GoldenGate
Greenlighter
- Joined
- May 6, 2017
- Messages
- 11
Hello all,
I am new to using this forum although I have read many interesting and helpful posts on bluelight over the past seven years of my addiction. I hope you'll bare with me and that I am posting in the right place etc.
So basically I have been a drug and alcohol addict for the past seven years and have been using for about ten years. I have been at the lowest and highest points I believe to be possible and have attempted to quit many times using various methods.
This time however I am 100% focused on stopping my use entirely and am using every tool I can think of at my disposal. I though it would be a good idea to begin a drug withdrawal and recovery journal so that I can look back on my progress and maybe get some help and advice from others who have been through similar things.
I will begin with by explaining my story, which is gonna take up quite a lot of writing, so if you wanna see what's been going on today and recently then you can just skip to the bottom. Hopefully I will have enough stamina to get that far. This is gonna be a long post as I have over 10 years of shit to get off my chest so I hope you'll bare with me.
2003:
So I was a nervous and timid kid growing up. I didn't have it diagnosed at the time but I definitely suffered from GAD. My confidence levels began plummeting when I got to secondary school and hit their worst in year 10 when I was 15 years old and I was unable to even answer the register in class for fear of saying 'yes sir' in front of 30 people. I had no friends, girls used to look at me with disgust and during lunch period I sometimes used to hide in the cupboard in the music department in which pupils stored their instruments.
One day I was hiding the cupboard in the pitch black for an hour when the door opened and Mr. Robb my music teacher stood looking at me. He asked why I was here and not playing with friends but I could see he already knew the answer. It was the look of pity in his eyes which totally undid me and that afternoon after school had finished I broke down at home on the landing. I remember my cat Prudence (who is still alive today) comforting me, and some very important thoughts came to my head which changed my life forever. I thought 'Luke, if you carry on this way you will never get a girlfriend, never get a job, get married, have friends, have sex etc etc.' I decided to do something about it once and for all.
I begged my parents for an electric guitar for my 15th bday and got one
I practiced before and after school religiously for 8+ hours a day. I timed myself every day to make sure I got those 8 hours in and after 2 weeks I was playing Noel Gallagher's most difficult Oasis riffs. After a month I could play most Pink Floyd, and after six months I was playing Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, and every other virtuoso rock guitar band I could think of.
2004:
I joined a rock band after school with whom I was extremely shy, but my confidence began to increase in small increments when my fellow band members saw what I could do. I formed a plan to up my confidence to the max and found a colossal amount of raw determination in order to complete this plan:
Every night after my 8 hours of practice I listened to Van Halen, Led Zep etc. in bed, in headphones with the music turned up to the max. I closed my eyes and imagined myself on stage playing guitar while girls swooned and guys stared at me in awe. This constant visualization really worked and gradually tuned my brain into realizing that their was no danger in performing on stage.
At the end of my last secondary school year, year 11, their was to be a huge final assembly which involved the entire school and corresponding college as well as all the teachers totaling almost 2000 people. I got in with the school orchestra who were playing 'smoke on the water' during the final assembly and acquired a wireless guitar system. At this point only 3 people apart from my parents knew that I had become a virtuoso guitar player in the space of a year and I still had no friends, but my year-long plan was aiming to change that.
After the headteacher stepped off the podium, the orchestra began to play, and I (with my heavily nurtured visualization tactic) stepped forward feeling like I was in a dream. I climbed the steps to the headteacher's podium so that the whole school including all teachers and everyone who had bullied me for years could see, and when it was time for my minute of fame i threw the guitar behind my head and played a blinding solo. Time moved slower. It was as if I had been made for this moment. I could see the faces of the crowd, staring in disbelief as I hammered out music at top speed, mashing the pentatonic and blues scales into a river of delicate and harsh sound. I remember seeing the faces of bullies who had taunted me for 5 years, and they looked embarrassed as well as awestruck.
After my solo I climbed down from the podium still feeling like I was in a bubble, and everything from that moment changed. After the assembly suddenly everyone wanted to be my friend. Bullies came and apologized. Girls ran towards me and hugged me. It was like something out of a film.
My confidence began to climb steadily after that. I went to college and made fast and loyal friends for the first time in my life. At the age of 18 I started drinking and quickly became known as a fun guy.
Life was really pretty damn good.
But it was nothing compared to uni.
2007:
At uni I was still engaging in various missions to get my confidence even higher. I started sleeping with girls for the first time and that quickly became regular. My popularity was very high and only got higher. I was a totally different person to the one I had been at school and I owed most of that to the guitar-solo incident. I developed an extremely positive mindset and nothing could ever bring me down. People who were depressed and feeling down used to come to me and I'd always find some way of making them feel good. I was a good person; morally tight and mentally very strong. If I had said this at the time it would have been bragging but I feel I can say it now because I am not that person any more.
The uni I went to was in Brighton, and for those of you who don't know, Brighton is like the drug capital of the UK. People everywhere were taking drugs. On campus people were smoking weed everywhere, even the security guards. People were sniffing ketamine and cocaine. Most of these drugs I had never heard of before. Before uni I had never once been exposed to drugs. I drank quite a bit but it wasn't problematic. The idea of drug use terrified me; I used to think that if you took 'ecstasy' your brain would explode and I remember sincerely promising my mum before I left for uni that I would never touch anything.
After a few months of uni however, I got curious. I began researching drugs heavily using wikipedia, bluelight, and in particular, erowid. It got so that I knew more about drugs than the people taking them did. I knew the chemical make-ups, the effects, LD50's and loads more, and I had never touched a thing.
That changed in Feb 2008 when I got so curious about MDMA, particularly since it seemed to me that it was less harmful than pretty much anything else, including and especially alcohol, that I finally took it at a small firegathering rave.
Well I was blown away. My life changed again for the better. I never could have imagined that there could be such an amazing feeling. I became completely obsessed with 'Mandy', couldn't stop thinking about it, and began taking it once a month. Once quickly turned into twice and my obsession deepened until some of my friends became worried about how much I was going on about it. I also began smoking weed quite regularly, although I never really enjoyed it. I think I did it just to look and feel 'cool'.
My life was literally perfect.
2009:
I Jan 2009 I had my best MD trip ever and the best night/morning of my life before or since. (I might go into it in a trip report, but I called the experience 'Snow Morning', and wrote a piece of trance music about it many years ago.) Then, suddenly, MDMA was gone. Something to do with the sap from the sassafras tree in China being made illegal I seem to remember. It was like my best friend had been killed. I felt totally bereaved. I took loads of shite which was supposed to be Mandy but was probably just piperazines and other rubbish. I began taking ketamine and coke to compensate which was great but never the same and this went on for about 9 months until...one day...my dealer gave me some mephedrone to try. I sniffed a line, walked out of his house and was immediately hit with the best rush of euphoria I had had since the MDMA days. I remember pulling my phone out and phoning everyone I knew to tell them I had just discovered something incredible. I sprinted back to the dealers and bought 2 grams.
I had a love affair with Meph for a couple of months, and then after partying for four days straight, had a severe psychotic panic attack which lasted four hours. That was by far the worst experience of my life at the time. I don't even wanna explain it. It's too traumatic. I'd like to say I was put off Meph after that but soon after, I was using again. I began using alcohol to drink off the comedown and the anxiety which was starting to come heavy with the drug.
2010:
The worst year of my life. By far. Just saying that number, 2010, makes my chest feel tight. By this time I had a huge reputation as party king. I used to set up illegal raves on the south downs. I could get free tickets to anywhere and used to take friends to whatever gig they wanted for free: DJ Marky, Foreign Beggars, Danny Byrd, High Contrast etc. I'd pay for their drinks just to feel like a bigshot. I knew security guards, bouncers, police, gangsters, semi-famous DJ's, and I'd sort all of them out with drugs. I was at the height of my popularity to the point where half the people that knew me I didn't even recognize. I had a religious routine in which I would begin partying with alcohol on friday morning, and continue for four days straight till monday night with Meph, Coke, Ket, Weed, Alcohol, Mushrooms, 2CB, GBL and more. I did this every week for two months. Once I stayed up for 11 days straight.
But something was going wrong. I was starting to lose it. Things were happening to my psyche which I cannot explain. Friends began warning me and eventually leaving me. Something dark was happening to my mind everytime I took Meph, but by this time I was addicted and couldn't seem to stop. I would drink at least 30 units of booze every day to compensate for the absolutely crippling panic which was descending 24//7. I had a hospital visit after which I tried to stop cold turkey but couldn't.
Eventually in March 2010 I lost it completely and went totally insane. Things happened which were so traumatic that I cannot explain them on here and have been having therapy because of them ever since. My heart is pounding right now just writing this. In midst of madness during which I was drinking my own piss for possible alcohol content and sleeping in vomit as well as constantly hallucinating, I text my parents who immediately left work and came and picked me up from Brighton. They found me crying and screaming, lying in piss and vomit, surrounded by vodka bottles. I screamed all the way back to Essex, and had no idea who my parents were. They took me to hospital and later to the doctor who diagnosed me with seven mental disorders: Panic disorder, Heavy psychosis, Sleep paralysis, PTSD, Major depressive disorder, Insomnia and GAD. I was given tiny doses of Librium which did nothing and had to ride it all out at my parents house, although I constantly stole their alcohol until they threw it all down the sink.
I continued to suffer all of these disorders which included thinking that I was dead and in hell for about 8 months, whilst living with my parents (I had dropped out of uni towards the end of my final year.) Eventually I began buying Diazepam from the internet to kill the anxiety and panic, and then extracting codeine from cocodamol to try and make up for the loss of euphoria and the horribly depressing nostalgia I experienced as a result of leaving Brighton and losing the entire life I had spent years building up. I had gone too far. Just way too far. My popularity was evaporated. My positive outlook was gone. The magnificent people and places had vanished like some gruesome magic trick. Due to this heavy depression mixed with psychosis and 24/7 crippling anxiety, I attempted suicide three times, the last time being Feb 2011.
2011-2013
I continued to live with my parents and continued to drink as much alcohol as I could smuggle into the house, and take diazepam from the net as well as alprazolam, lorazepam, clonazepam etc etc. I was also using 256mg of codeine a day and developed a nasty habit. My relationships with my family were mostly bad, although my family are all totally wonderful and have always been more than supportive. I was the problem. Before 2010 I had been good. Morally upstanding and mentally strong. But I had been psychologically torn to pieces by the events of March 2010 and I started lying and thieving from my family in order to fund my habits. I began going to the local Buddhist center and got pretty into that way of life. I tried meditating every day but it didn't even put a dent in my addictions or my anxiety.
Everything led to a climax after which I moved out into my own place in supported living. I carried on drinking like a fish and went to hospital a few times to beg for Librium. I was put on a subutex program starting from 2mg and stopped drinking alcohol, although I was now using up to 120mg of Diazepam a day. The subutex felt like a gift from god! Suddenly I had so much energy. I felt revitalized and on the 1st of November 2013 I began learning Russian for at least 4 hours a day. I had been playing concert level piano since college and I got myself an electric piano and began playing that again for another 3 hours per day. I also got heavily into exercise of which I did 2hrs a day. Throughout all this time however, I was still experiencing horrible nightmares and other PTSD symptoms from my experiences in 2010.
2014:
Everything seemed to be moving up. My relationship with my family started to rebuild and I went to see them every Sunday which was usually the highlight of my week. I finally got a job on the local army garrison, ensuring the soldiers got fed, and I aced my interview and got the job as a supervisor. I tried to go cold turkey from the Diazepam when I began my job, but had a massive seizure 3 days into the job whilst at work, and was taken to hospital with a concussion. I began to come down from my Subutex late in the year and at the time this felt fine. I was occasionally using some stimulants, namely coke and crappy MDMA but they didn't seem to be a problem. I was conveniently in denial about how much Diazepam I was taking, and told my parents I wasn't using any. As far as anyone was concerned, I was just using a small dose of Subutex which was getting lower by the fortnight.
2015:
I came off the Bupe in March 2015 and although there was no physical withdrawal to speak of, I was hit with an unexpected and overwhelming PAWS and couldn't go into work for a week because of the depression and emptyness. The following week I went into town and found a dealer who sold me 2 8mg subs for £10. I couldn't believe how cheap it was and because my tolerance was down, sniffing 4mg put me in the stratosphere. I found another dealer who began selling me enough for 8mg a day. I would sniff Subutex the minute I got out of bed, and then run the 6 miles to work. I'd then sniff more in the toilets at work. It wasn't long however, before my tolerance increased and it seemed that no matter how much I took, I just couldn't get the same high from it. Meanwhile my Diazepam use was still a huge problem. I was suffering from sleep paralysis every night, something which I didn't attribute to my benzo use at the time. Silly me.
2016:
Things kindof went downhill some more during 2016. I found a coke dealer who would deliver to my street and his stuff was always very pure. I'd always get a gram on payday and sometimes when payday was also a workday, i'd buy the g in the morning, and then take it to work and get high as a kite.
Everything continued pretty much in that vain until November.
After cocaine use at the start of the month made me incredibly anxious, I used almost my entire Diazepam supply in one night to quench the near-panic. Since online vendors were becoming more unreliable, I tried to buy Diazepam off the street from an old dealer, but when I turned up to meet her, two guys with pistols appeared from behind me and I was robbed out of £80. I still had enough money to buy more off the net, and god knew I needed it...but something happened inside me in November. It was like some old and noble part of me suddenly appeared from nowhere and said no. I suddenly couldn't bring myself to order any more Diazepam. It was really strange and I still don't understand it now.
Some strength kicked in and I remember thinking 'I don't wanna be putting pills into my body for the rest of my life'. I had been taking between 40 and 120mg of Diazepam per day for 6 years and I knew that cold turkey could kill me, but that voice suddenly had no power.
I went cold turkey from the Diazepam and after four days was sent home from work sick with 'migraines'. I bought alcohol to cope with the sudden horrendous anxiety and the next day was so messed up from withdrawl that I couldn't operate my mobile to call in sick to work. I spent the next two weeks in a downhill slope of heavy psychosis, constant panic, sickness and more. I didn't have the strength to pick up any opiates so I started going cold turkey from them as well. After 2 weeks of it I blacked out and awoke to my parents kicking my door in. I was seizing and lying on my bedroom floor in vomit surrounded by bottles of empty vodka. Work had gotten worried that I hadn't been calling in and had called my parents who had apparantly been banging on my front door for a while.
They took me to hospital where I was psychotic and screaming. The doctor said I had only been about an hour away from death. I hadn't eaten in three weeks and was severly dehydrated and so was attached to various drips and had plenty of tests done. I was given 120mg of Librium the first day which just didn't cut it since my problem was rooted in Diazepam rather than alcohol. My parents were amazing. They visited me in hospital everyday and bought me my favourite foods, and bought me inspiring books from waterstones. I was in hospital for a week before I was taken back by my mum to stay with my parents for as long as it took for me to get better.
I was completely clean from absolutely everything for a whole ten days which was extremely difficult and was a record since 2010. After being off opiates and benzos for the first time in seven years, music began to sound amazing again. I started to feel things I hadn't felt in a long time. I stayed with my parents for two months and used absolutely no benzos or alcohol, although my anxiety issues were very bad. I did use codeine occasionally which I smuggled into my parents house and extracted from co-codamol.
Relationships began to mend again and my parents watched me very very closely; this was during the xmas holidays so my parents were both off work and were able to watch me most of the time. It was during their morning dog walks that I would sometimes slip out to the local pharmacy for codeine.
2017:
Things plummeted again when I tried to go back to work - I'd been on medical leave for 2 months and on the medical slips I always got my doc to write 'PTSD' - which was kindof true. This was the first time I had been at this job without any benzos and 6 months previous I had been promoted to team leader. I felt I had no confidence without the Diazepam and I felt the way I used to feel at school all those years (and paragraphs) ago. After a few awful days of work I was on my way out the building one day when I got a txt from a dealer offering me 84 10mg Zolpidem pills for £50 plus a couple of free subs thrown in. Well I couldn't resist and I broke my sleeping pill sobriety which had lasted an awesome 7 weeks, and got totally fucked.
My parents could of course tell straight away that I was on something, as my tolerance was back to zero and 30mg hit me very hard. They told me they knew for a fact that I was on drugs and for some reason I got very angry. I think it was that I was angry at myself for breaking my sobriety, but I behaved like a complete c**t and insulted them before packing my bags and storming out.
What an arsehole. They had looked after me for 2 months - had saved my life in November, and I was spitting in their faces. I was so stoned I barely remember storming out but on the way home I bought a bottle of red wine and a gram of coke. I then spent the next 8 days spending my remaining £400 on coke, booze, weed and probably alot of other shite. After the 8 days was up I picked myself up and went back to work.
I stayed off the sleepers and kept my codeine use so infrequent that I didn't pick up a habit again. But then the devil got to work on me again in a big way.
A colleague of mine who has back problems came to me one day when I was feeling particularly depressed. He used to give me a box of his codeine here and there. I asked him if he had any codeine and he said 'no, I've got something better for you'.
Now at this point I had taken 47 different recreational drugs including legal ones, but for 6 years, the one drug I most wanted to try was Oxycodone. I'd never had it before but it sounded like the sort of thing i would fall in love with. And what was my colleague holding out in front of him? A full blister pack of 14 5mg Oxy pills. I couldn't believe my luck(?), and I danced around with joy. He didn't even want any cash for them. I promptly skipped into the toilet and sniffed 20mg. And then 10 minutes later another 10, and then another 10 until i'd taken 40mg. I liked it a lot but it wasn't what I expected. I proceeded to buy it entire script off him of which he had 80.
Over the last few months I've been buying every single Oxy he gets prescribed. At first he got 80 every two weeks, but I convinced him to ask his doc to give him more and she upped to script to 160 every two weeks. I bought them all. I sniffed them all. It got so that I was taking 200mg a day. Now I know people often do a lot more than that but my use went from about 80mg a day to 200+ in two weeks. My tolerance has never gone up so fast with anything. I also began taking a small amount of Diazepam to help with sleep since those Oxy's are so damn stimulating, but instead of getting the benzos off the net I get them from a dodgy dealer who sometimes puts other sweets in there, namely Nitrazepam and Pregabalin.
March 17: we're getting close now -
I took a week off work to try and go cold turkey from the Oxy but after 48 hours I failed dismally and went into work and took £60 out the safe for more. I also took the money for food since my company didn't pay me for 2 months. Not trying to justify it but there it is. I'm not proud of it. I wasn't caught and I put the money back on payday, and then had an attack of conscience and told my manager everything. He suspended me on full pay and I'm currently being investigated and basically waiting to be fired.
CURRENT EVENTS APRIL - MAY 17
During my time off work pending investigation, I have been attempting to put my life back on track....again. (Not sure if i've really mentioned it, but i've tried to do that dozens of times now). I went to the local drug clinic and saw the opiate specialists who asked me to withdraw for 24 hours to see what they were dealing with. Well after 24 hours without Oxycodone I was bad. They rated me 18 out of 20 on the 'how bad is your opiate addiction' chart and the doc wanted to put me on 8mg of Buperenorphine. I thought that sounded too much and said 6mg. After a few bad days I went back and got put on 12mg. This was 5 days ago.
So over the last few days I've been using:
12mg Buprenorphine
500mg Pregabalin (approx)
5mg Diazepam (average)
5mg Nitrazepam (average)
Since I have a lot more energy with the Bupe, and a lot of time on my hands with the suspension from work, I've been exercising for an hour a day, playing piano for an hour, learning Russian for an hour and learning Hebrew for an hour.
I don't feel that the benzo's are a current problem, however I am attuned to the fact that they could easily get out of hand and so I am watching my use like a hawk. Considering that I was on approx 120mg Diazepam a day a few months ago, I think this is pretty good. I aim to be taking no benzos by July.
The Pregabalin is a dark horse. I have found it extremely helpful lately with anxiety, sleep, opiate withdrawal, pain and depression, and I think it's gonna be a bit of a bitch to stop, not so much physically but psychologically. I'm gonna create an aim for that one later after doing more research.
That's my story so far. Obviously I've missed out shitloads, but I'll be amazed and impressed if anyone's taken the time to read all of it.
I will now post daily updates on my progress starting with today the 6th of May 2017. I really hope I stick with it. I really hope this is the last hurdle. Please life, let me win.
I am new to using this forum although I have read many interesting and helpful posts on bluelight over the past seven years of my addiction. I hope you'll bare with me and that I am posting in the right place etc.
So basically I have been a drug and alcohol addict for the past seven years and have been using for about ten years. I have been at the lowest and highest points I believe to be possible and have attempted to quit many times using various methods.
This time however I am 100% focused on stopping my use entirely and am using every tool I can think of at my disposal. I though it would be a good idea to begin a drug withdrawal and recovery journal so that I can look back on my progress and maybe get some help and advice from others who have been through similar things.
I will begin with by explaining my story, which is gonna take up quite a lot of writing, so if you wanna see what's been going on today and recently then you can just skip to the bottom. Hopefully I will have enough stamina to get that far. This is gonna be a long post as I have over 10 years of shit to get off my chest so I hope you'll bare with me.
2003:
So I was a nervous and timid kid growing up. I didn't have it diagnosed at the time but I definitely suffered from GAD. My confidence levels began plummeting when I got to secondary school and hit their worst in year 10 when I was 15 years old and I was unable to even answer the register in class for fear of saying 'yes sir' in front of 30 people. I had no friends, girls used to look at me with disgust and during lunch period I sometimes used to hide in the cupboard in the music department in which pupils stored their instruments.
One day I was hiding the cupboard in the pitch black for an hour when the door opened and Mr. Robb my music teacher stood looking at me. He asked why I was here and not playing with friends but I could see he already knew the answer. It was the look of pity in his eyes which totally undid me and that afternoon after school had finished I broke down at home on the landing. I remember my cat Prudence (who is still alive today) comforting me, and some very important thoughts came to my head which changed my life forever. I thought 'Luke, if you carry on this way you will never get a girlfriend, never get a job, get married, have friends, have sex etc etc.' I decided to do something about it once and for all.
I begged my parents for an electric guitar for my 15th bday and got one
I practiced before and after school religiously for 8+ hours a day. I timed myself every day to make sure I got those 8 hours in and after 2 weeks I was playing Noel Gallagher's most difficult Oasis riffs. After a month I could play most Pink Floyd, and after six months I was playing Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, and every other virtuoso rock guitar band I could think of.2004:
I joined a rock band after school with whom I was extremely shy, but my confidence began to increase in small increments when my fellow band members saw what I could do. I formed a plan to up my confidence to the max and found a colossal amount of raw determination in order to complete this plan:
Every night after my 8 hours of practice I listened to Van Halen, Led Zep etc. in bed, in headphones with the music turned up to the max. I closed my eyes and imagined myself on stage playing guitar while girls swooned and guys stared at me in awe. This constant visualization really worked and gradually tuned my brain into realizing that their was no danger in performing on stage.
At the end of my last secondary school year, year 11, their was to be a huge final assembly which involved the entire school and corresponding college as well as all the teachers totaling almost 2000 people. I got in with the school orchestra who were playing 'smoke on the water' during the final assembly and acquired a wireless guitar system. At this point only 3 people apart from my parents knew that I had become a virtuoso guitar player in the space of a year and I still had no friends, but my year-long plan was aiming to change that.
After the headteacher stepped off the podium, the orchestra began to play, and I (with my heavily nurtured visualization tactic) stepped forward feeling like I was in a dream. I climbed the steps to the headteacher's podium so that the whole school including all teachers and everyone who had bullied me for years could see, and when it was time for my minute of fame i threw the guitar behind my head and played a blinding solo. Time moved slower. It was as if I had been made for this moment. I could see the faces of the crowd, staring in disbelief as I hammered out music at top speed, mashing the pentatonic and blues scales into a river of delicate and harsh sound. I remember seeing the faces of bullies who had taunted me for 5 years, and they looked embarrassed as well as awestruck.
After my solo I climbed down from the podium still feeling like I was in a bubble, and everything from that moment changed. After the assembly suddenly everyone wanted to be my friend. Bullies came and apologized. Girls ran towards me and hugged me. It was like something out of a film.
My confidence began to climb steadily after that. I went to college and made fast and loyal friends for the first time in my life. At the age of 18 I started drinking and quickly became known as a fun guy.
Life was really pretty damn good.
But it was nothing compared to uni.
2007:
At uni I was still engaging in various missions to get my confidence even higher. I started sleeping with girls for the first time and that quickly became regular. My popularity was very high and only got higher. I was a totally different person to the one I had been at school and I owed most of that to the guitar-solo incident. I developed an extremely positive mindset and nothing could ever bring me down. People who were depressed and feeling down used to come to me and I'd always find some way of making them feel good. I was a good person; morally tight and mentally very strong. If I had said this at the time it would have been bragging but I feel I can say it now because I am not that person any more.
The uni I went to was in Brighton, and for those of you who don't know, Brighton is like the drug capital of the UK. People everywhere were taking drugs. On campus people were smoking weed everywhere, even the security guards. People were sniffing ketamine and cocaine. Most of these drugs I had never heard of before. Before uni I had never once been exposed to drugs. I drank quite a bit but it wasn't problematic. The idea of drug use terrified me; I used to think that if you took 'ecstasy' your brain would explode and I remember sincerely promising my mum before I left for uni that I would never touch anything.
After a few months of uni however, I got curious. I began researching drugs heavily using wikipedia, bluelight, and in particular, erowid. It got so that I knew more about drugs than the people taking them did. I knew the chemical make-ups, the effects, LD50's and loads more, and I had never touched a thing.
That changed in Feb 2008 when I got so curious about MDMA, particularly since it seemed to me that it was less harmful than pretty much anything else, including and especially alcohol, that I finally took it at a small firegathering rave.
Well I was blown away. My life changed again for the better. I never could have imagined that there could be such an amazing feeling. I became completely obsessed with 'Mandy', couldn't stop thinking about it, and began taking it once a month. Once quickly turned into twice and my obsession deepened until some of my friends became worried about how much I was going on about it. I also began smoking weed quite regularly, although I never really enjoyed it. I think I did it just to look and feel 'cool'.
My life was literally perfect.
2009:
I Jan 2009 I had my best MD trip ever and the best night/morning of my life before or since. (I might go into it in a trip report, but I called the experience 'Snow Morning', and wrote a piece of trance music about it many years ago.) Then, suddenly, MDMA was gone. Something to do with the sap from the sassafras tree in China being made illegal I seem to remember. It was like my best friend had been killed. I felt totally bereaved. I took loads of shite which was supposed to be Mandy but was probably just piperazines and other rubbish. I began taking ketamine and coke to compensate which was great but never the same and this went on for about 9 months until...one day...my dealer gave me some mephedrone to try. I sniffed a line, walked out of his house and was immediately hit with the best rush of euphoria I had had since the MDMA days. I remember pulling my phone out and phoning everyone I knew to tell them I had just discovered something incredible. I sprinted back to the dealers and bought 2 grams.
I had a love affair with Meph for a couple of months, and then after partying for four days straight, had a severe psychotic panic attack which lasted four hours. That was by far the worst experience of my life at the time. I don't even wanna explain it. It's too traumatic. I'd like to say I was put off Meph after that but soon after, I was using again. I began using alcohol to drink off the comedown and the anxiety which was starting to come heavy with the drug.
2010:
The worst year of my life. By far. Just saying that number, 2010, makes my chest feel tight. By this time I had a huge reputation as party king. I used to set up illegal raves on the south downs. I could get free tickets to anywhere and used to take friends to whatever gig they wanted for free: DJ Marky, Foreign Beggars, Danny Byrd, High Contrast etc. I'd pay for their drinks just to feel like a bigshot. I knew security guards, bouncers, police, gangsters, semi-famous DJ's, and I'd sort all of them out with drugs. I was at the height of my popularity to the point where half the people that knew me I didn't even recognize. I had a religious routine in which I would begin partying with alcohol on friday morning, and continue for four days straight till monday night with Meph, Coke, Ket, Weed, Alcohol, Mushrooms, 2CB, GBL and more. I did this every week for two months. Once I stayed up for 11 days straight.
But something was going wrong. I was starting to lose it. Things were happening to my psyche which I cannot explain. Friends began warning me and eventually leaving me. Something dark was happening to my mind everytime I took Meph, but by this time I was addicted and couldn't seem to stop. I would drink at least 30 units of booze every day to compensate for the absolutely crippling panic which was descending 24//7. I had a hospital visit after which I tried to stop cold turkey but couldn't.
Eventually in March 2010 I lost it completely and went totally insane. Things happened which were so traumatic that I cannot explain them on here and have been having therapy because of them ever since. My heart is pounding right now just writing this. In midst of madness during which I was drinking my own piss for possible alcohol content and sleeping in vomit as well as constantly hallucinating, I text my parents who immediately left work and came and picked me up from Brighton. They found me crying and screaming, lying in piss and vomit, surrounded by vodka bottles. I screamed all the way back to Essex, and had no idea who my parents were. They took me to hospital and later to the doctor who diagnosed me with seven mental disorders: Panic disorder, Heavy psychosis, Sleep paralysis, PTSD, Major depressive disorder, Insomnia and GAD. I was given tiny doses of Librium which did nothing and had to ride it all out at my parents house, although I constantly stole their alcohol until they threw it all down the sink.
I continued to suffer all of these disorders which included thinking that I was dead and in hell for about 8 months, whilst living with my parents (I had dropped out of uni towards the end of my final year.) Eventually I began buying Diazepam from the internet to kill the anxiety and panic, and then extracting codeine from cocodamol to try and make up for the loss of euphoria and the horribly depressing nostalgia I experienced as a result of leaving Brighton and losing the entire life I had spent years building up. I had gone too far. Just way too far. My popularity was evaporated. My positive outlook was gone. The magnificent people and places had vanished like some gruesome magic trick. Due to this heavy depression mixed with psychosis and 24/7 crippling anxiety, I attempted suicide three times, the last time being Feb 2011.
2011-2013
I continued to live with my parents and continued to drink as much alcohol as I could smuggle into the house, and take diazepam from the net as well as alprazolam, lorazepam, clonazepam etc etc. I was also using 256mg of codeine a day and developed a nasty habit. My relationships with my family were mostly bad, although my family are all totally wonderful and have always been more than supportive. I was the problem. Before 2010 I had been good. Morally upstanding and mentally strong. But I had been psychologically torn to pieces by the events of March 2010 and I started lying and thieving from my family in order to fund my habits. I began going to the local Buddhist center and got pretty into that way of life. I tried meditating every day but it didn't even put a dent in my addictions or my anxiety.
Everything led to a climax after which I moved out into my own place in supported living. I carried on drinking like a fish and went to hospital a few times to beg for Librium. I was put on a subutex program starting from 2mg and stopped drinking alcohol, although I was now using up to 120mg of Diazepam a day. The subutex felt like a gift from god! Suddenly I had so much energy. I felt revitalized and on the 1st of November 2013 I began learning Russian for at least 4 hours a day. I had been playing concert level piano since college and I got myself an electric piano and began playing that again for another 3 hours per day. I also got heavily into exercise of which I did 2hrs a day. Throughout all this time however, I was still experiencing horrible nightmares and other PTSD symptoms from my experiences in 2010.
2014:
Everything seemed to be moving up. My relationship with my family started to rebuild and I went to see them every Sunday which was usually the highlight of my week. I finally got a job on the local army garrison, ensuring the soldiers got fed, and I aced my interview and got the job as a supervisor. I tried to go cold turkey from the Diazepam when I began my job, but had a massive seizure 3 days into the job whilst at work, and was taken to hospital with a concussion. I began to come down from my Subutex late in the year and at the time this felt fine. I was occasionally using some stimulants, namely coke and crappy MDMA but they didn't seem to be a problem. I was conveniently in denial about how much Diazepam I was taking, and told my parents I wasn't using any. As far as anyone was concerned, I was just using a small dose of Subutex which was getting lower by the fortnight.
2015:
I came off the Bupe in March 2015 and although there was no physical withdrawal to speak of, I was hit with an unexpected and overwhelming PAWS and couldn't go into work for a week because of the depression and emptyness. The following week I went into town and found a dealer who sold me 2 8mg subs for £10. I couldn't believe how cheap it was and because my tolerance was down, sniffing 4mg put me in the stratosphere. I found another dealer who began selling me enough for 8mg a day. I would sniff Subutex the minute I got out of bed, and then run the 6 miles to work. I'd then sniff more in the toilets at work. It wasn't long however, before my tolerance increased and it seemed that no matter how much I took, I just couldn't get the same high from it. Meanwhile my Diazepam use was still a huge problem. I was suffering from sleep paralysis every night, something which I didn't attribute to my benzo use at the time. Silly me.
2016:
Things kindof went downhill some more during 2016. I found a coke dealer who would deliver to my street and his stuff was always very pure. I'd always get a gram on payday and sometimes when payday was also a workday, i'd buy the g in the morning, and then take it to work and get high as a kite.
Everything continued pretty much in that vain until November.
After cocaine use at the start of the month made me incredibly anxious, I used almost my entire Diazepam supply in one night to quench the near-panic. Since online vendors were becoming more unreliable, I tried to buy Diazepam off the street from an old dealer, but when I turned up to meet her, two guys with pistols appeared from behind me and I was robbed out of £80. I still had enough money to buy more off the net, and god knew I needed it...but something happened inside me in November. It was like some old and noble part of me suddenly appeared from nowhere and said no. I suddenly couldn't bring myself to order any more Diazepam. It was really strange and I still don't understand it now.
Some strength kicked in and I remember thinking 'I don't wanna be putting pills into my body for the rest of my life'. I had been taking between 40 and 120mg of Diazepam per day for 6 years and I knew that cold turkey could kill me, but that voice suddenly had no power.
I went cold turkey from the Diazepam and after four days was sent home from work sick with 'migraines'. I bought alcohol to cope with the sudden horrendous anxiety and the next day was so messed up from withdrawl that I couldn't operate my mobile to call in sick to work. I spent the next two weeks in a downhill slope of heavy psychosis, constant panic, sickness and more. I didn't have the strength to pick up any opiates so I started going cold turkey from them as well. After 2 weeks of it I blacked out and awoke to my parents kicking my door in. I was seizing and lying on my bedroom floor in vomit surrounded by bottles of empty vodka. Work had gotten worried that I hadn't been calling in and had called my parents who had apparantly been banging on my front door for a while.
They took me to hospital where I was psychotic and screaming. The doctor said I had only been about an hour away from death. I hadn't eaten in three weeks and was severly dehydrated and so was attached to various drips and had plenty of tests done. I was given 120mg of Librium the first day which just didn't cut it since my problem was rooted in Diazepam rather than alcohol. My parents were amazing. They visited me in hospital everyday and bought me my favourite foods, and bought me inspiring books from waterstones. I was in hospital for a week before I was taken back by my mum to stay with my parents for as long as it took for me to get better.
I was completely clean from absolutely everything for a whole ten days which was extremely difficult and was a record since 2010. After being off opiates and benzos for the first time in seven years, music began to sound amazing again. I started to feel things I hadn't felt in a long time. I stayed with my parents for two months and used absolutely no benzos or alcohol, although my anxiety issues were very bad. I did use codeine occasionally which I smuggled into my parents house and extracted from co-codamol.
Relationships began to mend again and my parents watched me very very closely; this was during the xmas holidays so my parents were both off work and were able to watch me most of the time. It was during their morning dog walks that I would sometimes slip out to the local pharmacy for codeine.
2017:
Things plummeted again when I tried to go back to work - I'd been on medical leave for 2 months and on the medical slips I always got my doc to write 'PTSD' - which was kindof true. This was the first time I had been at this job without any benzos and 6 months previous I had been promoted to team leader. I felt I had no confidence without the Diazepam and I felt the way I used to feel at school all those years (and paragraphs) ago. After a few awful days of work I was on my way out the building one day when I got a txt from a dealer offering me 84 10mg Zolpidem pills for £50 plus a couple of free subs thrown in. Well I couldn't resist and I broke my sleeping pill sobriety which had lasted an awesome 7 weeks, and got totally fucked.
My parents could of course tell straight away that I was on something, as my tolerance was back to zero and 30mg hit me very hard. They told me they knew for a fact that I was on drugs and for some reason I got very angry. I think it was that I was angry at myself for breaking my sobriety, but I behaved like a complete c**t and insulted them before packing my bags and storming out.
What an arsehole. They had looked after me for 2 months - had saved my life in November, and I was spitting in their faces. I was so stoned I barely remember storming out but on the way home I bought a bottle of red wine and a gram of coke. I then spent the next 8 days spending my remaining £400 on coke, booze, weed and probably alot of other shite. After the 8 days was up I picked myself up and went back to work.
I stayed off the sleepers and kept my codeine use so infrequent that I didn't pick up a habit again. But then the devil got to work on me again in a big way.
A colleague of mine who has back problems came to me one day when I was feeling particularly depressed. He used to give me a box of his codeine here and there. I asked him if he had any codeine and he said 'no, I've got something better for you'.
Now at this point I had taken 47 different recreational drugs including legal ones, but for 6 years, the one drug I most wanted to try was Oxycodone. I'd never had it before but it sounded like the sort of thing i would fall in love with. And what was my colleague holding out in front of him? A full blister pack of 14 5mg Oxy pills. I couldn't believe my luck(?), and I danced around with joy. He didn't even want any cash for them. I promptly skipped into the toilet and sniffed 20mg. And then 10 minutes later another 10, and then another 10 until i'd taken 40mg. I liked it a lot but it wasn't what I expected. I proceeded to buy it entire script off him of which he had 80.
Over the last few months I've been buying every single Oxy he gets prescribed. At first he got 80 every two weeks, but I convinced him to ask his doc to give him more and she upped to script to 160 every two weeks. I bought them all. I sniffed them all. It got so that I was taking 200mg a day. Now I know people often do a lot more than that but my use went from about 80mg a day to 200+ in two weeks. My tolerance has never gone up so fast with anything. I also began taking a small amount of Diazepam to help with sleep since those Oxy's are so damn stimulating, but instead of getting the benzos off the net I get them from a dodgy dealer who sometimes puts other sweets in there, namely Nitrazepam and Pregabalin.
March 17: we're getting close now -
I took a week off work to try and go cold turkey from the Oxy but after 48 hours I failed dismally and went into work and took £60 out the safe for more. I also took the money for food since my company didn't pay me for 2 months. Not trying to justify it but there it is. I'm not proud of it. I wasn't caught and I put the money back on payday, and then had an attack of conscience and told my manager everything. He suspended me on full pay and I'm currently being investigated and basically waiting to be fired.
CURRENT EVENTS APRIL - MAY 17
During my time off work pending investigation, I have been attempting to put my life back on track....again. (Not sure if i've really mentioned it, but i've tried to do that dozens of times now). I went to the local drug clinic and saw the opiate specialists who asked me to withdraw for 24 hours to see what they were dealing with. Well after 24 hours without Oxycodone I was bad. They rated me 18 out of 20 on the 'how bad is your opiate addiction' chart and the doc wanted to put me on 8mg of Buperenorphine. I thought that sounded too much and said 6mg. After a few bad days I went back and got put on 12mg. This was 5 days ago.
So over the last few days I've been using:
12mg Buprenorphine
500mg Pregabalin (approx)
5mg Diazepam (average)
5mg Nitrazepam (average)
Since I have a lot more energy with the Bupe, and a lot of time on my hands with the suspension from work, I've been exercising for an hour a day, playing piano for an hour, learning Russian for an hour and learning Hebrew for an hour.
I don't feel that the benzo's are a current problem, however I am attuned to the fact that they could easily get out of hand and so I am watching my use like a hawk. Considering that I was on approx 120mg Diazepam a day a few months ago, I think this is pretty good. I aim to be taking no benzos by July.
The Pregabalin is a dark horse. I have found it extremely helpful lately with anxiety, sleep, opiate withdrawal, pain and depression, and I think it's gonna be a bit of a bitch to stop, not so much physically but psychologically. I'm gonna create an aim for that one later after doing more research.
That's my story so far. Obviously I've missed out shitloads, but I'll be amazed and impressed if anyone's taken the time to read all of it.
I will now post daily updates on my progress starting with today the 6th of May 2017. I really hope I stick with it. I really hope this is the last hurdle. Please life, let me win.
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