My former life as a drug addict...

I was about 14 when I started smoking cigarettes, drinking and smoking dope. Mostly recreational then, being young you know and trying to hide it from my parents. It was in my early 20’s when I became an abuser of cannabis. I smoked weed every day from the time my eyes opened till they closed. So you can see I was always a drug abuser.

A year prior to when my relationship (sorry lack of a better word) with meth or P or pure some of the names its known as began.
It was in 2001 that I used speed, which is meth mixed with glucose and other stuff. I was snorting about two to three grams a week sometimes more. A gram of speed was about $150-200 a gram back then and it was easy to get.

In August 2001 I became pregnant and as soon as I realized I was I quit using speed that day. It was during that week I was at my cousins house and they had just scored a gram of pure and that was the first time I had ever seen Meth in its pure form without glucose etc and everyone (except me) that was at her house that day was smoking it in a light bulb.

My pregnancy delayed my use of Meth, however during my pregnancy I became a dealer of Meth. A gram of P could cost you anywhere between $500-1200, you then sold it off in 1 gram lots for $100. I was making $1500 profit a week it was a lucrative business and I made a lot of money.

I started using Meth at the end of 2002 my son was about seven months old. The first time I tried it I smoked it in a glass pipe with my sister in law. We were at home everyone else had gone to the birthday of one of the biggest meth dealers in Hamilton. She had stayed home to be a mate with me because I was at home with my baby. I had a lot of it on me being a dealer myself and smoked it with her so she wouldn’t be doing it on her own. I didn’t really feel the effects of the drug because I didn’t know what the effects were that first time.

At first I was a social user I would use it on weekends or when we would go out. It helped me to stay awake and nullified the effects of alcohol.
It wasn’t long before I was using it more than on weekends. I liked the way it made me feel; it made me feel confident and very sure of myself. I/we (others that you would use with) would think up fantastic ideas for everything and anything. You could conquer the world’s problems when high on meth. I could clean my house, do everything I had on my to do list, look after children etc. This is what made me continue using it.

In the beginning stages of meth use your happy, you feel on top of the world and you are a nice person. The thing with Meth is it keeps you up, days and nights become nothing. My average meth binge would be three to four days long and then I would sleep for about two days the longest binge I did was seven days.

That’s seven days of no sleep and hardly any food because the other side effect of meth use is that you don’t eat. You literally have no appetite; I would force myself to eat because I knew I needed to. After four days of no sleep you begin to see and hear things that aren’t there. You can barely think straight your body is aching and in pain because its tired but your brain cannot switch off.

I would have to exhaust all my meth resources to go to sleep because as an addict you need to smoke it all you cannot have any in the house or on your person without needing to smoke it all. Coming down off a meth binge is horrible; I used to feel like a walking corpse. I looked like one I remember weighing myself once and I weighed 43kgs.
Now the mood swings come during the down time, that time in-between your next load. My moods were terrible and violent over nothing. I have never felt so much rage, hatred and anger as I did when I was between binges.

My first year of meth use was a year of learning. Another heavy Meth user told me that smoking it ruined your teeth so I started snorting it instead you got a real good hit from snorting it. The other way to get a good pure hit from it was to inject but I was not ready to take my drug addiction to that level. I guess I had my own limitations of how far I would go and to me needles were a step to far. Pure meth burns your nostrils but it is actually a good way to test the purity of the drug.

Not all meth is created equal; Different ingredients create different kinds and of course it depends on how good or bad the cook is.
The other thing that I started to do to get a sleep was take GHB the date rape drug. If you overdosed on it, it would knock you out and it was the only thing that could over-ride the meth.

(This photo of me in the peak of my Meth addiction)

Heavy meth users have clicks, or ticks or some kind of repetitious uncontrollable quirk. Some bite fingernails, pick at their skin, click their mouths it’s a telltale sign of a user. Mine was my teeth I would floss or use a toothpick to clean in-between my teeth sometimes till they bleed. I started off with floss, and then moved on to toothpicks and then when they weren’t doing the job in a satisfactory manor I moved up to kebab sticks. I know it sounds crazy but it was my thing?

My partner (now hubby) was a heavy user as well. Two meth addicts don’t mix very well, its all fun, laughter and good sex in the beginning but as the addiction grows all that is soon lost to the need of getting that next fix. Meth affects your sex drive in the beginning it over stimulates you but after awhile you find you can only have sex when you’re on day one of a meth binge.

Two meth users are costly and even though we were dealing in Meth our addiction was eating up every bit of money. When we were coming down or looking for our next high we were fighting and I mean want to kill each other fights. We broke up every week, my eldest son was living with my parents in Wellington so he wasn’t around to see or suffer while we were in our addiction.

The other son was a toddler and lived at my husbands parents house most of the time. My meth addiction almost cost my parents house. We lived in and were renting the family home. I didn’t pay the rent for about 3 months and it almost went to mortgagee with the bank. Thank goodness my parents were able to save it. Sadly it didn’t stop me from using, it still wasn’t enough to make me quit.
My relationships with my family members and partner were strained and often volatile. I don’t want to talk about my family too much but we were all using meth and it affected our family in the worst ways possible.

In the height of my addiction I had lots of “friends” that were big time dealers of meth. I worked weekends travelling the country and I had meth hookups in every city and town in NZ. I could get it anywhere and anytime, lots of it and most of it was for free.
I was introduced to Ice about a year into my addiction, which is one of the most pure forms of Meth you can get. I loved it and it is Ice that got me really hooked on Meth, you couldn’t get Ice in NZ at that time. A friend of mine was bringing it here from Australia. Huge amounts of it, we smoked about 60k worth of ice in a month. All illicit drugs are run by gangs, I can say that I have been to nearly every gang pad of every gang in NZ very dangerous but when your high, your invincible and danger is a part of the drug game so it doesn’t matter.

But there is another side affect of Meth that I haven’t talked about yet and that’s Paranoia. It comes from lack of sleep and poor nutrition; a lot of our dealer friends started getting busted by police cracking down on it this of course creates panic and paranoia.
Most were big-time users themselves and all of them had gang connections of some sorts. One friend was certain that the police had bugged her home and were listening to her. Another thought everyone wanted to sleep with his wife etc.

We started losing friends, losing them to the drugs. Some went to jail, some were put into mental health others died from drug use illnesses and diseases and others moved away from all the drama. Because drugs bring drama, lots of drama some you create, some a created by others but there’s never any kind of normalcy when you are living in the world of drugs.

It was near the end of 2004 going into 2005 that I started to wean myself off Meth. It was physically hard, I had been a user of Meth for over 2 years now and I needed it to get up out of bed at that point. If I didn’t have any I would sleep and so for about 3 months that’s all I did, sleep and eat. I started smoking weed again to get rid of the headaches and take the edge off my withdrawals. It was about the middle of 2005 that I started to look at my life. I would still smoke meth occasionally if there was enough for me to get a good buzz out of it otherwise I wouldn’t bother because all it did was make me crave more and if I’m totally honest I no longer was in the drug circle that I used to be in they were all gone and I certainly couldn’t afford it either. I no longer worked weekends and travelled NZ so that helped me get my addiction under “control”.

It was in September 2005 I wanted more in my life. And I honestly felt like I was made for more than what I was doing. I saw a vision of myself one night it filled my whole mind and body. I saw myself standing on the edge of a cliff and words flooded my mind I was made for something greater than what I was doing. I am greater than this life that I have now. And from that moment on I felt purpose, but first I needed to kick the drugs for good not just meth everything.

(I am 21 days clean on my wedding day)

So I gave myself a deadline, which was Jan 1st 2006 to quit smoking everything, cigarettes, weed, meth and drinking.
I kept my promise I made to myself and I haven’t relapsed since, I am 11 years sober today, it wasn’t easy. I still craved meth for at least two years after; the feelings were still there. If I saw pictures of it on the news my mouth would water. The only difference was that I no longer needed to act upon those urges. My will was stronger than my addiction. I don’t think you ever get over Meth addiction. Some smells can trigger the desire for it but I have a choice now. I have the freedom to choose no to partake. I also suffer from a bit of memory loss my meth years are all just one big memory now, I see faces that I recognize and they recognize me but that’s it and I know that I knew them during that time in my life but have no actual recollection of them at all. I think the main long-term effect that I have is empathy, empathy towards those caught in the claws of Meth addiction. It’s a hard life I know people that have been using for 15 years now and they are just a shell of their former selves. Some are unrecognizable, others a chemically imbalanced now and suffer from drug induced mental illnesses. I know people who have lost everything homes, businesses, families all because they couldn’t get free.

I know a lot of the violent offending in our communities today are because of meth and from Meth use and users. A lot of the poverty is brought on by drug abuse. Child abuse, spousal abuse just every form of abuse you can think of Meth will be in there somewhere. I know that meth doesn’t discriminate it doesn’t care if you’re a lawyer, Doctor, Teacher, Politician, Musician, housewife, Grandfather or policeman if you give it an inch it will take you for everything you have. I know because I have seen its effects first hand I have used it with all these kinds of people.

This is my husband and 11 years sober and loving, living and giving life. We have six beautiful children, the four young ones have never known us as smoking, boozing, drugging parents. We are very blessed to have come through our addictions, learn from it and get to live a good life still.

I hope by posting this I have and will create an awareness and some insight into Drugs and addiction.