speaking of drugs

[lobelia321]

Innocent as I am, my experience of drugs is rather confined so if there is anyone out there with more drugs under their belt it would be interesting to hear some description of the experience. For research purposes. Because the Draco in my opus is, at this stage of this life, very dependent on the restricted substances. Except I could, of course, make it all up wildly as they are evidently magic drugs, ha. But it would also be interesting to hear from rl.

Comments

[freyafloyd.livejournal.com]

Evening.

Email me.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Hah! *laughs and can't manipulate keyboard*

Will do!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Is your email still the cordelia_wallace one??

[office-ennui.livejournal.com]

if it's hippy-dippy shit, i can help you but glamourous narcotics (coke etc) nope.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Whatever, I'll take it. It's Draco, he's taking magical drugs, it could be anything, Puff the Magic Dragon and so forth!

:-)

[office-ennui.livejournal.com]

the thing about my experience with drugs is that although i know i've taken them, it always takes me a while to figure out what i am feeling is drugs. specifically cause you dont know when they are going to take effect (ecstasy, lsd, mushrooms). it is doesnt creep up on you - it is just suddenly there. also your environment completely determines what you feel - in a way that when one isnt on drugs is background noise. for example, music. i want to start intellectualizing drug taking but i think you are looking for sensory effects, right? so here i have to ask how does our dearest slytherin injest this substance. is it liquid? is it a pill? time is completely distorted while you are on drugs. once i was on pot that was laced with pcp and i had no sense of time other than the exact five seconds i was in so i couldnt remember what i was talking about - i heard my voice say "dog" and i thought "what the fuck am i talking about? what dog?" - very fucking intense. another time i was on acid in the woods and i was looking at the sky and all of a sudden i realized the stars were twinkling to the beat of john coltrane's sax solo in "a few of my favorite things". my sense of sound is always effected but i never hallucinate - see things - only hear distortion - violin's where rustling leaves are and drums in running water. the thing is that although i have never been conscious of when it hits i totally know when it is leaving my system. overall, the main thing is that everything seems to exist in this pocket that isnt connected to anything else so everything seems so surprising - so unexpected. "wow dude, the toast like totally jumped out of that appliance. how cool is THAT?" though i've seen a fucking toaster work a million times for years and years...

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Okay, this is now super-interesting and totally relevant. The in-the-moment thing is precisely the kind of input I can milk and use!! THANK YOU!!! I love the thing about everything being in a pocket, and that also makes sense for Draco. I can tweak all this to suit my narrative needs!

Well, Draco can basically ingest anything I want him to. So far he's been doing various potions in vials, and later on he'll smoke something through a hookah, opium-den style, and he also has a little powder that, if mixed with liquid, frothes and then he swallows that. He also smokes Muggle weed but who knows, it may have a different effect on a magical person. Maybe I'll get him to make a magical pill but I don't see wizards shooting up or snorting stuff. It's got to be sort of potion-y, herbal-y, magically.

[office-ennui.livejournal.com]

i was assuming potions. the funny thing about drugs is that they all seem to taste bad - so a great deal of thought was always put into how to disguise that by myself and friends. "try smothering the shrooms in peanut butter" or "if we eat ice cream while we drop the acid maybe we wont notice the strictinine". ecstasy was always injested with orange juice and so on. the other thing is that if you arent a smoker than smoking something feels totally different. even if you do smoke, you arent really trying to hold tobacco in your lungs for extra time so the burning factor and a little lightheadedness is something everyone feels but not to the point of displeasure. i know with a lot of people who smoke pot and do most other drugs - for me i'd count my smoking camel lights in this experience - it is also all about the ritual. not paraphenalia so much as the preparation, injestion and process - a good deal of care and pleasure is gained from the repetative act. the anticipation and reward - thinking of what you are going to be feeling soon. in someways when you are on drugs you really are very helpless, not just because your survival instincts and ability to react to your environment are dulled, but there is this disconnect between what you feel and what you know - your ability to reason is obviously impaired. most of my friends who have a need to be in control (of their emotions, actions, etc) tend to have felt paranoia in substance use far faster than those who were more passive about control - i would really be curious to see how that played out with draco. i mean in someways he is very concerned with how others view him and tries to control things, people too, but he can get so overwhelmed with emotion that he ceases to notice how foolish he looks as well. i am glad if anything i say is helpful. i can wait to read your story!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

i would really be curious to see how that played out with draco.
Oh, thank you for making me think about that! This is all so mega-helpful, just what I was hoping for! God, I'll have to think about Draco and control. It is true, he likes to manipulate and maintain face but in my fic he is overwhelmed by trauma and an urgent need to curb the emotional onslaught. He has also become a pariah so the status thing is less of an issue; it's already fucked up for him, now he just needs to maintain control over himself, I guess, and he hopes to do that by muffling everything. But maybe it's a fool's hope: the trauma doesn't go away, after all! But then, he's only 17 and stupid about drugs.

better living through chemistry

[office-ennui.livejournal.com]

yeah i think at seventeen it is all about the numbness that one can get rather than the intensity of feeling - if i were draco i would be on a shit load of pain killers, oxycoden for example. here heroine or some opiate is better than speed cause you are trying to dampen what you feel not excellerate it but these plans usually backfire - ie paranoia etc not necessarily o.d.-ing. that is one of my pet peeves and i dont mean to sound like drugs are wonderful because like all things they in themselves are neutral it is the person using them's intent but my pet peeve is that i know PLENTY of people who did highly addictive substances and never became addicts (coke, crystal meth, crack and heroine included) it was more of either a weekend thing or opportunity but the people who did it as a party accesory all came to a point where the substance lost it's glamour and paranoia tapped on their sholder or they puked in public. i know i have self-medicated and it is a fantastic short term solution until you get drugs from a therapist or go into therapy. the control over oneself thing is part of that - for me it was control over my emotions which were uncontrollable and too overwhelming. i think being a teenager in general is unbearable with all the hormones and emotions but if you add trauma - sleeping draughts this way come...

Re: better living through chemistry

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Okay, painkillers, oxycodene, sleeping draughts: how would they make you feel? They sound like just the thing Draco would use! Also, a 'draught' I like; it is very potion-y.

Re: better living through chemistry

[office-ennui.livejournal.com]

i've taken several painkillers (check out drugs.com for descriptions of drugs) such as vicodin, morphine and codine. they are all opiates. codine is pretty mild - it's like taking a double dose of tylenol - it doesnt really affect your sense of time or reason but you dont feel any pain. it is often added to cough syrup if you have a really bad throat infection and it feels like heaven. vicodin is stronger and it makes you very mellow and a little sleepy but not like you want to go to sleep but like you are all wrapped up in your favorite down comforter and things seem slower, more gentle. you feel totally relaxed. if you are drinking alcohol while taking them, you have to concentrate really hard for complex things and you feel a bit spacy. sort of like when you have a high fever but without any negative physical effects. morphine makes you feel like you've just had a five hour massage and everthing moves VERY slowly - like moving through molasses. again, you are totally relaxed but also so blissed out it is easy to pass out into sleep where you have the most pleasant dreams. it's like floating. your thoughts slow down so you feel like you are some zen master meditating - you can stare in fasination at nothng for hours. you dont think about anything and you feel no anxiety - when you are coming down or before it hits hard you can think even about things which are painful but they seem very far away from emotion. oxycodene is also called hillbilly heroine and is sort of like a vamped up vicodin - courtney love has a rep for indulging - if you have a tollerance for these things i think you can complete complex tasks but most people it just knocks you out. the thing is that when you are on painkillers you feel totally insulated and those minor aches are all gone. you feel so relaxed and mellow but not trippy like with pot. i made up the sleeping draught but i thought it sounded potiony - i may have read that in rowling or maybe just in fanfic. i would think draco would take vicodin or morphine. i could see him smoking opium - that gives you visions. it also gives you the nods - which is the term for when you "nod" off or pass out mid sentence most often observed with heroine users. i LOVE opiates. they are amazing and the best thing ever - muscle relaxants are also good but they dont give you that blissed out emotional feel. they just make you feel very very un-achey...

Re: better living through chemistry

[office-ennui.livejournal.com]

god i sound like such a drug addict...