I’d been smoking large amounts of marijuana for three or four years and sporadically taking acid, mushrooms, pills, and heavily drinking, too, on occasion. Soon enough, I was introduced through a friend to cocaine, and became a regular user of the drug, often going on multiple day binges.
A couple months after beginning to use cocaine, I came across the drug “crystal meth” for the first time, discovering it at my friend’s townhouse, which functioned as our hub of drug activity. This new substance, “the meth” as it was being colloquially referred to, was rocky and powdery, like cocaine, but a more yellowish crystal white, as opposed to the snowy hue of the yay-yo we’d been buying.
I either purchased or was given, I can’t recall, a small sack of meth, which I’d previously never even heard of. My friend said it was stronger than coke, so I was instantly intrigued. And being in the midst of a coke binge at this point, too, I was seeking some additional enjoyment.
Following my receipt of the meth baggie, I set out a few lines on a small vanity mirror for my friend and me, and we got down to business.
Having snorted a good deal of cocaine and every so often crushing up and snorting pills, I was accustomed to ingesting drugs nasally. However, upon first snorting meth, my nasal passage burned in a way it never had w/prior drugs. I could have sworn my nose was going to bleed after taking that first line, but fortunately it didn’t.
The drug coursed into my body, and I felt a heavy head rush, more intense and producing a higher degree of euphoria than I was accustomed to w/coke. I stumbled back and had to lay down on my friend’s waterbed for a few minutes to compose myself.
Afterwards, I got up, suddenly feeling energized, and took bong hits of pot w/whoever was at the townhouse, played video games, and argued about everything unimportant for hours.
At some point, I realized I had to go back home, exited the townhouse, and got into my car. Driving back to my house was kind of scary. Every other automobile on the road seemed like a cop to me and I drove very slowly and carefully, so as not to arouse suspicion.
Upon arriving home I somehow was able to sleep for about 45 minutes before I awoke to a friend banging on my door. We were supposed to go on a camping trip together. When I groggily pulled open the door he said he thought I was dead and that he’d been knocking for 10 minutes.
We then hit the road, to the campsite, somewhere in the Everglades. On the way there we smoked a pipe of high potency weed, a “kind bud” known as “AK-47,” and I almost lost control of the vehicle on the highway, as I temporarily forgot what I was doing, and nearly hit a mile marker sign. Luckily my friend was alert enough to grab the wheel, probably averting a fatal crash.
Once at the campsite, I don’t remember much of what happened, other than getting there, selling a lot of weed and some coke and hooking up w/a group of girls. My friend who I’d come w/and another close friend of mine who was there disappeared w/some girls they’d met and I set off w/three girls and a Cuban dude, who I think was gay.
The girls, the probably gay Cuban, and me smoked a lot of pot and snorted a bunch of coke in a girls bathroom. Later that day, the probably gay dude and I snorted most of the remaining meth I had. I can’t remember offering it to the girls or if they were smart enough to refuse it.
I don’t remember the meth hitting me as hard, snorting it the second time, but I do remember us, the probably gay Cuban and me, smoking the last bit of meth from a small glass pipe and that really, really fucking us up.
I think it was around nighttime that we smoked it. I recall it tasting very harsh and chemically. Not long after, I started having very vivid audiovisual hallucinations, stronger and unlike those from acid, causing me to see and hear some things I’ll likely never forget.
Out in the mangrove thickets lining the campsite, I started hearing all sorts of hissing/meowing cat sounds and what sounded like people talking in African languages w/all those clicking vowels, which led me to believe painted-face African tribesmen were out there w/spears, stabbing feral cats to death or maybe snatching up and strangling the flailing animals, then sinking decayed, mangled teeth into them and devouring the cats alive, blood splattering everywhere, like some shit from a zombie movie.
Inside a campfire we were sitting around, I saw a couple cop cars, sirens blaring, crashing into each other, over and over, exploding into mushroom clouds.
I also saw my hairy gorilla of a next door neighbor, from when I was 8 or so, who, while smoking PCP, got into a fistfight w/his wife and was dragged out of his house by the police, barefoot, wearing just his pajamas. His penis was fully erect, pitching a tent under his pajamas, and he looked over at me and yelled something in a language I couldn’t understand as they stuffed him into a paddy wagon.
For some reason I kept seeing that gorilla man, all hairy, in his pajamas, penis fully erect, struggling w/the police and being dragged in the direction of the exploding cop cars.
The hallucinatory images of the erected penis hairy gorilla man on PCP and exploding cop cars and horrific sounds of the African tribesmen brutally slaughtering and eating those feral cats alive were really starting to fuck w/my constitution, and as I stared at the fire, this one older dude sitting nearby, maybe a park ranger, seemed to notice me tripping out. We made eye contact a couple times, and I thought he’d say something to me, but he didn’t. Maybe he didn’t really notice me and it was purely delusional paranoia. Perhaps he didn’t really exist.
That night, I slept w/one of the girls in her sleeping bag. I don’t remember if we had sexual relations or not. I do remember her getting up out of the sleeping bag every 20 minutes or so to crouch down in the bushes nearby to piss and me being absolutely terrified the painted-face African tribesmen w/spears might jump down from a tree to kill or eat her.
I also had more weird visions, such as that girl in the sleeping bag w/me’s long dark curly hair looking like medusa snakes and that really freaking me out, too, and me not being able to actually sleep the whole time.
Thinking back on it, that girl and I probably didn’t have sexual relations that night.
The next morning, that girl and I snorted some coke again in the bathroom. Then afterwards I got into an argument w/her about something I can’t remember. I remember cursing her and some random people out and leaving the campsite. Upon telling her I was leaving, she looked at me like I was crazy, and pleaded w/me not to go, but I left anyway.
Driving home was a blur, but somehow I got back to my neighborhood. Next thing I knew I was trying to walk home but couldn’t recall exactly where I lived, so I went to a friend’s house.
He wasn’t home, maybe he was also on the camping trip, I don’t know, but I needed a place to stay and so I tried to break into his house. Unfortunately, I was unable to pry open any of his windows or kick in his door.
Instead I stayed in his backyard for two days.
Those next two days, spent in an old treehouse, I didn’t eat, and drank my own urine. My skin grew severe rashes, which I scratched to the point of drawing blood, and I pulled hair from my head and carved my ex-girlfriend’s name into my arm w/a switchblade, as I thought doing so would save me from her appearing at any moment, in a wedding dress, ready shoot me w/a sawed off shotgun.
After finally passing out, I woke up to a call from a body shop, saying my car was brought to them, totaled, and that it would cost $5000 to repair.
I haven’t touched meth since and probably won’t anytime soon. Especially, too, since I've heard that shit can really run up the dental bills.
