Percocet weed

Here we go: I (32f) just found out that I’m 8 weeks pregnant with my boyfriend (Andy) of 2 years child (25m). This would normally be a no-brainer, as I generally feel that fathers have a right to this knowledge, however this is a bit of a weird situation. Andy and I have had an extremely contentious relationship that has caused severe mistrust on my end. This has been caused by poor communication on both ends, poor decision making and negative outside influences. Last year we went through a period where I needed to disengage and end my friendship with my (at the time) best friend Emily. Emily is a gaslighter and it took me several years to see how dysfunctional and one-sided our friendship was. She had become really integrated into Andy’s circle, and he & Em became closer after she began pursuing a relationship with Andy’s friend. He would confide in her about arguments, she used these opportunities to triangulate him and essentially derailed our relationship for several months. After I heard (from other friends who have since cut off em as well) the horrible and largely untrue things she was saying about me, I asked Andy to stop speaking to her. We went through a pattern of him telling me he would, then turning around and unblocking her, having phone calls with her almost daily, etc. As soon as we had a fight, he was on the phone or texting Emily every detail, which she would then spread to anyone who would listen. it came to a head after em and I were at the same wedding. Afterwards I went home, and she went to Andy’s parents where he was house sitting and spent the night on the couch with him, staying there the rest of the weekend until he finally came home to our apartment on Sunday. There were several other people there, but he lied and did not mention her being there. He told me I was being crazy and jealous, and it wasn’t until I was completely ready to end things that he cut ties with her completely. Healing has taken months. While we’ve healed from that, we have several other issues we’ve been working through, on my side primarily centered around him hiding things, spending money on weed and alcohol when he hasn’t contributed to rent, lying by omission and outright about what he’s doing, his consumption of alcohol and (though not recently) use of Percocet/fent . On his side of things, I have been unfairly jealous, overly critical, invaded his privacy by looking through his phone, generally bitchy, etc. I know we absolutely are not in a good place (individually or as a couple) to have a child, and we both have a lot of self work to do. I will not carry this pregnancy to term, but this is where the issue lies. I am a very private person (aside from blabbing to the entire internet about my personal problems) and I do not want anyone that doesn’t HAVE to know about this to have any idea this happened. I’ve confided in one person, my mentor and work colleague, and I’m leaning towards keeping it that way. I fully support women’s rights and am proudly pro-choice, but live in the south where that mindset isn’t universal. While Andy no longer has contact with Emily, several of Andy’s best friends still hang out with her. Andy has a habit of telling his friends everything, and I have a heavy gut feeling this would be no different. When he does, and Emily eventually hears this information, I might as well post it on Facebook. This has certainly brought a lot of things into perspective (like why am I in a relationship where trust doesn’t exist, and I’m the sole consistent provider for bills being paid, etc) but I’d like to know: would I be the asshole if I just carried out the pregnancy termination without informing him? How would I even do it? From what I hear it’s going to be painful and messy for several days and I’m not sure if I could even successfully hide it.

It seems to me that doctors won’t prescribe dopamine boosting drugs like opioid but are much willing to prescribe ssris or any serotonin boosting drug. I know it’s due to the likely abuse even though they actually help with relief as to why so many traumatized and even homeless use illicit drugs that boost dopamine rather than gobble down a bunch of Prozac to better themselves. I was actually fortunate to have been prescribed oxycodone and Percocet for a pain condition, and boy did it numb the pain from the traumatic memories while giving me energy to both alleviate depression and to enjoy things I would have never enjoyed without them. However, after just sick of being deemed an “addict” or someone ashamed for being dependent on them that I did get off to prove I wasn’t a true addict but someone legitimately in pain. However the doctor wouldn’t prescribe them to be anymore and I feel the drugs that had helped me and relieved me of my pain, whether physical or “mental” but really neuropsychological, was gone and denied from me.
When I’m on ssris , despite the anxiety gone and I can do things better especially academically, I can’t live life nor seem to be able to enjoy them, nor can I take socially approved substances like alcohol to socialize and ssris can negatively react with other drugs as I once had am ssri induced blackout from drinking alcohol that I had learned the hard way of not to mix them. That and side effects of ssris negatively affecting social life such as sexual side effects despite being able to better talk to women as I have autism and essentially was bullied and traumatized to being an incel.
My life is miserable and I didn’t get to hookup nor be in either romantic and sexual relationships with women as I was bullied to be traumatized to not pursue them along with rejection from women due to my autism while being laughed at and mocked by others. Also I feel that I cannot go for purely sexual relationships and that I have to be romantic with the woman out of fear of being deemed a “shallow womanizer” even though I haven’t done anything like that all (and especially it seems women go for the actual shallow womanizers yet sensitive and deep me are deemed weak and “bad” even solely due to social deficiencies that I’m deemed an unwanted nerd) due to the emotional and social deficiencies of my underdeveloped right brain that led to an overdeveloped nerdy left brain (and I also get crap from people telling me “try e left brains brain thing has been disproven” thst even though I can sorta feel my right brain, my left brain is clearly more developed than the right due to my autism.
Also, trauma appears different in those with autism that we do not get the formal ptsd diagnosis as with neurotypicals. I do realize I have worsening OCD of which I’ve read OCD a lot of times along with those being predisposed like myself with autistic brains that ocd is trauma aggravated.
This is just a long miserable rant, and at least dopaminergic drugs would at least alleviate that but I wouldn’t touch the fake Roxy’s and all I can get is kratom and weed, along with alcohol as I am not on ssris. Maybe there are others like myself, and like the legitimate pain patients in need of opioids but are ostracized as “drug seekers” during the “opioid crisis” as now doctors have realized they were too harsh on legitimate pain patients denying them of their pain meds as I was also one of them, but there are people like us who are traumatized and likely need dopamine boosting drugs in order to alleviate suffering.
I’m probably gonna get mocked and laughed at and even further bullied for this as this may come off as “autistic whining” by aholes

Proof read, edited, and formatted to hopefully be easy for The Trip Keeper to read on YouTube.
A lil about me: I have a family history of schizophrenia with two people in my family being diagnosed. I think that's why psychedelics hit me like a train. I know I'm one of the folks they say shouldn't tripping but I've already done it and I am not stopping anytime soon. I'm quite the spiritual hippie type. I live for the esoteric, bizarre, and werid side of tripping. I'm also quite experienced with psychedelics and drugs in general having tried alcohol, cigarettes, vapes, kava, Kratom, weed, oxycodone, hydrocodone, percocet, Hospital Morphine, Adderall, Ritalin, Vyvanse, Conserta, Nitrous, Acid, Shrooms, n-BOMEs, Synthetic shrooms, random Acid non n-BOME RCs, Hydroxyzine (only snorted while drunk), Phenibut, Promethazine w/o codeine, blue lotus, and a bunch of random herbs and nootropics.
A little context to story, I had got some liquid Acid dropped on Bottle Caps Candy from a family member we'll call R. R had called me up informing me he had liquid LSD and to bring a chalky candy when I came to pick it up. He dosed the candy in another room when I picked them up. When he brought them back there was a thick layer of liquid struggling to absorb into each hit so we smooshed another piece on top of each one, 3 tabs altogether. He told me each one was an equivalent of 2 to 3 hits of high quality LSD. I also hadn't tripped in 6 months at this point but that's a story for another sub. Though the reason why didn't have much to do with tripping itself nor anything fun like psychosis.
A couple days later I found myself with my bills caught up, a slow night on Doordash so no work, extra money, weed, some cigarettes, and my roommate was out visiting Family. I had showered and ate some Chinese before taking a short nap. When I woke up it was around 9pm, obviously already dark outside. I was in a good mood, had nothing to do, and didn't want to go back to sleep so I slapped an LSD bottle cap on my tongue and went for a walk.
One of the pieces dissolved really quickly, like less than a minute quick, while the other piece took atleast 15 to 20 minutes fully dissolve. I was slightly nervous about tripping the days prior and was even a lil scared before placing it on my tongue; but, that fear was completely annihilated when 5 to 7 minutes in I felt this electric tingle that started in the back of my head go down my spine. I started smiling, feeling super happy, and chilled out when the tingle reached the base of my spine. I thought to myself, "Wow, I can't believe I was scared to trip again, I feel amazing right now!!" I lit a cigarette and enjoyed my walk for awhile until I started coming to the end of a col-de-sac, the street I was on was on a downward slope I think this affected things but the end of the col-de-sac and the houses started stretching super tall and became super thin kind of like a fun house mirror. I was completely mesmerized by it till I was interrupted by this electric beeping that made my skeleton nearly jump out of my skin. I had looked over and saw this gray box with 2 pink lights on it sticking out of the ground and assumed that's where the beeping came from. I then straight sprinted home cause I wasn't sure if it was hallucination or not. I did go back a few days later and couldn't find the box.
After opening my front door the night is hard to remember linearly but I will try my best. I don't have the texts anymore from this night since I got a new phone. Once I got back home, I had to use the bathroom so I went did my business but while washing my hands I looked in the mirror and noticed my pupils are starting to look a lot like bowling balls. It was then, I noticed the reflection of the SpongeBob, Sandy, and Patrick on ketamine meme my roommate printed out and pinned on the wall. Their eyes were dilating more than normal and they were all swaying back and forth. I texted R to tell him I finally tried the acid and it's strong. It's roughly 10:40p.m. by this point, even though it had been 1 hour 40 minutes since dropping it had only felt like 30 or 40 minutes ago at the most. I was about to sit down and do a dab but I got a almost telepathic sense I was about to throw up rather than a physical feeling I was about to. After throwing up I texted R freaking out questioning if it was acid since it's not supposed to make you nauseous. He just told me "too much too fast" "calm down put your phone down and be safe". I didn't put my phone down.
I started finally doing some dabs after 2 or 3 big rips I looked over and saw 2 shadow people. One was a little girl with blonde hair, a yellow sun dress, no face, instead was an empty void. It was as if her head was an empty shell and her face was the hole. The other one was a middle aged man with short blackish gray balding hair dressed in overalls, no shirt, work boots, also no face. The second shadow person looked a lot like one of my deceased uncles. They didn't feel menacing or demonic nor even holy as one would expect an encounter of this type. I got up and walked to my kitchen probably to get water but I got distracted by a third shadow person who was a woman but I didn't get too good of a look before being distracted by my thoughts. I started stretching and thinking to myself, "well atleast the dark isn't so scary anymore compared to being schizophrenic" at the time it did feel very profound aswell as I am now genuinely less scared of the dark. There's also cardboard cut outs of the Elysian Full Haze and Full Contact IPA cans hung up in my kitchen. People were walking in and out of the giant head on the Full Haze poster, I thought they were sacrificing themselves to the massive head. Thought the dude on the Full Contact poster was holding my brain aswell.
I remember it was around this time the body load and vasoconstriction was getting so intense that my arms and legs felt lankier than normal and my jaw felt like it was wired shut. I drank some water and brought a glass back to my room. When I came back the ocean thunderstorm tapestry above bed had the clouds and ocean actually moving with the lightning striking. I have string lights behind that tapestry that wrap around to the conjoining wall. The string lights looked like technicolor rainbow stars forming beautiful constellations. Normally, they are only blue, yellow, green, red and twinkle but during the trip some were changing colors to pink, purple, violet, orange, and more colors that don't exist. While the tapestry was animated, it had no sound. There's a framed painting of a deer in a forest during the sunrise on the same wall. The light in the painting was actually coming through the painting as if it was a window with sunlight shining through. The deer even had his head down grazing when normally he has his head turned towards the viewer of the painting. I layed down and decided to throw on some music. I couldn't decide on a song, I hit skip on Spotify at least 30 times before settling on Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb, cliche I know, but they're one of my favorite bands and usually seem to find me when things start getting intense on psychedelics. I couldn't actually read anymore so I only knew it was Comfortably Numb by the hook and album art.
As I layed in bed I started stretching out and looking around the room. I finally started to relax a lil and calm down from thinking these were possibly nBOMes. I started to really lose myself in the trip. The slight movement of my air mattress made feel like I was floating on the ocean sea, which gave way to a euphoric sense of oneness and that I am an ocean of pure consciousness. The string lights above my bed were twinkling and reflecting slightly off the ceiling. The reflections were blending with the moving geometry on the ceiling. Next, I looked up at my Pokémon 20th anniversary poster. It was a bunch of black and white silhouettes of starter Pokémon from the first five or six gens with the ones in the middle being colored and shaped like Pikachu's head. Every silhouette was pulsating and almost bubbling.
At one point, I watched this abstract splatter colored tapestry for what felt like two hours, in reality it was probably only 30 or 40 minutes at the most. There were rotating hexagonal and octagonal pillars shooting out of the tapestry between the pillars it appeared to boil, the bursting bubbles had sparks flying off of them.
I can't remember exactly when this happened in the night so might as well stick it here. While hanging out in my bedroom, I got up to do what else but smoke more dabs. I did multiple in a row where I would do the whole ritual and forgot I had done so and follow it up with another. While sitting there, I light a cigarette to pass time and to just smoke more while conserving a lil on the wax. On my second or third cigarette in a row I started thinking to myself out loud that, "Ya know, Family Guy is right!! Vaping does look pretty fucking goofy. My twin flame out there probably thinks vaping looks goofy as fuck!! And smoking might look cool to some bitches but they give you cancer and shorten your life. It's less money for weed and psychedelics. I think after tonight I'm done smoking forever." I chain smoked a few cigarettes.
I think this is when I started hearing voices in my head. I was hearing random YouTubers, friends, celebrities, family members, and other random voices saying random words over over again. I truly thought I was hearing my sleeping neighbors' thoughts. I genuinely believed I had Telepathy. The only words I could make out vividly; however, was The Trip Keeper saying, "Gassid" over over like it was a soundbyte looping. At the time I took this as a sign to do Nitrous with Acid and that there was something spiritual I needed to see/experience from it. I was right, however this wasn't the night I did that combo as I had no nitrous at the time and it's an equally crazy experience but shorter story. I'm planning on posting that experience soon, also DO NOT huff nitrous it actually KILLS your brain cells.
Thoroughly freaking out again about hearing voices. I start frantically texting R, however I can't remember what for though. I even vividly remember asking R what would happen if I took more phrasing it "will things get more colorful or last longer?" He never responded. Since I couldn't read I was using speech to text to text R. I also had got up to pace through the house. Ordinarly, I would've left to go on another walk but I had convinced myself if that I had left again one of my cats would get out of the house and somehow I'd get arrested. I look up from my phone to notice a swirling florescent neon colored vortex of geomtry in the middle of my living room. The vortex started swirling towards me and started to suck the words out of my mouth. I saw the phrase ,"The only words that make sense are the ones I say out loud" get sucked out of my mouth by the vortex in bubble letters that distorted and mixed with geometry. As the bubble letters got closer to center of the vortex they would distort super cartoonishly, individual patterns and a mix of colors appeared over each letter. The vortex itself had a wigwag shape to it. At the time I thought in my head, "Damn this is what Jerry Garcia probably ment by "Steal your face right off your head"". I actually attempted to draw this out later on. See the drawing here if I can get imgur to work. I don't really remember turning the lights on all through my house but I vividly remember all the lights being off when the vortex stole my words. I don't remember how the vortex incident ended just that next all I know is all the lights are on suddenly and I'm walking out of my bedroom. It's probably 3 or 4am at this point cause I started hearing my neighbor cough and going in and out for cigarettes the rest of the night. I had laid my recliner, the voices had stopped but that was replaced with an intense loud buzzing inside of my head. I had my head on one of armrests, legs hanging off the other armrest, chair reclined, facing the wall. I was watching the logo on my clawhammer wall flag drip like white blood. My cats, of which I had 10 at the time, 5 being kittens still nursing, were running back and forth and playing with each other. Below the wall flag is a table with a wooden CD tower, my cats Cinderella and Oreo had jumped on the table at the same time. Completely in sync and as one fluid motion they stood up, turned to look at me, arched their backs, and sat down. Their coats were flowing and Cinderella had extra golden stripes in her fur. They stared deep into my eyes for a long time and were trying to ask me telepathically if I was doing okay. I more or less alternated between laying on the floor and my recliner for the next couple hours.
Every now and then I'd hear my neighbor out front coughing. I was debating whether or not to go talk him and wait for the sun to come up. Normally, I would've put on a show from myself at various points through the night but I had no internet at the time.
As the sun was starting to really come up and I was starting to really come down, I went outside and talked with my neighbor for awhile. Told him about my night, he's actually a little bit of a hippie too. I walked to the gas station to get some food. I felt like a zombie the whole way there and back. The light made my eyes sizzle like bacon on the Texas pavement in the middle of July. It felt like my brain was a steaming bowl of scrambled eggs. My jaw felt like I got my shit rocked by Mike Tyson. I came home, ate my powdered donuts despite only being able to taste it's texture which was low-key wigging me out, and watched either Space Ghost Coast to Coast or The Trip Keeper on my phone till I passed out.
The next morning (afternoon), my dad picked me up and we hung the whole day while I recovered and slowly returned to feeling human again. I bummed a cigarette off my dad and decided while smoking it that it was my last cigarette. I actually quit all nicotine for a month and half after this night. I started back up purely because of a bad (tested real) Acid/Nitrous Trip.
I do wanna add while not using nicotine I had vivid dreams about smoking cigarettes and vaping. Keep posted for the follow up stories about my bad Acid/Nitrous Trip, Smoking Dreams, and Snorting Hydroxyzine with Alcohol cause I bet The Trip Keeper wants to hear that last one.

For all the smokers out there that had a tonsillectomy and currently cannot smoke rn (praying for all of us 😭‼️) I’m 17M and haven’t smoked nicotine or weed for 33 days now, recommend time with no nicotine is 4-6 weeks, my 6 week mark would be May 6th (4 days after my birthday) I will be attempting to smoke again on that specific day and depending on how well it goes I will be back to update whether or not it’s safe to start again at the 42 day mark!! I have had edibles starting about two weeks ago, just a simple THC brownie, went down easy and worked the way it was meant to, as for b0ng rips again I will be here on day 42 post op to let everyone (smokers) know how it goes
Food wise I am almost able to eat completely normal now, haven’t tried chicken or anything crunchy or spicy yet but I’ve eaten a soft taco, quesadilla, eggs, soup, I had a tuna sandwich last night, was a bit difficult to swallow but didn’t cause any pain, I stopped my pain meds (Percocet) around day 11 or 12, my throat gets very dry very easy now idk how long that’s supposed to last but other than all of that I’m pretty much completely healed finally and am so glad I got the surgery!!
EDIT//: if you’re just gonna comment to “quit smoking” because YOU personally had a bad experience with it I’m ignoring your comment, weed affects everyone differently and it’s done nothing but help me over the years, this post is not to get advice on “how to quit” this is to let other smokers know when it is safe to start smoking again after surgery ‼️❤️

i have a surgery date!
i’m a 15 year old girl, and i learned that i have bilateral hip dysplasia february 1st. it came as a shock because i had been an aggressive athlete in volleyball since the age of 7. i made all three teams (Frosh, JV and Varsity) for one of the best schools in my state, and the current guess is that the overuse from school season pushed my hips over the edge. we had no clue that i had anything anatomically wrong with me except that my knees turned in.
february 1st i was diagnosed with bilateral hip dysplasia (18° right, 16° left), bilateral FAI and SIJ dysfunction. after getting CT and MRI, my doctor had confirmed bilateral labral tears and femoral anteversion (45° right, 41° left.)
i was told to do PT and take 15mg meloxicam. i had made considerable progress from diagnosis, and at the 6 week mark (march 12th) i had made a full recovery until out of nowhere i was back to square one. worse than that. i was in pain on both sides and it just kept getting worse.
april 1st i had to go to the ER because the pain had gotten so bad. i couldn’t get up out of my seat at school and i knew i wouldn’t be able to stay at school. they did another X-Ray and this one had shown extreme inflammation at my SI joint, and some irritation at my hip joint. they sent me home with a prescription for percocet.
a few days later i got the labral tear and the anteversion news, as well as the confirmation that i would need surgery now. we had exhausted every conservative option to get myself better but nothing had worked in the end of things.
my mom wanted to look out of state to find a surgeon with more experience and we are currently settled on Dr. Swann in colorado, and we have a surgery date at the beginning of July.
this week i’ve started to develop anterior knee pain. has anybody else experienced this as well? it is around a 6/10 pain with movement and 2/10 without. i do use crutches to get around mostly, so the movement is not at 100% pressure. i’ve been icing and resting as much as i can.
i go back and forth between acceptance and depression for my situation. there are some days where i am at peace with my diagnose and other days where i feel borderline suicidal. a huge part of my life has been stripped from me: movement. i can no longer play volleyball. it was my plan for college. i can no longer work out. i can no longer walk. i can no longer stand. i’m missing out on hanging out with my friends because i cannot move around as much.
my life has been flipped upside down and i’m still struggling to cope and be okay with it. it’s been nearly 3 months since everything started, and i briefly turned to smoking weed to get my mind off the problems at hand. i haven’t smoked in about a month and a half at least. i’m very scared for my future and for the surgeries. i’m scared for my short term future because my body is in so much pain all the time. it gets progressively worse each day and i’m scared of the damage i could be doing to myself. my right hip has swollen so much i lost the hip dip.
i’m scared for my long term future too. my grades slipped this semester. the level of pain and exhaustion and depression made it difficult to focus or study or do my homework and i’m so scared i’ll fail my classes. i’m scared that after surgery i won’t be able to play volleyball again, or that it won’t be fun anymore.
i’m scared for the surgeries. i’ve been under a few times for various operations - appendectomy, uterine polypectomy, wisdom teeth - but my fear for this surgery totally outclasses those ones. i’m scared i’ll wake up and i won’t be able to walk because my sciatic nerve got hit. i know there’s likely paresthesia but i’m terrified of partial or totally paralysis. i’m terrified of the recovery. i don’t want my friends to see me in that low of a state. i’m scared of the constipation and the blood thinners and the pain afterwards. i’m scared of nonunions in the healing process and i’m scared that the incisions will get infected. im scared of a lot of things.
i do have questions for those that have gotten arthroscopies, PAO or DFO/PFO surgeries - bonus points if it was through Dr. Swann.

• what are your scars like? surprisingly i’m not scared of what they will look like. personally i’d prefer if they were massive scars because if i have to go through all this i want something to show for it.
• what was your physical activity like before diagnosis and then after full recovery from surgery?
• what is sleeping like during recovery?
• what were your energy levels during recovery?
• what foods helped you not be too constipated?
• what tools are important for after surgery?
• what clothes are best to wear?
• how do you handle not being able to showewash your hair?
• were you nauseous after surgery?
• who did you have supporting you?
• did you have knee pain as a result of your dysplasia?
• did your knee pain resolve after surgery?
• did the femur surgeries (DFO/PFO) affect your height?
• how was it learning to walk again after your femur surgeries? (as far as i’ve heard that’s a big part of recovery)
• how often did you have to go to PT in recovery?
• how was your mental health impacted?
• what would you do to keep your mental health in check during recovery?
• what is something you wish you asked your surgeon before surgery?
• do you have paresthesia anywhere on your legs?
• back to the scars - do they at least look cool?
• can you wear underwear after your surgery?
• where are your scars located?
• did you gain weight as a result of your pain? (when the pain started for me i gained weight because i couldn’t exercise anymore)
• what did you do leading up to surgery to prepare your body?
• what was the scariest part for you?
• do you regret anything?
• what did you wish you knew before going into surgery?

i know this was a really really long post, but i needed to get my story out and also hear about others. if you have any advice regarding anything hip dysplasia, torn labrum, SIJ dysfunction, femoral anteversion, knee pain, surgeries, sports, recovery, mental health, etc. please let me know. anything and everything helps. ❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹

My (M53) ex-gf(F43) (we'll call her JF) and I were thrown together in unfortunate circumstances. We had been friends for years and both found ourselves single and in need of each other at the same time. She had just gotten out of a bad relationship and was jobless and homeless. My wife had just passed away and I needed company (in hindsight maybe I didn't).
It started wonderfully, in the first week or two we seemed to really hit it off. But it soon went downhill quickly. She kept going back to her ex, she claimed trauma bond. I didn't understand then but I do now. And over the next 4 months, while living in my home, sleeping in my bed, spending my money, and telling me she loved me, I caught her sexting other men, sleeping with other men, abusing her prescrition drugs, and going back and forth on whether she wanted to be with me or not. I moved her into storage and back out over and over again.
At the end of those 4 months she said she was ready to commit.
I knew she was in pain and troubled. I tried to have patience and understanding, but I started turning into someone I had never been before. I started invading her privacy and snooping to find out how she was going to hurt me next. I kept hoping I wouldn't find anything but each time, I did. Money that she asked for one thing was spent on drugs. Chiropractor appointment was actually a trip to her dealer. Messaging the people she had sex with in those first 4 months that I had begged her to stop. Continued contact (8 months after she "commited") with the ex that eventually led to expensive court appointments to try and fight orders of protection (she currently has 3). Illegal mail ordering of expensive drugs to replace the prescription drugs she had abused. New sexting incident. Lie after lie after lie. And instead of trying to rebuild trust by being open and transparent, she tightened up even more. Turned off notifications. Locked everything down. The lies continued. The drug abuse continued. The secrets kept mounting.
It was exhausting. Every fight turned into threats of suicide and destruction of our home. The money became and issue as well. $400 a month weed habit. Constantly breaking her phones, tablets, and vapes. Constant small purchases that added quickly. Takeout instead of cooking. Even blew up her car motor while trying to sneak to her dealer, ignoring a coolant light warning because she was in a hurry to get back before I came home from work.
It all ended when we went on a cruise. We had made some friends that were fairly local to us. All was going well until I found out she offered them mushrooms. Keep in mind she has had problems with heroin, opioids, amphetamines, and benzodiazepines. The mushrooms weren't an issue per se, the problem was that she had opened the door to drug acceptance with these people so it was one more place I had to worry that she could get hooked on something else from. Even something is innocent as a half a bottle of Percocet leftover from a dental visit is enough to get her started on that addiction again. She saw it as harmless, I saw it as a needless and dangerous opening for addiction.
I had foolishly put her name on the deed to the house thinking that a sense of ownership and pride might teach her some responsibility and give her a sense of worth as well. All it did was make it so that we were stuck together until the house sells and it gave her a weapon to use against me as the owner of a house can destroy the home however they like without any repercussions.
Our house closing comes in a few weeks. The breakup happened end of october. Since then she's gotten on to meth and upgraded her Klonopin to Xanax. She's smoking meth in my home inviting drug dealers over, I caught her trying to seduce a man in my bed while they were both spun and he was masturbating on my bed. It's been nothing but disrespect and being hurtful to me. Lies about the meth, sex with men, and dating when I begged her to just wait until the house was sold and we weren't tied to each other so she could stop hurting me. She was unfazed and continued to hurt me in all sorts of new and inventive ways. Including a sudden increase in her libido and a sudden desire to text and video chat with men when texting and video chatting with me was an issue for her.
Until very recently even after all this, I still loved her. I'm going to go ahead and chalk it up to a trauma bond. With the last few incidences, that love has turned to hate. I'll be happy to see her go once the house is sold. I confess, I am interested in seeing what happens when this addict with no impulse control and an inability to manage money comes into $60,000. She has no income and no job. We'll see if her uncontrolled spending and drug use was just to destroy me or if she destroys herself with it as well.
I also confess to being a fool. I am embarrassed at myself for thinking she loved me or cared about me. I was ready to take care of her as her disease progressed (she has an aggressive, physically debilitating disease) and help raise her kids. It hurts that much more because she has to know that it is a rare man that will step into that situation. Staying with someone who gets sick while you're with them is one thing. Starting a relationship with someone who is in constant pain, can't sleep for more than an hour or two at a time, and is very nearly ready for a wheelchair if an outing requires more than an hour of walking, is a different thing altogether.
It's so devastating to know that you're not worth the effort of rebuilding trust or fixing a drug problem when you're ready to love and look after someone for the rest of their lives.
Tldr: Got with someone who really didn't want to be with me. Tried to make her life better and just made both our lives worse. Her lying and addiction turned me into a snoop. I was easy to leave and I feel stupid. Rooting for karma.

hello, Ive been using mexiletine for the past year and it has been great, drinking and weed hasnt been a problem while on it, though Im interested if there are any interactions between other drugs, like xanax, percocet, ketamine.

I(30m) have family friend name Penny(39f). She has a 16-year-old daughter named Gabby (16f). Gabby she is a mess to put it bluntly. She abuses weed,xanax, and percocet on the daily. She dropped out of high school. She has a 34 year old "boyfriend" who gets her all this shit. I've been telling Penny that she needs to call the police on this "boyfriend". Take away the drugs from her and send her to rehab and get her reenrolled in school. Penny refuses and says Gabby is almost 18, so it's fine. So Gabby was bragging about her boyfriend buying her percocet. I tell she has no future. She looks at me and says, "how do I have no future?". I look at her and I tell her and I quote "first a drug addict. Second, you're a high school drop out, so you don't go to school. Third, your dating a pedophile who is old enough to be your dad". She looks at me and says no and runs off crying. I began talking to Penny about how she needs to call the police on this fucking pedophile but she refuses.

I(30m) have family friend name Penny(39f). She has a 16-year-old daughter named Gabby (16f). Gabby she is a mess to put it bluntly. She abuses weed,xanax, and percocet on the daily. She dropped out of high school. She has a 34 year old "boyfriend" who gets her all this shit. I've been telling Penny that she needs to call the police on this "boyfriend". Take away the drugs from her and send her to rehab and get her reenrolled in school. Penny refuses and says Gabby is almost 18, so it's fine. So Gabby was bragging about her boyfriend buying her percocet. I tell she has no future. She looks at me and says, "how do I have no future?". I look at her and I tell her and I quote "first a drug addict. Second, you're a high school drop out, so you don't go to school. Third, your dating a pedophile who is old enough to be your dad". She looks at me and says no and runs off crying. I began talking to Penny about how she needs to call the police on this fucking pedophile but she refuses.

Hello I’ve gone through a traumatic experience recently and I’ve felt really out of it, I feel like things are unreal, or like I’m dreaming. But it also feels like I’m high? It’s been like this since what happened.
For context here is what happened: April 8th at 3:30 I went to bed with my bf laying next to me. 30 minutes pass and I’m woken up by my dad screaming in the next room and my step brother banging on my door. I got up in my dazed state. I had taken a weed gummy that night and was extremely relaxed and the noise had startled me. I got dressed and my bf got up to check things out. My dad had been screaming “STOP STOP! AHHHH.BITCH DIE! DIE! STOP”. Now he does take pills like percocets and other pills like that. And also takes weed gummies occasionally. He is also a drinker on occasion. He doesn’t have night terrors but has spoke in his sleep. This was different. I knew right away it was a drug trip. I was trying to calm down my step brother he’s 17, and has autism and explosive intermittent disorder, I didn’t want him attacking me or my bf for how we were handling things, I called my mom(she’s not with my dad) and I called my older brother who lives with her. At the same time my bf, stepbrother and I were on the way to their house to get them. We get back to the apartment, called the cops and my mom and brother got him water in his system. They leave hours later, the cops arrive after(they didn’t give a shit and said it was a nightmare, and then left basically). My stepbrother slept over my moms for that night, and my bf and I slept at a friends place. Since this incident I’ve still felt that high from the gummy I took? Or like some form of derealization and depersonalization. I know what the feeling is just not how to get rid of the feeling. Does anyone have any grounding techniques? I don’t even wanna see my dad because it is so bad.
TLDR: Having depersonalization/derealization after seeing my dad go through a bad trip. What are some grounding techniques so things seem more real for me?

I am not in any way trying to promote drug use, especially the misuse of controlled substances. I am simply curious about the experiences of others compared to my own. We have bipolar disorder here, so I know I'm not the only one who's enjoyed a buzz. Drugs are bad, m'kay?
It has been my experience that frequently, drugs, prescribed or otherwise, do not always affect me the way they are expected to, or the way most people experience them. I am curious if this is something related to having bipolar disorder. I tried Google. I typed in "do drugs affect people with bipolar disorder differently than they affect the general population," and all I got back was stuff about comorbidities and how people with bipolar disorder are more likely to be addicts, and how to get help for addiction. So it didn't really answer my question.
But for example, some people think it's fun to take benzos to get high (I honestly don't really understand the draw, why is it fun to get so high you nod off in your dinner?), but when I take them, I don't always experience the same effect as the last time I took them. Like one time I might take them and feel loopy and silly and have a good time, but I might take them another time and just go straight to sleep, and yet another time I don't experience much of anything at all, beyond a calmer state. I've been prescribed benzos, and just using them as prescribed is fine, they manage my anxiety, but if I take more than the prescribed dose there's no telling what I will experience, because it's never been the same twice in a row.
When I smoke weed, it seems like I have to smoke just a little more than everyone else in order to get as high as them, and I suspect that even then, in general I do not get as high as most people. Where others will stay high for a couple of hours, I usually start coming down after 45 minutes to an hour.
One time, I was prescribed some Percocet for a mi or surgery I'd had. The pain was intense and I'd been taking them two at a time to quell it, and I'd feel kinda relaxed and nice, but not super high or anything. Well I had one left over after the pain subsided, so I decided to take it for fun, and holy shit I was so loopy I could barely stand! Makes no sense to me at all.
So, what about you guys? Do you have similar experiences, or is there some other reason drugs hit me differently?

Hi, my name is Christian. I just turned 16 on April 4th, but on March 17th, my younger sister, my only sibling, Anaia, passed away. Anaia died from an accidental drug overdose, on what, i’m not sure, but I assume it was a percocet.
Anaia died when she was fourteen, her 15th birthday would’ve been June 18th. Growing up, me and my sister were neck and neck, we were so close we would be considered twins and would do literally everything together. Even as we entered our teenage years, we may have made new friends, and may have had new experiences, but we never pushed eachother away. We lived with both of our parents, the easiest upbringing imaginable.
We talked about everything. Anaia was depressed, not to a suicidal extent, but to a demotivated, aimless extent. Around 2021, she became more secluded and developed severe anxiety, she once told me that during that time she felt like everyone was staring at her and judging her. She became easily overwhelmed by large crowds. This is when she started smoking nicotine and vapes. I used to ask her why and she would always tell me that it was fun. Smoking nicotine and vapes later ventured into marijuana. She then met this girl, Jade, who was far more mentally troubled than my sister and had tried nearly every drug in the book. Good personality, horrible influence. Jade quickly became Anaia’s main friend. Anaia and I differentiated in the fact that I always had a set of different friends, to everyone i know, everyone knows me but i’m not a popular kid, more like one of those kids in school that wasn’t popular but just someone that literally everyone could recognize and easy to talk to. I have a lot of friends, and i interconnect with differing groups, popular, weird, etc; Anaia didn’t. She had friends but she always felt like she didn’t have many friends or people she would consider friends, so when her and Jade connected, it became an unhealthy spark for them both. Anaia would go to Jade’s house all the time, nearly multiple times a week. All she had to do was ask, me and my parents knew that Jade wasn’t a good influence but we didn’t think much of it cuz at the end of the day, that’s Anaia’s best friend. You can’t make anyone do anything.
Drug use became less fun for Anaia and more of a bore reducer more or less. As Anaia invested more into weed, it became the only thing she did. My sister wasn’t interested in anything anymore, she’d go to school, come home, but smoke everyday, whatever she could. In September 2023, she told me that Jade was trying to get her to do a perc for the first time. I told Anaia that doing a street percocet could be horrible, and that she shouldn’t even try it as i knew she’d get addicted and she said she wouldn’t. In the same hour, I told a friend and he said to tell her it’s nearly as bad as heroin, to which she said we were overreacting and in the following days she tried it. Anaia and Jade would try things like percs, LSD, ecstasy, my sister did nothing further than that. The issue came with her attachment to Jade, they dated a few times. Anaia once told me that doing percocets made her happy, because they reminded her of Jade. Jade made her happy, going there gave her something fun, being with Jade gave her something to do because being at home was too boring for her and she knew that if she went to Jade’s house, she’d do some drugs and have fun with Jade. Doing percocets reminded her of that happiness. My sister would never do anything unless she wanted to at this point, my mom would try to spend more time with her but sometimes my sister would shut her away. Sometimes she would have random spurts of energy, like when her and my mom would paint together, or when she would randomly jump on my dads back, or when she would bust into my room and either lay down on my bed, play on my playstation, or just look goofy in my doorway and slam my door hard enough for the hinges to fly off when she was done. Hell, even pick up my change from my room. Jade wasn’t a bad person, just horrible choices, and long story short, her and Anaia stopped talking after my sister did something jade felt was cheating while jade in jail and they fell out. My sister loved the hell out of Jade, and the last thing she told her ever was that she didn’t want to give up on Jade. Jade tried to tell Anaia before that to get off that stuff, I saw the messages, but she didn’t.
Anaia quit for a bit, but I don’t know when she picked them back up. Anaia would tell me often how she felt depressed and unable to do anything that used to interest her when we were kids. She used to ask me how I could have goals, focus, hella hobbies, hella friends, and be happy with simple things that didn’t involve drugs or partying, how i was so secure with myself and don’t let comments bother me. I always told her I didn’t know. She told me she looked up to me in those aspects. Before that final spring break, I went into her classroom and asked her about her grades. We joked about her grades but she told me in a genuine tone she’d bring them up, as low as they were, they were the grades of someone who totally stopped caring about school. Someone who didn’t care about her grades or test scores, something she admitted to me herself. She didn’t care about it no more and that it was what it was, not the grades of the girl she used to be. In November 2023, she was admitted to a mental spot for four days, no suicide attempt, just extreme depression that overwhelmed her one morning. She told the workers she trusted me the most. Unbeknownst to me, she told her closet friends I was her best friend. My sister was such a fun loving, stubborn, dramatically sassy person when she wasn’t huddled up. It always showed.
I say her death was an accident for several reasons, for one, she had planned several things that Sunday. For two, she always caught herself on percocets. They make you vomit and that’s what she often did and she would often stay home from school some mornings cuz she felt unexplainably sick. For three, there was throw up around her mouth and in her trash can when we found her that morning, and that told me all I needed to know. Until the autopsy comes out, I believe my sister vomited in her sleep after taking a percocet and vomiting once and going back to sleep, thinking she’d be fine just like any other time. Four, she’s told people in dreams it was an accident, believers or not here, I firmly believe that regardless of all beliefs there’s an afterlife for everyone. Around 11AM, my mom found my sister cold and unresponsive, the last time anyone saw her the night prior was 2AM when she came out of her room and did something unusual. Anaia told my dad she loved him and went to sleep, not to my mom and not to me. Maybe I didn’t need it, and I think she was mad at my mom from an argument that night. My sister hadn’t been eating the whole spring break, she barely left the house, and my mom got onto her about her eating some food but she just didn’t want to. My dad finds it suspicious she only told him and not my mom, and makes him believe it wasn’t an accident, but I know my sister, she truly loved my mom and took her back on every occasion possible. They texted often too, so I don’t think that. My sister loved my dad, and they had their bouts of bumping heads but she truly loved and still loves all three of us. As a final comment, Jade is not someone I blame and she even came to the funeral Easter Sunday. I don’t want to paint her as a bad person, just influenced my sister and she’s essential to my sister’s story. Jade apologized for everything and feels way, way more guilt than anyone, and has expressed that so many times. I forgive her.
I came here to talk about drug abuse. Ultimately, what I want grasped isn’t the young life lost but the events leading to it. Anaia was someone who lost herself in drugs, she didn’t know who she was (verbally admitted) without them, couldn’t understand fun without them, and found herself demotivated. She truly had the resources, the support, she just was in a hole she couldn’t bring herself out of, a hole she told me she wanted out of. A hole she wish she could understand how to get out of. Drugs may seem fun but once you start using them for other feelings, it’s a downhill journey. If my sister had the chance, the time, to figure herself out and who she was and what she wanted out of it, she would’ve. She didn’t even know what she wanted with her life, she saw herself living, but it was just that, no goals. 14 is too young, and knowing my area (Carrollton), which has been inthe news in the last year for several fentanyl drug trades and teen related deaths and overdoses, I wouldn’t be surprised if the perc my sister took was laced. That’s if she even overdosed on a percocet, I assumed because they were found in her wallet when the police searched it and it was the only logical explanation.
One day, I’m going to become a Medical Scientist. I draw very well, I’m going to finish making my manga concept. Now, I’m going to add something else to that goals list, i’m going to build a massive foundation/organization/center building for teenagers. One with career surveys, tons of hobbies and recreational activities, counselors, courts, everything. Like a Boys and Girls club, where teenagers can come in and discover themselves. Separate themselves from the bad habits, find new interests. Even if they resort to the bad habits again, they would have learned new hobbies to invest in first, two or more options is always better than a singular bad option. I always told my sister that, as well as other drug abusing friends. “Just do something different”, anything different. Anaia’s death is unfair in that aspect, she didn’t have the time to discover herself and really live her life. I will forever miss my sister, and her death has truly inspired me and impacted many close to me in ways she wouldn’t guess. More than a sister, she was my best friend.

Ok some people might be Karen’s and get mad about this post, once again, 17M, I’m a huge pothead, before people try and just say to stop smoking, no, I haven’t smoked since the day before my surgery (25th), I’m scared that when i can smoke again it’s not gonna be the same, I smoke weed and nicotine, once again not looking for life tips on how to stop smoking, but if anyone else in this group that’s completely healed from their tonsillectomy can give me some insight on what it’ll be like smoking again after i completely heal? How long in total should I wait? My doctor said 2 weeks or until all the scabbing falls off, I’m scared to get myself sick or seriously hurt by starting again too soon, if anyone that has already been healed from surgery could let me know when I’ll be safe to smoke again I would really appreciate it, I can’t even take edibles rn because they have me on Percocet for the pain and I’d rather not mix THC with Percs. Any information helps 🙏

Background: I have never done any drugs, or smoked anything. I’m clean from that stuff, it’s against my values. My friend, who is now addicted to drugs, is 13, a few years younger than me, and has always been truthful and open to me, up until this point. We are all done with the 18 year old felon and we’ve cut him out of our lives.
I’m currently still conversing with mutual friends about contacting the proper people to help my friend get off this stuff.
I was recently on my friends phone helping him with importing photos onto his iPhone from an Android, when I accidentally saw a photo of him smoking weed in his gallery. He told me in the past that he was against it and that he would never do it, and then after asking a few of his friends, I was informed that he deliberately asked everyone to hide it from me and not tell me, and he even had an instagram dedicated to his new smoking hobby so that I wouldn’t see it on his main. I decided to have some fun with it, and I changed one of my usernames to a very similar one of his secret account for a little while, and he ended up changing his secret accounts username due to that.
I was told by a friend that another “friend” in our group, from online, who is an 18 year old convicted felon from another country, had been enticing my friend to smoke weed, start vaping (nicotine), do shrooms, drink alcohol, and do percs. He even suggested that I drive my friend for us all to meet up, and they would “go to a bar, find some females, and have sex with them in a hotel room” (all without me knowing somehow) which caught me off guard seeing as that’s coming from a 18 year old felon with a history of drug and alcohol abuse talking to a 13 year old. The 18 year old also said he would give my friend percocets and buy him vape supplies, which is absolutely screwed up.
As for some background on why we talked to the felon, we have two main reasons. One is that we didn’t want him to screw with our family (prank calls, etc) if we drop him out of our life, and we thought his charges were minor, before we got to know him better, and by that point, it was too late and he already found our parents info. We all want to contact the authorities but we don’t know how it would work since this guy is in another country.
Then a few days later, I asked him what he was hiding from me, and then he got apologetic, and admit to everything. I told him that it made me loose trust and confidence in his word.
So I called the 18 year old out. After a LOT of threats, shit talking me on his instagram, and deleting half his social media accounts, the felon is out of my life, and all of my other friends lives, and he won’t be coming back. As for my 13 year old friend, he is now trying to lie to me about his friend (who is 11 and also on these drugs) oding on weed, which I’ve been told cannot happen. As I said earlier, we’re working on getting him help with this.
The conversation that I had with the 18 year old felon ended up as you’d expect from someone like him. He was pissed off at me, swearing at me up and down, saying the screenshots were fake, (got definite proof they’re not) and even telling me I’m the messed up one for even knowing. Pretty sure he cut ties with me because he was afraid that I’d tell the police.
I have been going through constant shit with my friends because of this. They are trying to tell me that vaping isn’t bad, and my friend (who is 13 by the way) is justified for doing it, and he’s just “trying new things” and apparently I’m the bad guy for not wanting my friend to pick up a lifelong addiction. They’re also trying to justify it by saying it’s better then if he was doing heroine, which sure, but that doesn’t make it good. Really showed me who to trust and not to trust.
Sorry if this felt messy or out of place, I tried making it as easy to read as possible, but it might’ve been a little messy.

See my post history for more backstory, but after another manic episode of wanting like hell to get outside and go to the store but overwhelming herself into an anxiety attack about actually going, i gave my stubborn ass 64 y/o stage 4 Swiss-cheese brained mother a .5 xanax to calm her down and got her set up in front of the tv. I made sure she didn’t need anything. I told her to sit tight while i went in the other room to talk on the phone. 11 minutes. My phone call was 11 minutes. And in that time, she decided to get up (for no reason, she genuinely didn’t have a reason to get up) and managed to fall down and roll into the other room. I didn’t hear anything because they’re doing construction in the building. I come back out and she’s on the couch, clearly in pain. That’s when i find out about the fall. She bruised and/or broke her rib, but she refuses to go to the hospital. The doctor told us she would be a high fall risk when she takes the pills. We accepted the responsibility. 11 minutes. She just couldn’t sit still FOR ELEVEN FUCKING MINUTES and now she’s in agony. I’m taking her to the hospital when she wakes up, i don’t care how much of a cunt she is to me. I’m fucking done. We have had so many conversations about how she needs to listen to me and do things to help herself, but she is so fucking stubborn and independent and she makes every fucking situation worse. Oh and we got a welfare check yesterday from someone in the building who hasn’t seen her in awhile, and that was actually a blessing because a couple social workers showed up twenty minutes later and i got some great info on local resources.
I just want to scream.
Edit; finally convinced her to go around 3pm today. No breaks or fractures, just some bruised ribs. Painkillers and bed rest. She’s on Percocet and i ate a bunch of weed gummies as soon as we got home. We’re both a little calmer now. I’ll call the social worker tomorrow and get some help with the applications for hospice. Sounds like the cancer is rapidly getting worse, based on the CT they took today.
I’ve said it before but I’m super grateful for this community. I have friends that i also vent to, but no one really gets it the way y’all do. Appreciate you immensely.

TLDR: how I discovered Marilyn Manson and transformed my life in the process…
I saw Marilyn Manson live for the first time on May 15th, 1994 at the Tower Theater in Upper Darby, PA. They were one of the opening acts on NIN’s inaugural Downward Spiral tour (along with Fem 2 Fem). This show was a birthday gift from my friend Paul as I just turned 19 the week before and had recently returned home after completing basic training and AIT for the US Army at Ft. McClellan in Alabama. I enlisted on delayed entry the first week of my senior year of high school in 1992 when I was 17. I desperately needed to escape my abusive home. I wanted to run away for a long fucking time but never had the courage. So I jumped at the opportunity when the local recruiters knocked on my door that summer. I left for boot camp three weeks after graduation in June of 93 and had no idea how far I’d actually end up running.
I learned a fundamental truth about my existence shortly after I turned 13: The guy I grew up calling my dad wasn’t actually my father. He was my step dad, just some guy who married my single mother and adopted me in the process. I grew up in a “devout” Christian family lead by a strong Irish patriarch in my grandfather. He was a true bible thumper in every sense - boastful, self-righteous, and a disciple of Reagan. I knew from a young age that sex before marriage was not acceptable. It was preached often. So I started to ask my grandmother questions about how could it be possible that my parents were married for only 11 years and yet I’m 13? After that she forced my mom to reveal the deep family secret - that I’m a bastard. I was born out of wedlock to a young woman, the oldest of eight. This was a bit of an embarrassment for my grandparents. So they forced my mom to move into an old school Irish laundry in Towson, MD to give birth to me, then give me up for adoption. They also made her pay for every penny of the related costs. My grandparents visited the day after I was born. Apparently after seeing me for the first time my grandfather had a change of heart and allowed my mother to keep me, even though she was still single. My mom was 22 at the time. I was not allowed to know the identity of my biological father. Those questions were abruptly pushed aside, which fucked me up mentally. Especially because the only dad I knew use to beat me on a regular basis for the most minor of things like rolling my eyes, or not having a proper tone of voice, or “not playing the game right” - whatever the fuck that meant 🤷‍♂️. All I could think was, “who is this asshole beating me, why does my mom allow it, and why doesn’t my real father save me”. I definitely had some issues as a teen, to say the least. I was broken and suicidal from a young age. It’s no wonder that my eventual discovery of Manson felt like a complete and utter soul shift. It was a true revelation . My eyes were opened to the true possibility of life. I had no idea who I was but I didn’t have to be what everyone else thought I should be.
I had no idea who Manson was that first show in 94 and didn’t really care till they took the stage that night. I barely knew who NIN was at the time. My boy Paul had musical tastes that were far more advanced than mine back in the day. I was still mostly a fan of bands like Poison, Warrant, and Skid Row when I returned home from boot camp. I did listen to Metallica and Megadeth a bit, but not too deeply. So he wanted to expose me to another world musically since we were talking about forming a band together with our friend Bryan. Paul was a bassist, Bryan a vocalist and guitarist, and I was a poet with no direction and no musical ability. So they asked if I’d consider learning how to play the drums. Makes sense, right 😂🤷‍♂️?
We missed the first band, Fem 2 Fem, because what’s a show unless you get stoned first? I stood and watched as my friends got high under the 69th street Septa train trestle. The station located there is the local transportation hub for the greater Philly area and the Tower theater stood on the adjacent corner. I didn’t join in the session because I was still a drug virgin. I never tried anything outside of a some beer until later that summer in 94. I just got out of boot camp and was now serving as a reservist and still toeing the line. We rolled into the theater just as Manson was taking stage and I was the only sober person in my group. We had general admission floor seats and were able to get right up front since very few people were there to see them. It’s been 30 years, but I honestly don’t remember any more than 20-30 people who took an active interest in their performance that night. It was a good month before Portrait of an American Family was released on Nothing Records. Nobody knew who Manson was yet, but fuck was I blown away. I never witnessed anything like that before. Nails was great that night, but I left feeling transformed by their supporting act. I knew from that moment on that I didn’t belong in the military. I had only joined out of a false sense of patriotism fueled by all the childhood trauma I experienced. I finally knew in my heart that I needed to pursue writing and music. I’d do what I had to do to serve the US while I was enlisted, but I knew longer felt beholden to family ideals that literally rejected me as a human being. Writing poetry was something I had done since an early age. It was the only therapy I had as kid through all the abuse. Shit was different back then. No one seemed to give a fuck about the mental wellbeing of kids, but the pen and paper never judged me. It only accepted me.
I didn’t hear anything about Manson again after that first show (the first of 15 till this point in 2024) and soon forgot about them, until that Christmas. I was out shopping for my family in K-Mart (remember those stores?) when I came across a CD copy of Portrait in the music section. I recognized their name instantly and snatched up the album. I was newly exploring weed and acid by that point (my downfall was swift and without remorse when I finally decided to give in to a life that wasn’t straight). So I took the CD to my boy Paul’s house to get stoned and have a listen. He rolled and sparked a joint then put in Portrait. I was hooked from the first mutterings of Family Trip. Manson’s spoken word take in musical form on that part of Willy Wonka, one of my favorite childhood movies, only further confirmed what I saw as my life calling: that I had a right to an identity and to find out who my actual father was. I wanted to use music and poetry to not only explore all the pain I felt, but also to hopefully become wildly successful and force find my bio-dad. I was naive as a young man. I actually believed that success would lead to the discovery of my greatest secret. I was horribly wrong.
Manson has gone onto be among my greatest artistic influences. His music and art has grabbed hold of me like no other. My love for him also horrified my hypocritical Christian family. Especially early on. They saw a clear departure in my personality after finding what he had to offer. The discovery of his music also marks one of the darkest periods of my life because I did fall into a years long haze of weed, acid, X, shrooms, salvia, DMT, and for a short while an occasional Percocet. I still smoke weed today. I probably always will, but that’s pretty much it (outside a shroom micro dose every now and again too 🙄). However, it also lead to an intensely creative period of life in my early 20’s where I did create music and write like a fucking demon. I tried the drums for a little while but gave them up because the more I listened to Manson the more I wanted to be a vocalist, which happened. I was in 2 bands as the lead singer and lyricist (my voice sucked). Nothing ever happened with either of those bands, but they in turn lead me to a point where I eventually, independently wrote, recorded, and produced my own solo concept album with the help of a Grammy award winning producer from south Philly, all based around my poetry. The album we made was started 1997 and took till 2000 to complete. After it was done I packed my bags and moved to L.A. to pursue my dream of a record deal. I made the move possible by enrolling in the LARW (the Los Angeles Recording workshop) as a student of audio engineering and production. The school provided housing and contacts via networking, which did lead to a few missed opportunities. I was even offered a publishing deal to sell the album to BMG publishing, which I turned down because my dumb, young, ignorant ass still believed I could make my shit voice work. I simply did not want to give up the idea of being a front man.
In retrospect I was kind of stupid to turn that publishing deal down. I never ended up doing anything with the album I made. I basically have lived a blue collar life for the past 30 years working as a chef while I write on the side. I did go onto get a traditional college education at Temple University in my mid twenties. I earned a BA in Mass Comm and American studies by the time I turned 31. I also had become a father for the second time by the time I received my BA in 2006. I now have 3 daughters and I’m divorced. My kids will be 21, 18, and 12 this summer. All 3 of my kids were at my Master’s of Fine Arts graduation ceremony in 2022 when I earned a masters in poetry.
This journey never would’ve happened without Manson or that first show back in May 1994.
And I also eventually found out who my bio dad is on my own with no help from my family. He’s a dick and not worth the time, ironically. 🤷‍♂️🤘

I’m tired of lortabs and Percocets but I’m scared to ask my doctor about trying medical marijuana . She’s heavy on “no smoking it’s bad for your lungs” or “if we find marjuanna in your syestem we can no longer prescribe you opioids”. But these opioids are kicking my ass for little to sometimes no pain relief. Does weed help any of you guys and are you prescribed or just take it in your own.
For context 19M sophomore in college(in person if that matters)

I have not lived at home for years due to a rocky relationship with my narcissist stepmother and enabler father. When I was kicked out of the house my little brother was in middle school but I didn't really stay in contact with anyone from home due to resentment and severe depression that came from years of abuse.
After nearly 10 years away I have had to move back home with my husband because he lost his job and we could no longer afford rent on my check alone and his new job didn't pay enough to catch up after the fact.
Now that I am home I've learned that my little brother has a serious addiction problem. Before it had just been a lot of lounging around and smoking weed and his mother just letting it happen because he was the "golden child" and my father not doing anything because she won't let him parent her son.
Now I've come home a few times with him slurring his words and stuttering anytime he tries to speak or even passed out without being able to wake him. He's told me in these states that he's only taken a percocet or two but then the next day he'll remember nothing of our conversations and deny taking anything.
He did open up to me however about "beating" percocet addiction a year ago among other things like being raped while in school and feeling like his mom never cared for him. It hurts a lot because I feel like I failed him by not being around and now I don't know how to help him. I find myself wondering if I had been around if things would have been different. I know that it was not responsibility and when I was kicked out of the house I was only 18 and struggled greatly by my self to get by.
I know that many people end up feeling resentment and maybe I will once he's asking me for money or stealing from me to get by. But right now i just feel angry at his mom for how much she's failed him and by extension my dad. I feel sad for him that he doesn't even blame her even though he has no idea how to even take care of himself.
I'm incredibly scared that he will overdose but he acts like that's a silly worry for me to have. But it's genuinely been scary to see him slurring and stuttering and struggling to stand up because he's on something. At the end of the day it's his choice to get help or not but I still feel incredibly guilty and responsible.
I don't know if I am seeking advice or just venting even. I have never really been in a situation like this before. My mother was an alcoholic when she was alive but I was too small to remember what it was like. I'm just really really scared for him.