some graphics July 16, 2005
Posted by sickgirl2008 in creative.add a comment
THIS IS JUST ME MESSING AROUND
I thought that I would share some of my images. They are not really much of anything but I enjoy playing with my various art programs. For the most part I use Jasc Paint Shop Pro 9 but will from time to time, use Adobe”s Photoshop CS or Ulead”s Photoimpact 8. I am thoroughly addicted to brushes and gradients and like to mess around with blends the most. I have a frightening amount of original artwork saved on my computer and wouldn”t know where to start in attempting to share any of it.
This is my first attempt and I think that I will try to rotate my images on a semi-regular basis. As you can see, I am pretty addicted to flowers also. Wait until you see what I can do with hearts and stars!!!
I also used to do icons and anything associated with them for livejournal and greatestjournal and in fact have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds uploaded to my space that work provides. If you are particularly bored one day, please click here to see for yourself!!!!! Not to be boastful or narcissistic but this is actually quite a nice looking little site.
Mary Jane Meets Charlie and They are Never the Same July 14, 2005
Posted by sickgirl2008 in drugs, past, university.add a comment
Well, I guess it is about time that I told you a bit about myself and my current evils. My weakness is and always has been anything that is part of the opiod family. Up until that first hit, I had been somewhat indifferent towards drugs but the moment that first dilaudid entered my system, I knew that it was pretty much all over for me. I had found my Achilles heal although at that time, I had no idea what a rollercoaster ride I was about to begin.
I actually never even tried drugs until I was almost twenty-one. Through high school, I was more of a drinker. My brother who is a couple of years younger than I am began experimenting at the ripe age of 12 and I watched in absolute terror what he was doing and did to his young body. I also did not want to add to the anguish that my parents endured as my brother navigated thru his teen years. I just couldn”t added to that so I kind of made a casual commitment to myself that I could wait to try plus in all honesty, it didn”t look like a whole lot of fun watching my brother puke, stagger, dripple down his clothes, pass out, you name it. I can”t remember how many times my boyfriend or myself or both rescued my brother from mess after mess after mess. Believe me nothing about his behaviour was remotely attractive and as a result I never felt as if I missed out on anything. Now in hindsight I am kind of glad that I never used anything as a teenager because my brain cells were pretty much left untouched during their crucial growth period.
For my first year of university there were no situations that I found myself in to have a chance to try anything other than liquer. Again never felt as if I was missing anything. Finally in my second year, I decided that I wasn”t going to lifeguard. Instead, I wanted to give waitressing a try because I felt I had a greater chance of making much more money while working less hours. I found a place to hire me as a cocktail server and this place just happened to be the place to go every Thursday, Friday and Saturday way back then. I made money hand over fist and I started meeting some very interesting and experienced people – both fellow staff members and customers. Lord when I think back to my second year, I was so utterly out of my depth and so very green. I started going to the parties after the bars closed and finally I was standing around with a group when someone passed a joint around. I carefully watched everyone and when it was my turn, I believe that I carried it off like a pro. Once people had seen me take some form, any form, they became much more open and inviting with me.
The next party I find myself being invited into one of the three bedrooms with a couple of other people. When I get in there, there are about a dozen lines of this white powder lined up in a row and a guy sitting behind the table. He says help yourself to us with the qualification that it will cost us $10 a line. I had never seen cocaine until that moment and to be honest, I didn”t really have any idea what it actually was and what it would do…Drum roll…Of course, I ponied up my money and waited my turn. Again I paid close attention to what the others before me did and when it was my turn, I flipped my hair over my shoulder so that it fell down my back out of the way of this precious powder. Inhale and away I went. It was the coolest. Oh my goodness, I felt amazing. I was amazing. I was no longer little shy me from no name town population 1500. I had arrived and what an arrival it was!!!
My second year at university was coming to an end and I was getting ready to spend the summer in the British Isles with my best friend. About a month before we were to leave, I got involved with one of the bouncers at work. He was a very bad boy and I found him so utterly exciting. He just oozed danger and I was ripe for the picking…
TO BE CONTINUED…MUSHROOMS, ACID AND THE RINGING IN MY EARS
It’s Not A Habit July 13, 2005
Posted by sickgirl2008 in addiction, methadone, past.add a comment
I started methadone August of 1999. By then I was a solid year and a half into a pretty heavy opiate addiction. It had started with dilaudid but as soon as we were able we had moved on to heroin. We live in a funny city. While it is reasonably large with close to half a million, it is near impossible to find heroin here. Except for a time in the 1970”s – so I have been told – it is one drug that does not seem welcome. Very white collar town so there is lots of pot and cocaine. Crack has had some effect as has speed but not like those other two. Because this is also very much a university and college town, there is also lots of ecstacy and its ilk. By the time I had even given a dilaudid a try, I was about two years deep into a large coke and speed habit. Funny can”t even remember what that was like but I know that we were using every day and had been for a long time. Then along came a little yellow pill and it was as if nothing else existed. It was wonderous and it didn”t take long to develop a tolerance for it. Thank heavens we knew someone that could get us heroin. He was out of town three out of the seven days and he happened to be working in a place that was literaly drowning in it so every Thursday night right after getting off his bus, he would drop by our place with our weekly package. Sunday night we would wave him goodbye as his bus left town, our money in his pocket. This went on for over a year.
It started to get quite expensive as all habits tend to but this one also felt different. Where before, I may have been a bit of a bitch if I couldn”t get blow or speed, I could get by at least but not this time. When I was without I hurt, I felt sick, I was in servere pain. I couldn”t or wouldn”t want to go to work and I had always prided myself on never letting any of my vices interfere with work and to be honest, life in general. Suddenly I had become single minded, nothing else mattered but not feeling sick anymore. I had to have a hit no matter what. Came close to bankrupting us. Sad but at least we had a house to sell to get us out of debt. And selling this one, our favourite, meant that we still had two others left although they were nowhere near as nice and they were in a much rougher part of town but that didn”t seem to concern us so much anymore. We moved. We had to. We had someone else very important in our life now that very much needed to be accomodated. I had never lied before but suddenly I found myself doing just that. When my family doctor confronted me I couldn”t admit it at first. I was every which way of denial until I couldn”t take it anymore. This drug eventually wears you down, strips you of every vestige of dignity and self respect. I fessed up and when he started talking about getting us into a methadone program, I pretty much said yes just to humour him plus he said that as soon as we were on the list, he would be able to help us out and get us from having to buy our dope on the street at ridiculous prices.
I had never actually intended to follow thru with the methadone. The moment we were accepted our doctor wrote us each a prescription for 30 dilaudid a week. It was as if we had hit the jackpot. Between us we had 60 pills that would normally have cost us almost $20 each – quite a savings. He said that he could keep us supplied until we reached a high enough methadone dose that could sustain us on its own. I figured that we would ride this out as long as we could. Looked like it would be at least eight weeks that we could get our prescription and I figured that was long enough for us to get our finances back in order. We would in theory save a lot by not having to buy opiods for a two month period. As it was we were spending about $700/week and that was barely keeping us from getting sick so I knew that we were living on borrowed time if we continued spending at that rate. We were long overdue for a financial break.
But a funny thing happened while we going to methadone. It started working. I stopped grieving for any of the others. I went a day without a hit, then two and then a week. A week turned into a month and then two and three and we were still going. Suddenly two years had passed and I no longer did anything except for my methadone. I didn”t even drink anymore. I forgot about heroin and dilaudid and morphine – oxys had yet to make their appearance but that was only a matter of time. The methadone made me so very tired though even if it did seem to work a small miracle. I would start to nod off at the worst possible time something I rarely did while addicted to the others. I needed to stay awake. So before we knew it we were back doing speed but this time we vowed that we would keep our spending under control and we did for a long time. Speed wasn”t the same anyway now that we were on meth. Yes, you could kind of feel it but you never felt as if you were way out there. Oh well, it was still better than nothing. And we were spending about half of what we used to spend on the other.
Suddenly twenty seven months had passed. We were starting to get tired of the daily grind of having to grab our methadone. Yes, for the most part normalcy had returned to our lives. We fell into our own little routine. Gone were the hours upon hours dedicated to finding that one hit that would take away the pain. I could go back to work full time, we both could. Methadone gave our life structure once again. My credit card debts were now paid off. We had sold the other two houses and purchased a three story apartment building. Our self confidence and esteem had returned. We didn”t want or need methadone any more. It was time to say goodbye. I had two weeks vacation at Christmas 2001 but a week before my vacation started I got a terrible flu. I was down to about 20mg of methadone a day. I felt so sick that I just didn”t feel like grabbing my methadone one day and the next and the day after that. I just stopped going and when my flu ended, any withdrawal that I may have been going thru had also ended. It was hard to tell one from the other so I kept telling myself that there was no withdrawal just crappy flu symptoms.
Fast forward three and a half years. I am once again severly dependent on that little yellow pill. Well now it is the little white pill. No more #4s for us, we now need #8s. We are back spending ridiculous amounts of money and are consumed by abject fear whenever we find that we have run out or that none of our dealers is holding. It is no longer pleasant. But what of the intervening three years you ask? Well that is obviously a story for another day…TO BE CONTINUED
Another New Member July 13, 2005
Posted by sickgirl2008 in life.add a comment
OK, my first post ever here…Well, where to start? I ended up applying for a journal here after reading echotrash”s entry yesterday. The previous day I had sent her a link to one of ophelia”s entries that I thought would help her, plus I mentioned that she should check out this community in general and heroinegirl”s in particular cause I knew that she would love it. We “met” only about a week ago thru our livejournals when I asked her if she wanted to “friend” me. Even though I hardly know her, I could tell by her writings and interests that we would have much in common. It seems as if I was very correct. So echotrash, I owe you a big thank you for finally getting me out of the shadows….You getting a journal gave me the courage to set one up of my own.
You see, I have been lurking here ever since heroinegirl”s blogger journal was transferred over here. I discovered her journal shortly after Christmas and I have been absolutely rivetted since. I remember when I originally found heroinegirl”s blogger I ended up reading everything that she had posted in one sitting. Something like six or seven months of posts. Nothing could get me to leave my computer until I was current. I remember thinking that I had been sitting so long I was afraid that I may have actually lost the ability to use my legs!!!
Anyway, once her journal was here, I followed her new links and started reading all of the other journals at junkylife.com Ever since discovering junkylife.com, I feel as if I have found kindred spirits. It feels as if I have found some form of home out there in the vast wasteland that is the internet. These series of sites have empowered me over the past few months and now, hopefully, I too can have a similar effect on someone else.
