won't one day become addicted myself. Just because it didn't happen with the first hit like it does with everyone else doesn't mean it can't happen.

I actually did hot rails myself for a while, but one night after doing a couple big ones and smoking a ton, I crashed out hardcore and even withdrew for a couple days to a degree. since then I've barely seen any of my old tweeker friends, much less spent any length of time with them. They're all too angry and lost in their addictions to be much fun anyway... I've only gotten spun a couple times in the recent past, and the last bag I bought was really high in purity and threw me for a loop. I got all warped in the head after one night [usually took 2-3 days with really good shit back when I binged more], and I withdrew ever so slightly again. Just a reminder that I'm cleaning up for a reason... I've resumed smoking good ol marijuana regularly, and started finding reasons to call other friends I'm not as close to rather than the speed addicts.

The weirdest part about all of this is that once you sober up, it’s like waking from a dream. Meth creates an illusion of well-being and content regardless of how life really is. Sometimes I forget just how much it can distort reality, but every time I’ve done it recently I’ve been forced to remember how detached from reality I can become and it scares me to think of using glass too heavily again, or even becoming addicted and getting lost in a paranoid but beautiful dream.

Exp Year: 2003	ExpID: 22514
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Dec 1, 2006	Views: 53,338
[ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
Methamphetamine (37) : Relationships (44), Second Hand Report (42), Addiction & Habituation (10), Retrospective / Summary (11), Not Applicable (38)