DOSE:	repeated	oral	Opiates
	repeated	insufflated	Opiates
	repeated	oral	Pharms - Alprazolam
	repeated	oral	Pharms - Diazepam
	repeated	smoked	Heroin

BODY WEIGHT:

150 lb

My introduction to opiates began when my younger sister broke her finger riding her horse and was prescribed 5mg Vicodin tablets. She only took a few of them and left them in a cabinet in the kitchen. I was around 16 at the time and was a regular user of Pot, LSD, And Mushrooms. I had also tried cocaine on a few occasions. Anyway I noticed the Vicodin in the cabinet and decided I would only take a few at first to see if anyone noticed. They didn't, so I jacked the whole bottle and took 6 that night. I smoked a little pot when I felt the euphoria start to kick in. Then I hopped onto the chatroom on the official Tool website...they are my favorite band. I chatted and felt happy and content. Most important my usual back pain that I have had since I fell down stairs at the age of 10 was almost entirely unnoticeable.

I finished off the rest of the bottle rather slowly. I even combined it with LSD and tried snorting a crushed Vicodin due to ignorance. You don't want to do this, Vicodin contains Acetaminophen which is no fun to have your sinuses full of. I got a nosebleed on acid which wasn’t very fun either. I decided to eat a few instead which helped the comedown from the acid. After I finished the bottle I didn't have access to opiates for several more years as most of my friends were all into pot and tripping, just like I was back then...ahh memories.

Flash forward to 4 years later. I live in an apartment with my girlfriend and a little black and white mutt we named Tony after Scarface. I had been selling pot since I got kicked out at 18 to help pay bills and buy groceries. My girl met a guy at school we'll call C. C had a prescription for 120 1mg Xanax a month! Talk about lucky. He also was going in for shoulder surgery and was temporarily prescribed 5mg Vicodin tablets. Needless to say one day C had no cash, needed pot and had pills to trade. Now having back pain (which grows more severe as I get older) I said, 'Hell Yeah!'. He gave me a few Vicodin and 4 Xanax. I had never tried Xanax before but C assured me I would like them.

I did, I ended up taking the 4 my first time. Not all at once, but in the same day over the course of a few hours. I was expecting a Vicodin type high but got a quick lesson in Benzodiazapines. Xanax is like Valium but stronger and shorter lasting. I went to a friend’s house that night with my girl. The Xanax had me so fucked up by then I hardly knew what I was doing and kept passing out on our friend's couch while watching a movie. My girl kept elbowing me to wake me up. Over time I began to prefer trading pills with C instead of taking cash for weed as usual. Besides, I still had alot of paying customers (I also sold mushrooms and eventually Morphine and other Pharms).

C also had a hook up for 10mg Valiums, the Roche brand that have the V hollowed out in the middle. Those are the best Vals in my experience. I wish I could still get them. The combo of Vicodin and Xanax or Valium or all of them became a part of my daily routine to combat my increasing back and body pains. I was also suffering from alot of anxiety and sleeping problems, both also grow worse with age. Keep in mind I was about 19-20 at the time with all this back pain. I also worked a hectic job on the phone, which I hated. Being on all the pills and smoking weed on breaks made work go by faster and less stressful.

I was eventually introduced to 'a guy who could get Morphine' by another good friend named D. He arranged for me to meet the Morphine guy at his apartment and I brought money and some very high quality Mary Jane incase this dude smoked. He did smoke his name is S and I still get my weed from him to this very day. S had a baggy full of blue 100mg Morphine pills, the slow release kind that you can suck the coating off of and snort. He also had a baggy full of red 30mg Morphs that were not time release and were only good to take orally as they did not have coating and broke up into a red powder. Who wants to snort red dye? Not me. The 100mg were only $5.00 and the 30mg only $3.00. Very good prices. I got $60.00 worth of 100mg baby blues and traded him another $60.00 worth of that good Mary Jane I had for a bunch of the 30mg red. He had alot, I mean hundreds of these things.

I began using Morphine quite regularly when I would get home from work along with Xanax and/or Valium. When I didn't take the Morphs I was on Vicodin or Percocet which I would run into from time to time. Eventually I started selling pills to support my habit. I would buy 1,000's of milligrams of Morphine at a time dropping $400-$500 at a time. I always made it back though so it never cut into my pocket. It seemed that my sources for pills was ever growing since I was soon to learn that the 2 roommates I got mushrooms and the higher quality (I always kept different grades for different customers) weed from were heavily addicted to all kinds of opiate based Pharmaceuticals.

Their names were W and R, they knew a kid our age with brain cancer who could pretty much get any kinds of drugs he wanted from his Doc because sadly he was dying. The only problem was W and R didn’t share their stash of pills very often as they ate and snorted so many they couldn’t afford to trade. A few more years go buy and I continue to use pills everyday both opiates and Xanax and/or Valuim along with the usual 7-14 grams of high quality weed being smoked daily as well.

During all this time my back was getting worse and I was getting increasing pains and painful cracking in my wrists, hands and fingers. Of course solved this by taking more painkillers or snorting a line of Morphine which works VERY well. I had also quit my job for a higher paying, yet more stressful job. I compensated for this stress with more Xanax and Valium which by now I was taking several of each throughout the day. Normally 10mg of Valium and 1-2mg of Xanax while at work and I would take about the same dose when I got home to help relax and help me sleep. By this time my opiate tolerance had grown too. I would guess that my normal dosage range at this time was around 20-30mg nasally and 40-50mg orally.

The days I didn’t do Morph I would ward off the withdrawals by popping a few Vicodin or Percocet throughout the day. This was not only to ward off the withdrawals mind you, but also to get rid of my normal everyday aches and pains which are in no way “normal”. On a good day I feel like someone punched me in the back about 100 times and smacked me over the head with a 2x4 piece of wood. So you can see why I was so easily drawn to painkillers. When I took them I felt normal, little to no back pain at all. I could go to work and do my normal activities without the burning pain in my back that makes it painful to even lie down some days.

No, they didn’t make me feel groggy or disoriented unless I took A LOT and I only did that on occasion when I was alone and just wanted to get what’s called “The Nod”. It’s a beautiful place between awake and sleep a strong opiate like Morphine can induce. You are conscious but in your own world of bliss and the entire world around you melts away. Most days I wouldn’t get this high thought. I just took enough to be able to function on a relatively pain free level.

I continued this pattern until the fateful day of March 3rd 2005 when an undercover detective who had been tailing my dealer arrested me. He followed me from were I picked up a ½ LB of lower grade pot. I also had 29 and 1/2 Xanax on me. I had got 30 of them from W right before I picked up the weed but I took ½ of one since I was gonna go to sleep when I got back home. I had traded him 600mg of Morphine for those Xanax. Anyway long story short Detective Dick searches my car without my consent and finds the ½ LB in about 30 seconds. The cops found my Xanax too and cuffed me, read me my rights and I was off to the station for questioning.

I told them nothing so I was off to jail for the night. I was out the next day and had to get a lawyer and pay thousands in fines. This prevented us from being able to buy a house, which I had managed to save a little over $5,000 for. I also had to undergo 6 months of drug testing which forced me to quit for that time all drugs because the testing was random. I completed the course but my girlfriend made me promise to stop dealing so I did.

Time goes by, and now I’m 22 years old. I hadn’t spoken to S in a while and one day he calls me out of the blue. We start hanging out again. Now instead of Morphine which he can no longer get, he has time release Oxycodone pills. They were a lot more expensive that the Morphs though. !0mg pills were $5, 20mg were $10, 40mg were $20 and the ever coveted but rare 80mg were $40 each. These pills you could hold in your mouth to help dissolve the coating. Then I would spit the pill into a paper towel and rub the rest of the coating off. This left me with pure Oxycodone. Since like the blue Morphs these pills had no acetaminophen or other fillers, they could be crushed and snorted. I fell in love with these little pills because once again I had found pain relief, both physical and mental. I also had a new hook up for Valium and Xanax which I again began to use regularly for my anxiety, depression, and sleeplessness.

Since I wasn’t dealing anymore this began to wear on my bank account. But to me the relief from my daily pain is priceless so I keep using regardless. Eventually the Oxycodone supply is cut off for one reason or another and I am forced to wean myself off slowly. I only had two 20mg pills and 2 40mg ones left. By this time I was snorting upwards of 20mg at a time and more than 80mg a day. My girl hid the last pills from me and gave me 5mg doses every 8-10 hours to help with my withdrawals which lasted over a week. Once again I’m forced to endure my daily pain. Every now and then I am able to get Vicodin, Codeine, and sometime Percocet.

I am 23 now and my pain in my back has spread through my entire body and the pain in my hands and wrists are keeping me from being able to type at work, draw and play guitar. I decided it was time to see a Doctor. I undergo test, X-rays and MRIs. They find that vertebrae C5 and C6 in my spine show deterioration and the pain in my hands in Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Fun! They try a few different non-opiate pain relievers, which of course do nothing. They never have, even before I ever used opiates over the counter drugs never worked for me. Finally I am prescribed Soma and Tylenol 3 with Codeine. Codeine being the weakest of all opiates only offered slight relief but it was better than nothing. I didn’t want to make my Doc suspicious by asking for stronger meds either.

2 months later I tore my knee separating my dogs who were fighting. I limped around for 2 days but after that I went to Urgent Care because I couldn’t take it anymore. There they wrote me a script for 15 5mg Vicodin. They were gone by the next day. Not because I wanted to get high off them but because I was in that much pain. I scheduled an emergency appointment with my Doc. She wrote me a script for 30 5mg Oxycodone with Acetaminophen. Not the ones you want to snort, but they helped. I finished that bottle and was given another script for 30 more. After that bottle was gone I got no more but my knee was still torn and I had been on crutches for over a month now. My Doc wrote me a script for Physical Therapy but my manager at work was being a bitch about giving me the time off to go. I had to wait 2 more weeks to get an appointment with my Doc to get a note saying that I need to be allowed to leave work for therapy. Being on crutches was killing my back and hands/wrists.

Then I met someone who could provide the ultimate painkiller, Heroin. This person will be known as X. I will not say how I know or met X, just that X had Black Tar Heroin. One of the 1st times I smoked it I forgot my crutches and actually walked on my leg with the torn knee. I could not feel the pain then, afterwards I did but that’s what more Heroin is for. When I began smoking H, a gram would last me almost 2 weeks. A gram cost me $150.00 too, but as a mentioned earlier living pain free is priceless. I continued physical therapy and was able to walk again but continued to use H daily for my usual pains. Heroin did it all for me. She takes away all things wrong with me, pain, anxiety, sleeplessness, hunger, and replaces them with a warm feeling of “It doesn’t matter anymore, I feel so good.”

Eventually I was using a gram a week, then it was a gram every 2-3 days. I never did shoot up, I only smoked and snorted it. I used Heroin daily for about 3 months until I woke up and realized I was hooked, had no more money, and was destroying my relationship with my girl who had no idea I was using H. She had become annoyed with my constant nodding off during conversations, I just would say I was tired from work. Now, I could’ve had X front me another gram. He would, I always paid him back when I owed money. You HAVE to pay back your Heroin dealer or you fuck up your supply. But I decided I had to stop. I had 10 10mg Vicodin sitting in my drawer at home and decided I would use those to wean myself off. I did my last bit of H January 1st of 2007, just 16 days ago today.

I called S the next day who had a bunch of 2mg Xanax bars. I had told my girl I had been using H and I was quitting. She wasn’t happy but was nice enough to pay for the bars to help me go through withdrawals. I felt like shit when I woke up for work the next day and called in. I took some Vicodin and Xanax and laid down. I felt better. The next day I went to work with Vicodin and Xanax bars with me. I could feel the sickness looming but the pills were keeping it at bay for now. I got fired that day from my job for a non-drug related incident and went home. I was out of Vicodin now and I thought I was out of Xanax but I found 1 more bar in my drug drawer. Yes, I said drug drawer. I went to Costco and used a gift card I got for Xmas to buy the movie Underworld 2 for my girl since she hadn’t dumped my junky ass. She was happy and started watching it. The last Xanax bar began to wear off and I could feel my skins begin to crawl and my stomach muscles start to tighten. I became consumed with what felt like a never ending anxiety attack combined with convulsions, mild hallucination, sweating, diarrhea, and dry heaving (I made sure my stomach was empty, I hate puking).

Luckily I had some Kratom, it a special tree that helps with opiate withdrawal. If you are a regular user of opiates I suggest having Kratom on hand at all time for when you run out of opiates. Kratom eases withdrawals by occupying the opiate receptors. It didn’t take it away completely, but enough to were I fell asleep for about 4 hours. I was awakened by more withdrawal pains and ran to the toilet to shit my guts out. I went upstairs and was looking for water or something when my roommate came in. He threw down a bag on the counter. It was full of fresh, untreated poppy seeds. These still contain trace amounts of Codeine and Morphine. I thanked him profusely and put some water into a pot on the stove. I dumped in a pound of seeds on a low heat and waited about 10 minutes. I strained the liquid of remaining seeds and drank the liquid. It tastes nasty but in 15 minutes I was feeling a little better. Later that night a friend came by with 5 10mg Vicodin for me. Over the next week I took 5mg about every 6-8 hours and washed the pill down with a cup of poppy tea. This helped A LOT. It took a little over a week for me to even begin to feel normal again and start looking for a new job.

I felt really bad because I had no more money and my girl was stuck paying my bills. I have to pay it back of course but it shouldn’t have happened to begin with. At this point I am still looking for a job. Today I spent 5 hours applying for unemployment, food stamps and state sponsored health care. I have hundreds of dollars of bills to pay right now and don’t '’ have any idea how I will get them paid. I guess I should’ve thought about that sooner, but you the only thing you think about when you’re on Heroin is getting and doing more Heroin. That’s all that matters because you don’t want to get sick. Today I only took 1 5mg Vicodin for back pain. Now I can’t even get a buzz off of 5 Vicodin if I tried much less much pain relief. Not to mention the fact that I will always know the sweet feeling of H and it will always tempt me with her ability to take away all pain.

Exp Year: 2007	ExpID: 58878
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: May 2, 2007	Views: 136,145
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Heroin (27), Opiates (207), Pharms - Alprazolam (98) : Not Applicable (38), Relationships (44), Medical Use (47), Health Benefits (32), Addiction & Habituation (10), Health Problems (27), Retrospective / Summary (11)