What Were You Doing With Your Life Before Drugs?

[ex-junkie]

what sort of goals did you have in mind for yourself before drugs? career goals? study goals? family goals?

have you swimmers managed to fulfil any of them, or did they fade away in the distance?


swim had no idea what she wanted to do when she graduated high school. she had dreams of playing in a successful band, and at 17, was in an industrial metal band that were in negotiations for a signing with warner music. swim wasnt the only band member with drug problems, and the jams happened less frequently over time, and we drifted apart.

after that, she started business administration certificates 2, 3 and 4, and never completed it. worse thing is, she was only one or two modules from completing it.

nevermind that though, swim has bigger, better goals now for the future.

Reputation Comments on this post:

congrats, this is a very good subject, it brings focus to something some would rather avoid

[sandoz1943]

SWIM never knew what she wanted to be when she grew up and still hasn't figured it out. Nothing realy changed. No goals she didn't reach. No regrets about who she is or what she has done with her life. SWIM is pretty happy about life in general. Too many people get caught up in what others want for them or who they want them to be. They forget to be happy with what they have and who they are.

[ex-junkie]

Originally Posted by sandoz1943

They forget to be happy with what they have and who they are.

had to be quoted. in the context swiy wrote it, swim has to agree.

commenting on the flipside, happy people generally dont get hooked on opiates. not saying happy people dont get hooked on opiates at all, but the overwhelming majority seem to have a background of depression, mental illness, grief issues, low self esteem, and some abused.

[sandoz1943]

Believe this is a desperate attempt to self medicate. Opium can heal alotta hurts.

[ex-junkie]

honey, when you come down, all the hurt still will be there. you can run, but you cant hide. opium doesnt heal a thing. its just masks it.

[Mesaja]

SWIM never had any specific goals in life.
He just wanted to chillout,have fun and get on with life,living it in pink color.
He never had any troubles with studies,and always got high scores,so he didnt have to worry about that either.
SWIMs life,two years before drugs was beautyfull.
He wasnt using,but he was high every day,from love,from the air he breathed...from everything.
Than,the relationship with his girlfriend break down,and life started to suck.
That was one year before drugs.
So,SWIM went one really baaaaad year,full of depresion before he discovered that there is a supstance that can make him feel better and can give his old pinky live back.And from the first time he tried it,deep down,he knew that addiction is comming down the road,but ignored that cause the feeling was beautyfull,and nothing else mathered at the time.
So,thats it for SWIM.

[nick23]

Jesus,swim can't remember.

[sandoz1943]

Maybe cure was a poor choice of words, Maybe I should have said for some it deadens the pain.

[Mikeymc]

Swim graduated college in Montana, three years ago. Swim moved back to Minneapolis where he grew up, after a couple of years of working my way up the chain, Swim became a regional visual design manager for a major apparel company...it was at this time Swim started drinking heavily everyday. Literally with every drank swim had, i could see me pissing the future away...Swim loves design and always will....I have been sober off of alcohol since december 08 with out a single drink, now today is my second day clean of opiates....Swim is having a hard time coming off hydro. But soon enough swim will take one step at a time, day by day, to get back to that place he loved. His passions.

[ex-junkie]

Originally Posted by Mikeymc

But soon enough swim will take one step at a time, day by day, to get back to that place he loved. His passions.

its good that swiy has his passions, and he can indeed get back to that place he loves.


@ sandoz, swiy sounds so sad. swim really hopes swiy finds happiness again.

[chillinwill]

Red Rock always wanted to find a job with computers. He graduated in the top 5% of his high school and even went to one of the top colleges in the country for computer engineering before his addiction really took off. However, his addiction caused him to have to drop out of that school because of grades and come back home and that is where all the hell broke less with rehabs and shit.

Now, Red Rock is going back to school at a technical college for Network Security. He is going for an Associates Degree at first and then will come back and get his Bachelors later on. He now is back to making all A's again at this school and hopes to graduate in a little bit over a year from now.

[harrygoldfarp]

swim was quite a succesful dnb dj.. was getting quite good at producing too until it went the way of the pear

[ex-junkie]

Originally Posted by harrygoldfarp

swim was quite a succesful dnb dj.. was getting quite good at producing too until it went the way of the pear

tehe. we got something major in common then. swim djs and produces dnb herself.

[DubOK]

swim was into concert lighting and sound and was in my first year at college and then meth and heroin fucked that all up. Swim has been clean off heroin now was about a month and meth 3 years. So swim is hoping he can get back into the things swim loves

[ganjahero420]

swim was 14 and didnt have any goals or real interests. this is what really really fucked swim over. he was getting high on something everyday for all of high school and anytime he tried to get sober he was left with no interests or goals. that made for the perfect combo to revert back to drugs.

[ex-junkie]

Originally Posted by DubOK

swim was into concert lighting and sound and was in my first year at college and then meth and heroin fucked that all up. Swim has been clean off heroin now was about a month and meth 3 years. So swim is hoping he can get back into the things swim loves

concert lighting is cool as. mixing with lights.

always awesome to hear about clean swimmers with high hopes for their future. keep up the great work.

is swiy starting to feel better now?

[DubOK]

Originally Posted by ex-junkie

concert lighting is cool as. mixing with lights.

always awesome to hear about clean swimmers with high hopes for their future. keep up the great work.

is swiy starting to feel better now?

oh swim is feeling much better it is nice to sleep again and not waking up feeling like shit.

[ex-junkie]

yeah its weird how at the time it feels like youll be sick forever, but in contrast to the rest of your life, its really only a short amount of time.

swiy should be very pleased with themself, swiy is doing GREAT.

[cra$h]

this is going WAY back (well, swim hasn't been around that long, but it's a while to swim!) when swim started high school. Nothing really set in stone, a lot of things tossed around. Designing ads were one, swim's got an artistic hand, then for a year (when swim first started using) it drifted to the Air Force, nothing would be cooler than flying jets whenever, but still wanted to go to school for advertising, now with a hightened psychological aspect. Now, pharmacology. Swim wants to talk to people who (think) they have problems, and fix them with experimental drugs. Either that or just move to the desert and live for heroin. it could go either way at this point.

[ex-junkie]

Originally Posted by cra$h

Swim wants to talk to people who (think) they have problems, and fix them with experimental drugs.

ouch. experimental drugs can reap more harm than good. take champix for instance...

[~EnChAnTeD_DrEaMz~]

Swim has dreams, lot's of dreams, but SWIM endeavours to make them reality.

SWIM never knew exactly what she wanted to do...

What i wanted to do, is now having huge side effects from the global economic crisis, so i have moved on to bigger things...

I just tell myself, Don't loose sight of your dreams.

although, its not always that easy...especially on days like today.........

Argh!

~EnChAnTeD_DrEaMz~ added 1 Minutes and 19 Seconds later...

Originally Posted by ex-junkie

ouch. experimental drugs can reap more harm than good. take champix for instance...

My partner and i started champix last october to quit smoking, it worked.!
But the side effects were gross.

n

[ex-junkie]

Originally Posted by ~EnChAnTeD_DrEaMz~

My partner and i started champix last october to quit smoking, it worked.!
But the side effects were gross.

n

yeah it does work, but at the same time its caused suicides, and more problems after the course is over. swim had some terrible mental problems, including anorexia when she ceased the treatment.

shes never had eating problems, so it wasnt a recurring thing.

its very dangerous to people with any sort of predisposition to mental problems. that makes it very dangerous in some cases.

its a pity that something so effective, can be also be so dangerous. its a very fine line...

also, with experimental meds, alot of the time the after effects arent clear. how on earth would you feel if you got cancer from taking something experimental. (worst case scenario, just an example).

[dyingtomorrow]

Long story short:

Been smoking pot since SWIM was in about 4th grade, daily circa 8th grade through HS, then cut back in college. Heroin is the only "drug" to SWIM though, and SWIM don't count the others as life interference as they never were (heroin wasn't either, except for money issues). SWIM did contracted web development and graphic design, starting at age 16, and ended up specializing in corporate intranet-based software design, primarily involving financial data extrapolation for managerial decision making processes; but also custom data "spanning and normalization" systems between intra-corporate departments, and custom marketing-project related software. SWIM did this up until he got his undergrad B.S. in Finance and Business Administration, and did ecstasy, adderall, benzos, vicodins, coke and mushrooms heavily in college. After undergrad: daily pot and occasional mushrooms while working as a Business / System Analyst (fun job - every week SWIM got a "huge project," which they expected in a week or two but which took SWIM about 4-5 hours total to design, program and implement).

Crack, coke, marijuana, ecstasy, benzos and mushrooms 1st year of lawschool. Daily heroin use starting (because of the culmination of 10 years of suicidal depression) while doing real estate and contract related due diligence for one of the most well known financial companies in the U.S., the summer before the beginning of 2nd year in law school. 2nd year of lawschool heroin (but also IV coke and crack), also while working full time job doing legal / contract work on large commercial real estate purchases. Heroin completely got rid of SWIM's anhedonia, melancholy, suicidal thoughts, lack of caring - and made SWIM an empathetic, hard working, ambitious person. SWIM specialized in contract / real estate work for large commercial transactions pertaining to properties with major complexities involving scores to hundreds of lessors (with an eye for catching obscure financial options that even the experienced lawyers didn't get, and having saved many clients many millions of dollars). Then SWIM jumped with a group of lawyers who loved him (and who he matched in work skills, all the while going to law school full time) a couple times to different Fortune 100 companies who were always trying to acquire SWIM and them. Was about to go to either Bangalore or Manilla (not sure how the heroin addiction would have worked out) to train and manage outsourcing operations there - but ran out of money, reach a critical point of financial destruction and got flushed down the toilet extremely quick. SWIM was also always on the Dean's List and in the top 20-10% of his class (all of which he did without studying at all, save reading the book over in the 2 days prior to each final exam, compared to the average law student who studies around 40-60 hours a week) and received a prestigious national law school award for his Constitutional Law skills. SWIM eventually stopped going to work and law school, and has about a semester and a class or two left if he wants his Juris Doctor (law degree), which he doesn't.

Bragging? No. Attempting to demonstrate how stupid it is that SWIM just can't get his fucking heroin from the government when he has that kind of capacity at his laziest.

Honestly though SWIM never cared about anything in his life. With the exception of drug related activities, SWIM was pretty much melancholy and anhedonic since his earliest memories. SWIM probably cares about some things but he doesn't notice a pattern or really know specifically what they are. When he is sober, SWIM walks through life in a state of general revulsion, out of habit, not a desire to live.

So, long story even shorter: after all that, SWIM ended up 200k in debt and homeless. SWIM barely could feel the emotion of "caring" while sober before - the government really taught him a lesson with it's war on drugs by preventing him from contributing to society which he didn't care about anyways. That really showed SWIM. Hope they enjoy giving SWIM welfare, food, and free state-run poor-people health service; cuz SWIM sure as fuck ain't gettin no BS job now after all that. After SWIM's P's kick him out and he ends up homeless (prob 70%-80% chance of happening), they can teach him another lesson by spending 50k a year to lock SWIM up and feed SWIM while SWIM works out and reads all day (which is the only non-related drug things SWIM kind of likes to do anyways).


P.S. SWIM may sound like he's complaining but isn't really. The world always looked like a piece of shit to SWIM, and the bad things he considers "normal." The good things are what's crazy. Maybe if we didn't evolve from disgusting violent cannibalistic insane socially-perverse ape creatures, this outcome would actually be shocking. But anyways nobody owes anybody shit, and if this is the way "normal" people and the government want it, then so be it. They wanted a "war," not a solution, and they got one.

Rep Responses: Truly appreciate the interest, but also have to say: sure I can. Millions -tens of millions- of people in the U.S. alone, who would otherwise be emotionally or mentally dysfunctional for various reasons, are allowed to use alcohol to self medicate and be productive. Only certain types of people, whose mental or emotional disabilities are cured by arbitrarily-picked-Drug V, X, or Z are allowed to have solutions to their problems? Fuck that and fuck any system that makes that the law. If heroin were treated like alcohol, it would be cheaper by weight than a bag of sugar - and money is the #1 thing that causes problems with heroin (#2 is it is arbitrarily made illegal, which prevents safe usage and significantly retards the spread of safety information).

Reputation Comments on this post:

	wow, what a story. PS: you cant blame the government for the downhill slide.
	good post mate. very honest
	thanks for sharing your experience and perspective here

[Junkhead23]

Pacman never cared for himself much before taking opiates and hinestly didn't think he would live past 18 so he never really had any long term goals apart from try to say here to keep everyone else happy

[cannabis-sam]

Well all of SWIM's adult life has been spent taking drugs, he fucked up in school back when he was there and has had to work hard to get qualifications taking him alot longer than most. Thing is as hard as it is to believe and without sounding like an arrogant twat, SWIM is actually quite intelligent so getting through school and subsequently college (which he is still in atm) has not been alot of effort SWIM finds acedemic work very easy. SWIM is trying to get college qualifications as a back up plan more than anything else. At the beggining of SWIM's drug use he was pretty fucked up, had absolutely no self esteem and very few friends, he suffered with depression for several years in his early teens. SWIM's drug use could of been a result of this, however drugs helped SWIM in alot of regards, drugs introduced SWIM to a new social life, suddenly when SWIM started smoking weed, and occasionally snorting base, he became part of the "in crowd" a crowd that wasn't considered to be uncool, a crowd that wasn't picked on, and that enabled SWIM to regain some self confidence.

The drug use itself hasn't really effected SWIM, he doesn't suffer bad comedowns, or any negative effects from cannabis, unless he's stupid like he used to be, sitting around all day in his jizz covered sheets bong in hand watching cartoons, in his parents house, which had a fairly negative effect on SWIM's life, cannabis stopped him from getting up in the morning, from washing, cleaning teeth, it all slipped because SWIM was too stoned. Now SWIM still's smokes cannabis very regularly like 4-5 nights a week, but has stopped waking up and smoking all day.

Well I hope that wasn't too dull, and wasn't too off topic.