The Meth Makeover

I did coke everyday for about 10 months around 7 years ago. Was buying 2-3 Eight Balls a week and saving absolutely no money. I would do coke until 4 in the morning and then only get a few hours sleep before work. So I would do some coke to wake me up for work. Then repeat.

Finally I just got to the point where I was always fucking tired and just felt awful. Plus it fucks up your appetite. So I just stopped. Never bought another bag and after a few days I never even really thought about it again.

Not to say at the beginning it wasn't enjoyable. A few drinks and some coke can be very enjoyable. If someone offered me some coke I would probably do a couple lines, but I will never again spend a dollar of my money buying it.

I still smoke weed everyday though and am of the same mindset as Crown Royal.

 

I haven't dabbled too heavily in drug usage. I'm a heavy cigarette smoker, and I like weed, but that's about it. I've never been tempted to try meth, coke, crack, heroin, because those are all but guaranteed to fuck your life up at some point, and I know I wouldn't be able to fight an addiction if I formed one. I've had a very strong curiosity towards shrooms and ecstasy, but given all the conflicting things I've heard from different people/sources, I'm not confident in trying either.

I did try shrooms once, but I didn't eat enough to feel a damn thing, which was really my plan anyway. I'm the odd man out on this board when it comes to alcohol - I hate beer, fucking HATE it 99% of the time, but I will occasionally find myself in the mood for some liquor, in which case I usually drink until I'm one shot short of becoming an absolute and total ass. Weed is the only drug that's ever really appealed to me, but even then I use it intermittently. I'll smoke every day for a few months straight, followed by a year or more of not touching it. Rinse and repeat.

Someone made a point on the previous page regarding hallucinogenic drugs, and while I'm not familiar with any other than weed, I have to say, that post was right on. When I'm high I'll occasionally think of something in my life that needs to be changed...and it's not a "I should work on that" feeling, it's a "FIX IT NOW" kind of feeling. I want, at that moment, to go out and do exactly what needs to be done to fix said issue; no depression, no lethargy or apathy, just pure motivation that makes me want to take on the world.

...And then I pass out and doze for eight hours, waking to curse my state of consciousness through a veil of drowsiness. Speaking of which, how do the other pot users on the board deal with that "hangover"? Do you all even get it? I've known quite a few people who smoke, and almost none of them have had any idea what I'm talking about when I say weed makes it hard for me to wake up the next day. For fuck's sake, that stuff gives me wings, but it shouldn't be making me want to hibernate for a day and a half.

 

I smoke pot a couple times a month; generally when I'm in a shitty mood, it helps me be less bitchy. If I smoked any more, I'd be too worried to get fat because I eat so many Gushers when I'm high.

I tried E for the first time a couple weekends ago and it was amazing. It's not something I'd do on a regular basis or ever seek out, but a friend offered some to me at the bar. Sex on ecstasy is fucking phenomenal.

Heroin, coke and meth are all definite no's. My roommate's boyfriend is addicted to coke and while he is a nice enough guy when sober, he's a fucking mess when he's using. It's shitty to watch him treat my roomie like crap, but despite our constant suggestions that she dump his loser cokehead ass, she loves the guy too much.

 

No, I don't get it. Smoking weed has never stopped me from working hard at work either. I had a roommate in college who was like that though. We would smoke at night and I would wake up and go to class and I would come back after noon and he would still be sleeping.

 

People need to be careful about any drugs they take whether its drinking a cup of coffee, dropping acid, or drinking a nightcap. Everyone is affected differently by any variety of drugs and its because of this people can't make blanket statements. Take booze. Its harmless if used in moderation, but we all know the consequences of abusing it. Same with weed. Weed can be abused and wreck peoples lives. I think if people wish to continue making the parallel with weed and booze (regarding legality) they must also accept the negative consequences of the metaphor. Weed, like too much caffeine or hell Aspirin, can be harmful.

I think this also extends pharmaceutical drugs as well. My current opinion is that people far to readily take psychotropic drugs to fix their problems. Xanax is great if you are having a panic attack or your anxiety is unacceptably high, but it doesn't solve the cause of the problem, and like booze can obviously lead to addiction etc. I personally think anti-depressants are particularly insidious and overused. If a person is not suffering from major clinical depression, the effectiveness of these drugs is highly debatable. The downside to those drugs is huge, my particular hang up about that class of drugs is the dependency produced and if a person wishes to discontinue the drug the withdrawal is heinous.

But anyway my drug of choice is booze, and as I've found out because I had a bum shoulder for a while, percosets can also be fun.

 

Shit like this always seems like a good idea at the time. Surround yourself with friends, some drinks, and the right atmosphere, and it's near impossible to say no. The reason I started getting fucked up, night after night, day after day? I don't think I could wrap that reason up into a tight little package. Work related stress? My friends at the time and my desire to fit in? The fact that I'd felt I hadn't really lived? A solid cash flow? That feeling of invincibility that comes with being so young? Yeah, you name it, it was part of the reason.

Now. some people can handle it. I've known crackheads who hold down steady jobs, own homes and vehicles, and function surprisingly well despite smoking every night for several years. I know a good number of fellow chefs that pack their noses with cocaine the moment they get off shift and still manage to run successful restaurants. I know guys and gals who smoke a pound of ganja a week and you would hardly know it from how hard they work and how energetic and thorough they are in everyday life. They smash almost every stereotype and unless you knew them personally you'd be hard pressed to catch on to what they do in their off time.

Spot on. You'd be surprised what some folks can handle.


On the other hand, some people can't take it. They might last for a while, keeping on top of things quite well for a little while, before the wheels start to wobble and your priorities get all jumbled up. Their work starts to suffer, which hurts their paycheck, which hurts the bottom line of getting fucked up every night. They get desperate, make awful decisions, and even though they don't see it at the time, they damage a lot of the folks around them, guys and gals who might just have their backs if they would only man up and admit they're turning into a junkie. But they don't. They forfeit the ones closest to them, for whatever bullshit reason they can think of at the time. They take risks, like walking around alone in a shit neighborhood, just to score another gram or even just another hit. They ignore anything that hinders their goal of getting high.

I was one of the latter, fucked up on cocaine for a long time. Luckily, I got out before it got really bad. Got called out by a friend who'd been in the same position, and knew enough of the signs from personal experience to see what was happening to me. He smacked some sense into me and even though I fought him every step of the way he still managed to get it through my head that my addiction was going to get the best of me and fuck up any aspirations I'd had about anything at all. He got me to realize that I wasn't one of the ones who could handle drug addiction and keep it from blowing up.

Truth be told, while I regret a lot of my actions, I don't regret the experience as a whole. Taught me a lot about myself, and helped me grow up much faster than I would have otherwise. As it stands, strange as it may sound, I likely wouldn't be where I am right now if it weren't for all the bumps and all the 8-balls, a professional chef with a home, a wife, and hopefully kids down the road.

And now, after everything, I can teach my kids from my experiences, and hopefully save them from some of the trouble I've had. Hopefully. We'll see how that works out.

 

One of my best friends died last week due to some kind of drug combination. The autopsy didn't reveal anything, and I'm not exactly sure what he was on that night but I know he regularly drank all night, popped vicodin, occasionally snorted coke, and I'm pretty sure that night he did heroin (although I don't think he did this much). I'm not sure if he had a drug induced heart attack or stroke or what, but my other friend thinks he just got a bad batch of heroin. Losing someone this way feels as shitty as anything I've ever experienced. So unneccesary.

From now on I won't try any drug that has even the slightest chance of killing you. My friend seemed like the last person this would happen to. He would literally drink beer all night every night and he never got hangovers. He would do some combination of the drugs I listed above at least weekly and he always made it to work the next day. I guess living that recklessly catches up with you.

 

Yeah, pretty sure people don't need to worry about that particularly horrible "drug".

Funny that in an otherwise responsible post promoting safety, you mention mixing alcohol with oxycodone, a very dangerous and potentially lethal combination.

Focus-

I think people are fooling themselves a bit with pot; it's certainly not as dangerous as a hard drug, but does have some negative mental effects over a prolonged and constant period of use, and even when taken sporadically, largely kills productivity.

I can't tell you how many of my friends that used to smoke pot regularly found themselves able to get so much more done off the drug, and their research or work quality so far improved, that they largely gave it up, despite still enjoying it.

 

It's interesting to see that a lot of people from America and Canada seemed to have at least tried coke, but not had the opportunity to try E.

Where I live it's pretty much the opposite. (at least in my social circles) For a lot of people I know ecstasy was the next step after smoking pot. Everyone has tried E, even regularly does it, but it's rare to talk to someone who's done or is doing cocaine. Probably because it's so fucking expensive.

Speed is also really popular too, maybe because no one can afford coke.

 

I remember Dr. Drew (who I have grown to despise) claiming the guy was doing so great after the show, with his own "life coach" and everything...yeah, how about that? Meth is a hell of a drug.

 

When I was a teenager I had a good friend who I looked up to and was considered one of the smartest in our class. We were about 14 when we started hanging around with this other group of people and got into weed for a couple of years.

Eventually he moved away but just before he did he decided to do E with the others who had been doing it for a while. He asked me whether I would be there/do it with him but I held out for quite a while longer. He only did a couple and then didn’t have access to any drugs where he’d moved so just drank alcohol.

The first time he came to visit I could tell there was something not quite right with him as he would just sit there and say very little unless he was spoken to. It was even worse the second time, and then the last time he just rang up out of the blue and said he was passing through on a train and wanted to stop by.

It was awful when he showed up because his mind had totally gone. He always had this default facial expression of terror on his face and I couldn’t have any kind of conversation with him. It’s sad when I look back because he knew his mind was going and I think he was probably trying to get back to how things were before. He’d tell me stories about how he’d been in a mental institute and had nurses holding him down while he was screaming his head off hallucinating about things.

I can’t say for sure what caused it exactly but he was pretty sure it was the E’s. As has already been said on this thread drugs affect people differently and in this case it’s particularly scary because it wasn’t like he let it get a hold on him or anything. It’s like it just burnt a hole in his brain after using it a couple of times and it took his life away from him.


The others all ended up on heroin. Some managed to get out of it, although it’s hard to tell, but you can see it’s had a lasting effect on there lives. I’m just glad I decided to sit that one out the first time.

 

I'm 25, and I've never used any illicit drugs. It's not that I'm against drugs, in fact I would advocate for the legalisation of many currently illicit substances, it's just that I've just never really had the urge to use any. I do see the appeal of some drugs though, and am intrigued by acid so may give that a crack one day. As for everything else, I've never liked the smell of pot and am too shit-scared of all the impurities in E and speed to bother with them.

I do drink a fair bit though, and go through my fair share of caffeine. I did smoke for a while too, but gave that up (mostly) about 5 years ago.

When I visited the US for a conference a few years ago I couldn't sleep, and was prescribed some Xanax. Holy fuck does that knock you out. I got to sleep all right, and when I woke up I was a zombie for the whole day. How do people function taking that shit daily?

 

I am sort of a rarity in my town, and especially when I was in college, in that I haven't ever used any sort of drug other than booze.

The reason being, I have an addictive personality. I definitely have an addiction to alcohol and to gambling, and have finally gotten to the point where I have my use under control so it no longer negatively impacts my life, but it really is a battle. I no longer drink in the mornings, or before heading to work. But at nights I want to get obliterated still, but now I have the strength to have one stiff drink, and a glass of wine, but I have to use portion control. As in, I stop at the liquor store, buy an airplane bottle of liquor, and that is it for the night.

One of the problems is availability. It is easy as hell where I live to buy alcohol. I can walk 10 minutes down the street, and have hundreds of kinds of alcohol to choose from, and it will be really inexpensive. This is part of the reason I feel moving to Sweden will be good for me. The alcohol there is controlled by the state, and is not as accessible, and it is expensive, which really makes it even more unavailable.

When it came to using other drugs, I was constantly surrounded by it in college. I went to UC Santa Cruz, which was voted by Rolling Stone as "The most stoned campus". A lot of people thought that it was a cool honor, but Rolling Stone did a pretty good job of showing that it wasn't just people getting high at a party, but the people who did nothing but get high from morning to night, because they didn't have any real work to do because they were art students.

People say weed is a harmless drug, which like said above it can be to some, but not to everyone. I had two examples that kept me away from even trying it knowing how easy I get hooked on anything that gives my brain any sort of stimulus.

My sister completely fried her brain on drugs. I have posted about it on here before, but she started on weed, and gradually moved into harder and harder drugs, had bad interactions after smoking weed laced with who knows what, ended up in the hospital after overdosing, and committed after trying to off herself while high, and all this ultimately screwed up her life. I really didn't want to go down the path that she had, so I distanced myself from people at my high school that used drugs, and worked to not be my sister. All in all, it is pretty easy to avoid drugs in high school, but as I mentioned, college is a different animal. Especially at "the most stoned school in America." Luckily I understood what path I could easily go down, and was able to just avoid it.

 

Focus
I'm an alcoholic who's been in recovery for almost three years, and when I was drinking, I was also using and/or abusing a variety of different drugs. I had scripts for Xanax and Seroquel, which in the last few years of drinking, I couldn't sleep without. I had been on Xanax for years, both for sleep and panic/anxiety attacks (the inital script was for 2mg 4X/day, a pretty health dose even for someone my size), and it took a combination of booze and Xanax to get me to sleep. Eventually, that combination got me to sleep, but I started waking up at 2-3 am and couldn't fall back to sleep, and I'd either still be drunk or starting to feel the onset of a hangover. 100mg of Seroquel added to the bedtime cocktail had me sleeping through the night (and most of the morning the next day--I worked from home and fully took advantage of that situation). My wife isn't a big fan of pills, but whenever she got a Rx for painkillers, I made sure it was filled and I used them. I used to steal them from my folks' medicine cabinet whenever I visited them (my dad was dying of cancer before I got sober and he refused to take the morphine, so I helped myself). I was also smoking pot pretty much every day, and that's what life had become--drinking and drugging every day. Eventually, I hit my bottom and luckily, survived it. I haven't had a drink or used a drug recreationally since.

I tried coke a long time ago and didn't really like it. Heroin was taboo (junkies do that shit!), as was crystal meth, crack, ICE (none of which were around in my early and experimental years). I dropped acid a few times, lludes when we could get them, and loved mushrooms and hashish.

I really don't see myself picking up a drink or a joint anytime soon, but a part of me would love to give E a try just for the experience. That "part of me" is being an addict.

 

To clear up my previous post, when I made my caveat I did not mean to insinuate that I have mixed booze and pills. Clearly that is one of the dumbest and most dangerous things you can do. I have never used pills recreationally but when I had a bad shoulder I used them therapeutically and when my shoulder was better I stopped using them.

 

Ever heard of Percocet? Well that's my favorite drug in the world, except percocet is oxycodone plus tylenol and is 1/6 the strength of the 30mg oxycodone pills I like. It's becoming harder and harder to find because the DEA actually can control it. It's can't be produced in another country and smuggled. The pharmaceutical companies that make them have to abide by ever stricter law. But when I can find it I'll get them and either snort or swallow them. I don't remember the last time I found any but I guess it was a couple weeks maybe.

edit: I too draw the line with syringes. I can't fucking stand that shit, it's disgusting. When I'm in homes of known intravenous drug users I won't even sit down on their couches. I once passed on fucking a very hot girl because she was an intravenous drug user. Even though I do have naked pictures of her on my phone I don't have permission and don't think I'll be getting it anytime soon.

 

Pot has never stopped my productivity. I can get the weed hangover from time-to-time, which is just a baked out feeling. Kind of you you just woke up. Doesn't stop me from doing anything though. I smoke every day, at least 1-2 grams. It's the great thing about SoCal, weed is REALLY easy to find because it practically legal to sell out here. If your ever stuck in a traffic jam in SoCal roll down your window because you can probably smell pot from all the people smoking joints in there car bored.

I've also done acid and shrooms. Acid gave me a hangover the next day that made me all sweaty, and that's why I won't do it again. Kind of hard to pick up women when your sweating out of ever pour on your body. Shrooms gave me no hangover, just a 1 hour trip that felt like 1 week. Never do shrooms alone. When I do shrooms I get the feeling that I can hear colors, or taste sounds. This is because shrooms fucks with your sensory input in your brain, so if you take it alone it's really hard to communicate with other people. You'll feel shut off from the world, laugh yourself into insanity, and then cry yourself into a ball on your bed because every breath feels like it takes a minute.

That being said I'll probably do shrooms again and start posting on the board while I'm rolling on them.

My uncle did heroine, and seeing what it did to him makes me never want to do it. He was so high he tried to rob my great grand-pa, who pulled on a gun on him. My uncle then ran out the house, my great grand-pa called the police, and when the police came they found my uncle hiding on my great grand-pa property. Where did my uncle hide? My uncle shimmied up the telephone pole in my great grand-pa's front yard. The cops could see my uncle from they're squad cars while pulling up to my great grand-pa's house for the robbery call.