DOSE:	repeated	oral	Ephedrine	(pill / tablet)
	repeated	oral	Alcohol	(liquid)
			Pseudoephedrine

BODY WEIGHT:

220 lb

Here's my tale of how ephedrine has adversely affected my life in many different ways.

I first started taking it while I was in the military. One of my buddies handed me four tablets (100mg) every time our squad got assigned to KP duty. Oh, how it made the day fly by so much quicker. I only took it occasionally while I was in the Army. After the Army, I got a job working night shift in a convenience store. The stuff was readily available, and it wasn't long till I was taking the stuff every night. Within a year I was taking about 300mg a day. My body was building a resistance and I had to take more to get the same effects.

About 1998, those pills started to really cause me problems. I was taking so many I couldn't hardly sleep. I might get 2-3 hrs a night then every 3rd night or so crash for 12 hrs. To combat this I started drinking every night... So here begins the vicious cycle. Wake up with hangover, immediately take ephedrine to counteract that and get energy... then have to drink ever larger amounts to shut the ephedrine down.

In 1999 I got my CDL and became an over the road truck driver. For the next 2 and a half years I didn't drink much, but my ephedrine ramped up to 500-600mg a day. That's 24 pills folks. In the industry ephedrine is referred to as trucker's speed. From 2001 to present I've worked local delivery but until this year I took roughly the same amount per day.

Lets talk about side effects. Sweat. I was constantly hot and sweated buckets. I had to drink tons of water to stay hydrated. I was restless and my hands were always trembling. I had trouble with my speech... I would know what I wanted to say but really had trouble with words and names... My heart rated was elevated all the time and my blood pressure was about 20 points above normal.

IMPORTANT: When I drink while using ephedrine, it disables some of the things that protect me from alcohol poisoning. 1) It keeps me awake. Passing out is one of my bodies best signs I am past my limit. Since I stopped I can only drink half of what I used to. 2) I believe it suppresses the urge to vomit when drinking too much, at least it did with me. Vomiting is the bodies last ditch effort to save itself from alcohol poisoning. I got to where I could put down an entire 5th of hard liquor without passing out or vomiting. Now that I dropped the mini-thins, I can only drink half as much, and have been sick twice in the last 3 months.

Quitting -- I decided to quit after they changed the law in my state on July 1, 2005. I can still get it, but it is not exactly OTC anymore, you have to sign a log and the states tracks you. The first two weeks cold turkey were downright brutal. I could hardly get out of bed and go to work. It was like having the flu. Then there were nightmares. For years my brain had not been able to sleep deep enough for me to dream, and when it got the chance, it went nuts. All in all it took about a month for me to feel normal.

I know this was lengthy, but I felt it was needed. Most of what has been posted seems to stem from occasional recreational use... To put it in words a younger person might understand, this explains how bad I got owned by this drug.

Thx for reading.

Exp Year: 2005	ExpID: 46780
Gender: Not Specified
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jul 25, 2007	Views: 25,016
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Alcohol (61), Ephedrine (23) : Not Applicable (38), Hangover / Days After (46), Addiction & Habituation (10), Retrospective / Summary (11), Combinations (3)