Alright, so this story is just about my life, but it happened to me yesterday, and I just wanted to share it with some people. Sorry for all the back-ground given, but, I’m assuming whoever’s reading this isn’t a telepathic fucking mind reader, so, bear with me.
So, overall, my drug career has almost solely focused on weed. Around 80-90% of the time that I’ve been high in my life, it’s been off of weed (and whenever I’ve done other drugs, I’ve involved a lot of weed – just keep that in mind for the rest of this blog post). I’m a pothead, big whoop.
That being said, weed isn’t cheap – I’ve had to do a lot of stupid, menial jobs just to get enough money to smoke – waiter, server, construction (over the summer), etc.
Anyway, this was all going on for me at first in late high school and then I started going to a top 20 university in the U.S. – say what you want about higher education, but, if anything, it’s a bit of fucking work. While I had always been a naturally hard/smart/talented student, as a freshman in college, weed started taking over my life. Not in a bad way, necessarily, but I just used all the money I had saved up on weed or on excursions when I was high.…it’s like, whatever genetic capacity is within a squirrel to tell that little seemingly idiotic animal to bury its nuts in the ground over the winter so that they can easily access their stores of food in the spring – yeah, I must have the exact opposite trait to that…
Either way, though, that’s all well and good for a freshman to act a fool by smoking some pot, but by my sophomore year, through my weed connections (in other words, the other people I knew who smoked weed at my dorm…), I got into Adderall too.
Now, I’m not going to get into the finer details of everything, but I used Adderall for 2 years and most of the time, I did it in perfectly normal doses (20-40-60 mg). But near to the end of my use of this common stimulant drug, I started binging for almost no reason – did about 6-8 separate sessions total where I did 150-200 mg in a 24 hour period. When this was happening, I weighed in at 190-215 pounds, so I thought I could handle the higher amounts, but uh, I don’t know man, my body hasn’t been the same since all those binge sessions went down (I did 4-5 of these binge sessions in April-May, then another 4-5 of them in November-December of 2012), to be perfectly honest.
And this has been for the last year and a half now. I still can smoke weed without any major problems, but, um, I can’t work out like I used to, my blood pressure gets pretty high sometimes, and, well, I feel absolutely miserable, mainly because working out used to be MY MAIN HOBBY…I mean, it wasn’t hard for me to get a 6 pack, or to get into light bodybuilder size. It was actually hella fun. And, the thing is, I still am unsure if most of my problems are just in my head or if they’re actually physically real – I think it’s a combination of both, but, honestly, I guess I just underestimated the damage that Adderall could do on the body. All I know is…my body doesn’t feel the same as it used to before this one month period in late 2012 when I binged on Adderall about 4-5 times within that one month time span, specifically.
But…I’m not asking people reading this for their condolences or for their well wishes or for their suggestions/comments on my medical condition. Let me tell you this much – I at LEAST FEEL LIKE I took a number of years off of my life through stimulant addiction which never had to fucking happen….all four of my grandparents lived to at least 80 for God sakes…and they all died pretty suddenly without any extensive medical histories at that age. That might be part of how I used to be over-confident with stimulants…I always just thought of how my granddads had made it to 80-90 even with a few decades of cigarette smoking between the two of them, but, oh well, that was my thought process when fucked up 3-4 years ago.
More to the point though – fuck however many years I took off of my life in the long run. In the present, I am a 24 year old man who does not feel physically comfortable in his body, a body which 2 years ago had a 6 pack and was 180-190 (I got to 215 pounds a little later) pounds of flexible muscle. Those days seem like they were 50 years ago. I’m not lying, man…why the fuck would I lie about a feeling like that?? And this just from doing too much Adderall around 8-10 times max??? (And yes, there was a lot of other times where I did caffeine, and even some cocaine a few times, but…) I don’t know about you, but I feel fucked metaphysically in some way.
Anyway, all of this bullshit was the backstory to what happened yesterday. I was chilling at my crib after having done one of my dumbass jobs for the day, a job at which my body always feels like it’s holding me back from making more tips and getting any chance at a promotion…and, well, I had a revelation for a brief second.
I thought about ALL the money I’ve spent on weed/Adderall in the last few years…I mean, guys, it easily amounts to around 40-50 thousand dollars spent. I am being serious. Addict or not, I’m a hard worker. Obviously, the vast majority of this money went to weed. Only a few thousand dollars went to Adderall…but that was all it took to get the bodily damage done (I know I keep emphasizing this point to the point of redundancy, but hey, it’s my life, and it’s true, so my hands are sort of tied in that respect).
And then I thought back to this one time in freshman year, at the college I went to…I drove these two girls I knew (one of them I’d fucked) to the tattoo parlor in downtown near our campus, and the girl that I’d fucked asked me if I wanted to get a tattoo…I said nah and she was like, ‘Are you sure, this is a really good opportunity!?’ And yeah, I didn’t get a tattoo –I’m way too stubborn a person about shit like that to just get coaxed into doing something I hadn’t even thought about getting done before. And that happened a few months before I got into Adderall, and the downward spiral began with my life and the drugs and my body not feeling good anymore.
Well, the thought that went through my head the other day – if I could go back to that moment in time in the tattoo shop, start just getting tattoos, use all the hard money I had earned and WAS to earn in the future on tattoos instead of buying drugs like weed and Adderall, then I could have an absolutely killer tattoo setup on my upper body/arms AND be 100% in my physical body, which I am definitely not currently.
And then I just think about my parents deriding tattoos as a kid, and I think, yeah, bad advice, mom and dad, you fucking prudes!
Now I have a spiritual tattoo in a collective sense, if you ask me – now I have a body which has been through the drug wringer, as far as I feel it. You can’t tell it from looking at me – any damage I have is internal – but, nonetheless, it’s in my spirit now, this enfeeblement. And I feel marked for life, but NOT in a good way. And yeah, it’s depressing as hell. I’m a very young man, I’m not even 25 yet, I’m in the fucking prime of my fucking god-damn life, but, to what avail? I can’t beg God to go back in time a measly 2 years to get my fucking act together. Nah, I’m here to stay, unfortunately. A bad physical tattoo – you can get that removed!!!! Permanent internal scars from previous drug use – not so much.
I wish I could put a twist on this shit and make it sound happier, but, well, that can’t happen. In the technological age when I had full access to reading about the dangers of stimulants like Adderall, I failed my body. My body could’ve been saved by tattoos in favor of spending that money on drugs. Because, you got to understand, I’m a greedy, gratification oriented motherfucker. Although today I’ve started to learn how to save my money, when I was 19-20-21, the only thing I knew how to do with money was to spend that legal tender on whatever I well pleased – and 10 times out of ten, aside from food, it was drugs. Tattoos could have been a money-pit diversion, and my health could have been contained. But there it is – my tattoo revelation.
And I remember when that whole tattoo situation happened when I was a freshman – I thought there was some importance to that moment when I turned down the tattoo which just sort of dawned on me yesterday.
I understand that my life could’ve taken an infinite number of paths, but, yeah, that one with me starting out on getting tattoos would have been SO, SO, SO much preferable to the pain where I’m at now. I feel like I’m imprisoned in my body for the rest of my life and there’s nothing I can FUCKING DO ABOUT IT GOD FUCKING DAMMIT.
If you’re in good health, cherish it, because that feeling that you have, of being healthy, of being alive and being able to do whatever you possibly want to with your body, that feeling is a privilege, not a right. Respect your bodily temple and don’t desecrate it like I have. Good riddance and peace be unto you my fallen brothers and sisters, even if you beg, it’s too late…we have to endure these burdens for the rest of God’s children, for those who won’t and never will understand what pain is, what opportunity wasted is, what giving but never receiving anything is. Because that’s what it is, the battered footfalls of death laughing at your scorned remains, still standing, but just waiting to lie down, fucked, for the last time.
So, overall, my drug career has almost solely focused on weed. Around 80-90% of the time that I’ve been high in my life, it’s been off of weed (and whenever I’ve done other drugs, I’ve involved a lot of weed – just keep that in mind for the rest of this blog post). I’m a pothead, big whoop.
That being said, weed isn’t cheap – I’ve had to do a lot of stupid, menial jobs just to get enough money to smoke – waiter, server, construction (over the summer), etc.
Anyway, this was all going on for me at first in late high school and then I started going to a top 20 university in the U.S. – say what you want about higher education, but, if anything, it’s a bit of fucking work. While I had always been a naturally hard/smart/talented student, as a freshman in college, weed started taking over my life. Not in a bad way, necessarily, but I just used all the money I had saved up on weed or on excursions when I was high.…it’s like, whatever genetic capacity is within a squirrel to tell that little seemingly idiotic animal to bury its nuts in the ground over the winter so that they can easily access their stores of food in the spring – yeah, I must have the exact opposite trait to that…
Either way, though, that’s all well and good for a freshman to act a fool by smoking some pot, but by my sophomore year, through my weed connections (in other words, the other people I knew who smoked weed at my dorm…), I got into Adderall too.
Now, I’m not going to get into the finer details of everything, but I used Adderall for 2 years and most of the time, I did it in perfectly normal doses (20-40-60 mg). But near to the end of my use of this common stimulant drug, I started binging for almost no reason – did about 6-8 separate sessions total where I did 150-200 mg in a 24 hour period. When this was happening, I weighed in at 190-215 pounds, so I thought I could handle the higher amounts, but uh, I don’t know man, my body hasn’t been the same since all those binge sessions went down (I did 4-5 of these binge sessions in April-May, then another 4-5 of them in November-December of 2012), to be perfectly honest.
And this has been for the last year and a half now. I still can smoke weed without any major problems, but, um, I can’t work out like I used to, my blood pressure gets pretty high sometimes, and, well, I feel absolutely miserable, mainly because working out used to be MY MAIN HOBBY…I mean, it wasn’t hard for me to get a 6 pack, or to get into light bodybuilder size. It was actually hella fun. And, the thing is, I still am unsure if most of my problems are just in my head or if they’re actually physically real – I think it’s a combination of both, but, honestly, I guess I just underestimated the damage that Adderall could do on the body. All I know is…my body doesn’t feel the same as it used to before this one month period in late 2012 when I binged on Adderall about 4-5 times within that one month time span, specifically.
But…I’m not asking people reading this for their condolences or for their well wishes or for their suggestions/comments on my medical condition. Let me tell you this much – I at LEAST FEEL LIKE I took a number of years off of my life through stimulant addiction which never had to fucking happen….all four of my grandparents lived to at least 80 for God sakes…and they all died pretty suddenly without any extensive medical histories at that age. That might be part of how I used to be over-confident with stimulants…I always just thought of how my granddads had made it to 80-90 even with a few decades of cigarette smoking between the two of them, but, oh well, that was my thought process when fucked up 3-4 years ago.
More to the point though – fuck however many years I took off of my life in the long run. In the present, I am a 24 year old man who does not feel physically comfortable in his body, a body which 2 years ago had a 6 pack and was 180-190 (I got to 215 pounds a little later) pounds of flexible muscle. Those days seem like they were 50 years ago. I’m not lying, man…why the fuck would I lie about a feeling like that?? And this just from doing too much Adderall around 8-10 times max??? (And yes, there was a lot of other times where I did caffeine, and even some cocaine a few times, but…) I don’t know about you, but I feel fucked metaphysically in some way.
Anyway, all of this bullshit was the backstory to what happened yesterday. I was chilling at my crib after having done one of my dumbass jobs for the day, a job at which my body always feels like it’s holding me back from making more tips and getting any chance at a promotion…and, well, I had a revelation for a brief second.
I thought about ALL the money I’ve spent on weed/Adderall in the last few years…I mean, guys, it easily amounts to around 40-50 thousand dollars spent. I am being serious. Addict or not, I’m a hard worker. Obviously, the vast majority of this money went to weed. Only a few thousand dollars went to Adderall…but that was all it took to get the bodily damage done (I know I keep emphasizing this point to the point of redundancy, but hey, it’s my life, and it’s true, so my hands are sort of tied in that respect).
And then I thought back to this one time in freshman year, at the college I went to…I drove these two girls I knew (one of them I’d fucked) to the tattoo parlor in downtown near our campus, and the girl that I’d fucked asked me if I wanted to get a tattoo…I said nah and she was like, ‘Are you sure, this is a really good opportunity!?’ And yeah, I didn’t get a tattoo –I’m way too stubborn a person about shit like that to just get coaxed into doing something I hadn’t even thought about getting done before. And that happened a few months before I got into Adderall, and the downward spiral began with my life and the drugs and my body not feeling good anymore.
Well, the thought that went through my head the other day – if I could go back to that moment in time in the tattoo shop, start just getting tattoos, use all the hard money I had earned and WAS to earn in the future on tattoos instead of buying drugs like weed and Adderall, then I could have an absolutely killer tattoo setup on my upper body/arms AND be 100% in my physical body, which I am definitely not currently.
And then I just think about my parents deriding tattoos as a kid, and I think, yeah, bad advice, mom and dad, you fucking prudes!
Now I have a spiritual tattoo in a collective sense, if you ask me – now I have a body which has been through the drug wringer, as far as I feel it. You can’t tell it from looking at me – any damage I have is internal – but, nonetheless, it’s in my spirit now, this enfeeblement. And I feel marked for life, but NOT in a good way. And yeah, it’s depressing as hell. I’m a very young man, I’m not even 25 yet, I’m in the fucking prime of my fucking god-damn life, but, to what avail? I can’t beg God to go back in time a measly 2 years to get my fucking act together. Nah, I’m here to stay, unfortunately. A bad physical tattoo – you can get that removed!!!! Permanent internal scars from previous drug use – not so much.
I wish I could put a twist on this shit and make it sound happier, but, well, that can’t happen. In the technological age when I had full access to reading about the dangers of stimulants like Adderall, I failed my body. My body could’ve been saved by tattoos in favor of spending that money on drugs. Because, you got to understand, I’m a greedy, gratification oriented motherfucker. Although today I’ve started to learn how to save my money, when I was 19-20-21, the only thing I knew how to do with money was to spend that legal tender on whatever I well pleased – and 10 times out of ten, aside from food, it was drugs. Tattoos could have been a money-pit diversion, and my health could have been contained. But there it is – my tattoo revelation.
And I remember when that whole tattoo situation happened when I was a freshman – I thought there was some importance to that moment when I turned down the tattoo which just sort of dawned on me yesterday.
I understand that my life could’ve taken an infinite number of paths, but, yeah, that one with me starting out on getting tattoos would have been SO, SO, SO much preferable to the pain where I’m at now. I feel like I’m imprisoned in my body for the rest of my life and there’s nothing I can FUCKING DO ABOUT IT GOD FUCKING DAMMIT.
If you’re in good health, cherish it, because that feeling that you have, of being healthy, of being alive and being able to do whatever you possibly want to with your body, that feeling is a privilege, not a right. Respect your bodily temple and don’t desecrate it like I have. Good riddance and peace be unto you my fallen brothers and sisters, even if you beg, it’s too late…we have to endure these burdens for the rest of God’s children, for those who won’t and never will understand what pain is, what opportunity wasted is, what giving but never receiving anything is. Because that’s what it is, the battered footfalls of death laughing at your scorned remains, still standing, but just waiting to lie down, fucked, for the last time.
