I love crystal meth, and could probably make it a habit if i hadn't
watched it wither my best friend.
Victor got introduced to meth at the topless club where he was a dj, and
he brought it home for me to try. We did lots of drugs together back
then; neither of us cared for coke, but we had daily pot habits, and
supplemented that with drinking and hallucinogens every couple weekends.
It was a fun if irresponsible couple of years; lots of good hedonism with
little ultimately to show for it. Though I did get one of the very best
pieces of writing I've ever produced by spending 48 hours at a science
fiction convention in Sacramento totally tanked with Victor and a girl
named Sharee (who was the model for Molly in Neuromancer), wandering
around on acid and speed and dope simultaneously, with periodic blasts of
nitrous.
Where was I? Oh yeah. Crystal meth proved to be a sizzling drug for me;
I was always undermotivated and infinitely distractable, and meth
focussed me like a laser. The object of focus was unpredictable; I once
spent about twelve hours computing beats per minute on my favorite
songs. Anyway, Victor was overworking in those days, trying to dj
full-time and run a studio from home and party all the remaining hours.
We had some really cool times just getting intense in the studio, many
times just constructing music in painstakingly careful detail for like 48
straight hours. But it was recreational for me, and professional for
him, and I was too close to the situation to be able to see the toll it
was taking on him.
I did have one scary experience. I left town for a few months, during
which I had no access to speed. I came home, and me and Victor
immediately plunged into a music and meth session. I snorted the stuff
like I'd never been away from it, and a few minutes later I had amazing
chest pains, followed by heaves. I lay down, in agony from head to toe,
and shook uncontrollably for I don't know how long. I was a bit more
careful about dosage after that.
I left town again, and mutual friends reported that Victor was getting
into real trouble. He'd always had an abrasive personality, but people
didn't want to be around him anymore because he was blowing up
constantly, had a disconnected affect (would look past you and kind of
drool, I'm not kidding), and only talked about drugs and music. When I
came back to town again he was frighteningly skinny and his skin was
fucking gray. He told me all about this dispute he was having with a
band he'd recorded, and this tape he was holding on to, and what he was
going to do to them, and he sounded totally irrational. And he told me
that he'd blown almost everything that was left from a legal settlement
(his mother had been killed in a car accident) on drugs that year.
There isn't any really dramatic conclusion. He got ahold of himself,
kicked meth (though he continues to smoke dope daily to this day with no
apparent adverse effects), sold most of his music equipment, went to
journalism school, and is a newspaper reporter. But he had a real ride
there for a while. I still would like crystal meth if I could get it, I
