Need advice

[hawtin94]

Im not sure that this is the right place to post this, but...

So Im a pretty experienced stimulant user, but sometimes during comedowns get very strange effects. Ill stick to the latest one as an example:went to celebrate NYE to a party with a couple of close friends and a lot of buddies.After the party and the afterparty we went back to one of the girls place around 10 am.I was fine till then, but after that it soon started. My voice becomes a lot different, like "weaker", its like there is a lump in my throat(tho the 3-4 packs of cigs I smoke during a night like are probably the reason for that lol)and I struggle to make sensible sentences, not because I dont know whats going on around me, but like I ran out of energy and brain activity to do it. One of my friends said that it looks like Im only there physically, becuz I barely say anything for hours. When someone asks me a question I usually just stutter something stupid, and a few minutes later the perfect answer just hits me out of the blue. It can be very embarassing, and adds a lot to the already present anxiety and paranoia of the comedown, which in exchange makes the whole thing worse. I feel almost zero confidence, body language goes to shit, and everyone seems to be just fine(as fine as someone drugged out of their mind can), except me. Doing drugs in this stage have little to zero positive effects. Usually this subsides after a couple of hours, and I start feeling a bit more as my normal self, but still not as strong as I would like to.

This happened to me when I was with few good friends, or large groups, or with people I barely knew, so there seems to be no correlation in that(although Im more prone to it in more anxiety inducing situations). The worst case was year ago me, and a very good friend of mine went to a guys place after a party with two more dudes and a girl, stayed there half a day. During this time I was sitting in one place, barely moving and saying maybe 5 sentences. I was perfectly aware of this, but couldnt do anything about it, even hearing one of the dudes saying Im a complete psycho, I didnt react anything to that, but I wouldnt let something like that without a word in any other mindset.

So my question is, has anyone experienced something like this, or have any advice to change this?I would like to avoid making a complete fool out of myself in similar situations in the future.

Im not a native english speaker, tried to make this post as coherent and sensible as I can.

 

[CFC]

I don't think your comedown is in any way unusual at all, particularly when you've not slept! It may look to you in that state that everyone else is fine, but they probably aren't.

However it could also be aggravated by a low blood sugar level, which stimulants have a habit of causing later on and in the comedown, partly by maintaining elevated insulin levels in the absence of heightened blood glucose/amino levels. Does this still happen when you've eaten well?

 

[hawtin94]

Im quite certain that partly its just the comedown, but I feel like there is more to it.The things that bothers me most is my voice(its just sounds completely unnatural, almost like it isnt mine) and my delayed brain lol. It prolly looks like a group of people talking shit, having a laugh and a weirdo just standing/sitting there.

During most of these occasions I dont eat anything( apart from an orange or two in the afternoon :D), next time I will definitely consume something with a lot of sugar, see if it helps.

 

[CFC]

Not too much sugar if possible. A sugar rush would probably take you right back to a highly stimulated state again, but followed by another even more extreme zombie-like spaced out crash an hour or so later. Something that digests slowly with fats and protein in would be best, if you can manage to eat it. You really need to try though, you're probably suffering from hypoglycaemia when you're like that, which is potentially quite neurotoxic with stims.

 

[hawtin94]

I see. Could you recommend some food which falls in that category?

 

[CFC]

Cheese and Ham sandwich, burrito, burger, milkshake, pizza and so on

You could also try a protein shake if you feel you can't chew/swallow.

 

[hawtin94]

Great, will surely try it next time, thanks mate

 

[Vastness]

What stimulants are we talking about here?

Personally I think these effects sound like classic post-stimulant anxiety, perhaps you are more prone to anxiety anyway, or even if you aren't perhaps you just experience it to a greater extent, or in a different way, than your friends. I have been where you are, not while coming down, actually I remember something similar happening while sitting around coming up on some weird substance sold as MDMA when I was much younger, and it is not pleasant, and I would not put myself in such a situation again.

I still know that I will not enjoy social environments while coming down, personally, so I would either just take more drugs or just call it a night and remove myself from that situation. It really doesn't sound like you are enjoying yourself by this point, so I would suggest doing the same... in my opinion, although maintaining healthy blood sugar levels will maybe have some minor effect, the effects you describe are such that you are unlikely to experience a significant reduction in negative effects without, again, taking more drugs.

I don't mean necessarily more stimulants - you might need to do a bit of research to find your ideal comedown drug, but there are some of them that are physiologically fairly benign... that is of course, if you are hell bent on finding a way to enjoy the afterparty. The other option, as mentioned, is to just simply call it a night sooner, because it really doesn't seem that you are getting anything good from prolonging it at the moment.

 

[hawtin94]

Speed,pills ( mostly with mdma, sometimes god knows what), medium to large amount of alcohol and weed.

Yea I considered that possibilty too, but I dont always get these effects, and with time Im usually getting better, instead of worse. So its most likely the combination of both cases. Im a pretty private person, maybe its related too. Calling it a night is often not an option, because we r mostly in another town, ours is a shithole in terms of partying. Thats why it would be nice to find a solution for my problem. Doing more stimulant at that stage is kinda pointless, since its like they only work on a 25 % level instead of 100.
What do you mean by ideal comedown drug? I was thinking ketamine, problem is its hard to get around here...

 

[Vastness]

Dissociatives are usually a good choice, and are usually physiologically quite safe. Some people like benzos, but the fact that you've been drinking alcohol also might make this a bad idea.

Possibly you could try cutting out one of the substances you use prior to the comedown also, combining alcohol with multiple stimulants is probably only making the comedown worse. I haven't done speed (at least not intentionally) but I hear this is not great for post-crash anxiety either. How often are you using MDMA also? The symptoms you describe could also be caused by overuse, as MDMA alone and used infrequently for many people results in an afterglow rather than a harsh comedown, but (presumably) your usage has progressed past this point by now. It might be that weed would be a good thing to try cutting out as well, weed is anxiogenic for many people as I'm sure you know, but I do think many people just continue smoking it partly out of habit and partly out of an abstract desire to just become more intoxicated without actually considering it might not be fun for them anymore... This has been my experience with weed anyway, YMMV.

You can also probably help yourself by making sure you are in excellent health otherwise prior to pulling these all nighters which are very taxing on anyone physically, especially so if they are not in good health. Try to eat well, get regular exercise, and quit smoking if you can.

 

[CFC]

This doesn't sound anything like anxiety to me, and suggesting the use of more drugs to counteract other drugs is not really the kind of harm reduction we practice at BL.

OP I used to get pretty much identical symptoms to you until I began to watch food intake and get blood sugar up. At the very least try it before plunging head first into comedown drugs.

 

[hawtin94]

Vastness: Im doing it once, maybe twice a month, had my fair share of binges in the past, but I dont think its related. I tried cutting alcohol out, problem is I like it too much... :D

Considering all, first I will try it with food, see if it helps, try to be more healthier (trying to quit an 8 year old smoking habit at the age of 22, I think Im going crazy :D ) and be a more responsible user ( altough Im already much better than once was lol ). Anyway thanks for the answers mates, much appreciated.

 

[Vastness]

suggesting the use of more drugs to counteract other drugs is not really the kind of harm reduction we practice at BL.

It did occur to me while posting that advising more drugs is perhaps questionable advice from a harm reduction perspective, so my apologies if my advice was a little over the line as far as the ethos of this forum goes... just based on my own experience, however, a more bearable comedown has a net harm reducing effect on my own life, whereas a high-anxiety and stressful comedown will have both acute and longer term effects that are psychologically harmful.

I recognise however this may not be good advice for everyone, perhaps even not for the majority of drug users, and if it's not an anxiety problem of course this would be hard to justify... so in that respect, and in the interest of harm reduction, I would stress that my drug related advice should be taken with a fairly critical grain of salt and probably as an absolute last resort.