The first time I ever did a drug was when I was just four years old. Phenobarbitol , this drug fits into the barbiturate category, and was given to me for the many seizures I had as a child. I wonder now as a woman in her fifties, if taking so much of this drug, so young, that it didn’t open the door, the ‘gateway’ so to speak to desiring to get high again. I was not only a child epileptic, but I was also a very sick child. I had double pneumonia twice, infectious hepatitis, meningitis, and your typical childhood diseases like measles and mumps. I would get far sicker than other children because my immune system sucked. I spent months in the hospital as a child, and have both good and bad memories of being sick, mainly bad.

It was 1973, I was 12, and had grown out of epilepsy. It seemed only natural that my next drug be cigarettes. My parents would send me to the store to buy them smokes, it was not illegal for children to purchase them, and they cost 50 cents a pack. Back then you could smoke anywhere, grocery shopping, flying, in the doctors office, at school. My doctor actually smoked during our appointments. It was very acceptable, and the effects where only beginning to be advertised and educated in the schools. I used to roll smokes for my dad for work the next day. It was part of my chores, so when rolling his I would roll a few for me. I wasn’t allowed to smoke, and had to sneak around to do it, so me and my friends would meet in the back alley and smoke cigarettes and be ‘cool’.

The next drug I tried was alcohol. I had had the odd sip at Christmas time, and when I was sick, my parents would give me drambuie if the cough syrup (which had codeine in it) was empty. So now I have had barbiturates, narcotics, tobacco, and who knows what else they gave me when hospitalized! My 13 th birthday was fast approaching, and I really wanted to go to see the Beach Boys. This would be my first concert, I was so excited. I took my girlfriend, and for a present she bought us each a 26 oz of vodka. I had never drank like that, and thought we would just get the giggles. Well, I ended up almost dying, in the hospital with alcohol poisoning, I still haven’t seen the Beach Boys. This was the worst experience of my life and the hangover of my life, very sick for over a week. I didn’t even wake up for two days after I got wasted.

At this point I was so young to have tried all these drugs, and hindsight its disgusting that we all had such easy access to everything.

Yes, you can die from everything I have written about so far. It doesn’t matter if its prescription meds, or if its for entertainment and enjoyment for adults. Anyone can die from all of the above, never mind the juicy drugs I have done coming up in this story. I can say this much, I was cool to my peers.

We are starting to get to the ‘good’ drugs. I had older brothers, I knew they smoked pot and I wanted to try it. I went through my brothers jean jacket and found a joint already rolled up, it was thai stick. When no one was home, I went outside and lit up. It tasted pretty good, but at 13 I was a seasoned tobacco smoker. I smoked half of it and put it out. I didn’t feel too much, just relaxed, and sleepy. A couple days later I smoked the rest of the joint and BAM, I was higher than a freakin kite! I was hooked, the sweet, easy, get lost in your own mind kind of high made me feel just fine……this changed my life, even had different set of friends, different music, different life.

The next couple of years flew by, I tried acid, that has to be the trippiest drug I have ever taken. White blotter, purple microdot, and so on. I think it was the third try, that I decided it wasn’t the drug for me. I did not like hallucinations. I did not like to see peoples bodies shrink and their head grow huge. I didn’t like to hear other peoples thoughts. I didn’t like the sun coming up and I am alone in the graveyard, and looking in the mirror to see I no longer had any color, my eyes were all pupil, and my skin, oh my, my skin was breathing! My relationship with LSD ended quickly, it was clearly not my drug of choice.

I am now a 16 year old young woman, who knew how to dress up to look old enough to get into the bars, and nightclubs. The next wonderful drug I tried was cocaine….. lines and lines of real close to pure cocaine. I loved the way it made me feel. When high on cocaine I had clarity, I saw what the world was all about, it made me feel soooo good. It was still the 70's and cocaine was reasonably acceptable as a recreational drug. We would put long lines right on the pub tables, the waitresses would either pretend like she didn’t see, or grab a straw and help herself. That was when a woman could go into a bar and not pay for a thing, and come home days later drunk and higher than a kite. I remember going to a hotel room with my brother and his friends, and they opened a briefcase, half of it was bags of blow, the other half was hundreds of dollars. We snorted cocaine, and played backgammon all night long, and every hour or so I would go down to the pub and see if anyone needed to buy blow. Again, I look back on these times, and get somewhat angry, as my brother was 8 years older than I, and knew better. Cocaine makes you wide awake, but you also get what we called the smores, that’s when your crashing and need more to keep you going. When you run out, its an awful crash, can take hours to come completely down, and the craving sticks with you the entire time. Sometimes you can stay up for days without sleeping, when you crash though you can sleep for days. Sometimes, you wake up and are so depressed you want to die.

I tried different drugs when they were offered, MDA, speed ….. snorting and in capsule form, magic mushrooms, I would do mushrooms on and off for years, they were super fun, I laughed a lot on them. I smoked a joint one time and got lost in my own apartment building for hours, by myself, it was really funny too, I think someone laced the joint with angel dust though. I still didn’t drink vodka, the thought reminded me of how horribly sick I got on my 13 th birthday. I did like the odd beer, but few and far between.

I remember going to a party and seeing an old school friend from elementary. She was one of those nerdy, sweet quiet girls. One of the guys took her upstairs, she was up there for awhile, I started to worry. I ran upstairs and there she was with a fucking needle in her arm passed out, or dead….. had to check to make sure she wasn’t the latter. Thank God she was alive, and lived to talk about the experience, but only for awhile. She became a heroin addict that day….yup, all it takes is one time. She died not to long after that. I blew up at the guy that introduced her to heroin, but in the end, its our choice, no one else’s, just like everything I had been doing. I do still wonder if it wasn’t an easier road for me to go down with not having a ‘choice’ when very young, and needed the drugs to keep me alive. As we become adults, the choice is ours to take. A few years went by and I only smoked pot,cigarettes and the occasional drink. I quit smoking, got married young, had three children immedietly and proceeded to get a divorce. This all happened before I turned 25. I married a man who ended up being a loser Dad, I tried my best to work and raise three babies by myself.

I met someone, and went to his place , he asked me if I had ever free based cocaine. I hadn’t, it was the early 80's and a fairly new way of doing blow. He asked if I wanted to try and I jumped at the chance, I just wanted to get high. I had quit smoking awhile back, but this, was, AMAZING! He told me how to pull the smoke into the glass pipe, and watch how it would go in full circles, not to suck too hard or too slow, have to do it just right, now hold, hold, hold the smoke in, and let it out, my ears started ringing…. I was so high in such a beautiful way….. I had never ever been high like this, and I loved it! I loved it too much. This definitely became my drug of choice. Writing about it makes me crave a big hoot. I no longer can do the drug, I LOVED crack. At first it was a couple times a week, before too long I wanted to do it daily, but I loved my kids, so I never lost site of that, I ended up breaking up with the guy, and moving a thousand miles away. You see, I really thought breaking up with him I was breaking up with the drug as well. It was a few years before I touched crack again, so it did work for awhile…..looking back it wasn’t the move, I had subconsciously made the choice not to do it, and moving was how I would do it.

I stayed away from drugs altogether for a couple of years, then started dating someone who like to do heroin occasionally (so he said). One night he asked if I wanted to try some, I told him that the one thing I promised myself was that I would never put a needle in my arm, not because I stand in judgement, but because I already knew I had a very addictive nature doing drugs the way I did them, if I got on the needle I know I would be dead in no time. He told me I could just snort a little. I said okay, I will try some, how good or bad could it be? I had snorted tons of blow, so this little tiny half line he gave me would be fine. I snorted it, within 10 minutes I was talking to the great white telephone. It was really good heroin, it was china white. I felt like I was in ecstasy , floating on air, nothing in the world was wrong, all was right, I loved being so chill……I puked a lot on heroin. I did it every day for 3 months, then I stopped cold turkey. I was killing myself. I hated what I was becoming……. I was a VERY lucky person to have been able to stop like this. I never put a needle in my arm, but that doesn’t make addiction any easier, and yes, you can die snorting heroin, or any drug. You can die smoking crack, many people have. Its a sad life………….all the drugs were an escape that ended up being prisons.

I never did heroin again, its been over 20 years. I have done crack, but not a lot, and snorted cocaine once or twice a year, I did meet another drug that I loved. Crystal meth, it is a wonderful drug, makes you think you can do absolutely anything. You do become more creative, and this drug allows you to stay up for a week or more, although I would never recommend it, the drug or the staying up! It has to be hand in hand addictive wise with crack and heroin. Thing is it was cheaper, and you didn’t need as much to stay high. You could do a line and it would be good for hours. You don’t get the ‘smores’ . I am done with that too, done with it all, I hope. I love to have the odd glass of Melbec, or Cab Sav, Merlot or Shiraz, but rarely do I drink enough to feel it, one glass maybe two is perfect. I don’t think I will ever be ‘normal’ because of my past. I am on all kinds of prescription meds to keep me from going manic or suicidal. For the most part, I am okay. Life is good to live.