Skin

Methamphetamine

Citation: Unspun. "Skin: An Experience with Methamphetamine (exp42729)". Erowid.org . Mar 26, 2007. erowid.org/exp/42729

DOSE:

repeated smoked Methamphetamine (powder / crystals)

BODY WEIGHT: 118 lb

[Erowid Note: Driving while intoxicated, tripping, or extremely sleep deprived is dangerous and irresponsible because it endangers other people. Don't do it!

I'm writing about my experiences with meth for two reasons, firstly my husband and I were able to remain healthier than most by doing relatively easy things with homeopathic remedies and otc meds that I'd like to relay to others who are using heavily, and secondly, I feel that perhaps if I honestly relate the grotesque and extremely frightening things that happenned to us,I might be able to save those who have just begun 'the long farewell of the hunger strike' some of the pain we have endured.We first smoked meth on New Year's Eve because we heard it was great for sex. I had towork the next day and so saved some to smoke before work in the morning. When I got home another g was waiting for me and I smoked every day but ONE until we finally quit six weeks ago, March 20th.For three weeks we smoked meth with little consequence, then my skin became fragile and in addition to breaking out, started to swell. I was really worried because I was constantly thirsty and drinking water, but I rarely urinated. I was afraid I was fucking up my kidneys and I'd be too sick to keep using, so I started taking one pamprin, (otc, for P.M.S.) every other day, because it contined a diuretic, and alleve, an NSAID, for swelling as needed. That worked for a week or so, then I had to take two pamprin every day, then three... until I realized my skin had become clayey, for lack of a better word, as if there were a layer of playdough beneath it. I'd also noticed a powdery black substance, like dirt, was coating my skin no matter how often I washed it away.We used a lot of mineral oil for massage during sex, or before sex, or after sex... anyway... and one day I realized this black crap was literally POURING out of my husband's skin, from every pore, and not only his but MINE as well. We guessed that this was some toxin from the speed needing to be eliminated from the body and figured out that it could be massaged out with oil, or was released when we were hot and sweaty. We started using the sauna at our fitness center in the apartment complex where we live to try to rid our bodies of the toxins so we wouldn't have to quit doing meth, but despite how often and long we sat in the steam, we couldn't get rid of the swelling or the black shit in our skin.Then my kidneys started hurting, and his, two days later. I had lost twenty pounds in two months and my husband had lost thirty, and we'd read somewhere that rapid weight loss can cause kidney failure, or maybe we just thought it made sense that if you lost that much fat it had to leave the body somehow and our kidneys just couldn't handle it. I was so afraid of what I was doing to myself, but I still didn't want to quit and I was too afraid to go to a doctor to find out how badly off I really was. At some point during a sauna I noticed a whitish or greyish substance, similar to vegetable shortening, was coming from my skin in massive amounts, tablespoons of it at a time looking like playdough through a garlic press. I lost eight pounds in an hour in the sauna, of retained fluid and this shortening crap that built up under my skin, which I can only guess was the fat I was burning.We maintained like this, sitting in the steam three or four times a day for an hour, swelling in between badly enough to cause bruising where the pressure built up. I slept every three or four days for an hour or so and woke feeling rested. I would get weak and shaky and realize I'd eaten nothing in forty eight hours. I had to keep a chart and check off at least one meal a day, plus a multivitamin, plus a protein bar (powerbars, protein plus, peanut butter tastes the best.) My scalp would swell up and I'd run my fingers across it which would release enough fluid to make my hair wet. I kept having this feeling of 'waking up' as if I'd been asleep or unconscious, only I'd be at work, standing up, or driving.It was like I checked out for a few minutes or seconds and was totally confused upon checking back in about where I was or what I was doing or how long I'd been gone. It was like my brain rebooted and I had to figure out what the fuck was going on really fast because I seemed to be in the middle of helping a customer and he is looking at me stangely, and oh there's a credit card receipt printing out, so I better hand it to him and pretend that I was just waiting for it the whole time and God, I hope I didn't just stop talking in the middle of a sentence, or say something that didn't make any sense, because I've done that before but only when I was at home alone with my husband, shit just say thank you have a nice day...And we didn't want to quit. So we took our saunas and our vitamins and used preparation H for swelling and hydrocortisone for what we guessed was a heat rash. We took oral steroids, prednisone, which I'd been prescribed for asthmatic bronchitis but never took, to try to reduce the swelling. We masaaged the shortening from each other's skin and forgot to eat and sleep. We fell asleep with burning cigarettes and with the meth pipe in our hands. I spilled boiling meth on my husband and he, who had never been violent before, in five years, hit me for the first time and left bruises on my arm. He hit me again because he couldn't find his keys and left a bruise on my face. He could never find his keys. I started hiding little stashes of shards and forgot where they were, and he hit me when I couldn't find the dope. I was an hour late for work everyday. My husband wrecked the truck three times...And we didn't want to quit. I forgot to feed my son one day...And we didn't want to quit. All we ever did anymore was fight and fuck. Thank god my son was in daycare because they fed him twice a day, he spent the rest of the time watching T.V. in the living room while we locked ourselves in the bedroom and he'd have to knock to use the bathroom, which we'd yell at him for doing. I'd send him to school in the same clothes three days in a row. I didn't care anymore. No one made sure my son went to bed and he started acting up at school because he'd been up till two A.M. which we yelled at him for doing.I fell asleep during sex or worse, fell sideways into a dream state while semi-awake and I'd babble incoherently while we were fucking, but god damn it felt good. Exquisite, I said it felt exquisite. Everything was either the highest of highs or the lowest of lows, no in between existed anymore.I had delusions. Especially when I was hot. I would take the hottest showers I could stand, for hours, trying to clean the cysts I now had under my scalp full of the gritty black shit, and it was difficult because I couldn't use soap anymore, it got under my skin and burned and bubbled in my eyes nose and throat for hours afterward. I couldn't drink soda either, same reason. I had delusions that my dealer was poisoning our dope because he wanted it all for himself, which in comparison to my other delusions makes sense. I had delusions that the black shit in my skin was some new form of dope only produceable by the human body and my dealer was selling us tainted dope so my body would make it because he was going to come harvest this shit from me and turn me into a slave he would keep locked up and just feed meth to in order to obtain this new drug. I figured my dealer was doing this to lots of people, and that he'd keep me enslaved until I died from the meth. I knew it was killing me, I didn't care...And we didn't want to quit.We were banned from the sauna at our apartment complex because no one else could use it. Our sweat smelled so strongly of ammonia it burned the eyes, it was caustic, and it burned our skin too. We had to cope with just taking really hot showers, which didn't work as well.I fell asleep in the hot shower one night and woke with blood pounding in my ears and too weak to stand up. The fatty shortening crap that built up under my skin seemed to melt enough to be excreted through my pores with a little heat, but with a lot of heat it seemed to melt enough for it to all be released because I was sitting in a pool of it. I gathered the strength to turn on cool water and then realized I'd made a terrible mistake when all of this crap that was still in my body and had collected because of gravity in my pelvic region and belly suddenly congealed. It hurt, it hurt, it hurt... and I really had to pee, but I couldn't because a clot of it had congealed in my urethra. I eventually pushed it out and saw it in the toilet.Did I promise you grotesque? We aren't through yet. For days afterward this shit came out of my eyes, ears, nose, and throat. It came out of my vagina. It was in my urine and feces. I swallowed it down continually and it made me gag. I spit constantly because it was in my mouth. I wiped it from my eyes and it ran from my nose. I still have no idea what It was, exactly, only a guess that it had something to do with the almost fifty pounds total I'd lost. I know it wasn't a hallucination because I cleaned it out of the tub three weeks ago, and six weeks after quitting, it's still coming out of my skin, less, much less, but still there.And I still didn't want to quit. I got lucky. My dealer got popped and I crashed before I could hook up through anyone else. I slept for three days straight and then dealt with the worst of the withdrawals with coke, which I would not reccomend because it works about as well as caffeine, which is to say, not very well.My husband and I haven't done any drugs at all for four weeks, and things are slowly going back to normal. I find that benadryl works well for the withdrawals. I just take as directed for a few days and sleep through it...My son is happy, he has his mother back, and his daddy plays with him again. I'm happy, because I'm not so afraid anymore, not afraid of my husband, or of dying painfully in the near future. We are happy because we've nearly paid all the bills we neglected and have cable T.V. again. We are happy because we resemble the normal, healthy family we once were.But I still want it. I can't sleep tonight because I want it. I wrote this in all honesty mostly to help myself, to remind myself why I DON'T want it.And I still want it...