Do you regret taking drugs?

[Gormur]

I'm in the club that regrets, if you can call it that not taking enough. There's just so many drugs and not nearly enough time to try them all

I guess hunting down specific ones is kind of a bad feeling for me and I barely do it anymore. That could be considered as a negative aspect of the whole process. Taking drugs isn't really that bad, but everything leading up to it could be depending on your perspective

 

[nznity]

For me it's yes and no.
I'm glad I have tried them. I'd be too curious otherwise.
I'm not glad I got addicted to benzos. That was a cunt to kick.
I'm not glad I ruined my bladder and probably some of my brain with ketamine.
And I'm not glad I've ruined nearly all my veins with the needle.
But I sure as hell have had some fucking wicked times over the years. Bad ones too - some really bad ones. But so far, touch wood, more good ones...i think. Lol.
I also am not glad and don't really want to think about how much money I've spent, and owe out

So yeah, can't really give a definitive answer.

fuck it, those syringes filled with a shit load of drugs were the shit at the time. In retrospect, they were good times but now we have to take care of ourselves, we are not "invincible young motherfuckers" anymore.

 

[jhjhsdi]

fuck it, those syringes filled with a shit load of drugs were the shit at the time. In retrospect, they were good times but now we have to take care of ourselves, we are not "invincible young motherfuckers" anymore.

I haven't stopped yet still got some veins left

I am alot more sensible thesedays though. I used to use k, cocaine(or mephedrone when it was pre-ban), benzos, weed every single day, 24/7, and other downers very regularly, opiates, gbl, sleepers. Loads of trips and RC dissos whenever I could get them, binge on hundreds of nos at a time.. Etc etc

I haven't used anything since Saturday. I try to keep it to the weekends now, and I literally only do K, and drink, smoke cigarettes... Occasionally a little cocaine but I never buy it or binge on it, and the occasional diazepam or zopiclone to help me sleep, or tramadol/morphine for pain, but I (almost) never get high on benzos or opiates anymore.

K is my drug of choice and my vice. Always has been. I'm (surprisingly) not done with the cunt yet

 

[nznity]

I haven't stopped yet still got some veins left

I am alot more sensible thesedays though. I used to use k, cocaine(or mephedrone when it was pre-ban), benzos, weed every single day, 24/7, and other downers very regularly, opiates, gbl, sleepers. Loads of trips and RC dissos whenever I could get them, binge on hundreds of nos at a time.. Etc etc

I haven't used anything since Saturday. I try to keep it to the weekends now, and I literally only do K, and drink, smoke cigarettes... Occasionally a little cocaine but I never buy it or binge on it, and the occasional diazepam or zopiclone to help me sleep, or tramadol/morphine for pain, but I (almost) never get high on benzos or opiates anymore.

K is my drug of choice and my vice. Always has been. I'm (surprisingly) not done with the cunt yet

OFC man, i've collapsed a few veins aswell. But my right cephallic vein IS STILL THERE AFTER 5000+ SHOTS and going strong hahaha. I'm not done with dope yet, I know i'm gonna keep shooting up still for years but my days of reckless behavior are long gone. I don't shoot cocaine anymore too.

 

[Essentialle123]

Benzos. Yes. A lot.

Me too

 

[Gary White]

There have been a few drugs I took and didn't like so I don't do them (mostly downers but also PCP). The most regrets came from alcohol. That was responsible for some wrecked cars and damaged relationships.

 

[MrMojoRisin’]

Weed - no regrets: Helps me sleep, makes me more sociable and I can use it in moderation. I don't freak out if I can't get hold of any. Makes so many things better (food, sex, a warm shower) without having an "artificial" or "fake" feeling that opiates and benzos have. When you're on opiates or benzos, anything can feel good with the hazy-numbness they provide! With Cannabis I feel that it can just enhance whatever experience you're having whilst not taking anything away from/diminishing the experience. All of the different strains, ROAs, flavours etc can make it feel kind of like a hobby! Hence why "cannabis culture" is a thing. Cannabis opens up your consciousness rather than restricts it (like opiates, benzos, alcohol etc). This may lead to paranoia as people become more aware of themselves and their surroundings. But as you become a more experienced smoker this manifests less as paranoia and more as a psychological audit haha! Which brings me to...

Psychedelics - no regrets: Now, I know people who have had awful experiences from psychedelics., although usually from "non-traditional" psychedelics. I personally only have experience with Liberty Cap shrooms and LSD. I have friends who went too deep on the shrooms (tripping everyday for weeks on end, constantly having to up their dose) and have never really been the same since. I only know one friend who had a "one and done" deal with psychedelics and that was from taking a unknown compound sold as LSD (but was certainly not). He took 2 tabs, wash rushed to hospital that night and since then has been living in an "assisted living" housing scheme run by local mental health services.

SO KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TAKING WHEN IT COMES TO TABS! And even if you'e using the traditional and arguably safer psychedelics such as psilocybin or LSD, USE THEM WITH CAUTION AND RESPECT. I usually have a psychedelic experience once or twice a year (if that) and I'm good. I can honestly say I've learned a lot about myself through these experiences.

Opiates - Regret: If you're reading this and you've never taken opiates before, but you're considering a little dabble with the devil - I hope this makes you think twice and steer clear of the perilous poppy poison.

I don't need to go in to the nitty-gritty details and horror stories of opiate addiction, you can find plenty on this site. I will simply state that opiates take the joy out of life itself. This may seem hyperbolic but it is true. I'm not a doctor/health professional (yet!) but I do know that opiates hijack your brains reward systems. Dopamine is your brains reward chemical and rewards you for actions that improve your evolutionary "fitness". e.g. you ate a nice meal that's keeping you alive and supplying you nutrients etc....have a dopamine hit! Having sex with a pretty lady,potentially passing on your genes....have a dopamine hit! You've just finished a long run improving your cardiovascular system and strengthening your muscles (which is handy when avoiding predators.....have a dopamine hit! Our brain rewards us for these actions so that we have an incentive to repeat them.
As we all know, opiates hijack this reward system. Taking an opiate recreationally is instant gratification in it's purest form. Eventually you get to a point where you and your brain think "why do anything else that might give me a little gratification/dopamine hit when I can just pop with pill/shoot this gear and call it a day?"

I must stop myself here regarding opiates because I tend to ramble and could talk about it forever. But the bottom line is that once you open the Pandora's Box of opiate addiction, it's hard to close that bitch! From my experience; when I was in deep using around 300mg a day of oxycodone and smoking H, my brain was just like a brain in a vat being pumped full of dopamine. So my brain thinks "all must be well out there because in here the dopamine be flowin'!"but in reality this is all artificial stimulus from the opiates. Then once you get clean you're essentially asking your brain you make do with the dopamine hits that everyday life can give you and, in reality, it's nothing compared to the "reward" that recreational opiates gives you. Hence why depression is such a huge factor for recovering addicts. They just can't see the world the same way anymore, at least not at first.

But for me personally, I feel as though I always have this black cloud over my head. I can see, feel, hear, touch and witness the good in the world, but I don't feel like I can ever properly appreciate it. Why? Because I gave my brain a taste of what pure, unadulterated, neuro-chemical pleasure feels like. My brain doesn't know how beautiful a sunset is, or how comforting the gentle embrace of a lover feels, it just knows how those events translates to brain function.

Again, I'm rambling. But I just feel that, even after being clean for a long time, you can never fully enjoy life the way you did before you got hooked on opiates. Am I alone in thinking this? I am prone to depression and take Mirtazapine 45mg for that. So maybe this is just my negative thinking?

I'm sorry to have rambled. I did plan on covering more substances but got caught up with the opiates. That rings a bell! haha

Take care all. Big Love!

B

 

[Shall9000]

How does a person get opiates really ? I have a friend who’s just been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, compressed discs in spine, lupus & Sjögren’s syndrome. It took many years. They just made an apt for a pain specialist but can’t get in for about a month. Arizona has the strictest laws on opiates it’s ridiculous. Any doctor is afraid to prescribe them anymore. They don’t know where to go & it’s driving her nuts. They don’t know where to buy them.

 

[JackoftheWood]

No, I only regret wasting money on bunk shit that didn't do anything.

 

[dopamimetic]

I think doing speed was the problem for me. I started doing it a lot, alot of benzos and alcohol too. I have around 2-3 weeks of full blackout where i don't remember anything. I get very agressive and confortational when i do benzos. I also usually black out because i keep eating them thinking im not high. Yes i do, i would be in much better place without drugs.

Sounds more like the benzos are the real culprit here but I get it of course, they often call for a downer sometimes even in higher medicinal doses. There are less bad ones though, like antihistamines and antiadrenergics. They don't make you blackout or redose compulsively (been there, done that)..

I will simply state that opiates take the joy out of life itself.

They do, they do, but I suspect it's something different going on than plain old dopamine, because then dopamine agonists, or if not them then antagonists would offer some help but they don't. Guess it's hormonergic suppression as it requires time to set in and needs longer to recover than just to get the opioid out of your system, and strongly correlates with libido. Started a thread about this in Ns&PD as I suffer from this effect and think it's been kind of overlooked/put off as being 'addiction related'. Long term experiences welcome!

There is PAWS (post acute withdrawal syndrome) too, which indeed is dopamine related. If you suffer from it you might find memantine helpful.

 

[Jabberwocky]

Sounds more like the benzos are the real culprit here but I get it of course, they often call for a downer sometimes even in higher medicinal doses. There are less bad ones though, like antihistamines and antiadrenergics. They don't make you blackout or redose compulsively (been there, done that)..

There is PAWS (post acute withdrawal syndrome) too, which indeed is dopamine related. If you suffer from it you might find memantine helpful.

,
No they weren't. They were a big problem, but speed caused me lots more harm. Lots more, but i did it lot more, so relativily if you say how much damage to property/people relationships/life was done / use time i think benzos might have did much more. Lost so much of my stuff black outing, beat friends. Hell, i thought one friend was a russian trasgender whore but she was just really skinny tweaker, i beat her dude and tried to hit her, and took 2 1mg xanax from the dude - i kept getting missions to my phone like gta, but i had done benzos, ghb, speed and excstacy. The delusions started when i hit the excstasy, i blacked out after leaving the house. I thought the dude of the tweaker girl was huge bodybuilder, truly he is like 165cm little gnome tweaker.. Lost my passport, phone, keys just everything.
I know i would haven't got violent if i didn't do the benzos and ghb.

 

[dopamimetic]

Oh yeah I know part of the shit you describe, for sure it isn't exactly fun - got this from overdosing on dissociatives + opioids, that gives you an unique sort of energy, but mostly when I was still drinking in my teenage years - but know stims can do it too. For me they are pretty safe, rather help me to stay controlled and focused but am quite sensitive to them too.. Just thought yeah as you write, these downers can make you loose the last inhibitions..

 

[Jabberwocky]

Should have added that PAWS is actually much worse than actual withdrawal. Speed causes really bad, i lied in bed for 8 months mostly being alone after quitting speed. Opiate ones are really terrible, i can easily get over the hard symptoms but i have never got over the PAWS.

 

[Jabberwocky]

Oh yeah I know part of the shit you describe, for sure it isn't exactly fun - got this from overdosing on dissociatives + opioids, giving you an unique sort of energy - but know stims can do it too. For me they are pretty safe, rather help me to stay controlled and focused but am quite sensitive to them too..

I have this friend who always trips out really bad from psychedelics. One time he took LSD and was in train station thinking he is protecting portals of universe and didn't let people out of the train or outside. He attacked people, tripped super hard.
PCP can also cause really bad ones.
I have done MDMA blackouts where i have gotten very violent but alcohol was usually mixed. Beating people, i got actually to my first real relationship during this kind of blackout.
I started the morning with bottle of vodka and 7x 10mg valium. I went to friends house he gave me bottle of wine and mdma. I ate some more benzos and boom.
I was doing OK, my pants were falling down and i was just creeping around but then some junkie hit me in the head. I got very fucking crazy full blown snapped. Started yelling, beating random people, i took somebodys sunglasses from their head, i told this girl im gonna rape and fuck her. Only thing that would calm me down was her kissing me. I had this one friend who is really good guy, he told me that i was every 10 seconds "Hey, you're good guy man!" "Hey, you wanna fucking fight? i will rape you!" Later police came they called me by name. I was french kissing the girl, i tried to fuck her right over there. They took me and the girl to the car. Here we have huge cars, i was in the behind telling the girl to suck me off. I got what i wanted ROFL. Fun thing police have cameras there. Later they put me in room where everything was made out of towel so i couldn't hurt myself or anyone. When i got out the girl called me and said that i'm cool LOL. I was 16 at the time.

 

[Jabberwocky]

Also should have added that when i got standing up from kissing the girl my pants were kinda down and i had HUGE boner, the police laughed so hard and so did my friends.

 

[dopamimetic]

That's an unfortunate truth for some. Am very jealous to these ppl who seem to just have an intense acute w/d and be fine again within weeks. The same guys tend to do a shitload of sports (PAWS is the ultimative antidote to sports I guess) and make jokes about the others who suffer prolonged time......

Still my bet is on testosterone. Maybe strong trips could help too, they release loads of growth factors but need to read more experience reports. Antidepressants tend to work initially and worsen things on the long run, similarly to stimulants. Memantine really helps but too it is purely symptomathic and might turn against you after some time (less likely than pure agonists like eg ropinirole or pramipexole though). DXM might be worth a try, or even bupropion / DXM (this combo is actually in clinical trials for therapy resistent major depression and it's one hell of a stimulant)

@DeadManWalkin' Thanks for sharing! that's the sort of stuff to once tell your grand-son I once had (sort of) a similarly rare opposite with a sky-high & drunk girl wanting to fuck an almost similarly high me.. well, I am not really proud of that and it had serious consequences, as in theory I was already in a relationship at that time) but she continued the same after she came down.... Still somehow haunts my mind some times as the same girl later wanted to make money with porn and run into a horrible psychopath (thank fully not the physical kind of psychopath but one who uses the girls, obviously, for money, controls them mentally etc - some even pay him money afterwards if they miss an appointment and of course none ever sees a single cent. Promised the porn would only be shown and sold in Asis [yea, yea, it's the age of Internet] and of course locals identified her... It's a case for the police now, 10 years later)

How old are you now? Dunno, might be coincidencie but now that I am in my 30's, I notice some / many drugs to have become somewhat calmer and more controllable.. Part will be tolerance but certainly not all.

 

[Jabberwocky]

I regret abusing drugs and I regret my behavior while abusing them.

I don't regret having lifelong problems with depression and substance abuse because they're genetic, how can you regret being born with something beyond your control?

I guess they're called 'use disorders'. So along with major depression, I have use disorders on my medical chart like hallucinogens, benzos, alcohol, smoking, cannabis, and inhalants (I told a doctor that I might have inhaled gas once with some neighbor kids in grade school so I got diagnosed as a lifelong huffer).

Anyway, I'm fine with teetotalling some categories like GABA or opioid or dopamine related drugs because I really dislike drug dependency. Nictotine, caffeine, cannabis, and serotonin are still okay, even if there's some dependency or WD issues, because I'm pretty comfortable moderating those.

 

[Jabberwocky]

I regret abusing drugs and I regret my behavior while abusing them.

I don't regret having lifelong problems with depression and substance abuse because they're genetic, how can you regret being born with something beyond your control?

I guess they're called 'use disorders'. So along with major depression, I have use disorders on my medical chart like hallucinogens, benzos, alcohol, smoking, cannabis, and inhalants (I told a doctor that I might have inhaled gas once with some neighbor kids in grade school so I got diagnosed as a lifelong huffer).

Anyway, I'm fine with teetotalling some categories like GABA or opioid or dopamine related drugs because I really dislike drug dependency. Nictotine, caffeine, cannabis, and serotonin are still okay, even if there's some dependency or WD issues, because I'm pretty comfortable moderating those.

Those diagnoses don't mean shit. Don't make them part of your personality. I got Anti-social behaviour disorder and undefined personality disorder (basically ASPD, couldn't diagnose me with it when i was underage so they gave those 2.) I don't believe in it and the psychologist who did these things was fucking crooked.

 

[Jabberwocky]

Yeah, I take it with a grain of salt. They have a habit of trying to coerce me into total abstinence with moralizing and misdiagnosis.

I read some HR literature years ago that for some users drug taking is a completely normal, healthy, and rational way to self medicate when they're under stress or in pain. I tend to agree.

 

[dopamimetic]

Those diagnoses don't mean shit. Don't make them part of your personality. I got Anti-social behaviour disorder and undefined personality disorder (basically ASPD, couldn't diagnose me with it when i was underage so they gave those 2.) I don't believe in it and the psychologist who did these things was fucking crooked.

Some fucked up shrink (had a major in military, drove Porsche and said things like 'hey bro, you're a man, aren't you? Come on, kick yourself in tha ass') diagnosed me antisocial personality too. Without even speaking me just once, and after 9 days (I managed to run away after). I was 20 at this time and later another doc who had experience working in forensics, told me you need to be at least 25 for that diagnosis and to have repeatedly violated social norms or law in a relevant manner.

Other doc diagnosed me a psychosis, which I'd suffer from my whole life etc.pp. it was induced by the toxic cocktail of antipsychotics the same doc forced me to take cause He thought my talking about RCs and pharmacologic things were delusions

I read some HR literature years ago that for some users drug taking is a completely normal, healthy, and rational way to self medicate when they're under stress or in pain.

It is. Docs who tell otherwise are just repeating Nixon.