How to regain my confidence in my body's ability to handle drug binges after recovering from Long Covid

[outoftheloop]

Hi, Bluelighters!

First time posting here, but used to lurk a lot, a lotta years ago and was recently really happy to realize that this place is still active & thriving. I decided to make a post here, because it always felt like the most informed place on the internet when it comes to Harm reduction. I have been doing loads of drugs for ten years (i'm 27 now), had covid last year and it gave me a lot of weird heart issues for a year. I've mostly fully recovered, but I feel anxious about returning to using drugs.

EDIT: I do realize that this board is mostly for people who are trying to quit drugs, not return to using them, but I'm not fully sure where else to post this. Please lmk if I need to move the thread somewhere else!

Background.
Ten years ago, I was 17 and was just getting started with harder drugs, doing RC's, speed, E's, psychedelics and Meth (or at least that's what we were hoping we were buying when we were buying Piko in Bulgaria)

Over these years, I've been on my fair share of drug binges and apart from when I smoked weed in combination with other stuff, I never felt all that convinced that I was going to die. Sure, I've had my "oh shit, my heart is exploding, oh shit I'm dying moments", but for the most part if I avoided weed, I could stay up for five days on speed or acid or a whole mix of stuff, without too much "I'm going to die & I think I'm gonna puke" anxiety.

Getting Covid (july 2020)

I ended up getting covid during a three day acid bender, from someone who knew they had covid and had went to the beach to hang out anyways. Spent an hour with them, before they mentioned that they have no smell or taste - was definitely a weird thing to realize that you've been exposed to covid, on the third day of an acid trip.

In spite of the initial 2 weeks being really mild and afterwards feeling recovered, pushing myself too hard with drinking and a tiny dose of acid seemed to relapse me, leading up to a bit more than a year of lingering symptoms, including:
- lower heart pressure
- high heart pressure
- 6 months of dizzyness
- extreme dysphoria & body pain, feeling like I'm on a speed comedown, without having taken anything
- extreme fatigue
- getting out of breath really easily from like 30 seconds of dancing to house or techno
- postural changes of hearth rate

Six months into recovering I was able to do 50 mcg doses of acid and have some drinks without negative effects.

In july this year, I went to a friend's wedding, felt quite fatigued and still had some not fully resolved heart rate abnormalities ( heart rate would be much higher when I'm standing up, and I'd get out of breath really easily), but I was like "fuck it, it's two of my best friends getting married, I'm gonna turn up for this". Ended up doing three very small lines of coke on the first night, half a tab of acid and a tiny line of coke on the second night. This was at the tail end of five days of very heavy drinking.

To my amazement, coming back from the wedding, it felt like this mini-sesh had fixed my heart issues and I was for the first time able to go for a swim doing my regular distance, instead of being out of breath after 1 minute of swimming. This didn't last long, and after a couple of days was back to having weird heart issues and had to recover for a few more months

Trying to Confidently Go Back to Doing Drugs

I now feel 90% recovered, and the remaining 10% I think are no longer effects of covid, but rather effects of my recently adopted more sedentary lifestyle due to working a deskjob from home.

Nowadays, I find it really hard to imagine doing any binge like the ones I had done before. In my years before getting covid, I had never had any heart issues, which to me meant that it was safe to go a little bit overboard on the stims or go on a 4 day acid binge. Any chest discomfort, I could easily dismiss as anxiety and push through.

after spending a year, where a cup of coffee would feel like it's going to give me a heart attack, I feel like I've lost my confidence in my body's ability to handle drugs. It seems to have also become worse with time. Two months into my recovery, I'd smoke mad weed and it would alleviate my symptoms. A weird thing that happened a month ago, is I started out of nowhere having intense panic attacks from smoking even the tiniest amount would make me feel chest pain. I did believe it to be mostly anxiety, cos measuring my BP, showed no significant deviation and my pulse was the same (not sure how accurate those are at predicting heart attacks tbf). Also one day my chest pain was on the right side of my chest and I was like "Damn, my anxiety ain't even trying this time". Additionally, stuff like taking a hot shower would alleviate the chest pain, which made no sense at all if it was due to actual heart problems.

I recently did 40 mcg of acid, because I had to work a full shift from my laptop and I hadn't slept. At the onset, I had the most intense anxiety that I would have a heart attack, but later I mellowed into it and even went out skating for a bit.

But with such minor stuff triggering anxiety, I can't imagine myself going on a good stim binge.

I don't necessarily have any such ambitions for the immediate future anyway - I want to do more sports, meditate, etc. I feel like my main issue is anxiety and I realize that I've always had it and it's shaped a lot of my behaviour and I was largely using drugs to escape from how this anxiety manifested socially.

But I do want to return to doing drugs one day and I would like to do it in a confident manner.

So I have a few questions, that I wasn't able to find much info about, because I couldn't find any info that goes into detail about this stuff anywhere:

- What is the actual likelihood of dying from stuff like a speed bender for example? I think it's fairly low - but what would the main mechanism of action of such a hypothetical situation be? Would that be a heart attack?

- How can I best decrease my chance of having a heart attack from speed? Would doing sports help with this? Is cardio something that increases your ability to handle long drug binges?

- What are some general good practices for practising binging drugs as safely as possible?

- Any other general advice anyone might have or experience they'd be willing to share is welcome.


Thanks to anyone who read through all of this and thank you in advance for any input!

 

[n3ophy7e]

Hi @outoftheloop , I'm glad you decided to join and start posting!

As for answering your questions.....you're not gonna like what I have to say lol.

I had covid-19 last year as well, in March-April 2020. I had it moderately bad, lots of symptoms, one night in hospital, and it took a good 6 weeks to recover from the severe symptoms.

If I was you, there is no way in hell I would risk taking amphetamines or going on multiple day long drug benders. I can feel that my lungs and heart took a significant beating from the virus (I had influenza Type A in July 2019 which took 3 months to recover from and involved multiple hospital visits, so covid may have had a compounded effect).

Realistically, there is absolutely no way of knowing the answers to your questions, but I personally do not think it's worth the risk.

 

[outoftheloop]

Hi @outoftheloop , I'm glad you decided to join and start posting!

As for answering your questions.....you're not gonna like what I have to say lol.

I had covid-19 last year as well, in March-April 2020. I had it moderately bad, lots of symptoms, one night in hospital, and it took a good 6 weeks to recover from the severe symptoms.

If I was you, there is no way in hell I would risk taking amphetamines or going on multiple day long drug benders. I can feel that my lungs and heart took a significant beating from the virus (I had influenza Type A in July 2019 which took 3 months to recover from and involved multiple hospital visits, so covid may have had a compounded effect).

Realistically, there is absolutely no way of knowing the answers to your questions, but I personally do not think it's worth the risk.

Hi n3ophy73, Thanks for the reply!

I do understand what you're saying & I don't really plan to be doing stuff like this for quite a long time possibly.

Even before I had covid, I'd kinda decided that stims might not be the best thing to do in a pandemic, because firstly they aren't the best for your body & second I could never figure out if the comedown was just a comedown or covid symptoms.

So I don't think I'll be trying to do any stims until this shit blows over, with all the new variants and all that it don't seem all that worth it.

But I will want to return to this stuff later, maybe in a few years - until then I'll be trying to be on my health shit, doing loads of exercise.

I do get that there's a lot of unknowns at the moment. With long covid especially, the mechanism of action is still not clear - most people that have heart issues from it come out with perfectly clear ECG's, so doctors really have no idea what's going on there, maybe it might be good to wait until that's figured out more. A friend of mine, who is a fairly knowledge-able doctor, upon hearing my symptoms, believed that they are not caused so much by damage to the heart, as they are by inflamation of the whole cardiovascular system, causing the blood vessels to shrink.

I guess my point is that an important part of harm reduction would be to actually understand the mechanism through which stims can cause death. I've not been able to find much on the topic exactly. You do read about people having strokes or heart attacks from cocaine or OD-ing on speed, but with speed specifically I've been amazed at how forgiving it is.

In the sense that at times when I've been like "I took too much, I'll die", I'd read up on what counts as an amphetamine overdose and find out that I'm not even anywhere near that level or showing any symptoms of it - and what I am experiencing is a very intesne rush and some anxiety. That anxiety in most cases is due to there being too many unknowns. Like you know that people die from stims, but not exactly how or what are the factors that lead to it.

I will be trying to become a master yogi/aleister crowley tier magus before meddling with stims again for sure - it does seem like without having some yogic confidence in my body, there is always going to be some background anxiety after what I experienced with covid. But I also want to understand better what the actual physiological risks are and what their method of actions is, as I feel like that would be very important in understanding where exactly you are at (so for example: is it due to strain on the heart? If the heart can endure the strain from running a 5k marathon, is there anything in an amphetamine binge that is straining to the heart more than a 5k marathon is? Cos I've read of plenty people who've recovered from covid and built their endurance back into being able to run marathons, so if a person can do that, is there anything in a stim binge that is more dangerous/strainign than such an exercise?)

I am a DJ, and one of my favourite parts of DJ-ing has been playing a long 10-12 hour set, sniffing lines, going to the afterparty, sniffing more lines etc. Just the drugs and the music - such a great combo, so more than just missing the high, I also miss the entire lifestyle and would really like to be able to get back to it one day.

 

[relentlessgenjin]

COVID or not I know my body's ability to handle binges is fading fast