Sorry this is so long.
My friend Tom has vaped tons of this stuff for the past 2 months, and he’s currently trying to quit because it kind of took him over for a while, and turned him into a depraved vegetable who lived for the 018 high. Some background info: Toms is 26 years old, 6’6 and 300lbs. He has been a daily cannabis smoker for a little over 10 years. In the past, he has experimented heavily with LSD, shrooms, salvia, alcohol. He’s tried cocaine and opiates a handful of times or less. These days, all he does is smoke cannabis/hash 3 times every evening and has maybe 6 beers a week, that is until two months ago, when he discovered jwh-018.
So he hears about 018 in mid February and is very interested. He figures maybe this will save him money on his cannabis habit, plus he is very eager to experience the powerful high of pure 018. He has quite the tolerance to cannabis, and wanted to see if the 018 will make him high like it’s his first time again, like so many have claimed.
So he gets 1 gram from a confirmed reputable vendor. He eyeballs all his doses (which is really a terrible idea!). He’s very careful at first, taking a series of underdoses, but with a little practice, gets the hang of it, and is able to eyeball an enjoyable dose and take it down in 1 inhalation. He loves this substance. The first day he does it 5 times, and the next day he does it 7 times. He feels like a 13 year old, smoking that first joint. He is achieving trance like states, and loves it. He hasn’t been able to achieve such a high from cannabis in years, and the only way he can even come close is to smoke and smoke, but with this it’s just 1 small hit.
Almost immediately, he feels like there is something not quite right with this drug. He loves it and it feels almost magical like cannabis….beneficial even. Makes him happy, curbs his anger, makes him extremely tolerant and empathetic towards anyone and anything, it gives him major inspiration and sparks of creativity when he’s playing his guitar. Still, he wakes up craving a hit in the morning, sometimes even in the middle of the night. That never happened with cannabis in over 10 years. Nevertheless, he loves it and orders 5 more grams. The more he uses it, the more his tolerance rises. And that’s when the effects change.
When he first started using 018, it was like an impossibly strong cannabis high. Over time, it became more of a nodding off, junkie type high. And once that happened, it was like a different person took over him and was now calling the shots. That first gram lasted him 20 days, but then he vaped 3 grams over the course of the next 15 days so that’s roughly 200mgs every day. By this point, he’d acquired a meth pipe, and at first it seemed less effective than foil, but with a little practice, he learned that it was much more effective. By the time his evening dose rolled around, he required so much that he would just fill his lungs with 018 vapors completely full and hold his breath as long as possible, and take several of those hits in a row. 3, 4 or even 5. FILLING his lungs 5 times and burying it, and he has a huge lung capacity. By this point he was essentially vaping 018 like it was mid-grade cannabis. But those really trippy, initial psychoactive effects kept eluding him, so he just kept smoking more, and part of him didn’t even care anymore since he was such a nodding off, junkie type person now.
He was passing out at all hours of the day, in front of family and friends. People were taking notice, and becoming concerned. He was slurring his words, kinda like a drunk, but much faster and scattered, like somebody who can’t hold onto a simple thought. This kept getting worse, and eventually he was consuming amounts that would turn him into a physical wreck. Could hardly walk, had no coordination. Could hardly say 3 words. Muscle spasms. His eyes would get really dilated for very short periods of time. He’d take his last hit at night and then he couldn’t even manage to get the bag of 018 back in his drawer and close it, because he’d go catatonic too fast, or he’d forget who or where he was or what he’d just been doing. And keep in mind, this wasn’t 1 negative reaction. Tom was doing this to himself every night, and it was only getting more out of hand.
He wanted to stop so bad, because he knew what a wreck he was. He kept trying to stop, but he still had over a gram left so it was really difficult. Weed and hash REALLY didn’t work now. He knew that if he kept on the way he was, his gram+ would be gone very quick, but that thought scared him even worse because he knew he’d never order more.
His mom confronted him, and he knew it had to stop. He was genuinely scared, with the kinds of physical symptoms he was experiencing. He could hardly walk, and felt so paralyzed by the end of each night, that he was afraid he’d die in his sleep. He felt really stupid for pushing such a new drug so far, and that made him feel very isolated actually, like his problems were 100% his, and there was not 1 other person in the history of mankind who could understand. He felt like if there was ever a first person to die from this, it would be him. For at least 4-5 days straight he made a genuine effort to pack it away, but then he’d end up doing some. Still, this helped him cut back because he was trying so hard to stay away from it. He was even doing silly things like trying to put it in places where it would require a serious effort to retrieve.
So he kept trying and failing to quit, but then 1 day he finally managed to stay away from it. That was recently and today is day 5 of no 018 for Tom. Cannabis still didn’t work all that well as of yesterday, but it seems to be working a little better each day. He’s been having some drinks at night to take the edge off. He doesn’t feel like there is much physical dependency to 018, but he definitely feels like he got pretty hooked nonetheless.
Part of him wishes he’d never touched Jwh-018, and the other part of him is just hoping he can abstain long enough for his tolerance (to 018 and cannabis) to come back down. He wants a low tolerance again so he can experience the positive and worthwhile effects, without all the negative stuff that happened. Hopefully in a couple weeks, his tolerance will be down, and his plan is to then use 018 much more sparingly, like once or maybe twice a week. Hopefully, he can stick to that.
Sorry for the length of this. There are certain other details to Tom’s experience that are worthwhile to note, but then this would be even longer. But just this one last snippet. Towards the end of the 2 months, when Tom was taking insanely high doses, right before he’d get to the point of being able to do nothing but sit or lay down and lose a few hours, some of the last stuff he’d remember would be all kinds of objects speaking to him telepathically. It was like a flood, as soon as he got to that certain high, every object around him that his mind could perceive would speak to him and he would involuntarily respond….not out loud but in his mind. Just an overwhelming flood of remarks coming from all around his room, and he had to respond to each one. He associated it with discomfort, although he never had a panic attack. He’d sober up and forget about all of it, but then the next time he did a huge dose, it would come rushing back, and he’d think “oh yea that’s right, I forgot. Stuff starts talking to me and it’s unpleasant.” His lighter, meth pipe, scooping utensil, floor, shoes, they all started talking to him in rapid fire.
Then again, he did A LOT of psychedelics in the past, which by his own admission, could have played a big roll in his jwh-018 experiences. And he has always been a boundary pusher which is why he likes psychedelics instead of hard drugs. If you’ve been vaping jwh-018 daily and you think to yourself, “I could do a little more this time,” it might be time to pack it away for a while.
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
