The tremors were still running down my limbs. Like a shiver in the cold but not uncomfortable in the least. It felt more like a ripple that made me aware of my body. Looking at my hands, I could tell the acid was still coursing through my veins. The hair on the back of my hands was moving incessantly, as if it were caught in some current and their tips were dissolving in the air like wisps of smoke. A cold, crisp wind seemed to linger around the balcony where I sat. I took a deep breath and looked up at the Sun inching higher into the sky. The sky seemed to be dissolving within itself as the clouds formed a whirlpool, streaked golden with sunlight. Everything around me was bathed in a tingling, orange hue. This was the climax of my first, glorious experience with a psychedelic.
Over the course of my somewhat brief fellowship with various drugs, I came to two very basic conclusions. The first: Every drug is a gateway to the next. It was on a cocaine-addled night that an old friend of mine decided to drop in with a substantial amount of MDMA. I’d had my fair share of drugs but MD was still unfamiliar territory. After a brief introduction to the drug and its effects, I was guzzling a drink laced with the same. I won’t get into details nor do I remember most of them, but it was undoubtedly one of the most exciting nights of my life, by far. I was racing about the apartment in an ecstatic frenzy. All sensations were incredibly heightened and I kept feeling a flickering pulse of excitement every few minutes. I loved it.
After several such encounters with MD, I was still quite certain I was far from the clasp of addiction. I couldn’t stop doing it but I had convinced myself that it was a choice. It was not until I went clean that I realised how dangerously close I was to abuse.
The caution light went off the night a couple of friends and I decided to procure MD that was laced with Ketamine, a drug used in human and veterinary medicine. For me, at that point, when I was at the peak of my active experimentation with drugs, Ketamine was merely another avenue I had to cover. It wasn’t until I started coming off the MD that I realised something was terribly wrong. My hands and feet were cramping more than usual and my vision was unusually blurred. I decided to have a few more drinks to knock myself out. At the time, it seemed like a pretty good idea.
The morning after was excruciating. My body was stiff and cramping. My bones felt like they were afire. Every time I tried to stand, I was struck by a crippling rush of blood to the head. It felt as if someone had cranked up the brightness and the contrast and my eyes were stinging with dehydration. I had never felt this before. I spent the day sprawled out in bed. Agonized and helpless. It was the withdrawal I had always heard of but never experienced. Every time I so much as think of that morning, my heart starts racing and I break into cold sweat. It ensued in bouts of anxiety and sometimes, a lingering feverish feeling.
I decided to get my act together and tried to follow a relatively healthy routine. There were nights when I’d feel a barbaric urge to just have a taste. A little of this, a lot of that. It was during this trying time that I came to my second basic conclusion which I’ve abided by in my 7 months of sobriety: The only reason we do drugs is to, eventually, realize that we don’t need them.
The author is a freelance writer with several sporting publications.
