About mid-April I started taking speed (dextroamphetamine) orally (I can't bear to put things up my nose and don't consider veins an option for regular use) to help me shift a bit of weight that I'd put on in the last year. Being aware that amphetamines are very dangerous drugs, I gave myself a set of rules;

1) Do not take it for more than three consecutive days and have at least a three day break in between (this also helps to prevent tolerance from building up).

2) Do not buy more than half an ounce (not a lot by any stretch of the imagination ~ I can't afford anymore!) a fortnight.

3) Do not go without sleeping for more than three consecutive days.

4) Do not go without food for more than five consecutive days.

5) *~Stroppiness and aggression will cancel all use!!~*

In an ideal world with ideal people none of us would probably use drugs. This, however, is not the case and many of us do choose to use drugs. The importance of setting our own rules (and sticking to them!) to prevent drug use turning into compulsive drug abuse cannot be stressed enough.

Unfortunately, it's not always, due to circumstance and other extraneous factors, possible to follow the rules we set as rigidly as we might like to. This is when drug use becomes haphazard and ultimately dangerous.

At the beginning of May my husband lost his job. Just like many young couples at the start of their careers and bringing up a family, we are quite heavily debt. The loss of his job spelled out the possibility of financial destitution. Within weeks, the re-occurrence of a heart condition that my hubby suffers from made financial destitution inevitable unless I could work more.

In the meantime, I've carried on with my speed regime and begun working as many hours as possible to try and keep our family together. However, during all of what has been going on, although I stuck to all my other rules regarding my speed usage, I had no option but to disregard one of them; to not stay awake for more than three days at a time since I HAD to work. During the week that my psychosis began I had slept for six and a half hours in six days.

On the Saturday afternoon when the psychosis began I just felt a bit odd. My brain didn't seem to be connected to my mouth and I had to really concentrate to be able to form words. I felt detached and distracted. It was taking me a year and a half just to build a joint!! Anyway, by midnight and after everyone had fallen asleep, I was hallucinating, paranoid and clearly off my head.

I kept seeing shadows with murderous intent everywhere and the darkness kept scaring the living daylights out of me. I put every light in the house on (including torches) and turned all of my outside lights on too. I was completely and utterly terrified and kept wondering if someone had spiked me with something. Even though I know the *theory* of amphetamine psychosis, I did not realise what was happening to me.

I turned my chair around and wedged myself into a space where I could see all around me and wrote the following;

****I feel strongly that I have reached a cross-roads in my life tonight and that death is one of the four roads available to me. By this I do not mean suicide. Death would not be a choice I would choose for myself at this stage of this body's life. I'm not sure I would wish to return to a corporeal form should my existence within this body be terminated. There may be no choice in the matter since continuing in this body until a ripe old age offers no guarantees of release from that which is fleshly anyway. Besides, although these bodies are as fickle as they come, I've always been partial to the sins of the flesh.

Dark Shadows have been in the house for the last few days. Tonight they are all over the place; in every corner and even under the chairs. They were driving me mad looking for them last night. On this night there are too many of them and all of the usual hidey-holes are most likely occupied. It makes you wonder why they even bother hiding at this stage in the game but I know exactly why they do it. They do it because a Dark Shadow that cannot be seen has far more potential for inducing pure, unadulterated terror. All Dark Shadows feed on negative emotions but the one that provides them best with the energy they require is fear. They scare me and yet they are here because I am scared. Another of the Cosmos' little jokes ~ the almost indestructible circle of viciousness.

The Dark Shadows have been inside Wayne (my husband) for much longer but up until very recently they only ever made brief outings. I wonder how they got in there in the first place. They use his eyes more often than he does. I suppose it's entirely possible for them to have always been there. They can get in through cuts just like they have been trying to do to me. When it's dark you can't see them of course but you will feel them creeping along your skin just looking for a way to get in. Then they will destroy you completely unless your essence is strong enough to overcome them.

Darkness in the eyes. Darkness in the essence. Nothing but darkness within a heart that is hollow and stone cold. Does darkness reproduce or does it just get bigger and darker? Does darkness ever join together or consume itself?

I had never seen the dark shadows until these ones. Maybe they haven't all come out of Wayne. It's possible that they might just be like vultures; waiting around for someone to die.********************

At this point, Wayne woke up, found the house lit up like Blackpool, the furniture rearranged and me off my head (I was trying to find cuts on him that the Shadows may have come in from!). I was too scared to even tell him that it was HIM that was scaring me. He shouted at me that I was an inconsiderate bitch and asked if this couldn't have waited until his treatment had started. Then he left with the tent to go and live on a motorway roundabout.

Shortly after that I found that I had a beastie infestation all over my body (not really but there was nobody around to tell me otherwise!). Horrible little fuckers burrowing into my arms, legs and face. I was going to cut them out but there hasn't been a blade in this house for months and (LOL! luckily enough lest I'd be limbless by now!) I couldn't get into the garage for the jigsaw. I just pulled 'them' out with my nails.

My mum arrived on the scene just before I started having full on hallucinations that I couldn't rationalise at all. I saw people in my garden and in my house. I even had quite complicated discussions with some of them before they dissipated in front of me (I thought I was in the Simpson's episode where Homer eats the Guatamalan chilli peppers). The people in my garden were sculpting my hedges and trees into the most beautiful shapes. I was impressed but thought they were cheeky bastards for not asking my permission first. Then I hallucinated my neighbours dropping camcorders over the back fence to spy on me. I saw the men from the probation hostel I work in walking down my street. Various things like this kept happening for three days until I eventually slept for 19 hours. I'm glad my mum was there to look after me otherwise I might have ended up with a bed next to Wayne in the loony bin!! All in all a very scary three days that I would not care to repeat.

Rather than just the speed, there were many precipitating factors involved in this little episode but it just served to remind me how important it is to stick to rules we set ourselves in our drug use or simply don't use drugs at all. Since then, I've carried on with my three days a week speed thing but I've made damn sure that I'm taking every opportunity I get to sleep!!