DOSE:

20 mg

Methamphetamine

BODY WEIGHT:

190 lb

I have bipolar disorder type II and inattentive-type ADD. I know a lot of people think they have mental disorders, but in my case it's kind of hard to deny. My father's side of the family has a history of ADD diagnoses. My father himself would be the poster child for adult ADD, assuming he'd ever see a doctor about it, which he won't.

I've had enough depressive episodes and hypomanic episodes to know when I'm getting them. The hypomanic episodes are usually caused by stress, and allow me to stay awake for two or three days straight working on stuff constantly. It's too bad they only come less than once a year. But the depressive episodes knock me on my ass. I can barely function, and things that used to be easy become impossible. I've had to take a class over because a depressive episode coincided with my final exam. I went on about every legal medication they could prescribe for the bipolar disorder, but nothing seemed to work. The Adderall was a godsend though. I could do whatever I set my mind to, and studying was no longer an exercise in futility. It's too bad it didn't help my depressive episodes. When I took a higher dose of Adderall during a depressive episode, it just made me panicked, distraught, and easily frustrated.

Depressive episodes suck. Sometimes, I've spent weeks looking forward to a vacation, only to get there and be unable to have fun. When I have something I need to do, a depressive episode can make me fail a class or be unreliable at work. Having exhausted the legal medications, and having failed one too many tests due to my messed-up brain chemistry, I decided to try the illegal ones. Weed was fun, but no help at all. Hallucinogens were enjoyable and introspective, but not what I needed. Provigil was a decent stimulant, but not one that would help during a depressive episode. Cocaine seemed expensive, and I didn't like the idea of supporting drug cartels. Meth seemed like it might fit the bill. It was a lot like Adderall, which was the drug that had worked best for me up until that point. The main difference was that it also seemed to improve my mood, not just increase my focus and energy. I know that withdrawal can be a bitch, but I was already used to feeling like crap and I figured it would at least be nice to be able to control when that happened. So I read up on it, as much as I could. It seemed awfully addictive, but I understand myself well enough to realize that I'm always concerned about the long-term consequences of everything I do. This can actually be a liability sometimes, since I have to plan everything out, and I have a hard time being spontaneous. The really awful cases of meth addiction didn't seem like my personality type at all.

After learning about other people's experiences, especially the really awful ones, I decided I'd try it anyway. I don't trust drug dealers, and I don't like the idea of using my money to support the kinds of operations they're behind, so I decided I'd do it myself. It's not that hard if you understand a little bit about chemistry and don't mind scraping the striker pads off eight boxes of matchbooks. Eventually I came up with a system where I could make it for about a fifth of the street price. It's possible to make it for a lot less, but the method I chose was easier and took less time. If I did anything larger than the ten-gram batches I can do now though, I guarantee my chemical purchases would catch the attention of the authorities.

My first time went great. I have no idea how much I took, but it was probably less than 20 mg. I drank it dissolved in water. I did a lot of the work I'd been meaning to do, I felt fine, and after it wore off, I didn't feel that crappy at all. I had a tough time falling asleep, but OTC sleep aid pills helped with that. The next time, I did it when I had a project to finish. I did great, and ended up having my project selected among the top two in the class. Most of the time, I still stuck to Adderall, but I'd use the meth when something really important came up.

I tried snorting it, but the effect was slightly different, and it took me a lot longer to get to sleep afterwards than it usually did, so I went back to ingesting it. Later I tried smoking it. I liked that it kicked it so quickly, and I didn't have to wait for 30-60 minutes while I waited for it to start. I didn't get a rush like some people do. Immediately after smoking it, I was disoriented and spacey, but that wasn't really enjoyable. It didn't get to the effect I was looking for until a few minutes later. I don't have a way to measure quantities of a substance as small as my typical dose of meth, but based on what I have, I can't imagine I've ever taken much more than 50 mg in the course of a day. Keep in mind, that's pure, not the crap I'd get on the street.

No one knows I have this stuff, and I want to keep it that way. I keep my stash in an old Advil bottle, and I keep a bag of Hershey's kisses in my desk. I have a metal straw I got a long time ago as a souvenir, and a candle next to my bed. If I need to, it's simple to eat one of the kisses and fashion the wrapper into a little spoon, then suck up the vapors with the straw while I hold a little bit of the stuff over the candle flame. I do need to use metal or glass for this though. I tried using an old pen casing once, but I think most of the vapors were from melting plastic. Meth has to get really hot to vaporize.

This isn't so bad, I thought. Maybe it's only truly bad for those people who are predisposed to becoming addicted to it. I never took meth when I hadn't planned out in advance that I would use it that day. It just made me better at everything. Then it wore off. End of story. Or so I thought. It wasn't that I was wrong. Meth really did make me better at everything. And that's the problem. Why would I struggle through something hard, when meth can make it so much easier? Even when I hadn't been using it, I still liked the person I was on meth better. I was more confident, more talkative, more intelligent, more focused, more motivated, and just better at everything. I wanted to be that person all the time. But that's the thing. You can't. Your brain won't let you. If you push up, it pushes down, and you have to pay for every hour of feeling great with an hour of feeling like crap. If you try to postpone that with more meth, you end up addicted.

That's another thing about meth. It focuses my mind like a laser. Any physical problems disappear, including those problems that meth itself causes. And it does cause its share of physical problems. Sitting in one position without moving for hours on end can give me some pretty bad cramps, even if my mind and fingers are busy working. Forgetting to swallow and blink can do the same. You might think that the elimination of hunger will help you lose weight, but malnutrition due to lack of vitamins is no fun either. The inevitable sleep debt wears at my immune system, and I can get sores and infections if I'm aren't careful. No matter what, I brush my teeth regularly. No one wants meth mouth.

Do I wish I'd never tried it? No. It does what I had asked it to. During a period of depression, meth really can allow me to meet my responsibilities. I'm glad it's there when I need it. But I can also see why there are so many horror stories. I can imagine a man who was never good at anything his whole life, and who thought he was destined to be a total failure. I can imagine him trying meth, and seeing that he could give himself the abilities that nature did not. I can see him try to push himself to the limits, wanting to find out for himself just how close to the sun he can fly, unwilling or unable to focus his mind on anything else. And I can imagine him crashing spectacularly when he pushes his limits beyond what he's capable of.

It wasn't really addictive for me, but I'm sure it would be for some people. It's plenty useful if your goal isn't solely to get high, but by definition it will mess with your head. It can make it easy to ignore your physical needs, but you can't let it do that. It can give you abilities you could never have otherwise, and that's why it's so dangerous.

Exp Year: 2008	ExpID: 78682
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Sep 25, 2022	Views: 3,361
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Methamphetamine (37) : General (1), Performance Enhancement (50), Depression (15), Retrospective / Summary (11), Alone (16)