| I would like to begin by asking this simple question: Can smoking weed ONCE and getting high ONCE ruin the rest of a person’s life? The nightmare that now is my life began 4 years ago on November 8th 2001. I had started hanging with a bad crowd in school, you know the type that like sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll (I was never much good at the sex part. lol) Well anyway this new crowd was heavily into drugs, whilst I was just a normal 14 year old, who liked playing playstation and soccer. I wasn’t a ‘bad boy’ just a normal, regular, run of the mill dude. When I went out with this new crowd I tried to shy away from taking drugs, but boy did they make it hard. My good nature had started getting me bullied by the group, and after immense peer pressure I caved in and decided to become ‘cool’ and get high. BIG MISTAKE!!! The day of me getting high had finally arrived. I knocked for my friend and we walked to the tube station. Little did I no that this was to be the morning that changed my life completely. As we walked we found $20 on the ground ironic now is this because it was almost as if the day couldn’t get any better. It was sunny and we had just found 20 bucks on the floor, so the drugs were going to be much cheaper. We went to my friends dealer and my friend picked up a quarter ounce of what was called tie weed. As we headed for the smoking den the seconds that were passing me by were the last moments of my innocence. We arrived at the den and I proceeded to get high by smoking the quarter once of tie weed. At first nothing happened, so I decided to kick back and smoke a second and then a third ‘joint’. I was just laying on the make shift sofa waiting for the substance to kick in when it suddenly hit me. No words can adequately describe what happened in that split second of terror but all I no is that my life had changed forever. I jolted up off of the sofa as panic started to grip me. I don’t know what the fuck went on but I can only describe it as being the most scary and terrifying feeling that anyone could ever experience. The moments around these seconds of terror are now blurry but it was as if I wasn’t in my body; my voice sounded strange; I started wondering why I couldn’t see my own face. It is only now sitting here reading through other peoples stories that I can slowly piece together what went on in the moments of that morning. I was ‘high’ as fuck and I believe that this ‘high’ caused me to have a panic attack, which in turn triggered off both the depersonalization and obsessive compulsive disorders in me. The morning progressed through into the afternoon and I just lay on the sofa in the den shitting myself about what was going on. My friend had pre-warned me about your first time getting high being ‘scary’ but I didn’t imagine the terror that was to follow because believe me if I had of known there is no way that I would of gone through with it. At around 4:30 my mind was still in a haze but I somehow managed to leave the den and found my way home. On arrival I had something to eat and then went straight to sleep hoping that my mum and dad wouldn’t catch me stoned as fuck. I didn’t hope for anything as I drifted off to sleep, funny as it may seem because anyone in their right mind would of hoped that the terror they had just lived through would be gone by the time they woke up the next day; but I‘m not in my right mind and haven‘t been since taking the drugs. I awoke the next morning and realized that something was terribly wrong. I still felt ‘high’ as fuck and the things that were troubling me from the day before, like my voice sounding weird, were still present. Also, I felt overwhelmingly upset, so depressed it was unreal. I felt like I was dead, my emotions and feelings were gone. At the time I thought that I could still be under the influence of the drugs and tried not to panic. It was only when I awoke the next day that I really started panicking because I still felt ‘high’, it was as if my mind was trapped under the influence of the drugs and I still felt unbelievably upset by this ‘high’ feeling. It was as if my mind was continually playing back to me this scary feeling of being ‘high’ and there seemed to be no way out. Around this time I saw a program on TV. about manic depression and was sure this is what I had because I felt so unbelievably unhappy. A few days after taking the drugs my OCD started. It was initially a worry that touching certain objects was going to make me get ‘high’ again. I was worried (and still am) that certain objects contained traces of drugs and by touching them and then putting my fingers in my mouth would create this feeling of being ‘high’. The weekend after taking the drugs I went to bye some new sneakers and took the subway. Whilst waiting for the train I was sure that my mind was going to lose control and I was going to throw myself onto the tracks. The first weeks after my initial drug intake were hell. I was convinced I was going mad and that I had manic depression because I felt so unhappy. I realize now, but not at the time, that my initial drug intake had lead me to become depersonalized because I was walking around in a daze and continually felt light headed. After the first few months of feeling like this I started drinking heavily. This was because the only time I didn’t feel weird was when I was drunk. After a few weeks of getting drunk as fuck the bullying by my new friends came to a head and they beat the shit out of me. That’s right one fateful February night I got my head kicked in and lost one of my front teeth. Some friends they turned out to be, after initially ruining my life by getting me ‘high’ they went one step further and disfigured my damn face. Now let me summarize on where we are: It’s 4 months since I took the drugs and I’ve just had my face mangled by these bullies/friends and I’m starting to develop OCD, with depersonalization thrown into the pot for good measure. At around this time the derealisation started up. This to me is basically the familiar looking strange or ‘new’. At the beginning it was not recognizing people who were familiar to me because they looked different in some way. The best way of describing it is when you no that something or someone looks the way they do but you never new that they actually looked like that. Also, the sky started looking different in some way. It looked more bluer and in some way strange. It basically didn’t look how did before I took drugs and this scared the crap out of me. Furthermore, cars started posing me problems because when you have the image of a car your looking at it from the outside but when your actually driving a car you only see it from the inside. For some reason this bugged me. After some more weird weeks I felt I had to tell someone and confided in my Nan. At the time I didn’t know what was wrong, just that something wasn’t right. She was very supportive and said that she would have a word with my mum and dad. The next day after I came back from school my mum and dad sat me down and asked me what was wrong. I didn’t let on that I had taken any drugs, just that I felt really depressed. They rubbished these claims and said that it was something every teenage person goes through, hormones etc. I tried talking to them a few times after are initial chat but my mum just got angry and said that there was nothing wrong with me. I took my mum and dad’s words as the truth and just thought that what I was going through was a part of growing up. I started getting used to feeling like I did; always unhappy, no emotion, as if I was still high on drugs. As the months and then years passed me by I just simply ignored my symptoms and pretended that everything was alright. As the OCD and the depersonalization spiraled out of control I thought that nothing was wrong and that I was getting better on my own even though deep down I new that something was more wrong with me then simply adolescent hormone changes. I was blind to how bad things were getting and not even when I asked for help did I realize how sever my symptoms had got. It is only now as I write this do I start to realise just how bad these symptoms have got. There is not a second that goes by where I’m not worried by my symptoms. My symptoms around OCD are basically the fear of losing control and hurting loved ones, compulsions and rituals around religion, and lots and lots of intrusive thoughts, mostly centered around the fear of getting high through to me worrying that I‘m a pedophile (not something that all 14 years olds have to worry about). The symptoms around the depersonalization basically centre around me still feeling ‘high’, not recognizing my face in the mirror, my voice sounding weird, always feeling light headed, feeling like I’m having an out of body experience every time I leave the house and worries about why I cant see my face through to my hands not feeling a part of me. The derealisation centers around the environment and the people in it being in some way different to me and in some way strange. Put all these symptoms together and you get one messed up 18 year old. All of these problems are deeply deeply distressing to me. I think it is also noteworthy that my face ballooned with acne as the physical tole of all these problems took place. What really scares me is that I didn’t know how bad things had got and if only I had got help sooner things wouldn’t have spiraled so far out of control. I’m at the stage now where I cant look my baby sister in the eye because I’m so worried that I will have nasty thoughts about abusing her and I very seldom leave the house because whenever I go out I have this light headiness. Around January 2005 I decided that perhaps what I was feeling wasn’t normal and told my mum and dad again. They agreed that I was old enough to know my own mind and took me to see the doctor, who referred me to a child psychiatrist. It took nearly half a year to get a damn appointment and by the time I saw someone I was 18 and had to be referred to an psychiatrist for adults. I told them my problems and they suggested medication and talking to a psychologist. The talking that I do with physiologist has helped me but the good feelings only last for a few hours after seeing her. The medication has had absolutely no effect on me. I will conclude my story by saying that the best I have felt in the last 4 years is when I stumbled across this website and read the other peoples stories because I finally new that I wasn’t going mad and that there was in fact something wrong with me. I believe that what doesn’t kill you can only make you stronger, an although my problems have nearly killed me on a number of occasions (suicide), this will make me stronger. I do have some regrets like not getting help sooner because I feel that if I did I wouldn’t have had to live like this for the last 4 years and that perhaps there would be more chance of a full recovery if I had only been like this for a few months instead of 4 years. But I guess I gotta learn to live with regrets. If there’s one message I would like to get across then its got to be that you can’t …‘let the bastards grind you down’. p.s. don’t do drugs. |
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