Where did you get YOUR degree, by the way? Much respect.
Underneath a bridge shooting meth with a hobo named Larry who prep'd the shot with cracked and dirty fingers.... Well, not there, but I've been there... Mostly here at bluelight and online doing self-study, I like to update Wikipedia with information from online journals, etc. I have no degree, I'm a GED graduate and high-school drop out. Everyone tells me to go back to school...
Trust me I know where you are coming from, I spent all of last year (2010) shooting a lot of meth; mostly because I couldn't afford cocaine (...to shoot, which I like to better) with my heroin / dilaudid habit. I'm clean off of everything after my last month in county jail. Which wasn't on drug charges, but was because of drugs: I robbed a 7-11 living on the street so I wouldn't have to be dope-sick that day. Made it three days before they caught me pan-handling; the police knew me from the surveillance footage; and I did less time for that than breaking into my ex-girlfriend's house at three in the morning the previous year when I began my long meth binge (I walked 20 miles to her place, I still thought it was around midnight) and attacked the guy she was in bed with; who promptly put me in my place (thankfully he was bigger than me)... I hadn't seen her but once in person the past 7 months before that incident; but I had been up for a week shooting like $60 worth of crystal every two hours and was full on psychotic...... Got charged with a residential burglary and assault, the first trouble of my ever getting into at 28 years old, but only because I went back to apologize and they, understandably, called the police on me... It wasn't me at all, I'm still mentally fucked up over what I did. (I was stone cold rational sober when I robbed the 7-11, I just hated myself and knew getting put away would be the only way to get me clean)
So keep some kind of moderation at least, if I'm any kind of example. But of course, any kind of excessive use is moderation compared to my recent history with stories I could tell; with heroin for instance; I found a china white connection here on the west coast, my dealer told me to be careful that someone OD'd on $2 worth, well I was doing a bag or two a day of tar and just did the whole bag of china after taking an Atavan for dopesickness (because I didn't think I'd be getting well that day)... I have a vague memory after that of leaving the place I was staying at, with my friends trying to stop me and me having this imperative feeling that I can't explain to leave and make up any slurred nonsensical excuse to leave, then them giving up (I was mumbling, they say, something about "the first letter of your last name" and other straight out gibberish), then a vague memory of climbing a fence, and then waking up (luckily!) face down (literally) in a ditch behind a historic elementary school downtown. Face straight down, not turned to the side or anything, like a rigid Ken doll, in a full on ditch. I know no one dumped me there because I remember climbing the school-yard black iron-wrought fence to get there. I think my brain went on autopilot like an elk or deer that is going to the woods to lay down curl up and die.
Maybe this should go in 'the dark side' but I don't really feel like parading it, you just inspired me to give a response on why (in my opinion) meth isn't so wholesome. It's honestly not that dangerous in a life threatening sense (like cocaine) but it does render your mental faculties dull. It's the only drug I wouldn't seek out (though which I would do if someone offered it to me)... I still haven't gotten completely over my opiate or cocaine "seeking" fantasies (maybe I'd just rather die than end up without as sharp of senses), luckily I'm somewhere in the middle of nowhere without a vehicle, a suspended license, without money and I have made a resolution with myself not to pan handle anymore. (don't know how successful I'd be in a backwater town anyway.)
I used to work two full time jobs in healthcare as an RNA and even briefly at a hospital. (I did get several certifications for such work after my GED, but now I'm a felon for the robbery and can't do that line of work anymore)
My lawyer, the one my first time through jail, had a husband (also a lawyer) who secretly did so much meth daily to himself over a years time that he could no longer achieve an erection; and had to get a penis pump installed for impotence. He could afford that. Most of us can't. My lawyer said she studied it, and that it takes four years to get all your transporters back near the level to before when you've heavily used meth. 4 years of complete abstinence from dopamine releasing agents (which is hard to do, when you aren't, and it's the only thing that makes you so anymore). And they don't know about permanent damage.
I'm not opposed to meth, but I like to honestly weigh what risks are right for who uses it. I like thinking clearly, I know people have gone psycho on coke, but I just haven't, even doing two ounces to myself shooting it and not sleeping, whereas one shot of meth, and I even anticipate going so insane now (which didn't happen at first) that I get all the newspapers and magazines around the house spread out before me beforehand because I know I'll be so interested in reading all of 'the secret messages from God / the CIA / the aliens' seconds after doing the shot. (Have you ever seen the movie "A Beautiful Mind" with Russel Crowe? It's almost exactly like that, my experiences were nearly identical to that; amphetamine psychosis is very approximate to schizophrenia) I've talked to a lot of old time tweakers who "like to sketch out" & actually "like" "the sketch" of thinking people are talking about them and getting in fights with them etc. I sadly know what they mean, its "interesting" feeling like you are having a religious experiences with hyper-religious thinking (even as an atheist - before meth) or are controlling the elements of nature with your mind; but when the ideas don't go completely away after use (which they seem to with coke), and its hard (even after understanding the psychological rules of "confirmation bias"; that your brain retroactively archives events backwards so you remember something happening supernaturally or "pre-cognitively" by the glutamate and dopamine systems being so over blown) to talk yourself out of the supernaturally strange events that happen to you after doing it, even months later... well... I just want to say I was about as close as you can get to becoming one of those street lunatics while still being able to take a step back and not (at that point) actually become one.... thankfully. Doesn't mean I don't have shameful emotional and self-image scars of all kinds because of it. And this was only in the last year or two.
Of course, shooting meth and snorting meth are two very different things. Sticking with snorting it should remain a relatively sane experience.