I hate to join the cliché train, but for me it was meth. In the late 80s and early 90s, ephedrine was stupidly easy to get by the kg, there were "diet shops" selling all manner of "white cross" pills out the front door, and canisters of pure e out the back, so for a while, we had stupid amounts of crystal. Not even for sale, just for friends and ourselves.

It came to a head for me after a murder and the related investigation by state police got into my head. I had abso-fucking-lutely nothing to do with it, but I was questioned about it because I had been in the apartment less than an hour before it happened. It related to a fairly notorious bike club - not HA or Outlaws, but if I said the name, someone would certainly recognize it I had been hanging out with a few "hangers around" types. One of them lived with this insanely hot redhead I had a thing for, and they let me around because hey, free speed. I got to meet a guy who was in the club, he made meth, and I taught him how make cat by oxidizing rather than reducing (CrO2). Their whole social circle was completely different than anything I had been around before (me: computer geek with EFF and -cDc- stickers on my 286 laptop; them: Harleys and .45s. Yeah, you think bikers use chains and hammers, but not these guys...) So out of my comfort zone I go, cranked up on gogo and trolling for cute biker twat and excitement.

So I am in this apartment with like a dozen guys, someone starts to squabble, I leave when it starts to look like shit might happen. Maybe a fight at the most though. So the next day, my buddy tells me so-and-so stabbed then new guy and cops are looking for him. A few days later, we pop by that apartment, ignoring the black and yellow police tape on the door. The whole inside of the place looks like it has been destroyed, carpet is all cut up and the walls and refrigerator are covered with gray shit (fingerprint powder). Carpet around where it is torn has blood on it, presumably cops took it for evidence or something. One of the guys I was with starts cutting carpet up mumbling about a ritual - some of these guys were into black magic or some stupid thing - their group was into some pretty fucked up religion that had a racist component, something about how lighter skin is closer to god. Look, whatfuckingever, I just want to go balls deep in this girl, I didn't make a study of the asinine shit that some of them believed. So anyway, while we were there, cops came. I guess neighbors called them when they heard us. Two uniformed idiots. We were in a crime scene where we weren't supposed to be, and we were smoking weed. It was kinda funny - there was street parking directly im front of this second floor apartment, and it was snowing pretty hard, and instead of bothering to bust us for the pot, one of the cops just chucked our little porcelain bowl out the door. I guess the snow had obscured his view and he didn't remember the crowded street parking out front, because he threw it and turned back to face us and there was a loud BANG as it hit the window or door of a car and the surprised and embarrassed look on his face just accented how damned funny it was.

Anyway, so he had our IDs, and shortly after, the SBI questioned me, I guess they had a big investigation of this group in general and the murder was just one more part of it. I didn't know shit and they saw that, but the whole thing was like rubbing my face in the fact that I was just out of my league in this group. A few days or a week later, I was flying down snow covered mountain roads in the middle of the night with my headlights off, wired out of my mind on a three day binge, and sure they wee following me. I was parking on neighborhood side streets running through people's back yards, in the front of all night grocery stores and out the employee doors in the back, jumping off the loading dock and into bushes behind the store - all to get away from fucking nobody. I had long conversations with people who turned into rays of light and disappeared, hell, you guys know the drill. A shit ton of IV meth and days of no sleep or food will make a new (and lesser) man out of you.

A short time after that, I was on a payphone (thank you redbox, my trusty modded Radio Shack dialer) asking a friend in my home state to wire me a train ticket home. I left literally all my belongings including my car and started from scratch. This would be '92, I think.

Believe it or not, this isn't a stimulant post, unless you count thec150 mg armodafinil I took at about 6 this morning. It is just long and rambly because you asked for it, and it was fun for me to relive for a few minutes. Now I am going to join my wife in sleep. Tomorrow I have two early meetings and an AIX box to apply some fixes to, and I dislike screwing with AIX, so I need my sleep.