Somebody posted asking how many times everyone has overdosed which is pretty morbid... I've lost many friends, two of them probably my best friends at the time, to overdoses and that s*** is f***** up and maybe mods were right for deleting the post.

But, I wrote a long ass response that might help somebody a little bit that, if permissible, I would like to leave just so that the half hour I spent on it isn't wasted hahaha.

If this is the wrong place for this then please direct me to the right place mods.

I've been a heroin addict longer than I haven't and here goes a little bit of my experience loving and hating that child of the poppy all of these years.

I haven't had veins because of a run shooting speedbAlls of tar/coke back in like 2010-2012 your description of overdosing on cocaine, brought back some memories I wish I hadn't made.

I lived in a trap house north of ******* with my ex gf who was partners with her best friend selling h back in 2010. During that time I developed a nasty IV coke habit to accompany my "gold medal" heroin addiction as one doctor once described it.

During 2009-2011 in the Pacific Northwest there was this fucked up run of the horse deworming drug levimiscole being used to cut cocaine. Theres a series of articles about it in the Seattle weekly newspaper "the stranger" that document the damage it did. As I had really gotten down to business and was trying to kill myself, my previously moderated opioid addiction spiraled out of control in a big way, and adding the coke cut with something that basically gave you the same immune system as someone with untreated HIV caused me to come closer to death than any other point in my 23 years of opioid addiction and at least 15 overdoses to accompany my multiple ICU stays for life threatening sepsis/mrsa that took my left eye/endocarditis.

*Fuck dealers cutting shit and making it far more harmful, find cut that isn't gonna kill customers you lousy fucks*

Ok back to the shit,

I recently had acquired the income to properly make a go of my suicidal ideations thanks to conning a wealthy, old homosexual (I'm straight) pedophile into thinking I was 16 when I was like 22-23. I was extremely stand offish, bordering on rude, and never gave him any indication I wasn't very hetero but it must have been a challenge to him so over the years I was doing this it was into six figures. I would call him up, some weeks daily, and he blew my mind with him thinking nothing of meeting up for coffee and me asking for a few thousand dollars. I lived with 5, beloved and now dead, other sad young junkies, two of them HIV positive, in the house of a woman whose bf had been selling smack, had some ppl try to rob him and shoot him in the head, survive, only to go to federal prison when responding officers discovered many lbs of weed and Oz's of bth that the dumbfuck jack boys didn't grab. So his gf recruited my gf who was a street level h dealer in the u district to move in with her and then, as can happen like 4-7 of their customers who needed shelter would live with us at a time but like 5 were pretty much permanent. I literally, well the aforementioned pedo that I was hustling, kept that entire house not only well but we all go addicted to coke as well, for roughly an entire year.

During that year I overdosed on cocaine four to five times but the first one, was almost exactly as you described and I will attest to it being the worst feeling I have ever felt the brief. I woke up to to my friend that is now gone that I miss the most out of all of them slapping me in the face and crying with having pissed my pants and then everyone staring at me with very frightened looks on their faces and me confused as f***. I had shot up a large speedball, at that point I was using massive 3 ml syringes and shooting up in my femoral because I was having to do such large shots of tar in order to get a rush because of how out of control my habit was and also as it was easy to hit. Upon shooting up I had felt that terrible feeling the feeling of pressure in my head as well and like my vision was narrowing to a single point as I blacked out and then I fell over and had a seizure on the ground and pissed my pants was drug to an armchair and then everybody was panicking and my homeboy was slapping me and I came to thank God.

I think that it then made it more easy for me to overdose on coke because that same week I did it three more times though I had been banned from using cocaine in that house after freaking everyone out because we really did care about each other and so I had gotten a hotel room and same s*** happened three times, one of them me falling and hitting my head on the sink in the s******* bathroom and lucky I didn't break my neck.

I've overdosed on opiates many many times, too many to count. During my addiction after my father took his life I went through a period drinking and using h and combining the two is a surefire way to meet your maker. One week I overdosed was taken to the hospital, came out of it left ama, went back to the block overdosed again, hospital, left ama went back to the block overdosed a third time all in the same night.

The numerous times that I should have died have made this atheist into something more akin to an agnostic, for a long time I didn't believe people when they would say holy s*** you shouldn't be alive there's a reason that you're still here man, but you can only check out so many times before you start wondering,"why haven't I checked out when by All odds I should have half a dozen times and my friends who only OD'd enough times to count on one hand are all dead."

The s*** that really trips doctors out, and by virtue myself as well, is that I've been hospitalized with sepsis, severe, severe sepsis (coma for over a week one time, lost an eye to mrsa and was hit with endocarditis the same trip the other time) twice.

Both times ending up in the ICU for a over a month and both times being told I would be dead in less than 6 months if I didn't stay in the hospital after leaving the icu and stop using for at least the amount of time it would take for the course of antibiotics they wanted me on to complete, which for one of them would be around 6 weeks but I can't remember how long they wanted me there the other. I had to stay for that additional time because I had to have a PICC line since the nuclear strength antibiotics that they wanted me on were only IV and they wouldn't send me home with the PICC line, probably saved my life though I was pissed at the time.

Anyways, both of those ICU stays I ended up leaving as soon as I was out of the ICU but before staying for the additional weeks of antibiotics with the promise that I would be dead in 6 months or less from the infectious disease doctors or whoever I was being treated by. Both times, obviously, it turned out I had a couple more miracles left in me cuz I'm still here.

I've been on methadone for about 5 and 1/2 - 6 years now and though I occasionally buy blues even though with the dose of methadone I take they don't really get me that high, I have stayed abstinent from street drugs the majority of those six years. I don't know why I'm still here, I hope if there is a reason it is that I'm able to someday help somebody in the ways that I've never been able to help myself but so I can repay some tiny tiny fraction of the help that I've received from people and possibly something unknown over all these years.

4 years ago, I went through a bad breakup with a toxic woman that I fell in love with after me and the dealer chick from my trap house days had broken up (I'm scattering her ashes the 22nd of this month as I found out a few weeks ago she passed away as well leaving only me and the main dealer chick who is now clean and has a 2-year-old left) and since then I basically retreated into myself. Three of those years I basically slept like 22 hours a day, and the last year I have finally started to return to the person I was before the trap House days back when I was single last and not codependent and completely enmeshed with another person's identity.

I hope that all of the suffering had some purpose, part of me believes it has to, part of me believes it was all random and meaningless and here I sit essentially the same person nearly 15 years later.

If you made it this far I don't have any wisdom to impart, or uplifting quotes to give, but I do commend you and appreciate that you read a cliff notes of my story and thus, in whatever impact it has on you, gave some meaning to it.

Tl/Dr - I don't blame you.

Get out there and get to hustling up the dough for today's smiggidy smack.