fuck. i'll give yall a SHORT version. i mean abridged as fuck.
the first drug (and it IS a drug) i ever used was pot (which i can't really stand sitting here 20 years later. gives me fuckin anxiety, now.). I don't think pot is a gateway drug because i know many people who have smoked it for years and have never taken so much as a xanax or snorted a line of blow. said people would probably tell me to go fuck myself if i offered it. (some potheads are closed minded
)
i got dosed by a friend's older brother with what he said was 500ug of LSD in '97. 7th grade. he told how much i had taken after i had come off the shit (because i couldn't understand english about an hour after he had given it to me. he was trying to scare me and i was indeed terrified. complete ego loss.) looking back, the dude was 18 and i was 13...he was kind of a dumbass. he easily could have gone to jail if i had not kept it together and had a total meltdown requiring calling my parents (we knew even then that shrooms and LSD did not warrant hospital visits unless the user was seizing or their lips were turning blue due to not breathing....not color shifts style, (haha) AKA never. I walked around my friends house for 8 hours looking at my arms, not realizing they were attached to me or were arms for that matter, feeling the walls, crawling around on the floor, and saying "what the fuck? oh my god. what the fuck?" over and over. **this is what my friend told me i was doing. i don't remember a lot of this trip. i was never the same afterward, though, in that i gained a very high respect for psychedelic drugs and decided that god or whatever you want to call it if you believe in it was definitely not the shit i learned it church, but was something much to big to ever describe in words. i felt very subdued by what i was seeing and feeling. crushed, pulverized, and obliterated. i have since come to channel this sensation into very positive ways to grow as a person, respect myself, others, and whatever the fuck is running the mill of the universe. (i lost my way after some years when i stopped using psyches and started using pills, powders and eventually black tar. i'll get there in a sec...)
in retrospect, as a now older, and much more mature psychedelic user, i was really just getting "fucked up" back then. though all the while gaining a slice of insight into how fucking weird this whole universe and others truly are, i wasn't old enough to understand the gravity of doses like that...sometimes i'm still not but i don't do it for FUN anymore. Fun CAN be a byproduct, though.
Anyway, my third try was a combo of ativan and ambien maybe 6 years in to my stoner career. That shit FUCKED ME UP. the first ambien i ever took, i took in a dark room alone and hallucinated insane shadow people and such (which i later revisited on meth, numerous times after 2-5 day benders). i was around 17 at this time and had yet to ever even drink alcohol. I was that guy at the party in high school smoking weed and watching everyone else get sloshed, acting self-righteous and saying "yall are fucking stupid. why don't you just smoke weed, instead?". I also took lortabs a few times during this period but they made me incredibly ill unless i laid down for the duration of the experience. otherwise, i loved them. the first several times you use opiates...man that shit rules. years later, i found promethizine not only took care of the nausea FULLY but also boosted the opiates. i got a scrip for it, claiming nausea due to social anxiety and i soon developed a very long, painful addiction to all opiates.
**rewind a bit**
My senior year in highschool, i decided "FUCKIT" and ate 2 jello shots at a party. This is where the downfall really started, honestly. what a pussy way to imbibe alcohol for the first time, right? after about 3 minutes i felt slightly numb (i was also stoned so i didn't really experience alcohol on it's own the first time i used it). i ate 8 more jello shots in about 5 minutes. i was a horrible insecure person so i played it off like i had done this before. needless to say, i began sweating profusely about 6 minutes later while outside smoking a cigarette. i felt stupid but kind of good. i definitely needed to take a seat and did so. played it off pretty well that night but i did go puke in the corner of my friends back yard. no one noticed (and my 12th grade ass thanked fuck profusely for that). however, i started drinking every weekend after that. i stuck mostly to beer, which i developed a taste for almost instantly. i was like "this is like soda only waaaay fucking better and it's nice to have 3 or 4 with a joint or bowl". i LOVED the taste of beer (still do, though i no longer drink, for reasons you will find later on in this story.). I did weekend drinking for several years after, used hydros, benzos, and started taking psychedelics regularly (thankfully my mainstay).
My alcohol consumption started to increase my freshie year of college when i started running in to girl problems (i had a taste for awful, slutty, abusive, and very attractive women). Alcohol really helped me to care fuckin less. i stopped smoking as much weed because it was starting to make me get "all up in my head about the situations" if you know what i mean. It was a great friend. I'm a very sensitive person but enough alcohol (especially with a few lortabs or a xanax bar) alleviated the anxieties and hurt feelings i experienced when i was cheated on or just plain fucked over. I discovered that if i consumed these drugs constantly, hell, i never felt bad. A friend of mine in college also got 90 30mg Adderall IR per month and GAVE me his whole scrip every month. started snorting those every day and taking xanax and vodka to go to sleep at night. i excelled in college and graduated with a Bachelors in Arts with a 3.5 GPA. Got out of school and moved a girl i had been seeing for several years (though i got fucked up and cheated on HER a few times, early on. go fucking figure. she never found out.) ...anyway. i gotta stop the parentheses haha. i moved her in with me but could NOT get a job with my B.A. started working a nightshift at a local hospital. there were free hypos syringes in nearly all the rooms that patients checked out of and the Cath lab often left the medicine cart unlocked (unbelievable but i promise this is true). i used a friends pass to open the door to the cath lab several times a week. i told him it was to access the burn unit, which was highly restricted due to the patients having lowered immune systems. I stole vials of demerol/promethazine. JACKPOT. this is where i found promethazine. i could get as fucked up as i wanted off opiates without puking and while still being able to work! i started shooting morphine with the demerol and promethazine around this time in the bathrooms of the hospital. all new rigs. all medical grade. all doses regulated. dream job. worked it three years. showed up drunk almost every day and that finally got me fired. my relationship, which i had been in for six years at this point ended abruptly when i had "the flu" following my termination. The flu being MAJOR Opioid WD, of course. I didn't look for a job and i stole money from my gf while she was at work, drank lot's of whiskey, and put up with the WD. one night she came home and i ended it, surprisingly. at this point, i had given up and hated everything and everyone in my life, while at the same time feeling like they did not deserve to be treated the way i was treating them. she informed me she had been seeing another guy for the last 4 months, anyway, but that i had seemed too distant (high) to notice. that added insult to injury. solution? MORE DRUGS! I discovered roxicet within a few days of this girl leaving and i was getting 15's for $3 (yes. really). this ridiculously too good to be true price lasted as long as the roxis...about two months before my friend's mom discovered he was stealing from her stash. i was injecting and snorting them. when that supply ran dry, i had no fucking problem switching to heroin. i was hopeless and really just waiting to die. i sat on this addiction, while drinking a handle per day of whiskey. went to hair school, stayed fucked up the whole time. took a "leave of absence" for a month to try to straighten myself out, came back to school PRETENDING i was better (while still using and drinking) and suffered thru school. when i graduated, i met the love of my life. a straight laced fashion designer. she doesn't do drugs and did not know the signs of addiction what so ever. i successfully hid my opiate problem from her for 3 years. she even slept thru an overdose i had in the bathroom after she went to sleep one night. she knew i was an alcoholic but being that i wasn't abusive to her, she just hoped i would straighten that problem out. around this time, i started smoking crack and meth pretty regularly. heroin was always my main thing i absolutely "NEEDED". and alcohol. i could not even operate my body correctly unless i had a pint in the morning to get out of bed. next i had to score so i could go to the salon job i started. i got fired eventually ( i fell asleep standing up while working on a client and my boss, who had plenty of experience with drugs, as is common in the hair dresser world) and my boss told me she would give me my job back if i could get myself cleaned up. i never went back to work there. i started selling drugs to support myself while my girlfriend worked all day (she thought i was still working out of the house, cutting hair.) I drove prostitutes to tricks in exchange for hits from their boyfriends who were tricking them out. I stole, lied, hustled, got others hooked so i could get free dope by helping them get theirs, and never felt bad about any of it. i was the most selfish piece of shit ever and only prayed i would die soon.
One day, a junkie friend of mine asked me if i wanted a few caps of MDMA. SURE! why the fuck not? they were for free, surprisingly.
deep in to the roll, i started feeling like i was worth something. this is hard to explain but anyone who has experienced it knows what i am talking about. i had felt worthless for years and was overjoyed by this freeing sensation. i had rolled hundreds of times before this but for some reason, i have an awakening. i made an appointment with a suboxone doctor while rolling. next i called my parents and told them i was hopelessly addicted to heroin. after that, i called my girlfriend and told her the same thing but that i was getting help. i received undying support from my parents and girlfriend at once. i am truly blessed for this.
I got on suboxone three weeks later (taking only hydros and percs in the meantime. not enough to get high, as i had no desire to anymore, but just enough to stay almost "normal"). i got off suboxone a year ago. my alcohol problem continued and was bad enough that i knew factually was too ill to hold a real job. i kept selling drugs and eventually wound up in jail. i wasn't even smoking weed at the time. just drinking. my alcoholism, thru all that crazy shit, is what landed me in jail. after that, i found A.A. once i discovered i was allowed to choose my own conception of God or a Higher Power (which i had due to heavy use of psilocybin and DMT in my early 20's), i started working the 12-steps. i'm sure 12-step programs are frowned upon by many around here but it is the ONLY thing that helped me to quit a nearly 15 year daily heavy drinking regimen. when i was 26, a doctor told me i would be dead in 6 months if i didn't cut it out and THAT didn't even stop me. 12-steps have made me a nicer person. a much less selfish person....and much more patient and understanding with others. they haven't made me feel bad about myself...they have made me feel GOOD about myself and my recovery. my sponser knows i got my conception of a higher power from psychedelics and luckily agrees they can be beneficial. (psyches are frowned on in AA for some reason, even though Bill Wilson, co-founder was a HUGE proponent of LSD for alcoholics. go figure.) i am now married to the wonderful woman i have mentioned in this long (yet very abridged) post. I still use psychedelics on a monthly basis. LSD and more importantly Mushrooms, or DMT to keep myself humble and to gain spiritual insight. i have not had an alcoholic drink in 5 months. i eat healthily, i now have a job i LOVE, i pay my bills, i don't ever sleep in my car, and i can buy things for my wife when she lets me.
This is a story of triumph and it doesn't stop here. I have to keep living this way and helping others.
I do not judge any of you who love getting fucked up and partying. have fun! I'm just not someone who can use hard drugs. i've tried and failed miserably many times. If you can get away with it and just do it now and then, more power to you! if it is consuming your life and you are sick of it, ask for help. it's nothing embarrassing. Cheers!
