Drugs!

[arjue]

I went looking for a thread specifically on the broad subject, but after 4 pages I couldn't find one.

I myself haven't dabbled in drugs, apart from alcohol (and oh god have I "dabbled" in it), but thats not to say given the chance I wouldn't try some stuff, particularly LSD, as it sounds so interesting. I wouldn't know where to get it though, and it don't want it enough to go looking for it.


Any interesting/funny/bad experiences? Any preferences? Also, what are some of the downers like afterwards? My friend told me that Crystal Meth made him feel like utter shit for a week or so, which got me wondering about the other drugs.


DISCUSS BASTARDS.

[Adman]

I've never found the idea of taking drugs that appealing really. Not that I don't mind getting pissed outta my head on some kind of alcohol, hehe.

[Rick]

I knew a kid on Crystal Meth, I wouldn't touch it. INSTANT withdrawal the next morning, the kid was puking his guts out.

Know your limits with LSD, if you're going to bite off more than you can chew, you're going to regret it. And you DEFINITELY want someone sober to keep you in check if you're going to do it. You're better off just not doing it though. If you just want a euphoric trip, shrooms are a lot safer, although the effects of both are different from what I understand.

[spacecowboy]

I don't do drugs, smoke or drink so I really couldn't tell you. The only drug I moderately enjoy is caffeine and my favourite drink it Sprite. Drugs are bad for you.

SC

[Jeremy]

Caffiene is my drug of choice. No really memorably stories about it though.

[ChaoofNee]

I don't do drugs.
"Are you a chicken?"
I'm not a chicken! You're a turkey!

[Korian]

No interest, and if you respect your mind and body you wouldn't put that posion in your system.

[Josh]

I used to be pretty wild. I took acid much every day through tenth and eleventh grade.

The only "major" drug I haven't done is extacy.

I took a break from all drugs starting on December 17th, 1997 until about six months ago.

Now I just like to smoke pot, and play music/chill out.

[Diff-chan]

I used to be into it a lot, pot and shrooms pretty much. I liked shrooms a lot, but I had a bad trip once and it was a pretty shitty experience. I've also done the vicodin + alcohol thing, which I heard could kill you pretty easily. Ah well.

Now I lay off all that.

It's just not good for me. Pot really does kill my motivation. I really like it when I can just chill out though when I got nothing to do and it dont matter, but Im a senior in college - I got tons of shit to do.

Im not gonna say drugs are bad and people shouldnt do them... but I dont think they're very good for anyone and a person on drugs isn't advancing themselves, learning a hobby, etc. At least that's been my observation. But it's their life.

[PaCrappa]

Drugs are a mixed bag. Under no circumstances are they necessary, but then again most are none too horrible in moderation.

Meth = poison. It's probably the number one most dangerous drug in my opinion. The real problem with it is that while on it everything seems a whole lot more fun and exciting and interesting than it is. Then when you come down your body actually goes into a physical depression that can last for a whole year after a bigass dose. Quality control with this drug is tough too because outside of a standard spectrum of variation it all looks similar. "Good" meth will appear as hard completely transparent crystals and the shitty byproduct or botched batches, known as "crank" etc, can be clear, pink, brown, brick red and can have a consistency ranging from a firm yet squishy lump of goo to hard crystals. The shit is toxic and is one of the hardest to stay away from due to the aforementioned year long comedown. Avoid. And that goes for anything that you can get over the counter with the word "amphetamine" in the title. Just because it's legal don't make it healthy.

Opiates are also very touchy but certainly less immediately toxic (ask Rush) than meth. Most of us have had them and they really don't vary in effect too much. Heroin and morphine are basiclly just vicadin(sp?) x 1,000. The pills are all pretty safe as they can be cross referenced against the Physician's Desk Reference and only become a problem when taken too often or in to great a quantity. The high from all this stuff is as good as it gets, especially with heroin, morphine and oxycodon(sp?). Oxycodon, typically called "OC" is very much in vogue right now. Purportedly the effects are damn near identical to heroin except that the user stays high for ten hours instead of two. I used to very much enjoy the opiates but I found that they would give me this lousy three day "hangover" even after just a couple of vicadins, so I had to leave it alone. I recommend total avoidance or the strictest moderation. Otherwise you'll wind up like such high profile jackasses as Sid Vicious or Rush Limbaugh.

Tranquilizers fucking suck. The most common are PCP, Ketamine and Canibinol(sp?) PCP is a large animal tranquilizer and I've never used it. They showed alot of antidrug videos in health class and the PCP ones certainly worked for me. It sounded highly dangerous and wildly uncontrollable. At best. From what I understand, canibinol is for mid sized animals like dogs and mountain lions etc. Never done that either. Ketamine though, yuck! It's basically PCP lite for kitty cats and other small animals. I have ingested that and it really sucked IMO. Some people claim that it gets them pleasantly high. It certainly got me way past fucked up but nothing that I would call "high". High is a good thing and I usually don't have to hold the ceiling to stand up when I'm high. Nor do I have to crawl to the bathroom only to resume holding the ceiling to take a piss when high. Most of all I don't have to force myself to breathe when I'm high. Perhaps I OD'd, perhaps man wasn't meant to ingest cat tranquilizer. At any rate I hated the stuff so I say avoid. If PCP is more profound than that, I'd go mental.

Pschedelics have the greatest potential as helpful drugs. Unfortunately, real research is pretty hard to get done what with how scared the government and everyone else is of these things. I have only ingested shrooms, LSD, mescaline and DMT. Of those, the first three can go a long way toward helping a person change their self image. These drugs are more than just a good time or a way to see some (usually very slight) hallucinations. They can be used to consciously alter a person's perceptions and that can be used for the better. The problem is that in an uncontrolled environment, the effects of the drugs can sort of get away from a person and a bad trip may ensue. Some of the greatest moments of my life were under the influence of Acid and /or shrooms. Fortunately I always had a solid group of true friends to go adventuring around with and out of countless psychedelic experiences, I can count the bad ones on one hand. These things really will blow your perception of things physical, mental, emotional and interpersonal so I can only recommend them to people with strong will and huge common sense. There are no other drugs like these and once you start a LSD, shroom or mescaline trip you'll be riding it for a minimum of five hours, much longer with most LSD. Those easily shaken by strange states of altered consciousness should avoid. If weed makes you paranoid, forget psychedelics. Strange LSD fact: It has been much harder to get acid in the United States since Jerry Garcia died. It is only now starting to come back in quantity.

Cocaine is in a class by itself. It, like weed, just doesn't fall into any of the other groups. I used to find it enjoyable but nowadays it just seems like powdered anxiety. Snorting things also beats up my sinuses and smoking rocks was never something I was comfortable with. It made my heart hurt. So all the various personal discomforts cause me to avoid it like the plague. This one also has a tricky cycle of addiction. In addition to some possible physical euphoria, cocaine has a strange effect on the ego. It is very dangerous because of this as the user tends to feel like Prince Charming and Superman all rolled into one when he/she is high but then feels more like Urkel as the shit runs out. If you don't want to take my word for it just check out Dr Sigmund Freud's writings on the subject. It's perhaps the only valid stuff that poor sadsack of cocaine addict ever wrote.

Weed is great. I personally think the stuff is great. Not that I haven't had to battle with setting up some sort of responsible usage guidelines for myself. At age 18 I basically just partied 24/7 and so I smoked weed all the live long day. Now at 31, I tend to wait until after 6pm unless I'm doing hard labor. The effects vary from user to user which I suspect is one of the reasons it's hard for some people to get with legalization. Some people smoke it and feel relaxed and smiley, maybe even euphoric. Some smoke it and feel a heinous blend of anxiety and paranoia. Trying it is harmless. Trading in real life to become a wastoid ganja junkie eating Twinkies is pretty fucking sorry. Potency varies with quality and quality is generally pretty easy to detect. It's a plant and outside of it needing to be dry, fresher is better. So it should not look brown and flat. It should look green and puffy. It shouldn't smell moldy or musty, it should smell highly pungent and be skunky, spicy or fruity. Those videos from health class always make it seem like if you try weed you're likely to get some that has been laced with some other drug. Here's the real deal on that: After 16 years of HEAVY smoking, I have yet to even see laced pot. If you buy the shit from someone you know it will not be laced. Why am I so sure? Because drugs cost money and it has been a rare occasion indeed that someone has given me free drugs. Of course you may run into a "friend" who isn't really a friend that would trick you into smoking laced shit, or you may run into some fuckup of a PCP user that wants you to smoke laced shit to maybe turn you on to something new so he can sell it to you or become his useless PCP buddy (hard drug users use the buddy system to help defer the cost and effort of staying high). Both of the above mentioned scenarios are cause for a brutal beatdown as far as I'm concerned. Slipping someone a mickey is amateur hour and is not tolerated amongst drug users who actually care about themselves. So anyway, as harmless as weed is made out to be, it is not without issue and common sense must once again be brought to the table. If you have none you need to stay sober.

I think we all know about alcohol, caffiene and sugar so I guess that's all. Well except to tell all the little high horse caffeine users that they're on drugs too, just like Rush

Pa

*edit* Because I forgot Ecstacy. This is a weird one. As I understand it it is a synthesized combination of mescaline and amphetamine. A chemist friend says that it's only a methyl group or two away from methamphetamine, for whatever that's worth. Not being a chemsit I have no real frame of reference. The deal with ecstacy is that it causes ALL of a person's seratonin to be released at once. That may sound drastic but it's really not too big a deal if the user allows sufficient time for his/her seratonin to replensih itself before using it again. Therein lies the problem. People want to party every weekend or more and five days is just not long enough. When E is ingested without sufficient Seratonin reserves, dopamine is released instead. This is no good. The chemical in charge of seratonin reuptake does not gather the dopamine and it is left in the wrong part of the brain where it essentially "rots". This causes neurotoxicity and is EXTREMELY bad. Ecstacy seems to be very very poular and only seems to be getting more popular. No matter how old you are and no matter how salty a drug veteran you may be, please oh please don't do ecstacy more than twice a month. Also, in the USA pills can be crossreferenced through the website www.dancesafe.org This is a databse designed to help inform people about the drugs they're doing. Pills can be cross referenced by isignia, pill color, region etc. The few times that I did E, I used this site, found my pill sent in from someone from my region, found that it was pure MDMA and had great times. This shit is fucking dangerous as all hell. Reason being that pills sell for $20 plus and it doesn't take a slide rule to do the math. Selling fake pills can make a loser rich in a weekend so make sure you trust the source and make sure that you use Dancesafe.