Willpower and The omen of a pipe breaking

[Nickelodeon]

I have normally considered myself a generally responsible meth user.
I've never IV, and have never overdosed (4mg/kg), and I refuse to teach someone I know how to use meth on their own.

I only use meth when I have a supply of L-tyrosine for afterwards, and have been regularly supplementing Magnesium to assist with tolerance.


Lately, my problem has been willpower.


Once I have a bag of meth hidden in my room somewhere, I have a hard time resisting the temptation to dip into it, rather than save it for a fun time on the weekend.

My most common reason to dip into it mid-week is highly related to Stage 3 of the Amphetamine Addiction Model http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/showthread.php?t=461215&highlight=stages+addiction+tool

I find that using meth (~25mg Smoked) in the mornings as a Tool to get me out of bed at 5am so I can go on a 40km bicycle ride to assist my diet and weight loss program has become a sort of habit of mine. Typically amphetamine use and exercise should not ever be combined, but I constantly monitor my heart rate and am careful not to push myself too hard that it becomes serious risk.
The results don't help my justification either - I am typically able to burn about 1250 calories in a meth induced workout which is about a 25% increase on a normal workout. Also the hunger suppression effects reduce my morning calorie intake, which also helps my diet goals.

Although I realize that meth use should not be part of a diet and exercise program, but the results I have been getting (by analyzing body fat and muscle % on a special machine at the gym) contradict this.

This comfortable and affordable usage of meth in my life tends to leave me with but a single force or justification with a chance of stopping it - Willpower.

I can say for myself that my Willpower is very selective.....I would do anything at all just to be with a certain girl, but I can't bring myself to put my meth away and keep it away. (Once these two things were actually intertwined, and I ended up quitting Meth to keep a girl once, but unfortunately I am not in that situation anymore).

Earlier last year I saved a bag of 4-MAR (as I know how uber special and rare it is).....I ended up slowly chipping away at it to celebrate a few big events in my life centered around my recent engagement. I don't know if celebration was just an excuse I used at the time which was convenient....but that bag of 4-MAR is empty now.

Recently I have been doing something else - from each gram of Meth I purchase, I take out the largest rock and place it in a separate bag and stash that somewhere else. The motivation for this comes from the experimenting side of me, where I am interested in the different crystal formations and qualities of different batches.

I made it to Two before cracking.

The time was this Monday morning, I woke up feeling quite groggy from some cannabis and benzo dosing the night before with friends. It was one of those mornings where if I just had a small amount of meth, everything would smoothen out and be better.

Unfortunately, the only meth I had was the two pieces I had been saving.

So as I was preparing my pipe and stuff on my bed like I usually do, selecting which rock I was planning to chip.....my Pipe rolls off the side of the bed, hits the floor and completely shatters.

I was a bit shocked and the first thing I thought was: "This is an Omen, I'm not supposed to be using these rocks, I planned on saving them"

It was a perfect pause for me to stop and realize the error of my way, remind myself of my previous intention, and put the rocks back in their stash.

But you know what happened?

I didn't follow through.

I shrugged off the omen, found another pipe which was pretty dirty, gave it a bit of a clean, and proceeded to get high.

I only took a chip off one of the pieces and put the other one and a half back at it's hiding spot in my room.....

But now as I sit here, reading through Dark Side threads and contemplating my actions.....I really wonder what I can do to improve my willpower so that when I get back home, I won't find myself finishing off that chipped crystal of meth.


Thank you for listening, any input regarding willpower or pipe breaking omen stories welcome.

 

[Bojangles69]

Smoking meth is thee worst possible thing you can do to your brain. Every hit you take goes straight to your brain, and surges levels of dopamine that have a corrosive effect on all nearby brain tissue. Dopamine in high levels like that acts like ammonia, it destroys brain tissue - hence the "amine" part of dopamine (ammonia). Not to mention meth also breaks down into ammonia both in the body and if you let it sit out in liquid solution long enough.

Then is the stress factor on blood vessels. It doesn't take long of smoking meth before most users develop a twitch in the back of their neck/lower head. This is because the blood vessels die off, and it aggravates nerves sending impulses to your brain to contract muscles when they're not suppose to. Twitching is definitely not fun. Smoking meth, even controlled and for a diet plan is not fun nor smart.

I use to work out and smoke meth many many years ago. It took about a year before use escalated and working out stopped completely. It helped get me ripped as fuck, but I sacrificed many years of side effects afterwards and it was surely not worth the price.

Also, besides the caustic effects of smoking meth in and of itself, most meth is not purified properly. Most chemists do not do fractional crystalization and merely do an acid base extraction, filter, then dry the meth. It can appear white with a tint of yellow, and look very clean, but majority of the time there is sodium hydroxide in there, hyroiodic acid, iodine, phosphorous, and even sometimes white phosphorous which is an extremely lethal poison. Although you'd know if you were smoking that as you'd be dead.

Meth is simple to make, thats the main problem. Because nearly ANYONE with a chemistry book and the proper references can do it. And they do. This is a terrible thing. Drugs like ecstacy are much harder to synthesize, require much more in depth levels of comprehension, and chances are you're always getting a cleaner product, coke too. Maybe not the purest product but as far as harmful contaminates from the synthesis proceduce meth is the most likely to have them.

Smoking those contaminants even in minute amounts, is like injecting them straight into your brain tissue. I couldn't really think of anything worse to do. I smoked meth like I said, was relatively controlled and healthy in the begining, but I never met a person who could long term smoke meth in a controlled way and not rot to hell from it. Its just a horrible drug, well no I don't consider it a drug, its definitely more a poison what it does to the brain.

 

[Captain.Heroin]

Smoking meth is thee worst possible thing you can do to your brain.

Incorrect.

Binge drinking is the absolute worst possible thing you can do to your brain, without taking an even more neurotoxic drug which isn't considered recreational at all, unlike ethanol where people consider it "recreational".

Every hit you take goes straight to your brain

Wouldn't crack? Heroin? Yes, so I don't see how meth is different in this respect.

Overall - I agree, it shouldn't be used to help someone lose weight. They have to do it themselves. Methamphetamine might encourage someone to be more physically active at first, but at some point, you'll have to discontinue the drug, while also keeping an ideal diet and exercise level after the use.

Without doing both of these things during and after methamphetamine usage - you are bond to fail.

However, I wouldn't say it shouldn't be used at all; someone who is obese should consider losing weight, even if that means going to the doctor and finding a treatment plan which suits you best (this does not involve street meth).

 

[OverDone]

Not really seeing this as TDS material.

'Willpower' is a concept based on fantasy for most of us here regarding our drugs of choice. There are a few that have the ability to exert sheer force of will regarding their preferred drugs but those few are difficult to find in this particular forum.

We'll leave this open for a bit but it has the potential of going pear shaped and will quickly be closed if glamorization of usage or triggering material is posted via shared stories.

Best bet is to expect this to be closed or moved to a more appropriate forum. We'll see how it goes

 

[Middleway]

I think back to my crystal using days and I remember it causing me problems but I have forgotten the hold it got on my life until I read about pipe breaking.
I smashed many pipes in the attempt to stop using the stuff.
I went from crystal to ritalin to dexamphetamine abuse before finally getting my shit together and stopping stims all together.


All this stuff about an "omen", its bullshit, and typical of the thinking you have on meth and other stims. Your mind seeks (and finds) associations between events that may be real or imaginary, it doesn't matter.
The significance is the "significance" your mind puts to these things.
Attaching importance when it really is just ho hum run of the mill life in general kind of shit.
And all this shit about being a "responsible" meth user. It is meaningless.
I took magnesium, vitamins and I looked after my nutrition somewhat but I was a meth head all the same and so are you.


Of course if you use meth and exercise your going to to lose body fat. Any idiot knows that. The reason it shouldn't be used is that you would have to be seriously obese for it to cause you more health problems than using the meth does AND your going to have an even harder time keeping the weight off once you stop using it because your dopamine receptors have all downregulated and you wont have the energy to scratch your ass let alone go for a jog.

Crystal meth is bad fucking news, period. You can educate yourself about every effect that it has on your body and mind and how to compensate for it but all your doing is demonstrating even more how your life revolves around a drug...how a chemical owns you.

After prolonged stim use nothing is ever as good again. Everything that gives you a little high like food and film and love and sex...its all just a little bit hollow and a shadow of what it once was.

I'm not trying to be mean or harsh but I see someone who is writing cheques that are going to have to be paid one day.. Good luck on your journey, it sounds like you havn't even taken the first step.

 

[jaredvillhelm2002]

Run. Before it hooks you. Run.

 

[Bojangles69]

I have to disagree about alcohol being worse for your brain than smoking meth.

I can cite research too that supports this. Alcohol is bad for your entire body, organs and all, but as far as how meth works in the brain its nothing like crack or heroin. Meth is a volatile ammonia containing compound this is liquid as a freebase and breaks down immediately into ammonia from freebase form, it also gives off ammonia freely when exposed to brain tissue. Diluate saturations of ethanol would effect brain tissue sure, but ammonia would have far more catostrophic effects imo.

And thats not even the sole route where brain damage comes from regarding meth. Theres 3 primary ways brain damage is caused by smoking meth, with alcohol I'm pretty sure its just 1. Crack is much more neutral as well as heroin when it comes to reacting with the brain. Of course once you start taking in ridiculous amounts it really doesn't matter what you're using anymore, but I still have to say meth is far more toxic than any drug (including alcohol) and I will come back to cite some chemistry later.

 

[chitown rollin]

he didn't say alcohol is worse than meth. he said that binge drinking is worse for you. I've never tried meth but I can see how binge drinking is the worst possible thing you can do to your body just from seeing alcoholics.

 

[bennyZA]

Binge drinking is bad, but since ethanol intoxication's mechanism of action is relatively simple and binge drinking is not "organ toxic" but "organ corrosive" (meaning it takes years of binge drinking to die, as opposed to every toke of meth directly damaging part of your brain), The amount of damage caused by each hit of meth is absurd. However the which is the "worst" drug for you debate will never end... That being said, street meth is usually considered the worst by the end of my discussion and debates with people as well as literature I've read.

 

[Bojangles69]

/\ Thanks thats what I was refering too.

Meth devours your brain like no other drug I've seen. I've seen clearly what alcohol does to alcoholics, and most of the damage at first seems to come to thier bodies, then progressively eventually the brain.

With meth addicts changes to the brain happen much faster, and for the most part are irreversible.
But as far as the 3 routes that meth causes brain damage the first route is what benny mentioned about "street meth".
Like I've said before the majority of street meth is purified by mere acid/base extraction, gasing it out of ether, filtering, acetone wash, then drying. The majority of meth cooks I know (I use to cook meth myself) do NOT use fractional crystalization to get pharma grade meth. Meth containing any amount of yellow in it is loaded with impurities. Even if its white it can still have them. But most meth I've seen around here has yellow shading to it, those are nasty fucking impurities. Hydroiodic acid, iodine, phosphorous, sodium hydroxide, sodium iodide, you are vaporizing these corrosive chemicals with each hit and sending them directly into your brain/body. If its made via birch reduction then even worse, you get nice doses of lithium and ammonia salts with each hit.

Everytime I've made pharma grade meth via fractional crystalization, it looks like crushed ice/glass. If your meth looks cloudy, flakey, and more like snow, then crushed glass, chances are very high is was not purified the proper way. I can tell though just by looking at meth/smelling it how it was purified, and people rarely exhaust the time to employ the final most important step of purification, like I said fractional crystalization. It takes a few days to do as opposed to 5 minutes with the gassing from ether.

Second route of brain damage is from burning meth as you smoke it. Some meth gets to your brain in a vaporized state (which gets you high), a nice deal of it however decomposes instantly into its freebase form. That gets into your brain tissue and decomposes in ammonia like I said before, freebase meth is nasty shit. Its volatile, corrosive, and destroys brain tissue.

Third route of brain damage is from the dopamine. Other drugs that release dopamine do NOT release even close to the amounts of dopamine that meth releases in the brain. Its astronomical how much dopamine meth triggers. And dopamine itself in high amounts acts just like ammonia does, its an amine, it will eat away at brain tissue, vessels, capillaries, and like I said is what causes people who use meth to twitch and shake so much. Along with its stress on the heart that just compounds the shaking/twitching.

So you have the impurities from synthesis which are all lethal/poisonous chemicals, you have burning meth converting to freebase which then decomposes to ammonia once it gets into your brain. Along with other byproducts from the combustion that are just as toxic. And then dopamine itself acting as a corrosive amine in the high levels that meth triggers.

I do understand this is just a debate, and it could probably go on forever. But ethanol does not posses even remotely the toxic properties that methamphetamine hydrochloride does. Damage from alcohol happens much slower, and in terms of the brain meth is far more toxic imo. Point being stay away from the shit, its poison, not a drug. Not here to act like a know it all but I devoted a lot of my earlier years to reading everything I possibly could about meth. I was both a cook and a severe meth addict. When I got sober is when I learned most of what I know now, meth is hardcore shit. There was countless mornings I'd wake up, take a hit then vomit all over myself and fall on the floor. I still don't know what caused it but I think it was just the effects of what meth was doing to my brain/body overtime. It usually happened after really intense binges, I'd take a hit, vomit, fall on the ground sweating with a huge smile on my face. As sick as I was the high was still overcoming all that nasty shit. God was I bad on it.

 

[Middleway]

Great post Bojangles69.

I am curious, how long did you use for and how long have you been clean?
Do you feel you have done any irreversible damage?