DRUGS A-Z

For the first time I`m sober out of my own free will and with some understanding to why I am doing this, unlike many of my friends, who considered my drinking and drug use as an asset to my social persona- joyful and above all funny. However they did not see what was happening behind the scenes.  
Being in a rehab, I begun writing the story from the first high, to the last low and hopefully back again to something as strange to me as a “normal” life. On the way I have a good chance of becoming everything that I’ve despised, such as one of “them”, who says to be “high on life” being painfully cheerful, a person, who doesn`t smoke, drink or takes the painkillers, despite a migraine.  Who knows? -Someday I may even wear a tie, have 2 point 3 children, misbehaving in the back of my Volvo. The thought is about as appealing right now as selling my soul to the highest bidder. Amongst other it`s a process of maturing, which you will probably notice as my writing progresses. Despite what my documents may say- I am about 20 years old, having stuck in the naive world, built brick by brick with every smoke, injection and drink.     

I am not out to scare anyone from the drug abuse, since I do not regret having used them myself, despite losing almost everything, including my mind at one point. I do wish however, that I had not wasted so much time hitting the same wall. They say it`s the definition of insanity: repeating the same behavior, despite the negative outcome. One can abuse almost anything, and word abuse is a negative by definition, so I do not have to tell anyone not to do it. Hopefully the story of a lifelong addiction may spare someone a few mistakes, yet I strongly doubt it and it`s not even the point. Writing, remembering, putting bits and pieces together into a more or less coherent story is quite an eye opener for me.  I am making my very first shaky steps towards the existence, without the super duper rocket boosted chemical crutches. I`m going to miss a lot of my old self probably- I like that chemical adventurer, out to explore the inner cosmos, however there is no way of turning back or recreating the gone by experiences. I don`t mean to sound nostalgic- there is a whole brave new world ahead. Or so I`d like to believe.   

I`ve become a junky in the land where there were officially no drugs. I was an addict before my very first chemically induced high.

I guess I should start from the beginning.

I couldn`t wish for the better parents. True intellectuals- writers, journalists, publishers and… alcoholics. I`ve learned early that there are several kinds. My mother- drinking to pass out, to sleep- several days in a row, then going to work and doing an excellent job. Stopped drinking abruptly, after divorcing my step father and leaving the country. Father- drinking daily after the work. Rarely getting really drunk but just enough to get the thought process flowing to write his articles.
Eventually drinking himself to paralysis and later to a heart failure and death. Right until the last days of his life, he has never blamed alcohol for any damage to his health. It was smoking cigarettes in his bullet proof opinion. Until recently that was my excuse for much of my drug use and even dealing, believing that the socially accepted cigarettes were a lot more harmful than any of the drugs. That hasn`t however deterred me from neither smoking nor drinking. It`s true- it is not what you say, that stays in child`s psyche- it is what you do.
My step father was seldom drinking, but doing so to the delirium- being wide awake, loud and restless, not making any sense, until the total body collapse or alcohol poisoning, more often than not needing what looked like a blood transfusion. To stay sober he used to operate a capsule, a “torpedo” into the soft flesh of his body. Idea was that if he used alcohol during the six month that the pill was active- he would immediately die. I am sure he counted hours to the end of the term, to get wasted as soon as. I remember him loosing function in his right arm, having taken a relapse a few days too early.

Has it affected me? I am sure it has. However I have little to complain about, when it came to my childhood. Maybe one of the early lessons was that one can abuse alcohol, yet still manage to have a white collar job and even excel at it.
When it comes to the “Nature vs. Nurture” debate, I`m more on the side of nurture as being the main influence. Genetics surely play a role, however mostly when it comes to the size of the nose or the hair color. What may be described as an inherently aggressive child for example is probably due to the violent upbringing. I`m sure there is a lot research done on the subject, involving switching babies at birth and so forth. One thing I`ve noticed, that may have come with the gene package from my parents, was my search for the ways to play with my senses at a very early age, however the origin of this hobby is long from certain. Both of my parents come from non drinking families and themselves had their first drink in their twenties. Their relation to the illegal substances was one of a total blissful ignorance. All the drug related information I`ve received from them was my Mom`s story about her smoking hash once in Egypt with absolutely no effect, according to her. So, can one be born a dope head?

-Perhaps. Anyhow one can get an early start. I was spinning and hyperventilating to get dizzy as a 5 year old. Pressing thumbs against my eye lids to get sort of hallucinations. Stopping the blood flow to my brain by squeezing the jugulars, (with my hands- don`t hang yourself trying), thus losing consciousness, followed by a short dream. I was getting semi high long before I have discovered my first drug.

FIRST LOVE, FIRST HEARTBREAKE (c2)

That will say “the first drug ever not counting the alcohol”. I`ve just turned 14. My new friends, whom I loved dearly, were hanging at my place. After shooting up some liquid they sat there with glowing faces- chilling. Of course I had to try. Later I found out the liquid to be pervitine- a German Second World War invention for keeping the pilots awake and alert during the long missions. Commonly known as methamphetamine. It was just as important of an event in my life as the first love and the first kiss. It was also the day that I got ready to inject, inhale, smoke, snort, eat or drink anything that would alter my consciousness. Which I did from that day onwards, until hitting the rock bottom. Again and again…

I started rooting through my parents’ home pharmacy, injecting every liquid and eating every pill. Nothing happened, until a couple of yellow tablets- Aminotriptiline, a powerful antidepressant that sent me sleeping 2 days in a row. I can hardly remember names of any of my friends from that period; however it took me no effort to recall the brand of those pills.
It was as if something came loose in my head. Daily drinking, smoking pot and chasing new drugs became a 24-7 occupation. Was that the addiction in the usual sense? I do not think it was, since I was not out after any particular drug; however that first injection broke free something within me as a profound realization about the purpose of life.

I`ve always been pro-choice, when it came to most of the things and I guess I still am a drug liberal. Drugs have been my true passion. A magic tool, capable with some knowledge of bringing a relief to any misery and opening the doors of perception. Instantly delivering anything from pain and boredom relief to religious experiences and even giving a glimpse of what I could only describe as parallel time and space. A way of taking control of once reality- bending and twisting it as one may desire. Perception is reality. No matter if it`s 30 plus if you are freezing, no matter if only 5 minutes has passed, if every second feels like eternity. Drugs were the key to a perpetual bliss, promising endless possibilities- a world with no misery, hunger, pain, hate or greed. A world where one does not need a faster car or a bigger TV to be happy-happiness could be inhaled, swallowed or injected. A world where there was no place or need for god, since we could take over in that role.
Contradicting nature of dope- it is all of the above and the complete opposite at the same time. Control and the complete lack of it at the same time an angel and a demon, spiritual and mundane, enlightened and stupefied. Human factor and ignorance were to blame for any negative side effects, I believed at a time. LSD trip often felt as an intense spiritual experience, yet in the world where reality is governed by chemicals there cannot be a place for spirit and the soul since it is all pure brain activity on a physical plane. And if one was to be able to control every emotion and thus reality, one would become a God, hence depriving once self of any chance of an outside higher power interfering. Being gods in godless universe. Teenage Dope Theology, if you like.
Troubles in paradise begun immediately. My friends refused to hook me up with any of their dealers, so I ventured to a train station to find my own way. It turned out to be extremely easy- the same day I was in my grandfather`s kitchen, watching some much older guy that I found, mixing something in a cooking pan on the stove. I recognized the red phosphor, having had it in my “Junior Chemist`s set” as a kid.
 2 hours later he presented one and a half liters of pure methamphetamine- about 2000 doses. I got a few for letting him use my kitchen. After overdosing, I soon found myself crushing down heavily. Intense anxiety coupled with sleep deprivation felt like hell, unaware, that I had the best cure in the small ampoules in the kitchen. After a couple of days I`ve called my friends and invited them in.
 A brief check in the fridge, produced a couple of dozens of morphine ampoules. I wasn`t aware of its pain relieving properties and was not impressed by the effect, probably due to the low amount injected or maybe because as a kid, I had no pain at the time that could be relieved, thus giving the pleasure. I watched them nodding or asleep and thought about my recently deceased grandmother to whom the morphine belonged. She died, in excruciating pain. She has lived in fear for her and everyone else’s health for as long as I remembered. Lung cancer was her main concern. I remember as a kid, often hearing that my parents should be shot for smoking in front of me. Self she would not cross a highway, without improvising some sort of gas protection from a handkerchief round her mouth. Ironic that she had to die of the lung cancer or maybe rather the fear of it. Perhaps that was one of the factors playing in me completely losing any respect for anything with the health matters to do. I`ve become completely blaze to the notion of any possible harm from the drugs.
My new “pall” from the train station popped up with a one more guy at my parents place a few days later. They took over the apartment, scaring my confused mother to death. He started by showing her a priceless gold medal from the military academy that he had stolen from my grandfather`s cabinet, while I was high as a kite. It was almost sawn in half, in an attempt to see if it was gold right through. Menacing, yet unclear to what they wanted, the duo was out to get something. They`ve checked some drawers, asked my mother for where she hides her jewelry, but being high on meth, they were easily loosing the plot and the point to their visit. 
It must`ve been me. They`ve asked me to follow them into the car. There they`ve tried to initiate me by presenting me with a heavily used gun. I`ve realized that I was in deep. Gun must have been from some recent murder, which they hoped to lay over on me. After some time they`ve accepted my desperate refusals and left for the day, promising to come back. It took some time to realize how cheaply I got off. All it took was the symbol of my grandfather`s highest achievement and pride. He has never asked me about it, till the day he died. Typical Deda.
There were 3 things one could buy in any part of Moscow legally 24-7: cigarettes, vodka and 5 sizes of syringes and the hypodermic needles. Weed was less legal, but sold completely openly near the military stations, by soldiers from huge potato sacs. A dollar got you about 10 grams of low quality weed, which could be improved dramatically with a tricks I`ve learned immediately. 
So I was set for some wild teenage years. I rarely visited more than 2 lessons a day any longer, skipping school to buy beer a few hundred meters from there from a mobile tap. The beer was a solution of beer, water, washing powder (to compensate for the lack of foam, being cut with too much water) and Valiums (to compensate for low alcohol percentage), still it did the trick. 
I managed to get expelled from 3 schools within a year and a half. I was going nowhere fast…

FRESH START (C3)

I was beginning to scare some of my toughest old friends with my drug abuse. People who could drink a bottle of vodka on a Monday morning and seemingly not be affected by it, yet my manic behavior estranged them. I couldn`t care less- the new gang I found were the true underground youth- beautiful girls with tons of cash from their KGB daddies, writing suicidal poetry and drinking heavily throughout the day and new business boys, also chasing that illusive perfect high. Kids of the Soviet elite, they were disillusioned, depressed and so, so cool. I`ve left school completely by that time and used the unlimited access to cash and free time to the max, waiting to be enrolled into the military. At the time it meant going to war in Chechnya, to fight the Muslim terrorism or rather to secure the oil reserves… My mother knew very well that (especially for a dumbass like me) it would mean a certain death. Just when I was about to land into a Soviet jail or kill myself in some other indirect way, she managed to save my sorry ass and move to Sweden. It was not a second too soon, since my meth-cooking, gun carrying friends promised to return and collect loads of money “or else” on the very day we were due to leave. I`ve just turned 16.
 

Waiting for the equivalent of the green card we were stationed at a refugee camp for the Russians. “Refugee camp” does not do justice to a house complex, situated on the exclusive outskirts of Gothenburg, near the sea and the forest. It had everything for a new start and absolutely no access to drugs. It took me a few days to make up my own. I was somewhat of a gardener there- cutting the grass and trimming the hedges. So I had access to gasoline. Two deep inhalations sent me into the deepest hallucinogenic dream I`ve experienced. Completely disoriented minutes after, I heard the unearthly songs of the forest nymphs and tasted the blood of the planet in my mouth. I was Alex in Wonderland.

I was also buying 3, 5% beer to cure the hangovers from the Russian vodka, that generally flowed at the camp. All through the summer, until I begun at the English High School in Gothenburg. It was a posh arrangement in the middle of the city, with kids from all over UK and US. I managed to get high marks throughout my studies, yet by that time I`ve discovered that one could score some hash in a park nearby. Soon the circle of my friends also included heavy amphetamine users and dope heads in general. I felt at home, like I truly belonged with the guy who rhymed about writing poetry with his own blood and another one, who passionately spoke about serving grass as an appetizer at a restaurant.  New horizons were expanding at an alarming rate. I went on with my studies to a  Baccalaureate, also an English school, equivalent of a college, I guess. I still believed my ability to combine the drug use and the studies, but I was losing interest. Rapidly so in being a scholar. My priorities were shifting fast and all I needed was the last argument to leave this race  for securing my place amongst the others, by proving to my teachers that I had a longer attention span. Drug use was the knowledge of all the things that mattered- applied.

                                         THE AGE OF RAVE(C 4)

Coming to the lessons stoned and sitting throughout the day in a haze did not work any longer. The only thing that grabbed my attention were the Spanish lessons- being high I found the teacher and the funny words to be hysterical- by that time I wasn`t even trying. Having learned all 52 states and their capitals, able to fill in a blind map, I thought to have reached my full potential, still failing to see the point of it all.
Good education in a cool school brought me into contact with some awesome people- professional skaters, musicians, artists at a centre of it all- underground youth clothing shop. I begun working there, mostly making coffee and doing some cleaning. Basically it was the coolest hang out in town at the time- it was amongst other places there that the rave culture begun to flourish. I was happy to even make an occasional flyer for one of the secretive parties in the woods.
That was the beginning of my own generation-X, the new 60-es where music combined with psychedelics and ecstasy gave birth to a whole new culture with its own art, politics, philosophy and spirituality. It did remind of the hippie era with its ideas of love and heavy psychedelic influence from clothing to music. The new part was that we were less than a decade from the new millennium and the whole thing was very futuristic, especially when it came to music.
The idea that not the lyrics, not even the melody, but the primal beat and the sound itself could be so powerful was new and went hand in hand with the development of computers and technology, giving every kid a possibility to be his own composer. Some tried to separate the music and the drugs, claiming that the beat sent them into a deep trance, where drugs were unnecessary. Unnecessary- perhaps- wanted, like the sugar on top? Absolutely! Why be high when you can be out in space high.
There was another way of looking at the drug use- not the selfish, introverted and numbing kicks, but enlightenment, sense of universal love and deep insights were the aim for the new drug generation at the beginning of their chemical carrier The choice of dope was appropriate: cannabis, ecstasy and psychedelics- all hardly addictive and difficult to abuse in a usual sense. The culture was growing world-wide. At the beginning it was free, and then followed heavy police supervision- cops used to stand outside clubs every morning, following the techno heads with the sarcastic grins. Then begun the prosecutions. The DJ, who owned the only techno-music store in town, got an unpleasant visit, when the German Sheppards were nosing around, while the cops were throwing his LPs around the floor, which was stripped of the floor boards. No drugs were found but by that time the media hysteria was in full: accusing the Rave of corrupting the innocent children with the heavy drug use. No one seemed to care that any pub was filled with heavier stuff, besides alcohol, which went hand in hand with the violence. Propaganda was doing it`s thing, but more was to come. Radio started playing some poorly mass produced disco, claiming it to be  Techno, thus making it sound allot less cool for those unfamiliar with the real deal. More sinister were the drug politics- one could much more easily get away with heroine, coke, or any of the real drugs, than with a joint of weed. Slowly the spread of the heavy drugs started to show it`s ugly face amongst the old idealist of the Rave era. A new depression was not far ahead…

Whole in the soul or the addiction- which one is the result and which is the cause? Are drugs simply filling the craving that is already there or are they responsible for creating it? I do not deny that drugs may be addictive, but so is any behavior. Self annihilation is hardly something that a fulfilled and harmonious individual chooses as a hobby. Tell me your drug of choice and I will tell you who you are. An ecstasy demon or an acid head are quite different individuals from an alcoholic or a pill popper. And then there are those who are like me- out to get high, no matter on what. Whole cultures were formed by drugs; every decade has its own one of choice. 50-es: amphetamines, 60-es: LSD, 70-es: cocaine, 80-es: heroin, 90-es-ecstasy. Clearly cocaine, heroin  and speed existed hand in hand with alcohol at the same time any time, but they were not descriptive of a particular generation. Anxiety of the new millennium found relief in the tranquilizers, later to be combined with alcoholism and strengthened with the opiates addiction. History was repeating in the same order: as the 60-es idealism was replaced by materialism and ego-tripping of the 70-es, so the depression of the new millennium took place of the peace love and understanding of the techno era. For me none of the drugs really went away-new were occasionally presenting themselves and staying along with the others. My day started to look like this: beer, tranquilizers and pot were always in the background, daily, followed by whatever I could find… That costs money. Money I did not have.

THE SELLING POINT(C 5)

BIRD JAIL. (C 6)

My lawyer came to the trial with a coke hangover. It must`ve hit him hard, since he did not say a word during the whole trial, concentrating on his running nose. I wasn`t too worried, counting on a year in prison, with or without the defense. My life after getting busted has not changed much- I was still pushing and using as heavily as ever. Numbness was the only thing I felt. Nothing worried me and at the end of the short trial I simply admitted to “anything you say, your honor” and went home, waiting to be assigned a cell somewhere in Sweden for 10 months. I got off easy. Really easy, getting equivalent of possession with the intent to supply, when I was obviously a dealer. My list with all the money that people owed me was confiscated. It did not contain a single real name or even a nick name, which made it often impossible to collect back the money, since I couldn`t recall who is who. On top of the list there was a row of Russian letters, spelling a total nonsense. This left the judge irritated, but investigation never went further, after assuming that it was in fact the record of my dealings.  However I was young and it was my first felony, so they were lenient.
Days and months before the incarceration were flying by, without any memory trace. Events, people and feelings were in a blur. Next time I became self aware was my first night in a cell. I was drugged up with tranquilizers  even more than I was already, by the guards and left to sleep off the residual buzz in a cell with two other new comers. Next morning I woke up surprisingly calm and was about to go out and make new friends, when one of the cell mates, after steering at me for a while, asked:
-”What the fuck is wrong with you, man?”
-What do you mean?
You were screaming and shaking like hell all night and shit. Look at you now, you look like crap.
And I certainly did. I was at the beginning of a heavy withdrawal- pale, with blue circles under my eyes, shaking like a leaf and pouring sweat, still I felt just fine. It must have been some protection mechanism for my
 psyche, but I was in a great mood and soon was chatting with some guys in the corridor. Nice fellows. The place showed to offer a gym (not that I was interested), mini golf, sauna, library, cable TV in the single cells and mind numbing, spirit crushing daily job, packing toilet accessories in to plastic bags. Exactly what I needed. My mood was better than in many years. In fact it was so good that I just had to make it better…