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Voluntary Self-Destruction - Amphetamines (Adderall) - Shane EROWID

I first took prescription Adderall at school not a few months after I had taken up pot smoking. I was fifteen and didn't yet understand what it meant to be a responsible drug user. A peer I talked to on the bus offered me some pills he was prescribed. He said it wouldn't be like getting high, but it would make me feel good and the day would go by really fast. It sounded neat, so down the hatch. There was my first 20mg of tweak. Had I known this prescription Adderall was an amphetamine, I probably would have never touched it.

The effects I was waiting for never came. I didn't know what to expect from a stimulant. I didn't understand what it meant to be 'high' on stimulants. Hell, even when it was all over I didn't really understand. I kept telling my friend at lunch that I didn't feel anything. I said this as I gave away all of my lunch, spat out everything that came to my head, beamed with happiness, and talked some more. All my friends laughed at me and commented about how much I was actually being affected. They commented on my twitching.

That was when I began to realize that there wasn't going to be a strong body load or marijuana-like euphoria, even though I had already been told that. The euphoria granted by stimulants feels a lot more normal. It feels like I've just woken up, I stretch, and just happen to be in a really good mood that day. It's just like a day where I have lots of energy, confidence, and general good thoughts. It feels like I'm on top of everything. I was expecting something that would make me feel inebriated and fucked up; I never expected it would be like it was.

So I went back to class and took advantage of it. I did a fuckload of IPC work. In fact, I blazed through so much, I was on fire. When I was done, I literally asked my teacher for more work to do. She gave me the next day's assignments and I finished all of that too. It felt wonderful to get all that done and actually enjoy doing it.

I went home and read 600 pages in the book I was reading without stopping once. I remember this specifically because I made such a big deal about it the next day. I was up on the internet all night, but by that time I wasn't enjoying myself anymore. I wanted to go to sleep. I was far from being strung out, but I was definitely experiencing the come down and I didn't like it much.

I went to school the next day and I got nothing done; in fact, my teachers all commented on how well I was doing yesterday and asked if I was sick. I said no, and that I was just tired. That was when some dumbfuck of a kid I had in that class who knew I had been tweaking laughed and said something I can't remember that gave me away to a not-so-ignorant teacher. He pulled me aside and said, 'I knew you were a pot smoker, Shane, but I never expected this out of you. Never.' Had I known what I had done was actually speed, I probably would have understood what he meant a little more.

Anyway, I didn't think it was that great. I thought it was good to get work done and would be kind of neat to do every now and then, but I stuck to pot.

Now skip ahead about two years, …. I learned about speed, and I had tried it since my first use... but always at relatively low doses (20-40mg orally) and always spaced out by several months. It was not my drug of choice; I liked to trip and get high.

Then one day I came into a lot of the stuff. I had a friend who willingly gave a bunch of it to me for free. I had planned to take some up the nose for my first time and sell the rest, but that wasn't at all what happened. I ended up taking all of it over the course of a weekend, which must have been at least 250-300mg. Jumping from a single dose to a binge like that is a big fucking step.

I took 40mg up the nose and immediately learned to love the rush that oral consumption lacked. I was ready to go. We went to a party that night and I drank, consciously doing more lines of speed in the bathroom with the door locked and the faucet on. I dropped a few orally for good measure. I would go back out and talk to girls 50 times better than I talk to girls without speed. I partied 50 times better... basically, life was 50 times better. I learned that day that speed was not about hanging out in a room with my friends and getting high or having an interesting and thought-provoking experience. Speed is about making me better at living my life. It's about making me better at everything, and to this day I still look at it as performance-enhancing and not recreational. I did not start to become addicted to speed until I began using it for performance-enhancement, because it wasn't the type of recreation I had been looking for at all. Oh, but it gave me the social-prowess I yearned for. It filled a hole in my life.

And then it ripped the hole wider...

Skip a few days forward, lots more speed consumed, and there I was with an empty bottle of pills... I looked at them and wondered where they all went. Then I experienced what it meant to be strung out. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been to sleep, but I knew it must have been at least three or four days. I knew that I hadn't eaten once since I started taking the drug, and still had no desire to. I began to experience hallucinations. My skin looked different and unhealthy. It felt so smooth and dry, as though it would cake apart and fall off if I rubbed it too much. It fascinated me, my skin. Suddenly the good feelings and the confidence were gone. The energy was gone, and I sat there in fear looking at my arms. It was gone, and replaced with nothing. I could have cried. I sat there staring at the wall, truly empty. Anxiety build up until I felt like I would explode if something didn't happen. The weight of everything just crushed down around me, and I suffered by myself in the most horrible mental anguish I had ever experienced. I suffered alone until I could finally go to sleep.

I pretty much returned to normal after sleeping, told all of my friends what happened to me (including the one who gave me the drug to sell), and I told him not to give me anymore. My friends and I never thought highly of stimulants, and after that experience I agreed that I should stop using it and that it was shit. We were trippers, not tweakers.

A few days later I stole as many pills as I could empty out of my friend’s bottle and into my hand, roughly double the amount I had been given last time. I don't know what pushed me to do it, but I know that I didn't realize how much it made me an addict. I thought it would be okay. I don't know what I was thinking, or if I was allowing myself to think at all. I would never steal from my friends ever... I don't know what I was thinking. In fact, I thought about calling a friend of mine who could get me street meth. I wanted it. Thankfully, I never did.

But anyway, it happened again. I did it, and everything was great. I did it all, and everything crashed around me. This time when it was gone I hadn't slept for more than a week, and the hallucinations were worse. I began to hear and see things like I hadn't before. Before I would see illusions I could inspect, and would find were odd. This time I saw 'things,' (bird-sized insects that looked somewhat like sticks with wings) flying around outside trying to crash into me. I swatted at them frantically and refused to go outside. I saw a red tint in the color of everything, mostly my skin. My skin was doing as it did before, only this time it was worse. It was as though the tissue of my skin was breaking up into fine strands and falling off. It started on my arms and spread all over my body. I feared that all of my skin would fall off, and I was even more terrified to tell anyone it was because I was in the depths of a speed binge. I thought that my skin might need moisture, so I went to take a shower. A white bubble-like substance came out of my skin. It fell on the ground and formed on the walls of the shower, and I began to fear my parents would see it and know I was on speed somehow. I feared more why it was happening. I tried to pick it up, but I couldn't seem to touch it. It would just pop out and fall to the floor, and go down the drain. I decided a shower wasn't a good idea.

I went to my bedroom and curled up on the bed literally shaking in fear. I wanted more speed to make me not feel so bad, but by this time I knew that was absurd. I didn't want to ever see speed again when all of this was over. And eventually it was over...

When I finally got to sleep, I woke up feeling sober but definitely not the same. I went through a depression I had never felt before. It wasn't situation sadness, such as when a girlfriend leaves me or when a family member dies. It's simply a hopeless sadness. Life was so exciting and full of vibrancy on speed, and without it had diminished into nothing. There was simply nothing to live for. I knew that it was the speed; I didn't have to read about depression being one of the worst speed withdrawal symptoms to know. I felt it in my body. I knew what caused it, and I knew it would pass. By this time I knew without a doubt speed was the most evil thing a person could put in their body.

The last time I took amphetamines was a few days ago. I had quit for a few weeks, fucked up taking 60mg, and quit. It was the first time I experienced psychosis from a single dose. The psychosis is here to stay now. I'm addicted to speed, and there is no more occasional use. I have to quit. And yet I still want it so bad. As I mentioned, speed fills a hole in my life as it slowly rips it bigger. I've had that hole filled, and I want it filled again. Deep down I know that speed can't do it, but it seems so right... I feel like there is nothing to live for at all if I can't live without speed. In fact, I might voluntarily choose to deal with the hell speed causes just to fill that hole if not for one thing...

The girl I love doesn't like how I act when I'm on it. When I get a craving for speed, I think about that. It's really all I have to hold me down here. I smoke pot, and that helps a little. My sleeping habits still haven't returned to normal. I feel unhealthy a lot of the time, and I don't eat nearly as much as I used to. But what I guess I'm trying to say is... speed isn't worth it. It was something I didn't even like that much to begin with, and it ended up dragging me to the floor before I even knew. I used it because it made me feel alive where I previously felt just there. That's not to say I was always depressed; I've never been depressed until now. It's just that speed made life before speed seem like no life at all. The hole I told you about... Speed filled it, and I didn't want to go back to it being empty.

I fear what speed does to me like a Christian fears the fiery punishment of Hell. I'm deathly afraid of the psychosis and the horrible, horrible crash of disappointment and realization that the world is empty once again. It feels so dirty. It fucks with my head and makes me psychotically afraid of everything. Yet still, I think if I didn't have this girl to hold on to, I would voluntarily choose to watch myself self-destruct. I would choose it, and I would suffer because of it. There is no explanation for it, but it’s a fact.