by my decision. As I’m filling out forms to get my needles, the woman looks at me and says my name is already in the computer—what? This twilight-zone moment makes me incredibly tense and paranoid. Why am I in the computer at the needle exchange? Why am I at the needle exchange? Why am I on naltrexone? I walk outside holding a paper bag full of needles and bleach and feel like I’m about to cry.
I’m totally absorbed in frantic and confused thoughts. I wish I understood addiction. I have read so many books, known so many addicts, but nothing makes sense to me. I don’t want to say addiction is a disease, because diseases are excuses. Diseases are permission slips for being sick. If I’m addicted to Valium, that’s a conscious choice I make each time I swallow a Valium tablet. But how can I say that? I feel guilty. I’m so confused. Thomas Szasz said, “If the desire to read Ulysses cannot be cured with an anti-Ulysses pill, then neither can the desire to use alcohol, heroin, or any other drug or food be cured by counterdrugs.” But is he right? My trance is broken when someone offers me a flyer for “mad mojitos”.
I get on the train to Union Square and find myself spontaneously breaking into song, then running full speed until I lose my breath. After running, my body is assaulted with sharp aches and pains. Is this what it feels like to be old? I almost step on a sparrow pecking at a muffin crumb and scream at the top of my lungs. Wow, am I on edge! When you meet new people, instead of shaking hands, both parties should scream at the top of their lungs. That would be the custom in a naltrexone alternate universe. As the day wears on, my muscles are starting to freeze up into terrible wooden knots. All my internal organs have been replaced with beef jerky. I have to keep stretching—continuously—to avoid hardening into a solid block of wood. I can’t wait for this sensation to pass. O sobriety, how I long for thee!
CONCLUSION
There are so many anti-highs I have neglected to experience, but some are seriously dangerous. Drugs with the opposite action of ketamine are potent neurotoxins, and drugs that do the opposite of alcohol and benzodiazepines are known to cause seizures. Scientists are still mapping the gelatinous landscape of our brains, and as new drugs are discovered, new anti-drugs will also be found. Who knows what kind of chemical misery the future might hold! Although I must admit, after a week of enduring these anti-highs I feel incredible. The neurochemical floodgates have opened and there is unimaginable rebound euphoria. All night I walk down the street, peaceful and optimistic, ready to high-five strangers. Ready to high-five the moon! Hey moon, what up!
All that is loved is loved by contrast. We love intoxication because we know sobriety; to love sobriety we should know anti-intoxication. We can’t know the high without the low, and after a week of getting low I’m feeling pretty high. I think the only thing we have to fear is the middle.
DRUG REPORT: LEGAL COCAINE!!!
INTERVIEW BY JAMES KNIGHT | ILLUSTRATION BY PADDY JONES
Published April 2009
Mephedrone is a drug that you can buy on the internet that’s been described as a cross between cocaine and MDMA. It’s been doing the rounds in gay clubs for a while, but now it’s crossing over into straight places. It’s not been illegalised yet and, as it only costs £60 for six grams, we had one of our writers get some and made him go on a bit of a bender with it. The interview you read below was done two days after doing the first line and was conducted about three hours after the hallucinations and panic attacks had subsided.
Vice: So where did you get it from?
Guy Who Took It: Some website that’s like an online version of one of those stalls at a festival that sells wizard hats and poppers and glow-in-the-dark aliens. It was 60 quid for six grams in a big baggie and it looked alright. It didn’t look too bad at all.
What was it like compared to coke?
It stings your nose quite bad. And it’s quite thick so it gets stuck up there. So when you’re talking to people you sound like Ringo. Which is unfortunate because I was talking a lot.
So it’s like coke. You just get all angsty and talk too much?
Kinda, but not really. It’s got mild hallucinogenic qualities. It made my eyes wobble around. Things would get blobby. My eyelids would start fluttering and I found myself staring at things and noticing floppy waves of heatwaves coming off them. There was none of the intensity of E or MDMA hallucinations though. The last time I did MDMA I did a cough sweet-sized lump and melted into a puddle in the street. My girlfriend had to come and pick me up.
Where were you when you did the mephedrone?
It was a classic way to do drugs: a crappy fashion party with free booze and loads of annoying people.
Great. And you were there talking like Ringo, and seeing heatwaves?
Yeah, and I was giving it to anybody I knew telling them how great it was because this was the first hour of taking it. I’m cringing now thinking about it.
Ouch.
Yeah, but that was the good part of the experience.
What was the bad part?
It went downhill about an hour after the first bump. Because I had this stuff in my pocket and I felt compelled to give it to people I’d never met before and, of course, to do as much of it as possible. And so you end up going to different locations, people’s houses that you normally would never go to.
How much of the six grams did you manage to plough through?
I did all of it. Sniffing and coughing it down, all the time sounding like Ringo. And then I did that thing where you drink anything with even a hint of booze in it. Like other people’s half-drunk alcopops, red and white wine mixed together in a mug, then vodka and warm diet lemonade in a paper cup. I also remember a tiny sip of straight whiskey out of the bottle that had some cigarette ash in it.
Mmmm.
I’d done all six grams by about 6 AM. Plus a gram of illegal cocaine that felt amazing in comparison.
How did you and your nose feel the next day?
Really, really terrible. It was the classic combination of sadness and fear, but feeling even more cheap and dirty than after doing proper cocaine. I guess that’s what you pay for with coke: a rarefied sense of suicidal depression and shame. There was a big lump of stuff all still stuck up there, merged into one mess of crap, and ear, nose, and throat pain. My mouth is killing me.
I have to say it doesn’t sound THAT bad.
There was also a totally paralysing mania. I felt totally insane. I remember just standing in my front room staring at the blinds on my windows and peering between them. They had heatwaves coming out of them. And I was terrified of every car that came past. Each one of them sounded like it was a bunch of people coming to visit me and tell me about all the bad things I’d done in my life, or kill me or something.
