Drugs…
xtc tab with the warner bros. logo
if you open it in a new tab u can see how “dirty” that really is (it is also some years old by now)
since i briefly touched on this in the psychedelics post, drugs in general, and psychs in particular, will be a recurring theme on this blog. there will be other topics, of course, but drugs are definitely in the mix, so consider yourselves forewarned.
my first encounter with drugs is a bit hazy. i think i've been around smokers my whole life, but like most people, tobacco doesn't really spring to mind when i think of "drugs." same goes for alcohol, although opinions on that seem to be shifting. when you hear "drugs," you're more likely to picture something like that green pill in the image. after one of my early experiences with alcohol, it was egg nogg, it was my parents that warned me about older folks offering sweets shaped like Flintstones characters.
i'm not even sure if they used the word "drugs," but i'm leaning towards yes. though, they might have just said they were poisonous or dangerous. after a distinct lack of flintstones-pushing strangers, i had my first experience with weed. since every drug is getting its own post, i won't go into too much detail here, but those early days of smoking… good times, good times. they bring a smile to my face.
at seventeen, i had my first run-in with a "chemical" drug: speed (amphetamine). i was with a girl from the group home i was living in at the time, at her friend's place. this friend also happened to be a dealer. i picked up some weed, and so did the girl i was with. i was offered a hit from her bong, and i took it. we left relatively early, i think, because there were other customers waiting.
this is the opening of a whipped-cream charger, those are used to make cream. (click the picture for its wiki article, including full body picture)
iirc, we went back another day and bought more weed, and i saw the dealer selling other stuff too: ecstasy and speed. the day after vocational college, i called her up. at her place, i got my usual weed, and since i was curious about the other stuff, i concocted a story about needing three ecstasy pills for the girl i was with the first time, saying she wanted to stay awake or something. (i made that up because i wasn't eighteen yet.) the dealer knew they weren't for her, so she suggested i get some speed instead, since that was supposedly more effective. so, i ended up with my first €10 worth of amphetamine. more on that later.
shortly after, i bought my first ecstasy tablet, and that became a regular thing for a while, mostly weekends, sometimes every other weekend. looking back on that time gives me mixed feelings. yeah, the memories are funny, but at what cost? just thinking about the dangers of not practicing safer use makes me cringe. and who knows what damage it did to my serotonin receptors?
god knows what crap could have been in those pills. it was basically russian roulette every time you took one. same goes for amphetamines. i don't even want to think about what substances went up my nose that were labeled "speed." it's disgusting to think about.
that's one thing that's improved these days. drug testing kits are widely available online, and there's awareness of these dangers. you can test drugs at festivals, and in some countries, you can even mail them in and have them tested. sure, there are way more drugs ("designer drugs," what a stupid name), but at least they're somewhat distinguishable.
the ash of a joint
at some point, i tried cocaine for the first time. on a separate occasion, i also tried a tiny amount of mushrooms, but it was negligible since it didn't have any effect. my first real phase (a longer period of time) where i indulged in drugs (other than weed) pretty regularly was in my first apartment. those were some wild times.
that's also when my drug horizons expanded, as i discovered there are atypical drugs. one of the more amusing ones was nutmeg, but there were also some more serious ones like dxm or dph. i remember reading about them back then on land-der-traeume.de, which is like a german version of erowid.
oh my god, the memories are flooding back. for quite a while, i hung out in their "unofficial" chatroom. to put it in modern terms, it was like a zoom call, and everyone there was high on something. i met some funny people, and i even stayed in touch with one guy for a bit, though it was nothing more than icq chat. we drifted apart pretty quickly.
he wasn't doing so well health-wise, if i remember correctly. years later, i saw a post about him passing away.
i was planning to write out the whole timeline, but as you may have noticed, i tend to go off on tangents, and my history with this is pretty extensive. so, i'll split this topic up, maybe into three parts, we'll see. i was going to wrap it up here, but i figured i'd take some more pictures of the old pills i collected. when i say i collect everything, i mean it.
