Bad meth opiate experience help

[rufuscornpone]

Hi all,

I am a long-time reader, first-time poster. There are real questions at the bottom, but I am providing some context as to wtf happened.

I just "had" one of the worst drug experiences of my life. I smoked meth all day (anywhere from .2-.4 gs) and then added in some BTH (smoked, maybe 2-3 points, stronger than usual). This had been a daily pattern for me for about 6 months, usually with anywhere from a 6 pack of beer to a fifth of whiskey added in throughout the day.

Five month in, benzos entered the picture. Conned doctors into a couple of small xanax prescriptions ("fear of flying" to psych and "Help, I'm having panic attacks!" to urgent care staffers) and bought a dozen k-pins off my 2nd choice H contact. I used those sparingly, but necessarily when either a) smack was in short supply, or b) nothing else was strapping me to the gurney and it was critical that I got to sleep. I used them on and off, but hadn't had any in over 48 hrs.

The new factor was weed. I picked up a 1/4 oz of recreational weed a couple of days before the trip (I live in a US state where it's legal).

I smoked the weed (maybe 1-3 bowls) and just got this intense, overwhelming moment of clarity. I realized that I had been destroying myself every day. That I had become antisocial. That all of my emotions were fake and chemically-induced. That the past 6 months had been some sort of illusory trip. That all of the people (I had broken up with a long-term girlfriend earlier in the fall and had met a number of new girls with whom I was romantically involved with at the time) were not real. That they were illusions of this illusory drug life that I had created.

This was an anxiety reminscint of college. In those days, I would take long walks to deal with them. It's just this pounding, pounding in your skull that everything you are doing is wrong and that you are destroying yourself with each thought and with each breath.

I had previously been diagnosed with bipolar disorder (about 1 month before the binge begin). I was on 10 mg of Lexapro (escitalopram) and 5 mg Abilify (aripiprozale). I was also technically prescribed 10 mg of Adderall for my ADHD, but I wasn't taking it during this trip (though I had been abusing it periodically, usually as a substitute for the T). The Abilify really dulled my meth senses. I rarely got that crazy, crazy euphoria, but often got the hyperfocus benefits from high dosages of meth.

Before long after smoking the weed, I developed what the ol' DSM-IV-TR would've described as "racing thoughts." These thoughts were overwhelmingly negative and were mostly a reflection on how I had wasted the weekend (doing drugs), how my life was falling to shit, etc.

So on top of my previously mentioned doses. I added in .35 mg xanax (the .5 mg pills never crack evenly, so I took the bigger piece), and 3-4 new shots of cheap whiskey to dull that nagging, anxious voice in my head. I then drank a 12 oz IPA slowly to give me something to do.

Anyway, even after the benzos and the alcohol, I still had the racing thoughts, but they had become much less negative and more just a string of random thoughts. Another consequence, I couldn't focus on anything, just my computer screen. My thoughts kept leaping and leaping. I wrote some of them down. It included obviously "losing my mind. I'm going crazy" shit like:

"Everything justkeeps jumping and jumping and jumping
Still no answer tothe Abilify Question!

Strong feeling thatthere is something important that I am forgetting to do

Send presentation toIndia

Sit back and enjoythe experience. You're not going to fall asleep anytime soon
Scary thoughts areentering my headThat's why it'simportant that you are careful. This is your memory now.


That's really thedevil talking.

Remember, you canalways just do more meth. That way, you don't have to sleep. If you don'tsleep, this thing solves itself."



As I write this out, I realize how f**king crazy I sound. I am looking for serious harm reduction here now, guys. I have a couple of questions:

1. I feel like what I experienced was some sort of amphetamine psychosis. Throughout the entire experience, I was acutely aware that I was going insane. I even took precautionary measures like: set multiple alarms to wake me up if I fell asleep, bolted my door to prevent me from going outside, etc). Would a large dose of Abilify act quickly enough to treat psychosis symptoms, or would I need a traditional anti-psychotic?
2. I got super drowsy about an hr in (after the .25 xanax and the now 4-5 drinks of alcohol). I got so scared about how "heavy" the sleepiness feeling was and that it meant I was OD'ing / my breathing was stopping, that I grabbed the meth pipe and smoke another couple of bowls to keep my heart from stopping. Does it ever, ever, EVER make sense to use meth to stop a perceived opiate/benzo/alcohol cocktail withdrawal?

Don't tell me:

• Go to the ER
• Stop taking drugs

Do tell me:

• How to survive things like this / what to do in the future when / if it happens again

Thanks again for your help.

 

[falsifiedhypothesi]

You don't want people to tell you to stop taking drugs yet you are on benzos, heroin, meth, alcohol, and weed, not judging just saying.

I've had racing thoughts many times during panic attacks, they are always very negative, "you don't deserve to exist", "why don't you kill yourself?" Weed always made these worse and I can't imagine what meth and weed would do! I'd really suggest to stop taking amphetamines and weed, stop them completely or at least don't mix them. I suppose if you were ODing on downers meth might help save you but it would be a terrible habit to start relying on it.

Please don't mix that many CNS depressants, it's very easy to overdose on them.

 

[rufuscornpone]

Hey,

Tried writing a longer post, but I accidentally deleted it by hitting the wrong "reply" button.

Thanks for the input. These definitely weren't panic attack racing thoughts. I have had panic attacks and, for me, they have much more physical symptoms, as well as "gloom and doom" type thoughts. These thoughts felt much more like I was going "crazy." For example, I thought there was someone controlling my thoughts (a demon, and I'm not the type to believe in that sort of thing) who was trying to tell me to do more drugs. I also experienced an almost comical inability to focus. I was extremely "aware" of the entire experience and would time to time force myself to sit down and write down whatever popped into my head on my laptop. Writing took a great deal of effort and felt like an extremely conscious activity. Since I could think much, much more quickly than I could write, writing helped to slow down my string of endless thoughts and hold something in my head long enough to get it down.

Apologies for the tone of my "Don't"s. The point was not to be rude. The point was that I was acutely aware of the two options that I mentioned (ER or CNS depressants). I ended up taking the benzos because I wanted to avoid the hospital (I had work the next day and didn't want to wake up strapped to a hospital bed with an IV pumping anti-psychotics into me) and then the alcohol to avoid taking more benzos. I want to understand better if there were other options for treating an onset of whatever it was that happened to me that lessen the odds of my breathing stopping or my losing my job.

Again, I thought this was a pretty weird response to weed. It typically does very little to me.

One last note. I have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and take 5 mg of Abilify and 10 mg of Lexapro daily for treatment. Not sure how/if that affects the mix.

Thanks again for your help.

 

[falsifiedhypothesi]

I've never done meth only mixed amphetamine salts and methylphenidate but this sounds identical to cases of amphetamine psychosis. Like I said before it was probably the weed coupled with meth that did you in, I've heard that combo will even fuck with people tolerant to both. It's hard to tell what the real cause was since you were on around 7 drugs in total, just be careful next time. I hope everythings fine now.

 

[rufuscornpone]

Hey,

Thanks for the response. Yeah, I read up a bit more about stimulant psychosis and am fairly confident that that is what I was experiencing. Agreed that it was likely the weed that did me in, as I wasn't on an insanely high dose of amphetamines when I succumbed.

I am fine now and have fooled around with the crystal a couple more times without experiencing any thing similar.

I am still left with one of my original questions, though. Aside from giving myself a sedating dose of benzos, is there anything I can do to reduce the intensity of any future stimulant psychosis? Is it worth trying to get prescribed some sort of antipsychotic (other than the Abilify, which I already have) to keep around just in case? I am generally very leery of benzos as they often seem to be the straw that breaks the proverbial camel's back overdose-wise. I'm more a fan of the opiates for the comedown (I understand that this is likely more damaging to my heart), both because of how they feel, and the fact that they are easier for me to get than benzos.

Would greatly appreciate any experience that anyone had to offer. I tried a couple of searches, but couldn't find anything definitive on the subject.