Weed

Please don’t stop reading this article because the first point is ‘weed.’

Weed is child’s play. We all know that. However, I was an extremely sheltered individual who never partook in any sort of alternative behaviors until halfway through my second year of college when I went to an “eighties hooker theme party” (don’t even get 28-year-old me started). On my literal way to chugging an entire bottle of Bacardi Razz, getting a nosebleed all over a couch, and making out with various people whose full or even first names I can’t remember, the driver of our escort SUV (aka the only kid at college who had a car) dumped out a bag of weed on the center console of his truck.

Yes, I will allow you that every single thing about that is as stupid as possible.

At the time I was mystified though; I’d never seen drugs or to my knowledge even been around someone on drugs. It was simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying. Extra terrifying when I got ratted out a couple weeks later and I was the only one earnest enough to tell the Dean what I actually knew—god damn it—but that’s another story.

Crack

Cut to me a couple of years later. I have a massive, pulsating, mind-melting crush on a boy who occasionally fronted like he might feel the same for the sake of keeping me interested (#hindsight) who invited me to a party at one of his friend’s houses. The “party” is him, my best friend, and his roommate who I vaguely know from high school.

As it turns out, seems like in the approximately four years I haven’t spoken to his seemingly harmless-looking Abercrombie-clad roommate, he’s picked up a healthy drug addiction. He emptied out my purse which I’d only realize later, but he also offered me a pipe which my dumb ass could only assume was filled with pot (which I now smoked) but was actually comprised of what we like to call c-R-a-C-k.

Cut to me eating McDonald’s french fries and staring very concentratedly at my fingers wondering why they were moving so slowly. Then cut to me driving my Dodge Intrepid to the church my then-boyfriend’s father was the pastor of and playing Silent Night for hours on the piano. Yeah. That.

Oxycontin

Long story short: my college roommate had gone on a missionary trip (lol) to China the month before moving into our dorm room. She came back with little to say but several bootlegged copies of popular movies and television shows.

So… drugs. Her physician’s assistant mother had worriedly given her a bunch of drugs to ensure her safety. When she didn’t need them any more she threw them away and I, appropriately, I think, for being a willfully-yet-sometimes-justifiably depressed person was like, “Oh, I could get into drugs.”

End result being I took a lot of Oxycontin and a lot of Oxycodone by myself in our college cafeteria and I don’t think anyone noticed. I remember once being perched on the arm of my sofa having emerged from my bedroom suddenly more pleasant than I had left and observing how accepting of this personality adjustment the crowd had been. Made me think, “This drug experiment is going great!”

Xanax

It is probably imprudent for me to comment on this but here I go. Xanax makes me horny and rash. I quit after a heavy period of use (my dealer/”best friend” called it “SUGAR” and always referred to it in the way that you might need to go borrow a cup of sugar from your fucking depressed ass housewife neighbor in like 1954). I only revisited the stuff three years later when someone traded me for a couple of Adderalls I didn’t care about.

I got so fucked up I called every man I knew at the time including my then love interest—now boyfriend—asking them to come over. Nobody did (thank heavens) though my now love called me the next day to make sure I was “okay.” In retrospect I’m glad at least one person felt concerned about my welfare, but the reality of the situation felt like this: If someone could bake you a cake, frosting-ink “HUMILIATION” on it, then smash it in your poor miserable face, this is how I felt after the fact.

Meth

This is going to derive the worst possible comments if I haven’t already elicited them but meth is fucking fun, actually.

I only took one hit and I understand the reason why it hurts people physically, mentally, socioeconomically, etc. but that is my Yelp-style assessment. One of the people I love the most in my life has had yucky personal experiences with meth and meth cooking and meth selling and the pervasiveness of meth culture and its effect on people and I don’t want that. But what I will say is I understand how people get into it. It’s disorienting in a good way and tingly and harmless (seeming) and I can easily imagine how you might want to follow up an experience like mine with another hit, and another hit, and another hit, because it is like a shot to the brain that immediately goes away and I can easily imagine a person feeling discontent stopping there.

Also for what it’s worth at the same time I was subjected to a literal pack of gorgeous, exotic, younger-than-me women, snorting coke out of a Bare Minerals eye shadow pot. I mean come on, one can only take so much.

Vicodin

I threw up, a lot. I threw up at work and went home and threw up more despite my boyfriend’s coaching that I should try to eat a thing and not throw up. Fuck you Vicodin. I have no idea what you are good for.