DOSE:	repeated	smoked	Methamphetamine	(daily)
	repeated	insufflated	Cocaine	(powder / crystals)

BODY WEIGHT:

120 lb

The last few days that I spent in San Diego forever changed my life. I was coming off of crystal meth really hard, and even going through that hell, I remember almost every second of those days clearly. It is something I will never forget, when my whole life came down to one split-second decision. And had I not made that phone call, I know that I would be dead right now. I would not have made it out of San Diego.

I guess to tell the story of those last few days I really have to include some of my life beforehand. I know they are stories within themselves, but it is really important to understand what was going on. As everyone now knows, I smoked crystal meth on a daily basis for almost two years. This was not always my life. I had a pretty good life when I lived with B. I didn't do drugs, I didn't drink, I went to school at night, I worked full-time during the day. We had problems, but nothing like what my life would become. When B and I broke up after dating for 6 ½ years in July of 2001, my life went into a tailspin. For the first time ever, I had no plan. I had no place to live, I had quit my job the month before, and I was doing nothing but drinking all the time. I slept in my car for a few days before I finally got the courage to ask my brother and his new roommate if I could stay on the couch there. But I was uncomfortable staying there, as it was no longer my apartment, I had given it up a couple months before to my brother.

I ended up moving in with D within a couple of weeks. And that is when I starting snorting cocaine on a daily basis. D was a drug dealer, and I was always around drugs. I got really messed up into the whole coke scene for a little while, but when we broke up the following summer, I didn't stop doing coke, but it wasn't a daily thing anymore, and I didn't go looking for it and I did it if it was around. A few months later, I moved to Florida, and I did coke a lot down there too, but once again, it really was a non-issue most of the time. If it was there, I did it, if it wasn't I was ok with that and just lived my life.

One day I was sitting in a bar, after work in Daytona Beach. Some guy I had never before met asked me if I wanted to do a line. In my usual I don't care attitude I said sure. So I went into the bathroom with him and another guy and one other girl. He laid out four of the biggest lines I had ever seen in my life. My eyes lit up and I picked up my straw and snorted my entire huge line. I immediately fell to my knees in the bathroom stall holding my nose and yelling (almost in tears it hurt so badly) 'what the hell is that cut with'. It felt like I had snorted glass up my nose. And that is what I did. That was the first time I did crystal meth. The guy was shocked at my response to snorting the line, and told me it wasn't coke, it was meth.

That is when I realized that it really didn't look like coke. I just didn't think it would be anything else, never even crossed my mind. It looked like little shards of glass. And I hated it. I did like two more lines that night with the guy, and I was awake for almost three straight days after that. He gave me a bag of meth to keep for later, and I flushed it down the toilet the next morning, still all whacked out and having to go back to work the next day like that sucked. I did not like the way it made me feel, or how bad it really hurt to snort. I wanted nothing to do with crystal meth ever again. I was all set with that drug. It sucked as far as I was concerned. And it wasn't an issue again for quite some time later.

I went to Vegas with a few of my friends at the end of November/beginning of December of 2003. The entire time I lived in Florida, I kept in touch with D. We talked to each other all the time, almost every night on the phone. So when I told him I was going to Vegas, he told me that San Diego was only a couple of hours away, and I should come and visit him. So I talked to my friends and they were going to go for a drive to San Diego with me from Vegas. When we got to Vegas they no longer wanted to go to San Diego. So I went to rent a car and drive there myself. The rental car company wanted 3 forms of ID for me to take a car out of state, so I ended up just borrowing $300 from my friend and buying a plane ticket and flying there the next morning. I was supposed to be gone for only a few hours, I did not go back to Vegas for almost three days. My friends were pissed at me. But I had left Vegas as Heidi, and I came back as someone else. They had no idea what had happened to me. Those few days that I was gone, they knew was the moment that I changed. I was no longer the happy, goofy Heidi that they had always known. I was moody, and irritable, and just miserable. They had no idea that I had just become addicted to smoking crystal meth.

While I was in San Diego, D brought be to his friend Rodrigo's house. In his bedroom in Vista, California I smoked meth for the first time. I had told D a long time before what had happened that night I snorted meth, and how much I really hated it. D was already a meth addict for quite some time at this point (at least a year). He told me that smoking meth was sooo different, nothing like snorting it. I was apprehensive about trying it, I really didn't like it before, why would I like it now? But he convinced me to try it, told me I would never feel that good again in my entire life. Just try it once, what can it hurt, if I didn't like it, then just never do it again. So I smoked meth for the first time that afternoon in sunny southern California, where all your dreams come true. And I loved it.

I smoked meth with D for the next couple of days before I finally realized I had to go back to Vegas. I flew back to Vegas with $4.15 in my pocket. It was $4.25 to take a shuttle from the airport to the hotel we were staying at, and my friends would not answer the phone to come and pick me up because they were so mad at me for taking off like that. I had to ask someone for a dime, which really sucked because I am a very prideful person, just to get back to the hotel. I spent a couple more days in Vegas with them before we all flew back to Florida.

It wasn't a month before I was back in San Diego for a 'visit'. I smoked meth again the whole week I was there. And I even got to take some home with me this time. I smoked what I brought back with me over the next week or so, and then I ran out. I was completely miserable, but did not realize at the time that meth was so powerfully addictive that it controlled every aspect of my mood and feelings. I felt sick and tired. I was crying for no reason at all. I had a hard time dealing with people at work now, and that just wasn't who I was. I didn't connect the dots until sometime later.

I would fly out to San Diego a few more times before D convinced me to move there. I did not want to move there, the last time we lived together, it turned out to be a nightmare and I got screwed. I got thrown out of my home, with no place to go once again, and I just did not want that to happen again. But he told me he loved me, that he had always been in love with me. He gave me every line from Jerry Maguire. The whole 'you complete me' and all that other bullshit. But one thing he said to me changed my mind. I kept asking him every time he brought up moving out there 'well what if we don't get along' or 'what if this' or 'what if that'. I came up with every 'what if' I could think of. He then asked me one day 'What if you never know'. I wish I never knew.

I moved to San Diego in April of 2004. I bought a pretty blue and black dress to wear, and got myself all dolled up for him. His mom picked me up from the airport that morning, and brought me to my new beautiful home in Sorrento Valley. I was so excited. I had a pool with a Jacuzzi, I lived in a gorgeous neighborhood, and now I got to smoke meth every single day. He came home from work late that day, I had waited for him to come home for hours on end. But he left me a pipe and some shit, so I was ok. When he came in he had a friend with him. He said hello to me quickly, then went into the garage with his friend and then left me alone. I sat for the rest of the night by myself completely crushed, I cried myself to sleep all alone that first night. I had just moved 3500 miles away from anyone I had known, burned a lot of bridges on my way there, and he couldn't even spend five minutes with me. I told myself that the next day would be different. But it wasn't. It was exactly the same. He wanted nothing to do with me once I was out there. I wrote him a letter 11 days after moving there telling him I had made the biggest mistake of my entire life. It never got better.

I cried every single day for the next year. I smoked meth almost every single day also. My friend J died on August 18th, and I didn't even know about it until a week later. I saw the Red Sox win the World Series, and I had no one there with me to celebrate. I was once again all alone. October 27th, 2004 was the loneliest day of my entire life. For most people from Boston, it was the happiest day. But for me, I sat in that garage, with my meth pipe, and I watched the greatest thing in Boston history happen, and I had no one to high-five, or smile with, or laugh with. I was all truly all alone. I had not one friend left in the entire world. I had not spoken to anyone since I left Florida, not one person. By Thanksgiving I realized that I truly hated D.

But I was an addict, and I had no friends, and I was terrified to be alone. So I decided to make his life as miserable as he had made mine. Then on Christmas Eve in 2004 (eight months after becoming a full-blown meth addict) I decided to quit. I felt awful. I looked awful. I was miserable. I was sickly skinny, my skin was a disaster of sores, bruises, and scars, and my hair was falling out. So I stopped smoking meth that Christmas Eve, and never got out of bed for Christmas day, or for the next week after that. I went through about ten days of absolute torture and hell before I started to even feel a little bit better. D's father came to me on New Years Eve and asked that I find another place to live. I told him there was something wrong with us, but I promised D I would not tell them what it was. D and I went out on New Years Eve and then he left me at home later to go sleep at his ex-girlfriend's house (who is now dead due to her meth abuse, D got her addicted as well). As bad as I felt for him leaving me like that, I never went to sleep that night, but I did not pick up that pipe again.

Over the next few weeks, I started to change back into Heidi. I, for the first time in eight months of living in California, went for a walk in the canyon behind my house. I went outside! Before that I was completely agoraphobic. I couldn't even go to the grocery store. I could only go to work, and that was it. I had no ability to communicate with anyone while I was on meth, none at all. The people that knew me during this time probably think I am completely crazy, and I was. And then all of a sudden I was able to talk to his parents, and take his kids to go swimming, to the beach, anywhere really. I had gained back a little bit of my life. And in doing so, I was gonna lose my home again, but they gave me time to look for another place, they didn't just throw me out on the street.

Then about a month after I quit doing meth, D's mother and father told me they needed to talk to me. I went out in the living room to talk with them, scared to hell. They told me they did not know what was going on, but they knew I was different, that I had completely changed 100%. They told me that I did not have to move out, and that we could even move into the master bedroom of the house. But I had to pay more rent. Which was fine with me, I didn't really care about the money thing too much. I thought I was getting a sweet deal. Little did I know at the time I was setting myself up for anther tailspin.

I had a lot of trouble living with D and having him smoke meth still on a daily basis, even though I had quit. At first he tried to hide it from me, but then he would just smoke it right in front of me again. I went through January and February and most of March like this. I started to sleep a real lot, mostly because I had no desire to be awake. My body still felt like shit, my mind still felt like shit, and I had gained a TON of weight almost immediately after quitting. I would work a real lot, just so I didn't have to be at home, and if I was at home, I was sleeping so I didn't have the urge to smoke meth. My life was still not good, even though I had quit.

And then D's parents bought him a house in Vista, 72 miles away from where we worked. Instead of 'moving into the master suite' of the beautiful home in Sorrento Valley, I was now faced with moving to the Meth Capital of the United States. The place where our meth dealers resided, the place I had first smoked meth. I knew I was screwed.

On my birthday, March 22, 2005, I once again became a meth addict. We had gone to see Motley Crue in concert in El Cajon, and I had smoked meth again that day. I smoked it a little more for the next few days before I tried to quit again. And once again, my entire body shut down and I could not function. This really sucked because we were in the process of moving and I couldn't even get out of bed. His parents were pissed that I did not help them move and pack all their shit along with all of our shit, like it was my job to do so anyways. I paid enough in rent not to do shit like that for them. But everyone made a big deal out of me sleeping nonstop, so I just gave up and started to smoke meth again.

I remember the first night we spent in that new house, I saw it and I was horrified. I went from living in Sorrento Valley to living in the pit of San Diego. I lied on the living room floor and cried myself to sleep (until of course our meth dealer came over and woke me up). I hated that home. I didn't even want to go inside it. I would come home from work and sit in the car for hours on end, just dreading going in there, knowing that I was only going to imprison myself once again in the garage. I did so for a few months, but then I started just locking myself in my bedroom and smoking meth in there. I still hated D, and even more so now that I was once again a meth addict. We didn't talk to each other, and I just gave him meth to leave me alone.

I would pay for mine and his and this went on for quite some time. It was actually ridiculous how much I spent on him just so I didn't have to be alone and I didn't have to deal with his shit. But then one day, he actually bought a bag, and instead of sharing it with me, he tried to hide it and he ended up washing it in the washing machine. I was so pissed that after all I had given him for the past few months he would even think about hiding it from me at all and he washed like $100 worth of it away! So the next time I got a bag (later that day), I didn't give him any. I smoked with him a little bit, but I didn't give him a bag. And then he fell asleep on the highway in his sister's Mustang and drove underneath a Mac-Truck. He blamed me for that, for not giving him meth that day to take with him to Irvine. I went back and forth over the next few weeks about the issue with him. But if I didn't give him meth, he made sure that I didn't have a ride home from work or from the train station. One day he left me sit at the train station for over three hours, before I finally was able to get a cab to come out there to pick me up and drive me to his dad's house in Sorrento Valley.

When I got there I gave him meth again and we drove 72 miles home to Vista. He would drive me to work and pick me up as long as I gave him meth. And this was bullshit. I was the only one paying rent, I bought all the food, I bought his kids ANYTHING they wanted, I took them places and paid for it, I lent D a couple thousand dollars over the course of two or three months on top of it all, and he couldn't even get me to work. All I wanted was a ride to work in the morning and to be picked up at the train station at night. Even when I gave him meth, he never picked me up on time. I would usually have to wait a minimum of 20 minutes before he would finally show up to pick me up, knowing everyday what time the train came. This was a daily thing and really pissed me off that much more.

July 25th of 2005 was the last day I smoked crystal meth. I had decided to quit again, and this meant that he had to quit as well because he did not have the money to support his own habit at this point. He was pissed with me. His brother's wedding was in 10 days, he had his kids, and because I decided I did not want to smoke meth anymore, he couldn't even stay awake to play with them. We were staying at his dad's house that week, to make it easier for us to go to work because we were driving so far everyday now, and the house was gonna be sold really soon.

I am pretty sure his mom was back in Massachusetts at this time, but his dad was still at the house. I woke D up on the morning of July 28th, 2005 (a Thursday) and asked him to drive me to work. We had not done meth in over two days, which meant we were both complete junk. He told me to take the train to work, and I told him that I didn't have time to do that, that I would be late if I took the train. We got into a fight and he told me to 'take myself to work', so that is exactly what I decided to do. I took his car and drove myself to work. I knew that when I did this, that it would cause a huge problem between us. But I had to go to work. He called me at work that day swearing and cursing at me so loud that my boss actually wrote me up for what he was doing. I told him that I wouldn't come home unless he paid me all the money that he had borrowed from me, and I would move out and leave him alone. He told me he would get the money, and for me to just come home. When I got home after work, he was passed out on the living room floor, his kids just sitting doing nothing because their dad was complete junk.

I didn't say a word to any of them, I just took my bird and went upstairs to the master suite and went to bed (even though it was only like 5 o'clock). Around 10 or 11, D decided to come up to bed with me. When he woke me up, I asked him if he was gonna drive me to work the next morning, thinking that after all that bullshit that happened that day, he would. He told me to go fuck myself and that he took the battery out of the car so I couldn't take it again and he wasn't going to give me any of the money he owed me. Now we got into a HUGE fight, and he ended up throwing my bag of clothes off the second story balcony and into the back yard, when I went to go retrieve it, he locked me out of the bedroom that I had been sleeping in, in the first place before he decided to come and bother me. I yelled at him and pounded on the door for him to let me back in so I could get my pocketbook and bird. He wouldn't, so I went and found a key and the fight ensued. He pushed me off the bed and then grabbed me by my forearms and threw me against the wall before retreating into his kids' room. And then we went to bed.

I woke up extra early the next morning, feeling really awful from coming off of meth now for three days, and put the battery back in place and hooked it all up and took his car again. I knew that this was the end for us. I knew that by taking his car again, I was getting myself kicked out. But I figured that I would at least have the legal 30 days to leave, so I went to work and immediately started looking at apartments in the area. I called a few and even set up an appointment to see one on Monday. And because I was not smoking meth, I was able to actually go out to lunch with the girls from work, which I NEVER did. When we went to go to lunch, I saw that he had come and taken the car away sometime that morning and left me stranded at work. I paid $75 for a cab to take me to his father's house in Sorrento Valley that afternoon after work. I actually drove by him on my way to the house, I don't think he saw me, but I saw him. When I got there, he had locked up the entire house, which it never was locked, and I was pissed, so I climbed in threw the window.

I was taking my bird outside when his father came home and asked me if I had gotten the message from his wife. I told S that I had spilled grapefruit juice in my cell phone a few days before and did not have a phone anymore and I needed to go buy a new one. S then handed me a piece of paper requesting me to vacate the house in Vista within 3 days. I tried to argue with him about this, because I knew he could not just throw me out like that, I paid rent, I was the only person who paid rent, and I knew this was not legal. I told him I would see him in court on Monday morning, and he told me that was fine and to get my things and he would drive me to Vista to start packing. That is when I told him about the meth. His only response to that was 'haven't I had my head up my ass'. He filled in all the missing puzzle pieces at that split second. They had no idea in the world that we were meth addicts. That we sat in their garage, polluting their gorgeous home with some of the most deadly chemicals known to man.

But that was not the issue, the issue was that I had to go. At first I was pissed. I knew that by taking D's car that day I was gonna have to move out, but I really thought that I was gonna have time to look for another place, not be thrown out on the street again, but this time with absolutely no one to turn to at all. I had money. I could afford to get my own place. I even had a girl from work offer me a room at her place a few weeks before this even happened, she did not know about the meth, but she knew I was completely miserable in my current situation, everyone did. I told her I knew they (D and his parents) would never let me take the bird with me, and I couldn't leave her, she was all that I had, she was my only friend in the whole world. A fucking bird. How sad is that. But she loved me, and I just couldn't leave her. She was a huge reason I put up with D and his shit for so long, I just didn't want to give her up.

His father had me put the bird back in the cage and then drove me to Vista that night all alone. We didn't speak the entire hour long ride there. I wasn't really mad at S, I knew that D and I needed to end our relationship. But I did feel that I was once again getting a bum deal. I was trying so hard to not be a meth addict, and every time I tried to stop, something like this would happen, and I would be left to find a new place to live. Ironic, cause I always thought that not being a drug addict would be so much better than doing drugs, and yet at the time, things were not looking up. When I got there, I told S that this just wasn't fair, that I didn't even have a phone to call anyone, that he couldn't leave me in that hellhole in Vista all alone, with no phone, and no way to get in touch with even one person. He told me that he just couldn't worry about what I was going to do anymore and then left me to rot for the night in Vista all alone.

Coming down off of meth is nothing that I can explain to anyone who has not experienced it firsthand. I don't think there is anything in the world worse then the pain my body and mind go through for days on end. My body feels like there is electricity pouring through every inch of it (and if you have ever been electrocuted, you can understand how uncomfortable this can be, that feeling that isn't quite pain, but not something you can exactly explain to someone, but really feels awful). I feel like my entire body weighs ten times more than it really does, so just to get up is torture. My brain cannot complete even one thought, the meth ruined that a long time ago. I am endlessly hungry, but everything I eat, I end up throwing up.

I sweat and cry and beg for the pain to stop, and it just doesn't subside at all. It only gets worse the longer you go without it. And this is why most people who do meth are never able quit. Because as bad as you feel doing meth, the pain of coming off of it is so much worse. And to most people, this pain is unbearable, and just not worth quitting. I knew when I choose to quit meth the second time what I was up against, I swore that when I went through it the first time, that I would never experience that kind of hell ever again. And yet this is where I was on the night of July 29th, 2005. I felt like I was going to die.

I was so scared that night in Vista. I was all alone in the one place I hated the most. I didn't even have the dogs or my bird with me that night, and I was completely terrified. I lied down on the couch and fell in and out of the worst sleep imaginable. The thoughts of smoking meth spinning endlessly in my head, contemplating suicide, just to end the pain churning throughout my body. Suicide had been a realistic option for me for quite some time now. I had often sat on the bridges that would span the canyons hundreds of feet above the ground and the only thing that ever kept me from jumping, is knowing that my parents could not afford to fly my dead body home. But I didn't jump, I never did, and this night I couldn't even stand up, never mind make it to a bridge. My body was dying all by itself. I decided that I would get meth the next day, and all of this pain would just go away, and I would give it to D and we would stop fighting again.

When the sun came up the next morning, it did not bring happiness. It brought intense heat, like I had not experienced beforehand. My house became a sauna, with no air conditioning, no fans, no circulation of air, it was absolute hell. I had to fill the bathtub with cold water and sit in it just to cool down. I had no phone to call anyone, so I did what every rational person coming off of meth would do, I tried to take an unregistered car to go and buy a cell phone three towns over. But the car would not start, still unknown to me why. So I began to walk in that miserable heat to the closest store. And that walk was awful in itself. The sun was relentless on my aching body. The humidity swirled around me, laughing at my pain. I could barely make my legs move. But I did, I made it to that store on North Santa Fe Ave after at least a half hour of walking.

I tried to call D, and he would not answer the phone, so I went and bought two phone cards and tried to call him again and again. He finally picked up, and I begged for him to come and get me. He refused. He told me to go fuck myself. I told him that I would get us some more meth, I would call someone right now. And he just hung up on me. So then I called someone to bring me some meth. And told them to meet me at my house in Vista in about an hour. I hung up the phone and started walking out of the parking lot of that grocery store. Walking straight back into the hands of my enemy. I had decided that I could no longer fight, that I just couldn't do it anymore, I would be a meth addict and that was that. At that moment, I was so scared. My stomach was turning, my adrenaline pouring through what was left of my meth-ravaged body, I was shaking in absolute fear of going back to that drug again. I just didn't want to die like that. I knew there was no hope left. I stopped in the shade alongside the edge of the parking lot, and kneeled down on the small grassy area and started to sob to myself. In the next few minutes my life was changed forever.

I must have looked like the most miserable, pitiful creature in the entire world that day in that grocery store parking lot. My skin was scarred with years of meth abuse, my hair had been falling out for quite some time, and I even lost a whole chunk of it off the side of my head, leaving a bald spot above my left ear. I had never lost the weight I gained from the first time I quit. And I had not stopped crying for fifteen months straight. A man driving by on East Bobier Drive in an old beat up sky blue pick up truck yelled obscenities to me out his window as he drove by, which only made me cry even more. How the hell did my life come to this? How the hell did I end up losing everything I had worked so hard my whole life to get? I was the smart one, the nerd. The one who was going to do something great. And here I was, sitting on the side of a parking lot, crying, with absolutely no one in the world to turn to. I was all alone, I had been all alone since the day I got on that plane and moved to San Diego. I had turned my back on every single one of my friends, who had always been there for me. I had not returned one phone call in over a year to anyone. I had abandoned all my values, my roots, my family, and my friends. And life just spit me out on the side of the road in Vista, California to die a meth addict. This was my life. My 'California Dream'.

And then a man in some type of an older style van or work-truck pulled up next to the video store side of the plaza, not far from where I was crouched down crying. He got out of his truck, and then noticed me in the grass. He walked over to me and asked me if he could help, if something was wrong. I looked up at the creepiest looking guy: skinny, long straggly hair, paint on his ripped jeans. But that man changed my entire life. He asked me again if I was alright, and I told him, no that I wasn't alright. He then asked me if he could drive me anywhere, or call anyone for me. And I looked back at the ground and began to sob again. He asked me what was wrong. And I just looked back at him, my face streaked with tears, and told him 'I just want to go home'. He then said to me, 'Then why don't you just go home.' And I did. I went home.

When he said this to me it was the first time I even realized that this was an option. I walked back over to the other side of the plaza again and called my dad. For the first time in my entire life, I called my dad to help me. I had moved out when I was sixteen years old. I had got my first apartment within the next year. I graduated high school in the top percentage of my class. I went to college and worked and always just made it on my own. I never wanted to ask my parents for any help, because I didn't ever really need it before. And if he never answered the phone when I called, or told me he couldn't help me, I don't know what would have happened to me. But he did answer, and when I asked him 'Dad, can I come home', and he asked me when, I answered 'Right now'. He asked me if I could get to the airport, and told me to call back in a little bit, and he would give me the flight information and would have a ticket waiting for me there.

And the next morning, I boarded a plane bound for Chicago, and then on to Manchester, New Hampshire. I never met up with that person who was bringing me meth. I saw D twice after I had moved home, he asked me to move back to San Diego almost as soon as I left. He told me that I could just get my own apartment out there, and we could still see each other. I bought a plane ticket back to San Diego for three weeks later. But I never went back. I never got back on that plane. I stayed at my dad and stepmom's house for the next year before I went back to college and moved in the dorms. I never did meth again, and I can't believe that this is my life now. My life is awesome. I could not be happier. I feel like I have been given such a great gift, such a wonderful life. And it is only getting better. I know now, that I will never touch crystal meth ever again. When I smoked it for the first time in 2003, I had no idea what it would do to me. I now know. I know that is not something I will ever endure again. I want nothing more then to educate people now about the 'World's Worst Drug'. And let them know, that there is hope. It might only be six out of every hundred people who get clean, but I am one of the six. I am no longer a meth addict.

Exp Year: 2004	ExpID: 63653
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jul 3, 2007	Views: 143,969
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Methamphetamine (37) : Not Applicable (38), Addiction & Habituation (10), Difficult Experiences (5), Retrospective / Summary (11), First Times (2)