DOSE:

5 hits

smoked

Methamphetamine

(powder / crystals)

BODY WEIGHT:

120 lb

I had never really been interested in speed. In fact, my entire 15 years of life have been consumed by strict anti-drug, anti-sex morals up until 8 months ago when I broke free from the mindset and decided that I was up for anything and everything. I started smoking weed in June, fell madly in love with ecstasy in August, and though I was revving myself up to try acid, I was sooner given the opportunity to try speed. I wasn’t too anxious to try it, but I also wasn’t about to pass up the chance to try something new.

I was taking a weekend trip to visit some friends out of town and would be staying with my friend Matt, who was very acquainted with speed (everything I knew about it I learned from him.) On a Saturday we went to hang out at our friends’ place with 4 other buddies. We spent the night, and on Sunday, Matt and I slept in while everyone else went out to breakfast. That was probably a big mistake on my part, as I would have needed that food later. When everyone returned, we began plotting to obtain some meth. We pitched together $80.00, and after a couple hours of meticulous planning, managed to pick it up and bring it home.

At around 2:00PM, we smoked all of the meth between us (6 people) so we actually didn’t get that much individually. I particularly didn’t get a lot because after being accustomed to weed, the process of smoking this stuff seemed difficult, and I didn’t get very good hits. I felt nothing after the first two except a disgustingly bitter, chemical taste in my mouth and slightly increased heart rate. After 3 more hits, I grabbed a pillow and sank into the couch, proclaiming that I felt like I was on ecstasy. And indeed, it felt very similar with the whole-body tingles, warm fuzzy feeling, and “everything is a-okay!” attitude. I got up from the couch and floated over to the computer, where I logged onto AIM and blabbed to a friend that I was spun for the first time. My hands were shaking insanely and my typing was mostly gibberish no matter how hard I tried to control myself, though I felt great and didn’t care.

Everyone was sitting around the room watching Edward Scissorhands on TV, and about 10 minutes later, I got up and took a whiz. When I came back into the room, the intense sensation died down tremendously and I just felt really, really relaxed and calm. This puzzled me because I’ve always heard that speed makes you anxious and jittery, not wanting to stop moving for a second, but I didn’t mind — I felt good anyway. I got a blanket and sat on the couch. No matter what position I moved into, it felt like I was floating in an inner tube and I just wanted to take a nice, comfy nap, though I wasn’t tired. That didn’t last long though because the room was full of unstoppable chatter. I didn’t mind, and joined in for hours and hours. It was AMAZINGLY easier to communicate, as I am usually a very quiet person, and I found that it a wonderful way to get to know my friends better.

A few hours later, we were served dinner, which was a horrible disaster. Most everyone forced themselves to eat, so as not to make it obvious to the parents, but a couple people went in the back yard and dumped their food, and I just sat there staring at mine, completely petrified at the thought of ingesting an entire meal. I took about two bites, and it was unbearable.

At 7:30PM, we all went outside and walked around in an incredible thunderstorm. I noticed that my body was always warm — if not hot — regardless that it was freezing and raining out. The tingly sensation had also faded by then, and the only thing noticeably remaining was that I was awake and very deep in my own thought.

At 10:00PM, Matt and I left our friends’ place and went back to his house. We took the meth pipe with us, which had a bit of residue left in it, because everyone else had school the next day and we didn’t. We made some spaghetti to eat because we were both terribly hungry, but by the time I had the bowl in my hand, I realized that it would be impossible to force anything down. We decided to team up and do the hours of unfinished homework I had due on Tuesday, so at around 1:30AM, we each took 2 or 3 hits of what we could scrape out of the pipe. The homework idea was a failure, as at that point, we were both too jittery and talkative to get much of anything done. We ended up talking all night instead, which was enjoyable, but didn’t fix the fact that I still had tons of work that wasn’t getting done.

By 3:00AM, we were feeling kind of crappy on and off, and by 5:00AM it was just shitty. We had to go upstairs so that his dad wouldn’t find us awake, and we tried to sleep. Total failure. It wasn't just the inability to sleep which pissed me off, but that I was having horrible stomach pains, I had a raspy voice and sore throat, and my eyeballs were hot, sore, and felt like they were going to pop out of my skull. By 6:00AM (which was an extremely long, agonizing hour) my mouth was so dry that even if I could have brought my mind to sleep, the dryness would have stopped me in any case. We continued to lie there in discomfort, and by 8:00AM, I felt so utterly horrible in every way that I couldn't even get out of the bed. My stomach was getting increasingly worse, my eyes were tired as hell, my brain felt like a pile of mush, and emotionally I was a total disaster. Matt felt the same way, and to spare himself, smoked more meth. I wanted to, but not until I could get something to eat—but that couldn't happen anyway, as I was in too much pain to stand up, let alone take the bus to the store to buy something.

For some reason I put on Matt's welding goggles which he had sitting on the nightstand, and somehow they cheered me up a lot. After lying there for about an hour with the goggles on (and going totally delusional because of the drugs, thinking I was a scuba diver, skydiver, buried under sand [?], etc), my eyes and brain felt good enough to get up. We went downstairs and sat around for a while, trying to do more homework. We kept fading in and out of goodness and shittiness, which really sucked and got annoying after a while. Eventually the goodness just gave up and by early afternoon, we were totally owned. We sat around doing nothing and feeling horrible for a couple of hours until it got worse and worse and worse and finally we both just lost it. We'd end up sitting there staring at each other with expressions that read, 'I want to kill you. Not because you're you, but because I'm insane.'

Physically, I felt bad enough that I thought I might keel over dead at any second, and emotionally I felt bad enough to kill myself if I didn't. I can't even explain the feeling; it was just awful. Total disconnection. Every couple of minutes, I would — for some reason — involuntarily make a weird and senseless gesture with my arm or hand and leave it in hanging that position until my deadened eyes would catch sight of it, and a look-how-fucked-up-you-are type of grimace would cross my face. Matt was sitting on the floor just as twacked as I was and playing with guitars. At some point near then, his friend Heather called, and because my brain was mush, it really pissed me off and I wanted everyone to die, painfully. I went in the kitchen to find a knife and Matt came in. He took it from me and slit his arm open, just like that. At that point we realized that we had completely fucking lost it, so as a last resort, we went and smoked a tiny bit more meth. The insanity vanished, but not the discomfort.

We spent the rest of the afternoon finishing my homework, and then laid down for a while (I think I got maybe 5 minutes of sleep) and by the time everything was wrapped up, I was going home. At that time, my stomach was still messed up, but I was relatively emotionally stable. Matt's mom took us to the train station and I got on at 5:30PM. I instantly felt worse for being on the train (and having to go home of course), so my stomach owned me double time, and my brain turned back into mush. I put the seat back and listened to my disc man with my eyes closed. No sleep and no pain relief, but it wasn't too horrible. When I got to LA (7:00PM) I was feeling rather shitty and somewhat jittery. The feeling increased, and when I got to Chatsworth (8:00PM) I was going insane with anxiety. I thought that it was 1 stop away from mine, and when I realized it was 2, I was desperately trying not to cry. When we finally got to Oxnard (my stop) at around 8:30PM, they had to do the thing where they stop the train to let another one pass on the same track. They were only 20 feet away from the station, and stopped to let the other train pass while I stared out the window going mad.

Not only that, but the windows on the train were thick and tinted, curved in a way like funhouse mirrors so that when I looked to my right, my image appeared like my eyelids were closed and my mouth was sewn shut, and when I looked to the one on the left, my features turned very demon-like. On top of that, I was already starting to see fake shadows and minor trails from lack of sleep. Just as the train started moving, it stopped AGAIN to let another one pass, even closer to the station, and my heart started pounding so hard and fast that I seriously thought I might go into cardiac arrest. Instead, my skin started burning and I couldn't help but cry.

I managed to compose myself by the time the train finally let us off at 9:00PM, but when I saw my sister Jenn, I freaked out again, telling her how fucked up I was but wouldn't say why. She said that two of her friends had driven her, which pissed me off to begin with because I wanted to tell her what happened, but when I got in the car, it was worse. They had the heater on so high that I swear to god the windows were 100% fogged up and you could see the heat waves circling the inside of the car. I exploded. I didn't even know these people, but the first thing I said was, 'WHY THE FUCK IS IT SO HOT IN HERE!' I started clawing around insanely for the window-down button, and when I found that it didn't work, I threw in, 'WHAT THE FUCK! DOESN'T THE FUCKING WINDOW WORK! JESUS CHRIST!' I didn't want to yell at them, but I swore my brains were scrambling in my skull and I was too hysterical to control myself. Surprisingly, they didn't even seem to care, and just turned on the AC, which was just as freezing as the heater was hot, and didn’t help much.

Jenn was supposed to hang out with them, but I said I had to talk, so the two drove back to their house to switch cars, and that took 40 minutes, all the while I was sweating and tearing, trying to calm down. By the time we finally got rid of them, I told Jenn to take us to a restaurant so I could get some food since my stomach felt like a goddamn land mine. I was deathly hungry but totally nauseous at the same time. I was shaking with anxiety the whole way and wouldn't tell Jenn what was up until I got some water. When we got in the restaurant, I called Matt to see if he was doing as badly as I was, or if I was just crazy. By the time I got him on the phone, I was crying hysterically to the point where I couldn't even tell him with words how messed up I was. He said he was OK, so of course I felt worse and just got off the phone. Jenn and I got some water and soup and I cried like a maniac before I was actually able to explain what was wrong with me, even though there really was no solution. I just had to say something.

I got home at around 11:00PM, and I felt very relieved, though still not good. I stayed up until 5:00AM doing more homework, and finally got a chance to sleep, which took a while to come, but was damn good when it did. I had to wake up to be in class the next day at 10:00AM. I was EXTREMELY irritable, violent, and tired. I was screaming at everybody for ridiculous things, and had a horrible first day of school. My aggravation and impatience led me to sign up for classes that I did not want to be in. To boot, my throat was sorer, and I was developing a moderately bad cough. When I returned home at 1:30PM, I passed out in bed and didn’t get up until 11:00PM that night. By then, I had a bad headache, my cough was much worse, and I had lost sense of time. I only stayed up for a few hours before going back to sleep.

When I woke up the next day (today) at around 1:00PM, my illness was horribly worse. I was coughing up huge globs of mucus from my lungs, and my throat was swollen about 3 times its normal size. When it became difficult to talk or breathe, I wound up in the emergency room, and am still not completely better. I have little doubt that this was due to the meth. All the friends who I smoked with agreed that the speed we got was virtually crap in comparison to what they usually get, but I had nothing to compare it to since it was my first time. Matt said that it was the worst come down he has ever had, and I don’t doubt it.

Even though my experience thus far with meth has been a painful disaster, I’m not going to condemn the drug just because of one bad try. However, I don’t think I’ll ever *smoke* it again in fear of this problem reoccurring. I’ll stick to lines. And also, I’ve now caught a glimpse of what it feels like to be in withdrawal, which has scared me quite a bit into being more careful. This has also been my first experience with “bad shit” so I’m also going to be a lot more weary of who I get my drugs from. I can definitely see the potential usefulness of meth: social interactions, long-lasting alertness, and fasting if you like… but at this point, I’m much more aware of the negative effects, which I think is a very good thing. I’m not glad it had to be this way, but I’m glad I know what it’s like, and I’m glad I got a slap in the face from drugs, because I was starting to get a little careless.

Exp Year: 2001	ExpID: 10459
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: 15
Published: Sep 13, 2004	Views: 2,221
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Methamphetamine (37) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Hangover / Days After (46), First Times (2)