You Won't BELIEVE How Bad These Drugs Are

FEATURE | DRUGS

Written by Maia Carr Heke (she/her) | Contributing Writer

Trigger warning: Drug abuse, and mentions of sexual and domestic violence

Illustrated by Ilya Kurilyak (he/him) | @kurilyaak | Contributing Illustrator

WHAT IS UP YOU GUYS, it’s Maia, BACK with another video! TODAY we are counting down MY Top 10 WORST Drugs! Don’t forget to SMASH THAT LIKE BUTTON and SUBSCRIBE!

10. RITALIN!

Doing Ritalin sucked, especially compared to everyone else! They all seemed to be having the best time ever, yet I was off to the side, calm, twiddling my thumbs and wondering if I was defective. It just turns out I have ADHD, and my experiences with Ritalin actually helped me figure that out! I now take it daily, and its actual prescription use is great! 

That’s why it comes in at number 10 on the list – disappointing, but not AWFUL.

9. DEXTROMETHORPHAN!

Every time I did this dissociative drug, my body wanted to mimic the thick, dark red syrup of Robitussin and start its damn period. Imagine having no depth perception and trying to buy tampons for a bleeding part of your body you felt like was 10 metres away from your head! I still managed to have fun on this one (back before it was yanked off shelves), despite often coming to the conclusion that my birth was the reason everything was wrong with the universe.

And that’s why DXM is at number 9! Thought I’d dissociate away from my typical thought patterns a bit more. 

8. ORPHENADRINE!

Coming in at number 8 – this one needs some explaining! Orphenadrine is a muscle relaxant anticholinergic drug. There are many drugs that fall into the anticholinergic category. I’ve linked a Wikipedia list in the description below.

I found the blister pack on the ground, accidentally overdosed, and went to hospital with anticholinergic toxicity. I was utterly delirious, tripping tits, and I’m finding it difficult to recount. There’s nothing I can compare it to – it wasn’t like any psychedelic or dissociative I’ve had.

To help you guys, I’ve also linked some Erowid bad trip reports of similar deliriant anticholinergic drugs, like Benadryl. There’s only one orphenadrine report available, and that person had a different experience to me, so the other links will describe the vibe better. Sorry to disappoint, guys!

7. BENZODIAZEPINES!

My ex-boyfriend and I used to order unmeasured, unregulated Xanax powder off the internet (I was almost arrested, but that’s a story for another video…) and lick it off the end of a knife. We decided to start weighing it safely and properly, but the benzo blackouts made short work of that. We lost so many days, and I don’t know how many times almost our lives. 

I’ll never forget the time I came to in a bush right beside the Northwestern motorway. How many days had it been? Where did I go

6. CANNABIS

“Try a different strain.” “Was your shit laced?”

it was just weed. No matter how much or little, no matter the source or type, it mutated my brain. It speedran the beginning-middle stages of my mental illnesses. I watched it happen on the backs of my eyelids. please listen

I cannot possibly explain in any short form the way my brain cannibalised itself I’ve never heard of any experience similar and I wish I would so I wouldn’t feel so weak ALONE the exponential speed that my thoughts multiplied the babbling the terrifying illusion that burnt pathways in my head consuming eating myself the neurons destroyed essence lost. The Paranoia the static the PSYCHOSIS! (the delusions I still carry) the fear the mind-reading the insistence the way I could not stop smoking because it might be OK this time I have to see if it will fix me this time instead of unravel me even more and reform me wrong 

it was just weed it was just weed and I’ll never be able to explain

5. SYNTHETICS

I take the can pipe from my friend in the stairwell. Is she my friend? I can’t tell anymore. The acrid smoke assaults my lungs and my body begins to sway. Everyone is looking at me and I wish they would stop. Side to side, side to side –

My eyes are locked in the vacuum of the place eyes go when they roll back. There is a pulsing, sucking force around the eyeball and it is tinted a shiny, smoky grey. Suddenly, my eyes are released and I vomit. The smell wafts into my wet nose. I beam at everyone.

“You had a seizure, Maia.”

“Oh, did I?”

I grab the can off the stinking carpet. No one stops me.

4. METHAMPHETAMINE

Doing meth is nice and normal.

She’s a nice lady, save for the fact she’s helping 18-year-old me shoot up in the bathroom of an internet cafe. And he’s a nice guy, despite what he’ll want once the bag is gone. And this church is quite nice if you look past the scorched ceilings and rubble; if you drown out the sounds of two of us fighting for the meth in the pipe stem. And this house is nice, nice enough to burgle. I haven’t slept in days. I can see them everywhere. They are in the room

I’m nice and normal too, obviously. 

3. HEROIN

It comes into my life so casually. It should scare me. It doesn’t.

It removes my thoughts, which is so peaceful and necessary that I don’t care when it replaces them with blown veins and pus-filled injection sites. Or when I start to steal and sell my body for it. I don’t care, not even when I spit on and punch my mother during an argument. And certainly not when I give myself sepsis by cooking and shooting my months-old, heroin-infused blood that sat in a discarded syringe. Or even when my lips turn blue on a friend’s garage floor. And when I become homeless, all it means is that my WINZ doesn’t need to be spent on rent anymore.

2. GLUE

I ate Subway. It had too much salt and pepper in it. We rounded the corner near the Art Gallery and I came face-to-face with a man holding a plastic bread bag to his mouth. A sandwich, like me? But he wobbled on his bench, his eyes were crazed and threatening to disappear back into his skull. He tipped back and dropped his hand as I fell backwards, hyperventilating, into my mother. She told me he was huffing glue.

“Well, I’ll never do that,” I said.

11 years later I am sitting on a bench. I can hardly see a thing.

1. ALCOHOL

I mean, that’s what kicked this all off, isn’t it? I don’t know. Being 8 and sculling three cups of wine you unsuccessfully tried to peer-pressure your friends into drinking doesn’t bode well for anyone’s future, really. I was an addict before I knew what that meant. And it ruled my life for almost 13 years.

Little Maia, please slow down

0. GOING TO FUCKING REHAB

It took time, but I’m almost four years clean. Don’t skimp on healing. Heal twice as hard as you hurt yourself. It’s a slippery slope, but there are exits everywhere. You just need to look – and use them. The earlier the better. 

Don’t forget to hit that notification bell.