This part of the blog I feel will be quite frank, very raw as I'm going to go into a lot of detail about my previous addiction. Those who have been following over the past week will know I'm only 22, so you will be thinking how could you be addicted at that age, simple from the age of 18 - 21 I got off my face nearly everyday for 3 years. I must stress that in no way am I condoning the use of drugs, I just want to highlight my time using.
This is my story...
Getting caught up and working on the gay scene was fun at times, but as mentioned in the first posting in the Gay Culture setting, there is a darker, seedier part to the gay scene, and one of those parts was the drugs. I was a little naive at first, thinking that everyone was just up for a laugh, a good time or just friendly, but once I got sucked into the drug taking, I noticed that more people liked to shove whatever they could up their noses, me included.
I started to take drugs for recreational use around the age of 15/16, having the odd joint or snorting a quick line of coke in the toilets. I remember being at a party when I was 17, taking what I thought was a line of coke which infact, turned out to be ketamine! That's when I started to think drugs were pretty cool. I started pill popping ecstasy when I was out, passing them around friends like candy. It was easy and to be frank, I didn't give a shit!
It was when I fully started working on the scene, I worked 5 nights a week, handing flyers out, promoting on social media and even door whored once, that I got into taking drugs fully. I went to an afterparty one night, I was offered a legal high called mephedrone (meow meow, mcat) it was sold as 'plant fertilizer' it was £10 a bag, and my god the buzz I got off it was like nothing I had ever experienced.
I started to take a bag or two to work with me everytime, just to take the edge off working in the cold, be more chatty with people and obviously, to get that buzz. I mean, £10 a bag for something that would keep you rocking for hours was amazing. After parties became more regular, we would head back, sometimes 4 or 5 of us, sometimes 20+, order a batch and get completely trollied. It would keep me awake for days. It felt like gold dust in a bag and I was the richest man on earth.
Party after party after party went and yet even when the party stopped, I was buying the stuff "just to see me through". I would be sitting playing mario karts during the day, having line after line, just to keep me high as the comedowns were dreadful. I can't even begin to explain how moreish M-cat is, but I remember a time when I had ran out and I was scraping bags, checking the bins and rummaging the couch, just incase I dropped any. When I look back I think how disgusting it was.
My life had been consumed by the drug. I ate once or twice a week, usually on a Wednesday when there was no work and no money left, a jacket potato and beans, every week, just before I went back to sleep after being awake three days. I ate ice pops, sucked hard sweets and lived off chewing gum for the rest of the week. Oh! and also dilute juice, as the dry mouth was pretty bad. So bad, that I hardly brushed my teeth.
I took 1 gram lines for fun. I loved the burn in my nose. The drip at the back of my throat. The rush of going from being normal to completely on a different planet, my head spinning, eyes shaking, sweat pouring. I loved it all. There is, and I've still to find, no better rush that cutting some lines up, sticking a straw up your nose and sniffing till you can't sniff anymore. In that case, you stick it in a fag paper and bomb it.
The drug had gripped me, I wasn't interested in anything else but being able to get my next fix of it. I had ticks off dealers as high as £100, knowing that I'd pay it back and tick some more. My friends were on the drug, my friends friends were on the drug and it seemed like at the time everyone I spoke to or knew was taking it. I just couldn't escape, not that I wanted too.
I went from weighing 15st down to 9.5st in 6 months, I'd always been a little chubby but feeling skinny, having people comment on my weight, I loved it. I was looking gaunt, thin as and bones were protruding out of anywhere they could on my body.
I moved house after being addicted for about 2 years, I moved to a street where 5 of the houses were occupied by my friends, some of them new, who had never taken the drug before. I stopped taking it as regular but none the less, was still taking it far too much. I had sold all my things and my boyfriend had sold all his. We had nothing besides some tattered clothes and some furniture. As people on the street started taking more of the drug, I could see myself becoming hooked again.
I kind of had an epiphany, along with my boyfriend, that if we didn't leave there we would be stuck taking drugs for probably the rest of our lives. The drugs had taken over and the only way to stop was to move away, to a new city and start a fresh. Cut off all ties. So we did. Not without one last party though, eh?
I have now been clean from snortable drugs for 2 years, minus the slip up I had at my bosses house, and clean from weed for 2 - 3 months. I will speak about weed in another post but I wanted to just clarify the Mcat addiction.
I had some of the best times of my life on that drug but, I also had some of the worst. I'll talk about dealing with dealers, scary people and experiences in other posts too!
I am now happy I'm drug free, it just took the willpower to pull myself away from the situation and give myself a stern NO everytime I had a thought of going back there, it's not worth it. I'm back up to 13st now too, so I no longer look like a walking, talking skeleton!
A.R. Wilson x
