Growing up in a conservative family I often pushed the envelope, these problems where evidenced during my schooling career where I would swear at a teacher or just go that little too far...
I managed to stay at the same school and graduated and stayed friends with my group, as we got out I got heavily into drugs as did my friendship group. I dibbed and dabbled a bit in school with weed, i was mostly okay but i remember on one particular occasion doing a 'gravity bong' and getting auditory halucinations that told me to do despicable things i will not speak of... this was in grade 8.
Studying law and going out every weekend, tripping on acid, smoking weed everyday, doing mdma every weekend and whatever else i could get my hands on (thankfully it never progressed to meth etc) my life was going good... there wasn't much going wrong. I was passing, maintaining good grades and pushing the boundaries of consciousness and what was possible. This was throughout 2015
Then one day i thought to myself, why don't i go on the dark web to support my drug habit and have it mailed to me, rather than spending more money for drugs... then all of my problems started. This was in 2016. I ordered whatever i wanted, even weed that would stink out the post office where i walked in to get it... quite a joke really. Before this, I got a DUI. I drank and drove into maccas on a saturday night at 8pm....
I got a sheet of acid and started to trip every weekend for three weeks, where all my issues started. I became psychotic, I didn't need to eat and I thought i was a character out of fiction, like a god, a vampire, something along those lines... It changed all the time. I sent crazy messages to people on Facebook. This one particular occasion i thought i was getting a job with apple or Telstra, communicating with people entirely unreasonably and with people whom I had never met.
I eventually ended up at the hospital where I handed in my tabs of acid, thinking that the nurse was a shaman who was coming to collect my wrongdoing. I eventually got better, i spent 5 weeks in the mental health unit and was put onto medication. Thankfully this happened on the holidays after uni and I was able to go back next semester, although it was extremely hard.. after my delusions and hallucinations vanished I became extremely anxious, all the time as if there was a bad person out to get me. I don't wish that feeling upon anyone. I went through this in class during tutorials whilst trying to keep the appearance of a sane person, don't know how i managed that.
Then I got better... I got back to my friends and social life and whilst they all still did drugs i stayed away and was comfortable around them, although in the back of my head I always wanted to do them whilst they were around... I was on a trip at the beach once and there were people tripping and smoking bongs, i never wanted to trip again but the weed was always tempting.. just to feel something again. You see whilst I was feeling better, I was feeling nothing, there was no diversity or spark in my life that there was before... this is what medication does to me (even though it kept me better).
Then one day in 2017 i said fuck it, i went across to my old mates house and smoked... it was inside of a shed on an oval i remember it vividly, the voices came back into my head and i just sat there and spoke to my friends like i always did, without telling anyone what was actually going on. This was the first time doing weed again in a few months, and as i kept going on with it I got a higher tolerance and the voices started going away, just got normal effects like anxiety etc. One day I got pulled over high and got another DUI, It was 9am in the morning after I drove first thing to my mates to have a bong..
Then I got even more out of hand. I got back into the Dark Web.
I would get grams of mdma mailed to me, highest quality and do most of it... a gram in a night one night... half a gram... on a casual sunday night... That wasn't even the worst of it, I got addicted to painkillers and did them every day. It was so easy to just have them mailed to me and i'd take 3 a day at the worst of my addiction. It was nice to smoke them with weed, I'd crush them up into a cone and smoke it. I was still in uni and going well, my grades where still above average and i swapped into info tech instead of law. I had a part time job that i was happy in and kept it going during all of this. I stopped doing them every day and went through alot of anxiety and withdrawals.. but i kept doing drugs occasionaly.
Then I grew fond of a drug called ketamine. I had a dealer that i went to see and would rail lines before heading into university, i was still doing well even though my quality of life was going down the drain. I stopped my antipshychotic medications as well at around this time, putting up the front of being a healthy and normal person to my psychiatrist.
This is at the end of 2017 now, when university stopped. I did drugs occasionaly, but then one night i knew i was screwed again. It was the 24th of December,
I went over to a dealers house and got what I thought would be mdma, but it wasn't. it was cut with speed or meth.
That night is undescribeable. I spiraled back into psychosis and kept it away from everyone again, that feeling of being detatched from reality... I couldn't speak to anyone... I barely got home from my mates apartment i was walking around in circles, thankfully a taxi driver stopped and could understand what i was saying. Time operates differently when you're in that status, and the voices in my head where telling me alot of crazy shit.
Got back home to my family for christmas, pretended everything was normal. I think they knew though, I said barely anything and slept most of the day. Then alot of my issues as a kid started to come up again and i began to speak to Dad about them, who was supportive but couldn't understand why they were relevant now. I thought i was a 'shaman' again and was going on a spirtual journey to banish my wrongdoing of the past.
I kept going on with life, feelings of elation came by me and i was rarely sad. This time i knew how to act more sane. The last thing I wanted to do was go back and receive treatment from a psychiatrist. I was getting by for two months, back at university until i got unfathomably bad again. I lost my part time job on account of my innapopriate interactions with patients and a diminished quality of work. I couldn't go to university anymore, although i showed up I had to stop doing 4 subjects. 4 subjects became 2. two became one, then i went back into hospital.
Before I went to hospital i was hallucinating like you couldn't imagine. I was accusing family members of horrible, unspeakable acts. I was smelling things, rotten, unspeakable things that weren't there. At the worst of It I didn't sleep for 3 days. Walls where melting, people were shapeshifting. I sesnt crazy messages to my ex-girlfriend from school who i hadn't spoken to in years... Why would I do this? Sent some more crazy messages to people I don't know, on Facebook, these messges exist forever I can't get rid of them.
University has stopped. I'm unemployed.
I've just gotten out of hospital where I spent 3 weeks. my hallucinations are gone but the anxiety is bad... I got panic attacks every night for about a week, which have stopped recently. Have you ever had a panic attack? I begged for death, although I never gave up hope.
I'm at the stage of mania now where I'm very depressed, but getting through with the amazing support of my mum and dad who have stuck by me all this time..
I'm stuck in my house, but I go out to walk the dog... taking life easy.... I draw alot and haven't seen my friends in a good while. I've been sober for nearly 4 months now :). I'm going to get back into the gym soon as well... rebuilding my life slowly.
I hope this story helps anyone else who is going through the same problems as me, or similar. Addiction is a very serious thing and it nearly ruined my life. I can't do drugs ever again (obviously) and this time I am doing whatever it takes to stay away. I am hoping I don't develop a mental condition from my drug abuse, and that I just suffered from psychosis and one day I can come off my treatment. (Not to worry, Im listening to my doctor this time around and will be on for as long as necessary).
Hope you all enjoyed the read and have a blessed day.
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