purge 1

I've heard writers give those who want to write the advice that they should "write what they know". Well I know a lot about drug addiction and the incredibly varied emotional states it can bring (Often with nauseating suddenness). When I'm having trouble falling asleep at night, it's because I get stuck on memories that keep recurring. This doesn't happen every night but it's happened often enough to the point of knowing I should probably exorcise these memories somehow. Growing up in the age of widely available internet(even to 11 year old kids such as I was when I first started using it regularly), I find that I'm able to let my thoughts flow more freely in type form rather than with pen and paper.

Lately I go to shows or to hang out with friends or play music with them or watch them play music and sometimes I'll notice the dilated pupils, the gyrating jaws, the inability to finish a sentence without getting too excited about a new idea and starting another one in the middle. Sometimes watching this action happen fills me with an intense yet usually brief longing. More and more, I find myself being appalled at the fact that I ever looked that way, perhaps jealous of the high they were feeling but not at all envious of the empty feeling that would follow the day after... but I suspect that the feeling of longing will always be there, if only just a little bit. Yeah, I used to display extremely addictive behavior with mdma. From the first few times I ever tried it(letting the fact that I couldn't find any more soon after ruin my entire night and mood), to the extreme some 5+ years later of dishing it out of baggies to my friends and always doing most of it myself. I did at least 10 points in one night more than a couple times.

The lowest points were always when everyone else had come down and gone to bed and I found myself with the sun coming up, the inability to unclench my muscles, sometimes still full on in the throes of the high, sometimes taking more if I had any left, until it was completely gone. If I was lucky I'd have some kind of sedative pill to knock me out so I wouldn't have the spend the next 24 hours tossing and turning in bed, sweating, muscles twitching and mind going 123094 miles a minute, just letting the after effects run their course so I could enjoy normal human functions like eating and sleeping. Sometimes I'd just have to wait it out. On those long lonnnnnnng nights or mornings, I'd ask myself why why why I kept poisoning my body like this, I'd feel so sorry for my poor body who had done nothing but try to exist and function normally while my ungrateful self just kept dumping chemicals into it.

I went to see a show with my boyfriend during this same time period. It was when we still both wanted to recreationally use that stuff sometimes. We got a couple capsules each and of course mine were gone quicker. Sometimes when this would happen I'd get him to share the rest of his, sometimes I'd immediately set my mind to getting drunk. Most of the time I'd immediately start scheming on how to get my hands on more. This time, while the music was going I texted a friend who lived up the block and sold the stuff, I was thinking I could slip out of the bar, run to his house to get more and be back before Luke could know the difference. After I had texted the friend and he had OKed me coming by, I noticed I had forgotten my wallet at home(probably the fault of my earlier-in-the-night-and-more-sensible-self who didn't want me to blow all my money on more drugs just as I was trying to do) but decided to run there anyway and see if he'd front it to me. He did of course but as I was saying goodbye my phone started ringing and it was Luke. He called over and over and I just ran back, he was already in the parking lot waiting and knew exactly what I had gone to do. He was yelling that it's never enough for me, I always need more, and I was petulant, knowing he was right and slightly disturbed by it but more overwhelmingly unconcerned since I had my hand on the baggie in my pocket. The world could have been falling apart around me and if I had some of that stuff or my favorite pills in my pocket I could still feel a sense of serenity and only be vaguely annoyed at what I thought of as his dramatic and square-ish reactions. If I was out of the stuff however, I had no choice but to hear what he was saying with full force and absolutely hate myself. It forced me back to earth.
We had a huge fight that night, one of the many that tore me in two and made me feel as if I had to choose between my freedom and identity(so intertwined with my drug use that I felt a part of or all of me would die if I stopped) and my relationship. He drove me back to his place where my car was and I got in it and started driving home. He followed.  I lied and said that I threw the bag out the window, when in reality I had swallowed the whole thing at once. We got back to my place and he was so stress-riddled and exhausted he went to fall asleep in the back room. I, on the other hand had just ingested half a G of(what I hoped was mostly) molly and was feeling social as hell. I invited a few friends over. We painted a collaborative piece and I got to know these people(one of which would become an awesome friend). Of course I outlasted them and they started getting tired so I was left to be awake in my living room. Luke got up and went home, I rode out my high as long as I could, started a painting, read some Alan Watts, and took some Xanax at about 9am so I could pass out. This memory blends together with so many other similar ones like it, one variation was me meeting one of my neighbor ladies and buying a cocktail of pills to help me pass out and feel less bad when I woke up, one variation is me going to Luke's soon after getting up and spending the come down in his bed in the dark basement while he went record shopping and enjoyed the sunshine.
Talking about these things makes me feel ill but lately sometimes I feel extremely unhappy and the more of this I get out of my system, the more I feel that I am releasing some guilt that has been acting on me like a slow poison. I haven't been able to figure out what my sense of unease has been coming from but that may be playing a part. This is one in hundreds of memories that make me feel sick to my stomach and I already feel lighter.