imperfect.la
Warlord
I'm a big drug nerd. My most favorite website is erowid's experience vaults. I just love reading about different kinds of drugs and the way they affect a person's experience. I'm also very much interested in how people become addicted and such, to drugs, cigarettes, or alcohol. I believe there's so much undocumented research about these substances that I need to find out some truth for myself. If you guys would be willing to share your experiences with me that would be very helpful and I'm sure many will find them interested.
Let me begin with my experience: Heroin.
I grew up in the Bay Area. If anyone's aware of the way things are up here in the Bay, the cities of Oakland, Berkeley, and San Francisco, they will understand what "growing up in the Bay" means. Needless to say, due to the very liberal politics, located near major ports, and the high minority population, drug use wasn't just common. It was expected and accepted.
At around 6th grade, I started smoking weed with some of the older middle schooler kids (7th, 8th). As much as I am against drug propaganda, I'll be the first to admit that weed is a gateway drug. I was never a really big fan of marijuana and its effects, and to this day I have trouble understanding people's fascination with the chemical, so needless to say, I started experimenting with different kinds of other drugs.
Alcohol came next. I liked the "high", since this is probably the best social drug since it's acceptable by middle class society. Girls, who usually never do drugs, will most likely drink. And if you want to have girls, you're going to need to drink too.
Needless to say, I found the taste of beer horrible, and hard liquor makes me want to throw up when I think about it. So alcohol was out, for me, I was never a big enthusiast for the bottle. Up to this point in my life, freshman year of high school, weed and alcohol were really the only two drugs that I used on an on - and - off basis.
However, that all changed during my sophomore year, when the Hyphy movement hit the Bay Area in full force. Living outside of Oakland I felt like I was in the center of the movement. It was like nationalism really. The same . .. .. .. . that people get hooked on, fascism, communism, and Bay Area pride. The drug of choice was thizz - aka, ecstasy.
I was always afraid of taking pills. Since a young child I had a strange obsession with my health after my grandmother informed me that tylenol will eat away your stoumach lining, and that every pill has some sort of sideaffect - whether you know about it or not. Before taking any pill I was always wondering whether this was going to hurt me somehow, or make me crazy, and I wouldn't have even known about it. However, being the impressionable man that I am, I decided to join the movement and thizz (to take ecstasy) in style.
MDMA, the active compound in the pill and the whole point of the drug, is usually very low in street pills. They are often cut and filled with meth or other similar drugs that make you feel kind of like you are on MDMA. After 'thizzing' for a couple of months I became more and more aware of this fact. I built a pretty steep tolerance to MDMA when it got to the point that I was only feeling the nasty chemicals that the pills were cut with. I realized this was bad for my health and I needed to stop.
To this point I never knew physical addiction, only a weak form of psychological addiction that didn't really matter much for me. I could quit any time I needed, and as a result I did rather well at school. Midway through my junior year I decided to quit "thizzing" in order to focus more on my school work. In the highly competitive world of highschool academics everyone needs a little edge. One of my friends (who now goes to Stanford) let me in on a little secret - adderal. This little drug is a prescription pill designed to combat mild forms of ADD. In normal people, it helps people focus and stay awake - perfect for studying and taking test. In essence, my friend was taking academic steroids. I decided I needed to do the same. I could have walked down to the doctor and gotten a prescription with the snap of my fingers (just like someone can get a medical marijuana card) but this stuff is like dirt around here. The doctors here are all crooks and drug abusers themselves and will give a scrip' to anyone so everyone has a scrip' for adderall.
I started using the drug with mild results. While it did help me focus and stay awake, those were not really problems of mine to begin with. I decided to stop using this drug. However, since I was already starting to abuse prescription drugs, why not try some painkillers? Everyone's always talking about how great they are. This was my biggest mistake of my life.
Oxycotin, Oxycodone, and the like are all opiates. These powerful painkillers are drugs made from the opium poppy and are designed to relieve powerful pain; in perfectly painless victims it creates a euphoria, something very similar, as I would soon find out, to heroin. People get these pills from different places. Someone breaks their leg, gets a bunch of pills and sells them, or just from crooked docs, or crooked pharmacists. Needless to say they are very common - but also very expensive.
When I started taking these pills, I started to realize I was addicted. After a few weeks taking these painkillers, life was good. Unlike other drugs, when you are on these painkillers you just feel good and no one can see you're "high". You feel very relaxed, yet still in control, still able to do anything you need. Needless to say, it was cool. It was the best I ever felt in my life.
When the summer of junior year came around I made a realization that I managed to keep - when I get to college I'm going to quit this stuff... but since right now I've pretty much solidified my academic record, there's not much more damage I could do. So I might as well have some fun before I go out into the "Real World".
Pills are expensive. For example, Oxycotin and Oxycodone are pretty weak drugs unless you take quite the amount. After realizing that I was addicted I also realized I had quite the tolerance to these drugs. And I wanted more. I wanted to feel the cool waves in my body, washing away all the pain and nervousness. It's hard to describe the effects of these drugs to those who have never taken them, but needless to say the high is very good and you just want more, more, more.
Next thing I knew I was trying to find ways of how to experience a better high. There are methods of chemically treating these prescription drugs to remove the binding elements to make the pill more pure and other methods that increase your high. This wasn't new to me - back in the day I would extract pure caffeine from No-Doz pills by crushing up the pill in a mortar and pestle and using water to get rid of the binding agent and then drying the pure powder on a pane of glass for several weeks. But this was different, I would need solvents, chemicals, and other stuff. I was trying to relax, not start a meth lab.
So I realized heroin was just a better deal. It was a lot cheaper, and got you a lot higher. It would be the same high, since it's an opiod, but a bit different, from what I've heard. Around here no one messes with heroin - it's like a taboo. Walk up to any dealer and they will stick their head in the sand; heroin is out of the question. The only way to get heroin is to go to Oakland or Richmond - into the blackest, dirtiest, and poorest crime filled neighborhoods.
Needless to say, my first experience was interesting. By this time, the continual use of these painkillers really turned me into a loner - opiods aren't party drugs, they are drugs you use that make you not want to do anything except sit in a chair and think. So I was all alone now, driving through Richmond's worst neighborhood. I dropped about $50 that day for some black tar heroin and brought it home.
The heroin came in a baloon and I emptied the thing out to find these two black ugly looking lumps. I wasn't going to smoke it or sniff it - I hate smoking in general and I never snorted anything before, and I wanted my money's worth. I did a fair bit of research and learned how to cook, and inject heroin. I found a good day when both of my parents were out of town and decided to do it. I weighed out an appropriate dose and applied to to my vein.
It hit me hard, fast, almost instantly. I don't even remember taking the needle out of my arm, I just remember slowly laying down and looking at the ceiling. At that moment I felt amazing, the best I have ever felt. I remember thinking that I just want to lay down on a couch and relax, maybe put on some music. However, I felt amazingly sick and nausea crept up. I collapsed in my bathtub and puked out for a pretty long while. However, it didn't feel bad - it didn't feel like anything. I didn't even bother getting out of the bathtub, I just laid there and relaxed, and eventually fell asleep. It was all a continuous flow of time from laying there and eventually falling asleep. Needless to say, I was hooked.
No one around me shared my habit, and frankly, that made things so much easier. I didn't want anyone to know, I felt guilty and sick all of the time so I didn't want to be around people. My parents constantly asked why I was sick and that I looked pale/weak and I just told them that they are imagining things. In reality, after a few weeks of continuous use I became the shadow of the man that I was. I dropped a lot of weight - I don't remember exactly how much but now I looked very skinny and weak.
Eventually, I started to run low on cash. Money was never a problem, I come from a relatively wealthy family and they have always provided me with anything I needed to buy. However, asking for pure cash seemed kind of strange and I didn't want them to suspect anything, so I started to sell my items. Though I hadn't seen my friends for a couple of months I suddenly reappeared into their lives and surprised them. However, all I needed was money. I sold all of my video games, a lot of my clothes, shoes, until I had only the bare essentials. I was not stupid, however, so I only sold items that my parents wouldn't really find out about - like clothes and video games that they rarely saw or bothered to count/look for. The straw that broke the camel's back was, however, when I decided to sell my laptop. I have a tower pc and a laptop that my parents bought for me (and would eventually go to college) recently in an attempt, I guess, to improve my mood and get me out of being "sick". However, at this point I really cared little about anything that didn't have to do with heroin so a laptop was the last thing I really needed.
I decided I would hide the laptop for a while and see if my parents noticed. If not - after a week, I would sell it. A week went by, school had already started, and I didn't hear anything from my parents about the laptop and it was hidden in my car the whole time (that is where I put everything that had to do with heroin - my parents don't have keys to my car). After a week I started looking for buyers. I eventually settled for $500 to some guy from school. The laptop cost 1700 MSRP but I didn't care at that point. I always heard stories about dumb junkies selling their cars at half their value and always laughed and though "what morons", but here I was, selling a $1700 laptop for $500. If you ever want nice stuff cheap, hang around heroin addicts.
Living a life of physical addiction is strange when I look back on it. When I sold the laptop I thought all of my troubles would be over, $500 in cash seemed like it was a million bucks and I would have enough heroin to last me until I wanted to quit.
You live a life like a poor single mother - from paycheck to paycheck, not really thinking about the future, always focused on the present and trying to survive - until that one day when everything's going to be alright.
After I sold the laptop I thought I was good, at least for a long while. However, my parents were growing more and more concerned about me. College application time came by and I hadn't started anything and only a month was left to finish. Somehow, while on this heroin, I completely forgot that I still had a life and I had to go to college after this stuff.
I maintained my grades, miraculously. Since I didn't have a social life I had plenty of time to read, write, and do homework. Everything seemed to be floating by just fine, but I always needed the heroin. It was scary really, like I was walking a tightrope through heaven while hell was only 1 foot below me.
My parents got more and more concerned and got on me on doing my college applications. They pressured me and became hysterical and started asking me "What the hell is wrong with you?" "I can't understand what's going on." My parents, I guess, were naive and never thought I'd ever do drugs. To give me credit, I was always smart enough to hide everything and never leave any trace of my habit. I did however, under this pressure, complete my college applications and did a damn fine job.
My father then asked where my laptop was. I told him it was at my friend Joe's house. He asked me to bring it back. He knew I didn't have it, somehow, he knew. This is when I came clean. I got to the point where the junk was really messing with me that I had an emotional breakdown. I confessed my dirty secret to my parents, showed them my veins, the drugs, and everything. I don't know why I did - I guess it was a cry for help.
It was nearing Christmas and everything was bad. My father signed me up for doctors meetings to assess the damage that had been done, I went to several detoxes that I don't really want to talk about (it was bad), and put on several drugs to help the withdrawal symptoms. I'm glad that I didn't have any friends that did it because all I could think about was finding a way to do heroin. My parents took my car keys and didn't let me out of their sight, so nothing could happen, and I'm glad. After a few weeks of living like this I realized that I was "cured". The heroin didn't kill me and the drugs and rehabs and all the other stuff really got me off. I was actually surprised at how easy it was considering all of the withdrawals and the myths that I have heard.
I am now attending UCLA in the fall. I got into UC Berkeley, but that community has a lot of drug use and it way too close to Richmond. Even though I am cured I still have paranoia and nightmares of one day just getting up and driving down to the same alleyways of the Bay Area and repeating the process. I don't have cravings or anything like that, just an irrational fear - a phobia, or going down that same road.
Let me begin with my experience: Heroin.
I grew up in the Bay Area. If anyone's aware of the way things are up here in the Bay, the cities of Oakland, Berkeley, and San Francisco, they will understand what "growing up in the Bay" means. Needless to say, due to the very liberal politics, located near major ports, and the high minority population, drug use wasn't just common. It was expected and accepted.
At around 6th grade, I started smoking weed with some of the older middle schooler kids (7th, 8th). As much as I am against drug propaganda, I'll be the first to admit that weed is a gateway drug. I was never a really big fan of marijuana and its effects, and to this day I have trouble understanding people's fascination with the chemical, so needless to say, I started experimenting with different kinds of other drugs.
Alcohol came next. I liked the "high", since this is probably the best social drug since it's acceptable by middle class society. Girls, who usually never do drugs, will most likely drink. And if you want to have girls, you're going to need to drink too.
Needless to say, I found the taste of beer horrible, and hard liquor makes me want to throw up when I think about it. So alcohol was out, for me, I was never a big enthusiast for the bottle. Up to this point in my life, freshman year of high school, weed and alcohol were really the only two drugs that I used on an on - and - off basis.
However, that all changed during my sophomore year, when the Hyphy movement hit the Bay Area in full force. Living outside of Oakland I felt like I was in the center of the movement. It was like nationalism really. The same . .. .. .. . that people get hooked on, fascism, communism, and Bay Area pride. The drug of choice was thizz - aka, ecstasy.
I was always afraid of taking pills. Since a young child I had a strange obsession with my health after my grandmother informed me that tylenol will eat away your stoumach lining, and that every pill has some sort of sideaffect - whether you know about it or not. Before taking any pill I was always wondering whether this was going to hurt me somehow, or make me crazy, and I wouldn't have even known about it. However, being the impressionable man that I am, I decided to join the movement and thizz (to take ecstasy) in style.
MDMA, the active compound in the pill and the whole point of the drug, is usually very low in street pills. They are often cut and filled with meth or other similar drugs that make you feel kind of like you are on MDMA. After 'thizzing' for a couple of months I became more and more aware of this fact. I built a pretty steep tolerance to MDMA when it got to the point that I was only feeling the nasty chemicals that the pills were cut with. I realized this was bad for my health and I needed to stop.
To this point I never knew physical addiction, only a weak form of psychological addiction that didn't really matter much for me. I could quit any time I needed, and as a result I did rather well at school. Midway through my junior year I decided to quit "thizzing" in order to focus more on my school work. In the highly competitive world of highschool academics everyone needs a little edge. One of my friends (who now goes to Stanford) let me in on a little secret - adderal. This little drug is a prescription pill designed to combat mild forms of ADD. In normal people, it helps people focus and stay awake - perfect for studying and taking test. In essence, my friend was taking academic steroids. I decided I needed to do the same. I could have walked down to the doctor and gotten a prescription with the snap of my fingers (just like someone can get a medical marijuana card) but this stuff is like dirt around here. The doctors here are all crooks and drug abusers themselves and will give a scrip' to anyone so everyone has a scrip' for adderall.
I started using the drug with mild results. While it did help me focus and stay awake, those were not really problems of mine to begin with. I decided to stop using this drug. However, since I was already starting to abuse prescription drugs, why not try some painkillers? Everyone's always talking about how great they are. This was my biggest mistake of my life.
Oxycotin, Oxycodone, and the like are all opiates. These powerful painkillers are drugs made from the opium poppy and are designed to relieve powerful pain; in perfectly painless victims it creates a euphoria, something very similar, as I would soon find out, to heroin. People get these pills from different places. Someone breaks their leg, gets a bunch of pills and sells them, or just from crooked docs, or crooked pharmacists. Needless to say they are very common - but also very expensive.
When I started taking these pills, I started to realize I was addicted. After a few weeks taking these painkillers, life was good. Unlike other drugs, when you are on these painkillers you just feel good and no one can see you're "high". You feel very relaxed, yet still in control, still able to do anything you need. Needless to say, it was cool. It was the best I ever felt in my life.
When the summer of junior year came around I made a realization that I managed to keep - when I get to college I'm going to quit this stuff... but since right now I've pretty much solidified my academic record, there's not much more damage I could do. So I might as well have some fun before I go out into the "Real World".
Pills are expensive. For example, Oxycotin and Oxycodone are pretty weak drugs unless you take quite the amount. After realizing that I was addicted I also realized I had quite the tolerance to these drugs. And I wanted more. I wanted to feel the cool waves in my body, washing away all the pain and nervousness. It's hard to describe the effects of these drugs to those who have never taken them, but needless to say the high is very good and you just want more, more, more.
Next thing I knew I was trying to find ways of how to experience a better high. There are methods of chemically treating these prescription drugs to remove the binding elements to make the pill more pure and other methods that increase your high. This wasn't new to me - back in the day I would extract pure caffeine from No-Doz pills by crushing up the pill in a mortar and pestle and using water to get rid of the binding agent and then drying the pure powder on a pane of glass for several weeks. But this was different, I would need solvents, chemicals, and other stuff. I was trying to relax, not start a meth lab.
So I realized heroin was just a better deal. It was a lot cheaper, and got you a lot higher. It would be the same high, since it's an opiod, but a bit different, from what I've heard. Around here no one messes with heroin - it's like a taboo. Walk up to any dealer and they will stick their head in the sand; heroin is out of the question. The only way to get heroin is to go to Oakland or Richmond - into the blackest, dirtiest, and poorest crime filled neighborhoods.
Needless to say, my first experience was interesting. By this time, the continual use of these painkillers really turned me into a loner - opiods aren't party drugs, they are drugs you use that make you not want to do anything except sit in a chair and think. So I was all alone now, driving through Richmond's worst neighborhood. I dropped about $50 that day for some black tar heroin and brought it home.
The heroin came in a baloon and I emptied the thing out to find these two black ugly looking lumps. I wasn't going to smoke it or sniff it - I hate smoking in general and I never snorted anything before, and I wanted my money's worth. I did a fair bit of research and learned how to cook, and inject heroin. I found a good day when both of my parents were out of town and decided to do it. I weighed out an appropriate dose and applied to to my vein.
It hit me hard, fast, almost instantly. I don't even remember taking the needle out of my arm, I just remember slowly laying down and looking at the ceiling. At that moment I felt amazing, the best I have ever felt. I remember thinking that I just want to lay down on a couch and relax, maybe put on some music. However, I felt amazingly sick and nausea crept up. I collapsed in my bathtub and puked out for a pretty long while. However, it didn't feel bad - it didn't feel like anything. I didn't even bother getting out of the bathtub, I just laid there and relaxed, and eventually fell asleep. It was all a continuous flow of time from laying there and eventually falling asleep. Needless to say, I was hooked.
No one around me shared my habit, and frankly, that made things so much easier. I didn't want anyone to know, I felt guilty and sick all of the time so I didn't want to be around people. My parents constantly asked why I was sick and that I looked pale/weak and I just told them that they are imagining things. In reality, after a few weeks of continuous use I became the shadow of the man that I was. I dropped a lot of weight - I don't remember exactly how much but now I looked very skinny and weak.
Eventually, I started to run low on cash. Money was never a problem, I come from a relatively wealthy family and they have always provided me with anything I needed to buy. However, asking for pure cash seemed kind of strange and I didn't want them to suspect anything, so I started to sell my items. Though I hadn't seen my friends for a couple of months I suddenly reappeared into their lives and surprised them. However, all I needed was money. I sold all of my video games, a lot of my clothes, shoes, until I had only the bare essentials. I was not stupid, however, so I only sold items that my parents wouldn't really find out about - like clothes and video games that they rarely saw or bothered to count/look for. The straw that broke the camel's back was, however, when I decided to sell my laptop. I have a tower pc and a laptop that my parents bought for me (and would eventually go to college) recently in an attempt, I guess, to improve my mood and get me out of being "sick". However, at this point I really cared little about anything that didn't have to do with heroin so a laptop was the last thing I really needed.
I decided I would hide the laptop for a while and see if my parents noticed. If not - after a week, I would sell it. A week went by, school had already started, and I didn't hear anything from my parents about the laptop and it was hidden in my car the whole time (that is where I put everything that had to do with heroin - my parents don't have keys to my car). After a week I started looking for buyers. I eventually settled for $500 to some guy from school. The laptop cost 1700 MSRP but I didn't care at that point. I always heard stories about dumb junkies selling their cars at half their value and always laughed and though "what morons", but here I was, selling a $1700 laptop for $500. If you ever want nice stuff cheap, hang around heroin addicts.
Living a life of physical addiction is strange when I look back on it. When I sold the laptop I thought all of my troubles would be over, $500 in cash seemed like it was a million bucks and I would have enough heroin to last me until I wanted to quit.
You live a life like a poor single mother - from paycheck to paycheck, not really thinking about the future, always focused on the present and trying to survive - until that one day when everything's going to be alright.After I sold the laptop I thought I was good, at least for a long while. However, my parents were growing more and more concerned about me. College application time came by and I hadn't started anything and only a month was left to finish. Somehow, while on this heroin, I completely forgot that I still had a life and I had to go to college after this stuff.
I maintained my grades, miraculously. Since I didn't have a social life I had plenty of time to read, write, and do homework. Everything seemed to be floating by just fine, but I always needed the heroin. It was scary really, like I was walking a tightrope through heaven while hell was only 1 foot below me.
My parents got more and more concerned and got on me on doing my college applications. They pressured me and became hysterical and started asking me "What the hell is wrong with you?" "I can't understand what's going on." My parents, I guess, were naive and never thought I'd ever do drugs. To give me credit, I was always smart enough to hide everything and never leave any trace of my habit. I did however, under this pressure, complete my college applications and did a damn fine job.
My father then asked where my laptop was. I told him it was at my friend Joe's house. He asked me to bring it back. He knew I didn't have it, somehow, he knew. This is when I came clean. I got to the point where the junk was really messing with me that I had an emotional breakdown. I confessed my dirty secret to my parents, showed them my veins, the drugs, and everything. I don't know why I did - I guess it was a cry for help.
It was nearing Christmas and everything was bad. My father signed me up for doctors meetings to assess the damage that had been done, I went to several detoxes that I don't really want to talk about (it was bad), and put on several drugs to help the withdrawal symptoms. I'm glad that I didn't have any friends that did it because all I could think about was finding a way to do heroin. My parents took my car keys and didn't let me out of their sight, so nothing could happen, and I'm glad. After a few weeks of living like this I realized that I was "cured". The heroin didn't kill me and the drugs and rehabs and all the other stuff really got me off. I was actually surprised at how easy it was considering all of the withdrawals and the myths that I have heard.
I am now attending UCLA in the fall. I got into UC Berkeley, but that community has a lot of drug use and it way too close to Richmond. Even though I am cured I still have paranoia and nightmares of one day just getting up and driving down to the same alleyways of the Bay Area and repeating the process. I don't have cravings or anything like that, just an irrational fear - a phobia, or going down that same road.
