DOSE: T+ 0:00	12 mg	SC	Hydromorphone	(pill / tablet)
T+ 8:00	24 mg	SC	Hydromorphone	(pill / tablet)
T+ 7:00	16 mg	SC	Hydromorphone	(pill / tablet)

BODY WEIGHT:

72 kg

I have been enjoying a dalliance with Dilaudid for the past 2 years or so. It's a drug with effects quite different than those of other drugs I tried, and one with both significant benefits and drawbacks. I'll recount a particular day and a half of experiences, and intersperse general comments when I really can't stop myself.

Three weeks ago I was on a bit of a run. I work during the weekdays, and I enjoy my job too much to risk getting stoned there, but in the evenings, and especially on the weekends, I sometimes cut loose. On the Sunday in question I woke up around six, with my wife and child still asleep, and wandered down to my drug room. There I ground up three 4mg Dilaudid with my mortar and pestle, poured the powder into my carefully cleaned spoon, added about 1.3mL of distilled water, and brought the mix to a boil. Then I drew the hot mixture through a piece of sterile cotton, and gave myself a subcutaneous injection into the skin above my right hip (in the place where a 'love handle' might be). The result is not immediate; after maybe 20 minutes I start to feel a slight soothing, a smoothing of any internal bumps. 40 minutes post injection I can feel some spreading warmth, and by the 60-minute mark I'm locked into the soft-edged world of the opiates. It's a nice world, which looks brighter than its alternative, and doesn't include the usual pains associated with life on earth. In another 45 minutes (T+1:45) my baby daughter cries out from her crib, and I go to cuddle her. I put on some soft music, and lift her onto the bed with me, and we lie there, dozing, warm, and magnificent.

Since I'm on a run, I shoot again at 2pm (this time I load up six 4mg pills), right before I walk out the door and go to the gym. 24 mgs is a decent dose for me, and I want to get done driving before the effects become strong. It's a short drive, so I can arrive, change, and then start using exercise equipment just as I start to feel my shot. Then I use their machines, banging the weights around, and instead of feeling sore my muscles seem to feel better with each repetition. I do nod out once or twice on some of the machines, but nobody seems to notice, and I don't have any friends there who'll ask questions. Next I mount the aerobic machine, and start 30 minutes of running in place. Normally I find this excruciatingly boring, but under the influence of the drug it's a breeze. 30 minutes pass like 5, and I'd swear I even fell asleep for a while, but apparently my legs kept pumping. Later I stretch, swim, sauna, and by then I'm feeling reasonably alert, and it's time to go home.

After I play with my daughter in the evening, and she heads off to bed, I'm getting ready for one last shot for the day. I ready 4 more pills (a modest dose, so as to not interfere with my late night reading), and off into my connective tissues they go. Note that I never slam my drugs—intravenous injection is too heavy for me. I sometimes snort them, but I only get about half the potency that I would from a shot. And getting the most from my drugs is important, since I am prescribed a strictly limited number of pills per month. The prescription was not easy to get, and in fact it took years of work. I do indeed have some chronic pain in one part of my body, but it's mild. But around 4 years ago, ever cynical, I decided to test my assumption that whatever the drug laws might claim, a well-mannered white boy who knows the right code words could malinger his way into damn near any drug he chose. I had to see a lot of doctors, endure a few unpleasant treatments, and pretend to take all manner of drugs that I have no interest in (Amitriptyline, Zoloft, Neurontin, Doxepin, etc), and then to slowly climb the scale through Tylenol-3s to hydrocodone to oxycodone, but eventually someone gave me the magic slip of paper that let me get Dilaudid, and I've never looked back.

Now it's the next day, my run is over and I'm back to work. I don't take any opiates in the morning or at noon, and by the afternoon I'm starting to develop the first symptoms of withdrawal. A couple words about withdrawal: it sucks. For me it starts with alternating shivers and sweats, and then develops into a runny nose and sneezes, and then I get this gawd-awful backache. Withdrawal symptoms are proportional to the length of time you've been using plus the amount per dose, with an additional factor thrown in for the particular method of ingestion. Since I never stick the drug directly in my veins, I've never seen the worst kind of withdrawal, but what I've seen is bad enough. I find that the most oppressive part (perhaps other than the backache) is an overwhelming lethargy, a grand, systemic fatigue that leaves me feeling perfectly wretched. Fortunately, for those with well-stocked pharmacological armamentariums there are some options. Tramadol is my current favorite: I mix up 150 mg pills and pop them up to 7 times a day, whenever the sweats start, and then use one pill less every day or two until I'm drug-free. It's not perfect, but it really, really helps. Also useful are stimulants to power through the fatigue: I've used (on different occasions) Benzedrine (12mg), Adderall (10mg), and benzylpiperazine (75mg), all twice a day, once in the morning and once around noon. Benzodiazepines are nice to calm down at night, my favorites being Alprazolam (2mg) for sleep, and Clonazepam (1mg) for keeping an even keel. Finally, though I'm not usually much of a smoker, I have been known to indulge in marijuana when I'm feeling particularly bad, and looking for any technique to forget my current condition.

But I digress. It's 3pm, and I can't go home yet. So I wait. I wait, and those last couple hours pass slowly. Around 5:30 it becomes possible to leave, and I get in the car and drive straight home, and then move directly to the drug room. Since I was on a run all weekend, I'm planning a full dose tonight, in order to ease my re-entry into the world of the unopiated. Before I fix, though, I need to take one precaution: I use a little trick to make sure that my pupils don't contract after my shot, since my wife knows this symptom, and she and I don't entirely agree on the role of drugs in a life well-lived. So, in an effort to keep my activities from becoming unnecessarily obvious, I take some sterile eyewash, which I had previously prepared by cold extracting into it about 1g of dried Datura Stramonium leaves (followed by careful filtering!). I put one drop in each eye, and then I can do whatever I like, confidant that my pupils will stay large and fixed for at least 12 hours. It took a little playing to get this mix right—at first it was too strong, and then my vision for nearby objects would become fuzzy. I diluted the mixture a little, though, and now it's exactly right. So, finally, at about 6pm, I go off to wash my spoon again. Will I be able to slowly wind down my consumption this week, or will I hold steady until I can run again next weekend? I've done different things at different times, so I honestly can't be sure. Lady D is a temptress, I know, and I'd be lying if I said that I couldn't hear the soft melody of her siren's song.

Exp Year: 2001	ExpID: 10045
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Nov 23, 2001	Views: 133,748
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Hydromorphone (300) : Various (28), Retrospective / Summary (11), General (1)