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 My name is Paul and it was on my twentieth birthday when I first took drugs, it was speed and ecstasy. |
Before my
birthday I had been feeling very low about myself for quite a while. I think I
was suffering from depression and had very low self-esteem, very little
confidence in myself and I found that I couldn’t talk very well to other
people. I started hanging around with a group of people that I was sort of
close to and they were taking speed and ecstasy. So, on my twentieth birthday I
got a gram of speed and an ecstasy tablet because I wanted to enjoy my
birthday, and I had a great time. I thoroughly enjoyed myself,I was bouncing
around and hugging people and I felt really confident,enough to go over and
talk to complete strangers. I have never felt that kind of confidence before,
so much at ease with myself and other people, like on a level par with people
because I had always felt inferior. After I had had that ecstasy tablet and that speed,a couple of days later I had it again. It made me feel so confident that I could do anything. Basically, I stopped taking ecstasy but the speed gave me the confidence and I felt the concentration that I needed to talk to other people and be able to cope with social surroundings. So, I just constantly hammered the speed for years and I just felt that I was able to function properly. I didn’t realise at the time that I was a chemically dependent person,which came later when I found myself unable to deal with coming down. At this stage I turned to injecting speed. I started to feel really bad about that and the family surroundings that was going on at the same time. My mother became ill and I couldn’t do anything to stop that and so I started to take more speed. My father died and I had a lot of emotional problems around that. So, again I just hammered more speed. It got to a point eventually when I just didn’t care. I moved house various times and I was homeless but I was still hammering the speed. I got so low and it didn’t seem to matter to me . Then I found heroin. I didn’t think I would get addicted to heroin,I really didn’t. At first I didn’t bother with it and then one day I just said ‘give me a toot’. The next time I had it I cooked it up in a spoon and injected it. I was violently ill but afterwards that warm inner bubble effect took over. That was a great feeling, it was as if nothing mattered. At this stage a lot of people I knew were taking heroin and it was just like a normal thing for me. My arms were a mess and I was losing so much weight off my face. I was lying to my mother and I was thieving off her. I was telling her that I needed money for gas and electric. She was in an old people’s home and I was taking advantage of that. I have never felt so ashamed of myself. Everything was going really down hill. |
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