long term effects
somebody asked about the long-term effects of pcp so i wanted to add my experience.
i was addicted to it hardcore for about a year. i was in pretty big denial of its actual "addictive" qualities (in comparison to drugs like cocaine and opiates, i also had problems drugs like that) but i think my denial was part of the addiction itself. it was a drug i used for about 10 years, but only occasionally... i had "loved it" and binged on it as a teenager and then only used it a couple times a year up until about 2 years ago.
at first it was the garden variety things, blackouts, injuries, robberies and assaults that happened when i was under the influence. its the type of drug to very easily push yourself over the edge with because the most common method of consumption is smoking and dosage isn't stable with street-grade pcp. also once you are under the influence of pcp it is the type of drug that makes you crave more, and if you have more you will take more... and when that happens all hell can break loose. while i never fried a baby in cooking oil or cut off somebodies face and wore it as a mask, i was incoherent a lot of the time, often being carted off to the hospital because the cops would find my car stopped in the middle of an intersection, or i would be freaking out somewhere. i got involved with undesirable people, gang members... i did live in a "ghetto" area at the time...
it progressively got worse, as time went on. my mental symptoms declined, because when i was sober things were almost as bad as when i was intoxicated, i was just as irrational and psychotic, just not incoherent. i got into a hit and run accident because i thought i was in a video game and my car could just take some damage and keep going. i thought i was invincible and could drive 90 miles per hour and run stop signs and red lights. i didn't think i was doing anything wrong. they say that pcp causes people to have "schizophrenic like behavior" and its a pretty spot on description because my behavior was definitely crazy....... hallucinations, delusions, completely erratic outbursts. eventually i was spending so much time in a blackout state horrific things began to happen to me, i "came to" in the middle of being raped, i was beaten severely, every single time i walked to the spot to score i wound up being carted off to the hospital in an ambulance, and times i would "escape" the emergency room, often to get high again and get hospitalized again...
the whole thing is, for months and months it was almost like i was in a dreamlike state 24/7 and didn't realize what was going on, it wasn't until after i had stopped using the drug entirely that my mind cleared up and i was able to see all the damage that had been done. by then i had lost my husband, my daughter had been taken away temporarily, i crashed my car, i lost my drivers license, and a number of other life changing things had happened to me. but it didn't even "hit me" until i stopped using the drug.
i sobered up completely but it took months for many of the psychotic symptoms to go away, and some have not completely subsided after 6 months clean.
i am not some inexperienced young idiot either. i'm a 28 year old psych major and i used to have a genius IQ. my brain is pretty much fried now, memory wise... although the brain is a wonderful thing and i am able to form new crystallized intelligence, the leftovers are pretty much mush. i'm all for personal freedom and didn't come to harp on anyone for using pcp - i am actually information gathering - but i wanted to share my own experience because its not a drug to be played with, and the long term effects are serious. severe depression, psychosis, memory loss, thought organization - just to name a few.