Funny how this works. I can honestly say I have not craved meth in over four years, having quit it in September 2013.
But today that changed, because today I did something stupid. I shared a video on Facebook, a video showing a girl using a meth pipe, or pookie, or lolly as we called them (in Cape Town, South Africa). I felt sorry for her, because others who shared it before me were harsh in their comments about her. The title was “smoke all day” and she took several quick hits, which prompted judgement and name calling, and even someone who claimed “she’s one hit away from a heart attack”.
So I felt sorry for her, and commented as much on my own share. Also, I could see she was an inexperienced meth user, unlike the comments implied. She used a burner, and moved the burner around the lolly, which is a really odd way of taking a hit. Also she pulled too hard, and thus had to stop constantly to exhale and start again. A more experienced user, someone like me years ago, could have taken the lolly from her under the pretense of having one hit, then taken a single long, slow, steady hit while holding the lighter stationary and turning the tube of the lolly instead so as not to overheat it, and used all her meth. (“Tikked out all her tik” as we used to say in Cape Town meth-head slang.) Then passed back the empty lolly to her with a wink and a stupid grin while exhaling and saying, “Now that’s how you take a hit”.
Yeah, I did that. More than once. I was not a nice guy on meth, especially to my fellow addicts. And most probably that’s exactly what happened to her, most probably by the same asshole who took the video, right before he uploaded it to the interwebs for all the world to see.
But the point is, that mental image, of how to take a proper hit, is one hell of a trigger. I shouldn’t have visualized it, because with that visualization came the feeling of glass turning in my left thumb and fingers, the lighter and its heat against my right thumb, the feel of the end of the glass tube in my lips as it touched my front teeth and the taste of meth residue on the tube touching the tip of my tongue, the long steady pull of a hit, and the rush of euphoria that comes with it. I can feel it even as I type this. Another bad idea which brought it back again.
I’m not going to use… Obviously. But I am surprised. It wasn’t the video that triggered this craving. It wasn’t seeing someone take a hit. It was my silly comment, my imagination and memory that allowed me to momentarily experience an imaginary meth hit again, and thus triggered a craving for the real deal, my first such craving in four years.
Note to self (and anyone reading too)… Don’t be too eager to boast of your experience as the expert drug user you used to be… It’s nothing to be proud of, nothing to celebrate. And it can lead to a craving like this unexpected one.
The craving vanished as quickly as it appeared. I’m editing this half an hour after writing it, and in fact it was gone minutes after writing this post. That’s not the way it used to be. Those cravings used to hang around for hours, and even for days. But it did surprise me to feel such a craving again in the first place. I empathize with those who get such cravings regularly… I’d mostly forgotten how it felt.