I made the decision to be drug free sometime in February/March this year and I will never regret that decision.
My definition of drug free is regarding illegal substances and recreational drugs. I never counted alcohol and cigarettes, purely for the reason of them being legal and readily available to anyone over the age of restriction. Now here's the bit I hope my parents never read, and by the way the laughs are few and far between in this entry, read with caution:
Over the past 3 or 4 years I have experimented, regularly used and even had dependencies on many varying substances. I had always had a view point and a very loud opinion against drugs and even cigarettes while I was growing up. Before the age of 17, due to my ambitions on being a professional fighter, I barely even drank and never thought I'd get to a position in my life where I'd ever touch a substance I perhaps shouldn't. But as with many of the major mistakes in my life I've made, it all revolved around a girl.
I've always had a slight attraction to girls that smoke. I don't know why, but to me it gives them an edge. A cool "I'll rip out you heart and not give a fuck" kind of look and my masochistic brain always seems to draw me towards them. The first girl I ever truly loved did smoke and in an attempt to impress her, when I was drunk, I decided to try it. I hated it. However, since when did hating something mean you stopped doing it? Well, usually, but I was hellbent on doing whatever I could to make this girl love me even more and this seemed perfect. After a while I stopped hating it and started to get used to it. The first few times I smoked more than 8 or 10 in a night, I remember waking up and my chest actually aching. My healthy, active lungs were being attacked. After she left me to move to Australia, I fell pretty hard. I continued to smoke, at this time in secret from my parents, for a few days after she left, but soon just felt dumb doing it so I just kind of stopped. I never quit, I had one very occasionally, but quitting requires someone to intentionally stop what they are doing, which I never did. The next few months were really difficult for me. I attended therapy sessions, talked it out with my friends, started for the first time to actually get drunk (purely for that old adage "it helps me forget") but despite all of this, it never helped. I would burst into tears for no reason and spend days without eating or talking, but always in strange patterns. I'd always had done something similar for as long as my parents could remember, but instead of the extreme lows being between a day and a week, they generally lasted between a week and a month.
I was diagnosed with an ultradian cycling form of bipolar disorder. This basically means I'd have extreme mood swings that would hit me very quickly and throw me pretty low. Over the year I suffered about 6 bouts of major depression. It was about this time I started smoking weed. The genius that I am, I genuinely thought it would help even me out. It was extremely easy to start smoking it as out of all of my closest friends at the time, I was one of the few that didn't do it. All I had to do, was nudge the guy next to me as the joint got passed around and I was officially a drug user. For me, this was a huge deal. I had always spoke against my friends doing any kind of drugs, I was even a bit of a preacher. Getting hold of it for myself was again way too easy. I just knew the right kinds of people who could get it for me any time, any place. I was smoking weed pretty much every day and for a while I even thought it was working. But it got to the point where I could barely function either on it or without it. Keeping in mind I had a full time job all the way through this, I was in an emotional coma every time I was stoned and when I wasn't I was chomping at the bit and swearing blind I couldn't cope without it. I was in a little bit of trouble, but I couldn't really do anything about it right now.
My dealer used to work on the bakery at the supermarket I'd stack shelves in. This was way too convenient. I had been buying exclusively from him, minus a small holiday I had in Wales, for about 4 or 5 months. We'd built up a trust. I always knew he'd deliver and he knew I'd always pay. At a work Christmas party I went to his car to pick up my bi-weekly twenty bag when he started up racking a few lines of coke. The way I saw it is the way I'm pretty sure many people I know at least see it.. Weed's illegal, but it's not that fucking illegal. You can talk about it pretty openly and discuss your use, and as long as your not blowing hits in their face, people generally don't get offended by it. Cocaine is very different. That shit is illegal and comes with a prison sentence to prove it. You mention that you use it or even have in the past and you always run the risk of disgusting someone. He rolled up a twenty and snorted the line off a CD case and then handed it over to me. I knew that as soon as he handed it to me I was going to do it but I was shit scared. Can coke kill you? Or is that ecstasy? Shit.. I was so retarded when it came to drugs those days. I took the rolled up note placed it to my nose and sharply inhaled taking the white powder up my nostril and eventually into my blood stream. At first I felt nothing, a slight burning sensation, followed by a slow intensity building up inside me. My heart rate increased and my hands started to sweat. First thought that came to my head? I'm going to die.
Luckily, I didn't. Far from it. I continued going back to the car and did more and more. By the end of the night I was well and truly cained off my face. It was a whole new experience for me. It was totally different to smoking weed. I was gesticulating wildly as I talked, I was being more open, I was talking to everyone. I was also talking total bollocks, but that didn't bother me. I was just glad to be alive. That night I drank excessively and probably did half a gram on my own, a pretty hefty portion for your first time. But the coke balanced out the alcohol and where if I had done the equivalent with weed, I'd be vomiting out my own spleen. Despite feeling like a I'd been punched in the back of the head by a silverback in the morning, I felt sadly a lot better about myself. I promptly bought half a gram that morning and I slowly started to replace weed with coke.
With my new found Class-A drug habit, I felt a lot less weary about other drugs and played about with pills, MDMA, acid, mushrooms ("Anything but crack or smack").. But nothing ever really replaced the coke. In the mean time, I'd actually managed to pick up a long-term girlfriend somewhere. With my girlfriend having absolutely no idea what I was taking, as far as she was concerned I smoked a little bit and had a joint every now and then, I moved out of the comfort and familiarity of Gravesend and in to the daunting, brightly lit London. After a week of being in London, I ran out of drugs. What was worse is that I didn't know anyone who sold anything other than weed. I now lived in one of the largest cities in the western world and all I could get was some dirty bags of weed of my girlfriends ex-boyfriend. I had to make some friends. It was 2 weeks before I found anyone that could get what I wanted. I was too nervous to ask anyone, but desperate to pick up. Through some cunning detective work and slyly asked questions, I found out that one of my girlfriends best friends used to buy a shit load of coke and was always carrying. I quickly made good friends with this girl and eventually plucked up the courage to ask her. I bought from her behind my girlfriends back and picked up my first half a gram in nearly a month. With the massive relief I felt from that first line I realised two things very quickly. Firstly, I definitely had a bit of a problem and secondly, whatever the fuck I'd been buying in Gravesend was cut to hell. I'd never had anything so strong. We're talking watering eyes and the slow numbing that spreads across most of the front of your face. It was insanely good stuff. Unfortunately, this would be what catches me out. On my 21st birthday, I bought 2 grams of the super coke costing me just about 120. The details for the next 24 hours are vague at best. I partied extremely hard that night, sharing the coke with a close friend of mine. I remember everyone going home fairly early because of me and my friend. I remember going to another club and being there until the literally had to drag me out. I remember doing a key off of Trafalgar Square. I then remember going home and being the biggest prick to my girlfriend ever. I stormed into the house, chaos spraying from my pours and spreading to anything I touched. I offended everyone that was in the room (my girlfriend has been at a tribute gig to a friend of hers that had died the previous year and was still up with some friends) with my appalling state. With everyone still reeling, I pottered off to the bathroom to finish off what was left of the super coke. I lined up 2 on the toilet for my friend and I and took mine first. Just before I got to the door I took a quick look in the mirror. My nose was gushing blood. This was surprisingly the first time this had happened to me. My friend tried his best for me to cover it up but all of our commotion cause for my girlfriend to be alarmed, she insisted on coming in. As soon as she saw what was happening, she knew. She burst into tears and ran off to her friends, somewhere after an extremely emotional chat and not sleeping all night, I made a promise to her and myself, I'd never touch it again. Soon after, unfortunately, we broke up and I was soon back on it.
This though didn't last long. I can't remember the exact day or the reason why, but I just stopped. I'd had enough. I was fed up of being poor and being a twat when I was on it. I was also pretty crazy about a girl that would never stand for it at all. So I kicked my habit. I make it sound like was pretty easy, but to be honest, it was. Since that day I have faltered twice and both in quick succession. I decided to try ketamine just the once, which ended up with the girl I really liked dumping me not long after finding out I had done it and shortly after I did a few lines of coke at a lock-in. Since that day though, I have not found myself tempted or dragged towards it again.
As of tomorrow, I'm cutting out cigarettes and cutting out alcohol. My vices are holding me back. I haven't been happy with my behaviour recently when I've been drinking and it's not the stuff that everyone sees. A story about me sleeping under a bridge at Waterloo Station, although hilarious, is just wrong. I need to get a job, I need to get a life. I need to really sort myself out and think about what I'm doing. My bipolar has been extremely manageable since giving up drugs. I need to start taking my training for MMA and the Marines seriously and I can't do that without cutting these out. I will miss cigarettes and alcohol so much more than the drugs. I could have had a much better time over that last 4 years if I had never had drugs and just drank. I have fun drinking with my friends, but I have cut out alcohol before and I was totally fine. I will never call myself straight edge though, I don't like connotations that come with a label like that and will never be bringing attention to my life style via three massive X's tattooed on my chest. No thanks.
Tonight though, I'm going to enjoy these final few pints down the pub and my last pack of cigarettes with one of my best friends. And I know I'm doing the right thing when even a twenty-a-day drinking buddy thinks that I've made a decent decision.
My definition of drug free is regarding illegal substances and recreational drugs. I never counted alcohol and cigarettes, purely for the reason of them being legal and readily available to anyone over the age of restriction. Now here's the bit I hope my parents never read, and by the way the laughs are few and far between in this entry, read with caution:
Over the past 3 or 4 years I have experimented, regularly used and even had dependencies on many varying substances. I had always had a view point and a very loud opinion against drugs and even cigarettes while I was growing up. Before the age of 17, due to my ambitions on being a professional fighter, I barely even drank and never thought I'd get to a position in my life where I'd ever touch a substance I perhaps shouldn't. But as with many of the major mistakes in my life I've made, it all revolved around a girl.
I've always had a slight attraction to girls that smoke. I don't know why, but to me it gives them an edge. A cool "I'll rip out you heart and not give a fuck" kind of look and my masochistic brain always seems to draw me towards them. The first girl I ever truly loved did smoke and in an attempt to impress her, when I was drunk, I decided to try it. I hated it. However, since when did hating something mean you stopped doing it? Well, usually, but I was hellbent on doing whatever I could to make this girl love me even more and this seemed perfect. After a while I stopped hating it and started to get used to it. The first few times I smoked more than 8 or 10 in a night, I remember waking up and my chest actually aching. My healthy, active lungs were being attacked. After she left me to move to Australia, I fell pretty hard. I continued to smoke, at this time in secret from my parents, for a few days after she left, but soon just felt dumb doing it so I just kind of stopped. I never quit, I had one very occasionally, but quitting requires someone to intentionally stop what they are doing, which I never did. The next few months were really difficult for me. I attended therapy sessions, talked it out with my friends, started for the first time to actually get drunk (purely for that old adage "it helps me forget") but despite all of this, it never helped. I would burst into tears for no reason and spend days without eating or talking, but always in strange patterns. I'd always had done something similar for as long as my parents could remember, but instead of the extreme lows being between a day and a week, they generally lasted between a week and a month.
I was diagnosed with an ultradian cycling form of bipolar disorder. This basically means I'd have extreme mood swings that would hit me very quickly and throw me pretty low. Over the year I suffered about 6 bouts of major depression. It was about this time I started smoking weed. The genius that I am, I genuinely thought it would help even me out. It was extremely easy to start smoking it as out of all of my closest friends at the time, I was one of the few that didn't do it. All I had to do, was nudge the guy next to me as the joint got passed around and I was officially a drug user. For me, this was a huge deal. I had always spoke against my friends doing any kind of drugs, I was even a bit of a preacher. Getting hold of it for myself was again way too easy. I just knew the right kinds of people who could get it for me any time, any place. I was smoking weed pretty much every day and for a while I even thought it was working. But it got to the point where I could barely function either on it or without it. Keeping in mind I had a full time job all the way through this, I was in an emotional coma every time I was stoned and when I wasn't I was chomping at the bit and swearing blind I couldn't cope without it. I was in a little bit of trouble, but I couldn't really do anything about it right now.
My dealer used to work on the bakery at the supermarket I'd stack shelves in. This was way too convenient. I had been buying exclusively from him, minus a small holiday I had in Wales, for about 4 or 5 months. We'd built up a trust. I always knew he'd deliver and he knew I'd always pay. At a work Christmas party I went to his car to pick up my bi-weekly twenty bag when he started up racking a few lines of coke. The way I saw it is the way I'm pretty sure many people I know at least see it.. Weed's illegal, but it's not that fucking illegal. You can talk about it pretty openly and discuss your use, and as long as your not blowing hits in their face, people generally don't get offended by it. Cocaine is very different. That shit is illegal and comes with a prison sentence to prove it. You mention that you use it or even have in the past and you always run the risk of disgusting someone. He rolled up a twenty and snorted the line off a CD case and then handed it over to me. I knew that as soon as he handed it to me I was going to do it but I was shit scared. Can coke kill you? Or is that ecstasy? Shit.. I was so retarded when it came to drugs those days. I took the rolled up note placed it to my nose and sharply inhaled taking the white powder up my nostril and eventually into my blood stream. At first I felt nothing, a slight burning sensation, followed by a slow intensity building up inside me. My heart rate increased and my hands started to sweat. First thought that came to my head? I'm going to die.
Luckily, I didn't. Far from it. I continued going back to the car and did more and more. By the end of the night I was well and truly cained off my face. It was a whole new experience for me. It was totally different to smoking weed. I was gesticulating wildly as I talked, I was being more open, I was talking to everyone. I was also talking total bollocks, but that didn't bother me. I was just glad to be alive. That night I drank excessively and probably did half a gram on my own, a pretty hefty portion for your first time. But the coke balanced out the alcohol and where if I had done the equivalent with weed, I'd be vomiting out my own spleen. Despite feeling like a I'd been punched in the back of the head by a silverback in the morning, I felt sadly a lot better about myself. I promptly bought half a gram that morning and I slowly started to replace weed with coke.
With my new found Class-A drug habit, I felt a lot less weary about other drugs and played about with pills, MDMA, acid, mushrooms ("Anything but crack or smack").. But nothing ever really replaced the coke. In the mean time, I'd actually managed to pick up a long-term girlfriend somewhere. With my girlfriend having absolutely no idea what I was taking, as far as she was concerned I smoked a little bit and had a joint every now and then, I moved out of the comfort and familiarity of Gravesend and in to the daunting, brightly lit London. After a week of being in London, I ran out of drugs. What was worse is that I didn't know anyone who sold anything other than weed. I now lived in one of the largest cities in the western world and all I could get was some dirty bags of weed of my girlfriends ex-boyfriend. I had to make some friends. It was 2 weeks before I found anyone that could get what I wanted. I was too nervous to ask anyone, but desperate to pick up. Through some cunning detective work and slyly asked questions, I found out that one of my girlfriends best friends used to buy a shit load of coke and was always carrying. I quickly made good friends with this girl and eventually plucked up the courage to ask her. I bought from her behind my girlfriends back and picked up my first half a gram in nearly a month. With the massive relief I felt from that first line I realised two things very quickly. Firstly, I definitely had a bit of a problem and secondly, whatever the fuck I'd been buying in Gravesend was cut to hell. I'd never had anything so strong. We're talking watering eyes and the slow numbing that spreads across most of the front of your face. It was insanely good stuff. Unfortunately, this would be what catches me out. On my 21st birthday, I bought 2 grams of the super coke costing me just about 120. The details for the next 24 hours are vague at best. I partied extremely hard that night, sharing the coke with a close friend of mine. I remember everyone going home fairly early because of me and my friend. I remember going to another club and being there until the literally had to drag me out. I remember doing a key off of Trafalgar Square. I then remember going home and being the biggest prick to my girlfriend ever. I stormed into the house, chaos spraying from my pours and spreading to anything I touched. I offended everyone that was in the room (my girlfriend has been at a tribute gig to a friend of hers that had died the previous year and was still up with some friends) with my appalling state. With everyone still reeling, I pottered off to the bathroom to finish off what was left of the super coke. I lined up 2 on the toilet for my friend and I and took mine first. Just before I got to the door I took a quick look in the mirror. My nose was gushing blood. This was surprisingly the first time this had happened to me. My friend tried his best for me to cover it up but all of our commotion cause for my girlfriend to be alarmed, she insisted on coming in. As soon as she saw what was happening, she knew. She burst into tears and ran off to her friends, somewhere after an extremely emotional chat and not sleeping all night, I made a promise to her and myself, I'd never touch it again. Soon after, unfortunately, we broke up and I was soon back on it.
This though didn't last long. I can't remember the exact day or the reason why, but I just stopped. I'd had enough. I was fed up of being poor and being a twat when I was on it. I was also pretty crazy about a girl that would never stand for it at all. So I kicked my habit. I make it sound like was pretty easy, but to be honest, it was. Since that day I have faltered twice and both in quick succession. I decided to try ketamine just the once, which ended up with the girl I really liked dumping me not long after finding out I had done it and shortly after I did a few lines of coke at a lock-in. Since that day though, I have not found myself tempted or dragged towards it again.
As of tomorrow, I'm cutting out cigarettes and cutting out alcohol. My vices are holding me back. I haven't been happy with my behaviour recently when I've been drinking and it's not the stuff that everyone sees. A story about me sleeping under a bridge at Waterloo Station, although hilarious, is just wrong. I need to get a job, I need to get a life. I need to really sort myself out and think about what I'm doing. My bipolar has been extremely manageable since giving up drugs. I need to start taking my training for MMA and the Marines seriously and I can't do that without cutting these out. I will miss cigarettes and alcohol so much more than the drugs. I could have had a much better time over that last 4 years if I had never had drugs and just drank. I have fun drinking with my friends, but I have cut out alcohol before and I was totally fine. I will never call myself straight edge though, I don't like connotations that come with a label like that and will never be bringing attention to my life style via three massive X's tattooed on my chest. No thanks.
Tonight though, I'm going to enjoy these final few pints down the pub and my last pack of cigarettes with one of my best friends. And I know I'm doing the right thing when even a twenty-a-day drinking buddy thinks that I've made a decent decision.
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
good luck, i think you've just made the best decision ever.