My experience with drug psychosis, trauma and the resulting voices.

I've been experiencing what I believe to be voices in my head for 6 years now. It began when I started doing meth; it got really bad to the point where I wasn't sleeping, I wasn't eating, showering, brushing my teeth. I stopped communicating with family members, I was taking 10+ pills a day and going on binges for 4–5+ days.

I thought I had friends at the place I was working at, but I started to hear them talking about me. I worked in a meat processing factory at the time and the noise in the warehouse was really loud so I would wear noise canceling earmuffs. I was hearing them, they ALL talked badly about me, I swear I could hear them through my ear muffs. When I would confront them, they would act like nothing happened, then go right back to it. I was losing my mind. I eventually couldn't cope with it anymore and stopped showing up to work. I lost my job, people stopped talking to me. To this day, I know in my heart that most of them were talking shit and weren't my friends.

Losing my job meant I couldn't pay rent. 4 months went by and my landlord eventually kicked me out and threatened to have someone break my legs if I wouldn't pay for the months owed. At this point, all my savings had run dry. I spent most of it on meth. I had an abscess under one of my tooth which I had to get removed. I tried to do it myself when I was high with a pair of needle nose pliers and ended up completely shattering the tooth. I was messed up. I was snorting meth, and after a binge, I would blow my nose and keep the tissues and boil them to make meth tea. My lowest ever.

I was homeless living in my car for about two months, stealing from grocery stores to feed myself. I eventually got caught. Cameras saw me bag an apple pie. Cops asked me why I didn't steal a steak instead. I was living in my car, couldn't cook a fucking steak. I got off with a warning and was banned from the store. So much weird shit happened to me while I was living in my car.

One night I parked behind a garbage dumpster in the parking lot of some random business at like 1am to sleep and a random car pulled up behind me (it was a kids car, like a souped-up Honda Civic or something like it) and it just stood there with the headlights on, car running, no one got out, just watching me. I got out of my car with a switch blade I had stolen (stealing was my way of surviving back then) and the car just instantly switched to reverse and tailed it out faster then I could blink. I didn't sleep that night, no matter how many times I switched spots.

The paranoia of being followed haunted me as well as these voices I would hear in the middle of the night. It felt like I was stranded in the middle of the ocean with sharks circling around me. Paranoia was my reality, day in, day out. I was a defenseless animal trapped in a corner.

One late night, I had a bag of 30 meth pills on me while I was driving down the highway and there was this parallel off-road trail to my right that stretched out following the highway for atleast 5-10 kilometers it seemed liked, honestly seemed like millions of km to me because a dozen cop cars and ATVs were speeding down the trail like something straight out of a movie with their sirens going off, side by side with me. I had never been more freaked out in my life.

I took the nearest exit and drove up into the mountains (I lived in Québec Canada back then) and found a house in the middle of nowhere with no cars in the driveway and no lights on. I quickly spotted that and decided to park there, turn my car off, switch the headlights off, and wait.

I waited for about 10, maybe 15 min and I swear to God; maybe I was just really high but to this day, I still remember it this way; a mini remote controlled monster truck drove up the road and made a left into the driveway where I was parked and then just stood there next to my car. I saw it because of the street light and the noise it made… all roads there in the mountains are gravel roads. It drove up and stopped 5 feet away from my driver's door, looking straight at me.

I panicked, I thought the cops had followed me there and used this little RV truck as a remote camera to watch me. I did the only thing that seemed logical at the time; I shoved the bag of meth pills into a very dark place. I pooped the bag out the next day… it was riped and I was VERY high. The pills turned into mushy powder. It was powder, but not dry. Moist enough to clump but not gooey. I didn't fucking care, I just wanted to get high, so I would take clumps of it and either mix it with Gatorade or straight up ingest it.

I eventually got fed up with the lifestyle. I felt ashamed and disgusted. I had no money left. No more support lines. I had burned all my bridges so I seeked help.

I got into a 6 month rehab program funded by the government (most people there are mandatory by the court, I was voluntary). I finished and got sober only to relapse once I got out.

At first, my dad let me stay at his place for a couple months but I found my own place. Really cheap basement appartment. No bedroom(living room is the bedroom) 250$ a month.

This is where the voices really gripped into me and ate my fucking mind, chewing away at it day by day. I didn’t mention it previously but I was in the hospital before rehab in the psych ward for sever psychosis. I called the ambulance after a long binge with no sleep or no food thinking there was worms crawling out of my testicles. I was ready to cut them off…. I was taking a lighter and burning my own testicles AND anus thinking there was worms in there crawling under my skin.

Once at the hospital, I was questioned by a psychiatrist and apparently I was talking about suicide. I have no recollection of this besides the moment I was in the hospital on a table with no pants or underwear on, holding my balls saying “there's bugs crawling on and inside me” and next thing I know I'm in a wheelchair speaking to a shrink. No idea what I said, I just have the image but apparently I was talking about suicide. They kept me there for 3 days and gave me meds to help with the withdrawls.

When I was in my appartment, my daily life was consumed by these voices. Anything I did, or say, or wrote… any action I would take, brush my teeth, take a shower, pee, cook food, even just the motion of getting out of bed or just laying there watching a movie, it would be narrated in a negative way by this voice. Like when I was watching a hockey game “look at his eyes, is he following the puck? Yeah, he's following it.. oh wait, he lost it. Look at his eyes, he can't follow the puck. Oh, now he's got it. Wait, look, look”And it wasn't just one voice. It was like he was watching me with some high tech spy gear that I could not begin to understand. He would watch and comment, then call his friends in to look at what I was doing like I was some sort of circus animal. Then there was the girl, she defended me a couple times, but it was only to fuck with me. Like the good cop bad cop routine, I was hearing these fuckers 24/7. I only had peace when I was sleeping. Listening to music didn't help, they would speak through my headphones. Putting earmuffs didn't help, they would just talk louder. These fuckers even commented on the way I was breathing, the position I would chose to fall asleep in. It was a fucking nightmare, an ongoing, every waking minute, 24/7 fucking end me now type of nightmare. I knocked on every single door in my appartment building trying to catch these fuckers. Their voices came from above, but the person living above me was a single elderly lady. I was going mad. Pure fucking hell I was in, and I'm the one who purchased the ticket.

I got fed up, moved to another province. Fast forward 6 years, and I'm completely fucked. I got fat, can't talk to my family or anyone. I'm sober 5 years from drugs, but the trauma lingers I don't hear the voices anymore… it's worse; I think them. Like they still say the same shit, only telepathically. I can't fucking focus, I can't do anything I love or say what I want or do what I want without being insulted and brought down. It starts the very second I wake up, and ends the very second I fall asleep, unless I drink alcohol. It doesn't shut them up, but it makes me not care.

I lost my job again, and all I want to do is sleep forever.