• Psychedelic Drugs Welcome Guest
    View threads about
    Posting RulesBluelight Rules
    PD's Best Threads Index
    Social ThreadSupport Bluelight
    Psychedelic Beginner's FAQ

Dissociatives Promise on the mountain: My breakup with dissociatives

Listening

Bluelighter
Joined
Aug 17, 2009
Messages
806
My love affair with dissociatives started back when MXE first became available in 2010. I remember that first taste so well. I was so happy, so energized, so full of creativity and vitality. I felt like a new person. Then I noticed something. "Hold on," I said to my partner, "if I close my eyes, and let go... Do you notice that too? It's..." Ohhhhhhh... The ecstasy. The oneness with the universe. The feeling of wholeness. That vibration. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh...

In fact it was that vibration that I would be chasing, but seldom encountering, for the next 10 years. One thing that you have to understand is that I did not take very heavy doses: Big doses did not agree with me (I would become nauseous with little good effect). Instead I would do small bumps here and there. They were entirely functional doses, removing my baseline depression completely and pushing me to create in a myriad ways. I would also receive incredible insight into self, and be able to talk to my partner without being affected in the habitual ways, allowing me to break out of my reactionary patterns of relating. In the early days of MXE, I labeled the drug as "100% wholesome." I felt like it was a source of pure good.

Still early in our courting, I already made the disturbing discovery: Even if MXE was totally good, my relationship with it was not. Almost immediately I was doing it without ever telling my partner. My partner is a particularly judgmental person, and I am particularly sensitive to being judged. A match made in heaven. Needless to say, it was much easier to just not tell her about my life change. And so it was for the ~10 years that I continued to chase after that good vibration. Partially because of this, that chase was filled with shame, confusion, insecurity, and self-hatred.

Even in that first year, I remember getting a different batch of MXE, from a different vendor, and feeling like it was not MXE. I was convinced that it wasn't the same stuff. Where was that good vibration? This vendor-paranoia would continue with batch after batch over the coming years. I did reagent tests, with inconclusive results every time. Finally, this culminated in a slew of GCMS tests that removed all doubt that at least some of these "bad" batches were, in fact, pure MXE... That was a tough pill to swallow.

That was one of the reasons that I began experimenting with other dissociatives. I tired so many different dissociatives that I cannot name them all anymore. Whatever came on the market, I tried it. They were all pretty good in their own way. They all satisfied me to an extent, but none of them satisfied me completely. I started to think outside the box. I tried vaporizing some. I tried plugging. I tried mixing with other drugs. Still frustration, but still no stopping.

I should mention that my wife gave birth to two children throughout this adventure. I have so many memories of profound connections with my kids because of these drugs. It was amazing and horrible at the same time. The shame in thinking about it now is almost too much to bear, but at the time I felt compelled. Mostly I felt unable to face my life without the help of some altered state. It was too painful otherwise.

I probably would have continued like this, but I was paranoid about what these things were doing to my health. My doses were very low by most peoples standards, but I was doing them pretty consistently about two or three times per week. On the off days I would have chronic colds, and lack of energy, and I was petrified that this was because of my dissociative usage and that I was doing horrible damage to my body. Blood-work and other tests always showed nothing, but I was sufficiently freaked out about it much of the time.

I tried to control my usage (i.e. to take long breaks), by keeping my entire stash in the freezer, knowing that I would have to plan to get some out by letting the jar thaw sufficiently before opening it, etc. This worked sometimes, but not always. Invariably, I would have a fight with my wife and would thaw the jar and take some out. I can't count the number of times that, after doing that bump, I would then dump into the garbage the rest of what I had taken out of the jar... I created a cycle of resisting, indulging, and then regretting and finally trying to get back on track.

This went on for a while until I realized that I couldn't be trusted with this jar in my freezer. However, by this time my collection was substantial and I didn't want to just get rid of it completely! MXE isn't even available anymore and surely one day I would be mature enough to use it responsibly! Right? I had something like 10g+ of MXE (from various sources), and even more of other dissociatives in this jar. So I did what I do when anything else in my house breaks. I used krazy glue. I glued the glass jar shut and put it back in the freezer, to be returned to in a future iteration of my life (in my imagination: 20 years down the road).

Predictably, that was a short-term solution. I think I lasted something like six months before a bad fight with my wife led me to dark places and had me taking a hammer to the jar. That was a bit over a year ago. She went out of town for work and I had the kids for the weekend. I needed to release some energy. I did a bump, put my kids in my bicycle trailer, and started biking. We live in Montreal and my kids had never seen the cross at the top of Mount Royal, up close. I decided that I was going to take them there. I biked up and up and up and didn't stop until we got to the top. The last time that I had done that bike ride, I had probably been 15 years old. As we got closer, it occurred me that I had never actually touched the cross so, when we finally arrived, I stuck out my hand and brushed it, before heading back down.

As I touched that cross, I told myself, "I will end this today." When I got home I disposed of the jar, once and for all. The feeling of relief then, and in the coming days, and even now, a year later, was and is monumental. I still have plenty of battles to fight, but I'm glad to be done with that one.

Goodbye MXE. You truly were a thing of pure goodness, but you were no good for me.
 
Yeah, the (black?) magic of MXE. But it wasn't until O-PCM which caught me in a nasty addiction and for sure lost some brain cells.. disposed a lot more than just 10g (both myself and other people doing it to me) just to buy even more toxic adulterated shit. MXE at least didn't so much damage, but indeed it's highly addictive.
 
Interesting read. Vibration with the universe is a big draw for me with dissociatives also, I get that entirely, although ketamine is my poison of choice that I keep going back to despite the ever present threat of lasting bladder issues and the more hidden threat of kidney injury.

Also totally get the constant self-control failures and planned extended breaks cut short. That stuff is like drug addiction 101 and I bet anyone who's experienced a problem drug habit or even teetered on the edge of one can identify. Self control is not the issue, but the human delusion in the complete autonomy and strength of our own minds makes us believe it is.

Of course some kind of machination of mind is what eventually leads to a solution - or in some cases disaster - but it's no doubt a complex and multifaceted process, only partially conscious, and I don't think anyone really understands it exactly although usually chance on it fortuitously by accident, as you appear to have done when the grinding gears of your subconscious, fighting towards a solution, finally lined up and clicked into place.

Some neuronal pathway that was fighting to grow around those deep rooted drug-seeking superhighways in your brain finally connected and lit up at that trigger moment, the powerful memory from 15 years ago triggering a synaptic flash that lay deeper than the physical structure of addiction, which served to provide the final link in the chain as 2 branching trees of neurons on opposite sides of the addiction circuits finally connected, branches touching, opening up a bypass over, under, through or around those aforementioned superhighways of self-reinforcing drug-seeking behaviours, and an ability to think and act in a different way.

Give it enough time and those highways will decay through disuse and the pressure of new trees of synaptic growth breaking through the concrete, which itself will crumble to dust, recycled into the soil of your mind to provide nutrients for your continued evolution as a human being.

Just a very minor point of warning though, many addiction experts will tell you those pathways never truly go away, even as they weaken and fall apart like a road in a deserted city long abandoned, but with enough effort they could be opened up again. I'm not sure if I personally believe this, but then, I'm not a neuroscientist, I'm just a drug addict in denial so what do I know. 😏

Don't feel bad about chucking MXE either, I've done it too, if a smaller amount, and it is still available, if a lot more expensive than it was, definitely not a unicorn drug by any means. No one should ever feel bad about chucking drugs.

Self control is not the issue. In fact I don't just do it with drugs, I do it more often with other things. I've regularly chucked half a pint of ice cream. Why would I keep it if I know I'll just eat it later and it's bad for me?

I've, several times, bought a pack of 20 cigarettes, smoked 1 and chucked the rest - running them under the tap and crushing them up first for good measure so I don't go rooting through the bin for them.

I've poured multiple units of alcohol down the sink - alcohol is a drug of course but chucking alcohol when it's not a symbolic moment in a pattern of problem alcoholism in my experience seems to be rare and not well understood.

I also practically never scrape up dregs, lick baggies, etc, if I've had a session and there's diffuse powders all over the cutting surface - that shit is getting wiped up and thrown away. If I have an empty baggie with visible residue - that's just going in the bin.

How many of you would lick a plate of food until it's spotless? Wasting food is more of an issue, arguably, than wasting drugs. It's just bad practice to reinforce degenerate behaviours. I mention this hoping to encourage more people to understand the psychological benefits of really basic methods of moderating drug intake.

For a while I'd buy a little K, and chuck it when I'd holed and the session was no longer fun (ie, blocked nose at best, bladder twinges at worst) but recently I've just been doing it til it's gone, using nasal decongestants to keep going and hydrating constantly and popping D-mannose as often as is likely to be safe... I still don't lick the baggie or try to scrape up that last tiny line that isn't going to do shit though at least.



Anyway... Couldn't help balking at the sentence
My partner is a particularly judgmental person
...which sounds to me like a problem in itself, although by the sounds of it it's not a problem for you since it sounds like you're still with the same partner and have kids with her. I don't know you guys obviously so she must have other good qualities, and this comment isn't aimed at you - but drug use is only a problem when it's a problem, NOT when someone else judges you for it, even if that person is an important person to you.

Sure, if a lot of people judge you for it maybe it is a problem, and I probably should be careful saying this lest I accidentally encourage anyone with a serious problem to decide they're fine and ignore the advice of loved ones.

But, there is a stigma surrounding drug use that many who do not use drugs do not appreciate, and feeling judged is a psychologically damaging thing in itself - and in the context of substance use problems, in many cases - I want to say most, but again, I'm not an expert in any cognitive science I preach about, so - in MANY cases, it's just as likely at least to exacerbate the problems associated with problematic substance use than it is to help in any way.

Anyway, glad you found a route out of your suffering, good luck to you and thanks for sharing your story.
 
I have only disposed shitty drugs that really deserve it, like piperazines.

Al that MXE that was lost like tears in the rain...
 
Interesting read. Vibration with the universe is a big draw for me with dissociatives also, I get that entirely, although ketamine is my poison of choice that I keep going back to despite the ever present threat of lasting bladder issues and the more hidden threat of kidney injury.

First of all thank you for the thoughtful (and beautiful) response. Your neural pathway prose resonates with my own thoughts. As for whether or not you can ever truly rid yourself of the pathways of a well-worn addiction: I think it's unlikely. However, we can surely invent and practice new ways of relating to our feelings that make these old automatic behaviors obsolete and perhaps even render those unuseful mechanisms impotent.

Regarding my relationship with my partner, you are of course right: My habitual patterns of coping (like all of us) we're etched into place as an infant, long before I encountered the triggering stimuli in the form of my wife. Blaming her for my feelings (and following behavior) is confused at best. Still, it's part of my context. There are 100 amazing things I could say about my partner, but I am deeply unhappy in the relationship. Though difficult for me to admit, I have been unhappy from the beginning. It took me many years with her, before I stopped blaming her for my feelings (if only she wasn't so rude, judgmental, unkind, etc) and admitted that she was no more broken than I was: just in different ways. It's a cold comfort, but that's where I'm at.
 
Damn, sorry to hear that man, that's a difficult one. I'll refrain from giving any life advice coz I'm not qualified and it's not my place and, fuck, I don't even know.

For the record as much as I love to write as poetically as I can manage about the correlates between neuronal constructs and the subjective experience of being, that recent spiel was partially inspired by the books of Marc Lewis, a polydrug but primary IV opiate addict in his twenties who later became a neuroscientist to study the biology of addiction.

I personally found it very interesting because his perspective changes between the 2 books he's written. His first book, "The Addicted Brain", is very much traditional, those brain changes are permanent, addiction is a disease type of outlook (at least to my interpretation) whereas his second book, "The Biology of Desire" - subtitle "Why Addiction is Not a Disease" takes a much more nuanced view of addictive behaviours, with drug use not functionally too different to any other maladaptive habit except for the obvious direct brain interface of the chemical, of course, and the cultural perception of drug use which has it's own influence on outcomes. Anyway, anyone who has studied neuroscience in an armchair fashion as it relates to drug use will mostly be familiar with the concepts he writes about - but his writing is very poetic if you can get past some of the obvious biases in his earlier work.

Actually besides just waxing lyrical about pleasing prose I bring this up because in my view actually although he definitely went off the rails - he also kept it together surprisingly well. While robbing pharmacies and sketching out on meth binges working at a hospital he got married a few times, had kids, advanced his career... He was more functional than I would be if I did drugs like he did for sure. And I think that points somewhat to an eventual shift maybe just as the brain matures... Obviously you also have kept it together somewhat having a wife and a family and - by the sounds of it, despite your own perception of your failures - actually never really gone truly off the rails despite by your own admission having a jar full of multiple grams of your drug of choice in your home for the entire duration of your addiction. I mean, I don't know really what I'm getting at here but I think there are indicators that could be studied by someone other than me to figure out what makes some people more vulnerable than others to just spiralling, and how some people just experience a kind of spontaneous remission eventually.

But yeah as far as your relationship with your partner, I've had a similar thing although mercifully not with a romantic partner but someone I thought was a friend for a long time, and maybe we were friends once. But for the last 4 years or so, it's been a type of hell, and my own drug use is a point of contention, and the salve I used to get over serious conflict. For various reasons I won't bother going into it's been difficult to properly cut the guy off although my own conclusion eventually was that actually he was and is just a manipulative cunt and drug use was a fairly neutral factor. If anything, actually, it was the drug use that stopped me from realising the real problem, that I just dreaded any and all interactions with the guy and came to believe it was somehow my fault. So I'm not blameless either, I've been an enabler, nothing in life is black and white. Don't actually mean to imply that this relates to your situation except in the most superficial way, just wanted to share coz it's been on my mind a lot and this reminded me of it.

Once I stopped caring about their opinion though, my compulsion to use substances to deal with the emotional backlash from conflict pretty much vanished, although I won't say I'm totally recovered yet, that stuff takes time, distance, and therapy.
 
Also totally get the constant self-control failures and planned extended breaks cut short. That stuff is like drug addiction 101 and I bet anyone who's experienced a problem drug habit or even teetered on the edge of one can identify. Self control is not the issue, but the human delusion in the complete autonomy and strength of our own minds makes us believe it is.

Of course some kind of machination of mind is what eventually leads to a solution - or in some cases disaster - but it's no doubt a complex and multifaceted process, only partially conscious, and I don't think anyone really understands it exactly although usually chance on it fortuitously by accident, as you appear to have done when the grinding gears of your subconscious, fighting towards a solution, finally lined up and clicked into place.

Some neuronal pathway that was fighting to grow around those deep rooted drug-seeking superhighways in your brain finally connected and lit up at that trigger moment, the powerful memory from 15 years ago triggering a synaptic flash that lay deeper than the physical structure of addiction, which served to provide the final link in the chain as 2 branching trees of neurons on opposite sides of the addiction circuits finally connected, branches touching, opening up a bypass over, under, through or around those aforementioned superhighways of self-reinforcing drug-seeking behaviours, and an ability to think and act in a different way.

Give it enough time and those highways will decay through disuse and the pressure of new trees of synaptic growth breaking through the concrete, which itself will crumble to dust, recycled into the soil of your mind to provide nutrients for your continued evolution as a human being.
I suspect this is the most beautiful prose I'll read all day.

How many of you would lick a plate of food until it's spotless? Wasting food is more of an issue, arguably, than wasting drugs. It's just bad practice to reinforce degenerate behaviours. I mention this hoping to encourage more people to understand the psychological benefits of really basic methods of moderating drug intake.
That's a pretty good point. I'm a total miser when it comes to wasting drugs. I'll like the mirror clean, rinse the baggie out for every last microgram, just out of principal. I'm also extremely careful about not wasting a scrap of food, but you've inspired me to throw some powders to the wind here and there, an offering to the spirits if you will.

Oh and @Listening, this is a great story, well done, you've made the right move.
 
Obviously you also have kept it together somewhat having a wife and a family and - by the sounds of it, despite your own perception of your failures - actually never really gone truly off the rails ...

It's true: from the outside looking in, I seem like I've got it together. I was always a "functional" user. I have my own business and work with many people (software engineers). No one would ever guess I do any drugs at all.

The standard I'm measuring against is my own sense of integrity. Waking up in the morning, feeling like my body needs a serious break and telling myself, "let's make this an off day," and then proceeding to dose anyway: This my ego cannot cope with.

That's a pretty good point. I'm a total miser when it comes to wasting drugs. I'll like the mirror clean, rinse the baggie out for every last microgram, just out of principal...

I remember way back when I got my first high-end weed grinder with a screen to collect kief... That stuff was always so precious to me. Waste not, want not! It took me several years before I realized that I didn't actually enjoy smoking kief: that even though it was extremely potent, I much preferred the balance from a single strain of weed over the cacophonic mixture of the past year together. Similarly for not vaporizing weed until it's totally spent: Better to vaporize it the right amount and then use new...

Of course some of this has to do with being fortunate to have enough money to be able to waste where waste is appropriate. However, I think a lot of it in drug culture may also be rooted in a sort of belief in the drugs being sacred. I know people have strong feelings about this (especially in the psychedelic community). I can even relate to it. However, I think it's a mistake. If anything is sacred, it is how we express our humanity, how we create, how we grow, how we overcome, how we relate, how we come together. When we treat the drugs as sacred, we forfeit our ability to choose for ourselves.
 
You just disposed of a bunch of mxe?!

Fo shizzle mah nizzle, watch me set fire to the last of my stash of MXE through aid of some sulfur and niter:




Listening, that was a truly beautiful retrospective. When your time is up, its up. You just know it and life goes on from there.

please consider putting it on erowid too, in the Methoxetamine Summaries/Retrospective section.

A true Closure story of 10 years.
 
Fo shizzle mah nizzle, watch me set fire to the last of my stash of MXE through aid of some sulfur and niter:

That was lovely. Well done. Feels good to know that I'm not totally alone. Now I just wish I had filmed it. :p
 
Broke upto as unlike MXE the disso's today break me up.

Used to wake up all bruised with wounds. As during my near holes i cooked, cleaned did whatever necessary. But my balance was so of I kept bumping and hurting myself. Sending, looking back, slightly improper mail's or at slightly improper times.

Yeah I am done with them to.
 
Lol my first thought was of the lost MXE too... I have a couple grams left myself and haven't touched it in years for fear of killing a unicorn.

But then as I read on and thought about your experience Listening, I realized that if that's what you had to do to break the cycle, then it was worth the loss of that MXE, all those dissos, just so that you could start to put your life back on track. MXE is not worth more than life <3

I can also immensely identify with a judgmental, harsh wife. Mine has become better and we are content in our marriage now, but there are still many rough memories for me... for both of us really. I hope you can find some peace.

Now you guys know how Frodo felt on Mt.Doom
"Cast it into the fire!"

"No."

I'm Isildur when it comes to drugs >.>
 
I am happy for you but I am not watching that.
Guess it comes down to pure mental martial art then.

MXE was the only of the whole bunch I could use without it effecting my motor skills or lowering inhibition's. No amnesia either when dosing it way below hole levels. It was an great allrounder stimulating/ mood improvement, better then Amphetamine. At the low dosages I mentioned.

Higher doses and it becomes an whole other drug.
 
Guess it comes down to pure mental martial art then.

MXE was the only of the whole bunch I could use without it effecting my motor skills or lowering inhibition's. No amnesia either when dosing it way below hole levels. It was an great allrounder stimulating/ mood improvement, better then Amphetamine. At the low dosages I mentioned.

Higher doses and it becomes an whole other drug.
Yeah never tried more than .15 - .2 myself
 
Top