| Majic |
06-12-2010 02:33 AM |
The Internet is Srs Business
Oh goodness, drugs.
I first smoked pot about five years ago, and smoked most every day for those middle three years. Marijuana is an addiction-prone personality's best friend; it helps keep young hooligans like myself from embarking on ridiculous shenanigans, and as a bonus it helps alleviate some of the nastier side effects when the ugly hard drugs are abused. Not that I'm saying everyone should understand and hail pot's awesomeness, but not personally liking it ain't a reason to understate it's potential benefit to society at large (I contest that under current legislation in the United States, the benefit is significantly qualified by the continued federal prohibition).
Somewhere around half a year after that first toke, I first drank. I drink on a semi-regular basis, only a handful of times per month, oftentimes to excess. As far as recreational intoxication is concerned, I strongly dislike alcohol in comparison to the options at large; it's far too physically and mentally inebriating of a drug to squeeze much fulfillment, indulgent belligerence excepted. But of course, I'll still drink if it's a party night and I'm thirsty for some social lubrication.
My next milestone would be mushrooms (psilocin) a bit less than three years ago. I love mushrooms to death, and after a couple dozen rounds, have yet to encounter any semblance of a bad trip, even under the most stressful of circumstances (ie calming down and taking care of other people in the midst of terribad tripness). Some people have fantastic revelations, some people spend a few hours in Hell, all from a beautiful looking fungus that grows on cow shit. The world is a crazy place.
So then I tried acid (LSD) a couple months later. I don't get along quite as well with LSD as I do with mushrooms, courtesy of the fact I can't sleep for shit after long-duration stimulants, and acid is a beast of a stimulant. As much as the media misrepresents the risks of marijuana, I feel LSD is even more criminally demonized, but I'm sure no one wants to here me ramble on about that atm. If you get along with it, acid is hands down the best all night party drug.
A few months after that, I then tried my first ecstasy tablet. In retrospective analysis, I'm pretty confident it was clean MDMA, but hell if I know for sure. The current state of party pill content is even sadder than the current state of acid; in the US, methamphetamine cut pills are abundant, and the bigger problem in recent years are pills that contain piperazines (a drug class that can crudely imitate MDMA, but with a much nastier array of side effects). Overall it was a fun night, but not nearly as fun as tripping. But then about half a year later...
Candy flipping! I took LSD and MDMA together out at a psychedelic forest rave, quite a phenomenal experience. I tried mushrooms and MDMA a short time later at an equally awesome warehouse party; I find the hippie flip equally satisfying, just more on the lovey dovey fun side instead of ZOMG-THIS-IS-AWESOME. I save flips for special occasions, and in turn the dozen or so flip nights I've had are hands down the best party nights of my life. Gorgeous visuals, transcending mental peace, empathogenic enhancement... all wrapped into one hell of a time.
Since that point I've also tried MDA (essentially a longer lasting, trippier version of MDMA) and Methylone (an MDMA analogue) once each, both times unknowingly misrepresented as MDMA by dumbass dealers. I loved MDA with a passion, and eagerly await the chance I happen upon it again. Methylone was kind of ehhh, it's like a cross between MDMA and regular amphetamine. Fun fact: because methylone has a lower serotonin potency than MDMA (thus marking dopamine a very influential factor at recreational dose) people on antidepressants can actually feel the effects and have a good time (unlike MDMA).
And then we have... DMT! DMT is awesome, and I've probably smoked a couple grams worth total. I love the trip, but I hate the short duration. 20 minutes isn't nearly enough time to take much out of the experience, at least beyond spontaneous revelation. I find the most enjoyable aspect of tripping is the ability to develop complex and momentous trains of thought in the absence of the human ego, and that's just hard to pull off when you're back to baseline within an hour.
So pretty much, those are the ones I enjoy and endorse to open-minded adventure seekers. What I've tried that I dislike overall...
Opiates: I first tried this lovely drug class after numerous trips, which had caused me to greatly underestimate the addictive/disastrous potential of *illegal* drugs. Opiates very euphoric and highly addictive (not to mention very abusable), and I've periodically indulged in these in times of emotional turmoil (with consistently awful results). I've taken lots of hydrocodone/codeine and morphine/oxycodone on occasion, drank a fair amount of opium tea, and snorted heroin a few times. Yeah, opiates are hands down the drugs that I've fucked up the most with. Bad stuff.
Benzodiazepines: I first tried my first xanax around the time I got into opiates. Being the socially awkward mother trucker that I am, the semi intoxicated anti-anxiety effect was naturally alluring state of mind to return to. I took xanax, klonopin and valium at moderate dose off and on for about two years. Eventually, after noting the development of severe withdrawal symptoms every time I took one of the three, I swore them off and haven't returned. Bad stuff.
Amphetamines: I can take the various short duration amphetamines without much fuss, surprisingly enough; they just aren't recreationally satisfying to a point that I desire to abuse them. The extended release preparations drive me insane though. Again, I'm very sensitive to stimulants, so the normally annoying-but-short comedown turns into a maddening stretch of feeling incapacitated strung outness. Amphetamines are very useful for accomplishing real world tasks and hold immense potential benefit, but imo are too widely prescribed and abused courtesy of their pharmaceutical production.
Methamphetamine: A couple years back, I tried smoking meth to understand what the fuss is about. Bad idea. At first I didn't understand; it seemed innocuous enough, and very controllable. So I tried it again a couple more times, no big deal. Come New Years Eve a month later, after spending four days awake and watching my friends turn into raging lunatics, I determined that tweaksville is too powerful a state for anyone to truly wrangle (which is ironic, considering how it use to be prescribed en masse). Bad stuff.
Cocaine: I have little experience with cocaine. In total, I've only tried it three times; once good stuff, twice ehhhhhh stuff. I can understand the allure, but really, considering how much even a caffeine addiction will mess with your body and mind, I don't desire to delve too far into the world of uppers.
Nicotine: Stupid, stupid, stupid.
DXM: Robo-tripping is even stupider than smoking cigarettes.
Sedatives of various sorts: Uninteresting, surreal and unsatisfying. Aka stupid.
Antidepressants: Unless you truly have chronic, unyielding depression exists independent of outside stimuli, there's no reason to rewire and ass rape your brain. For some people they're extremely beneficial, but I suspect only a fraction to whom they're prescribed should actually be taking them. Similar to ritalin, I personally find the psuedo-zombie state frustratingly boring.
I also got super-dosed with what was supposed to be acid one time, but it turned out to be a DO-XX compound, I suspect DON to be specific. That was a night of awful epic fail. the DO's are an even heavier stimulant than LSD, and nowhere near as fun of an experience.
So that's the abridged account of my interaction with drugs. This is pretty much just passive rambling, I could go on at length over many a substance. At this point in time, I'm shooting to utilize my knowledge and experience as a licensed chemical dependency counselor; it's a medically related niche position where I'll be able to help save minds from self-consuming destruction, so I consider it a very lucrative career choice. Now I just have to get myself back on track in college... when I first started out, I had aspirations to teach high school English. Then I train wrecked my life with addictive drugs for a while, my GPA plummeted, and I became severely disenchanted with the thought of working in such an unyielding environment of political correctness. Quite frankly, I'm very excited to go back to school at this point. To a thrill-seeking, hypomanic psychonaut, the thought of getting to fight the dark side of drug use is a very enticing job.
I also just realized that I forgot to mention ketamine and nitrous oxide... I'm sure none of you really care about those, but for the record I'll say that they can be a really cool experience on occasion, but nothing to write home about, el oh el.
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