OT: Hey You Weirdos!

[bearclaw]

I've seen many people becoming involved in cocaine/crack addictions. It doesn't take very long before that becomes an all-consuming passion. I've seen people give up EVERYTHING for their next fix. In one extreme case, a man even turned his back on his wife and kids!

I personally had a brief problem with cocaine. Fortunatly, I got away before anything drastic could happen but I've seen others go down so far that I doubt they could ever come back. It's truely nasty.

If you want some examples and stories, PM or email me and I can send you some truely horrible cases.

Also, in British Columbia, Canada, if someone gets caught DUI 3 times, they loose their drivers licence for life. And there is NO way to get it back again.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Cocaine is not such a good idea. It's very very VERY hard to surreptitiously sneak it up someone's nose, and ingesting it is a bad idea. Someone I know once told me that he was at a party where someone ate some cocaine, and promptly fell asleep. Some time later, he woke up and immediately fell asleep again. I believe it also happened a third time, I'm not sure. However, sleeping on your workplace might get you a reprimand, but losing your job over it, especially if it occurs only once, is not very likely.

Likewise, surreptitiously giving her heroin the usual way is very hard, unless she's a diabetic and you can put some in her insulin. If you do that, be sure to spike her food with extra sugar, so she'll need more insulin than usual. Be sure to repeat that; otherwise, she might just call in sick for one day and that'll be the end of it. Using heroin repeatedly can cause manic depression, carelessness and recklessness (i.e. you don't care about anything any more and you'll watch your life fall apart around you without caring in the least), aggression, paranoia, etc.

Using LSD a lot causes hallucinations and paranoia, and "flipping" occurs rapidly. When that happens, the user (i.e. addict) will get paranoid and suffer from massive panic attacks. If this happens on her workplace, there's a good chance she'll be sacked rightaway, especially if they find LSD on her or in her desk.

[Renegade 13]

Starhawk said:
(Though I did fall in love with a girl who KNEW I existed and liked me just not in that way and I never told her so this kind of story is a little too close to bad memories....)

Unfortunately I think we all have memories like that.

[dogscoff]

I'd go with sleep deprivation. Fairly easy to cause (especially if the target lives in flats/ terraced housing- just buy the neighbour's twelve year old kid a drum set) and can really screw up someone's life and personality.

Also, if you really want to screw up her life, don't just get her kicked out for her job for drugs or stealing or something. Hack into her computer or sneak into the office or something and delete/ tamper with her work, so she has to work gruelling hours trying to replace/ fix it all, losing touch with the rest of her life, losing sleep, not staying well until, finally, after weeks or months of this, they sack her. *THEN* you hit her with the drugs or the driving charges or whatever, so that she can't get re-employed.

As for drugs... I know speed can make ppl pretty aggressive but I don't know a lot about it (but there's always wiki). I've also seen ppl get really nasty on caffeine, believe it or not. I used to work with this one girl who lived on caff tabs and she was one of the scariest ppl I've ever met. She could flip from pure sweetness and everybody's best friend to hate-spewing *****-balrog from hell inside of about 2 seconds with absolutely no provocation. Looking back on it, I wonder if she didn't have some psychiatric problem.

And as far as screwing with ppl's lives by secretly administering drugs and stuff... I thoroughly recommend you go read "invisible monsters" by Chuck Palahniuk: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...books&n=507846
You'll be glad you did (although you'll be lying in bed awake for about a month, worrying about the soul of the human race)- it's a fantastic book, I burned through it in two days.

[Fyron]

Strategia_In_Ultima said:
Using LSD a lot causes hallucinations and paranoia...

Only while on the drug... Most certainly not after it has worn off.

[dogscoff]

Cocaine is not such a good idea. It's very very VERY hard to surreptitiously sneak it up someone's nose

LOL!

"Hey, look at that!" *points upwards, then quickly produces two drinking straws loaded with Charlie, inserts them into other person's nostrils and blows*

[Randallw]

A few months ago I saw a movie where this female detective was taken to the crime boss and threatened. The boss then goes and starts to snort cocaine through a glass tube with the woman sitting practically next to him on a chair. Now can you imagine what someone who has just been threatened will do to some idiot who is sticking a glass tube up his nostril . Boy did he learn his lesson.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Imperator Fyron said:

Only while on the drug... Most certainly not after it has worn off.

Yes, but if you use it a lot, you can get paranoid even when not on the drug, and the hallucinations can appear too. But that's only if you're really hooked on the stuff, if you take a heck of a lot of it, like, 1970's a heck of a lot of it.

dogscoff said:

LOL!

"Hey, look at that!" *points upwards, then quickly produces two drinking straws loaded with Charlie, inserts them into other person's nostrils and blows*

No, seriously. Cocaine can have pretty major psychological effects, but that requires that you take it in through your nose. Eating it will result in the keeling-over almost comatose sleep I mentioned.

Cannabis is not such a good idea, since it's easy to detect (i.e. smell) and when she smells it, the woman is sure to get the hell out of wherever she smells it.

Slick said:
Crystal meth will mess you up, but I don't recommend using it in a story. It actually destroys your brain. CAT scans clearly show holes in a brain after sustained use. It also alters personality, usually permanently after not much use.

Perhaps that just might be a good idea.

AgentZero said:
.....he's also destroyed what made her the person he loved.

Burning holes in one's brain (crystal meth) is a very effective way of changing one's personality extremely dramatically.

On the other hand, a rebar through the forehead will do the same. I'm not joking; some railroad worker in the late 19th century IIRC had an accident where a steel rod was blown clean through the side of his forehead. He survived, but he was a radically different person after that, got sacked and spent the rest of his life traveling with a circus sitting on a chair with a steel rod in his head. Then again, this might not be such a good idea for the story.....

[Fyron]

Strategia_In_Ultima said:
Yes, but if you use it a lot, you can get paranoid even when not on the drug, and the hallucinations can appear too.

Paranoia, maybe, if you already have a paranoid psychology to begin with. Any powerful (and negative) emotional experience, such as a bad trip, can intensify latent psychological disorders (such as paranoia and schizophrenia). Hallucinations? No. LSD does not permanently alter your brain or live in your spine or anything like that, so it does not continue affecting you after the dose has worn off. Any sort of flashback is a normal procedure for the brain, related to powerful emotional experiences. This is not a property of LSD itself, but of how memories work in general. You can get flashbacks from any experience that triggers profound emotional response, such as falling in love with someone. Please refer to this FAQ on LSD: http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/lsd/lsd_info7.shtml

[bearclaw]

Strategia_In_Ultima saidOn the other hand, a rebar through the forehead will do the same. I'm not joking; some railroad worker in the late 19th century IIRC had an accident where a steel rod was blown clean through the side of his forehead. He survived, but he was a radically different person after that, got sacked and spent the rest of his life traveling with a circus sitting on a chair with a steel rod in his head. Then again, this might not be such a good idea for the story.....

While this story is true, the bar did not remain in his head. What happened was that it struck him in the chin and went through the top of his skull, severed the frontal lobe of his brain from the rest. What ended up happening is that there was no concious or chemical control of his moods. Without any promting or causes, he would have radical and unprecicable mood swings which were so dramatic that he had no control of his personallity. When he was mad, he was nothing but mad, or sad, or glad.

As an interesting comment on the LSD discussion, it has been found that the actual chemical LSD causes a chain-reaction of 'mis-fires' in the brain that last for several hours. The initial cause (the chemical) is actually processed out of the body within 45 min. As a former heavy LSD user (it was a long time ago), I can attest that there are NO such things as LSD induced flash-backs or other long-term affects. (whoa dude, look at the colors of that Phong... it looks so real... BLAST. cool dude, even it's lasers feel real...)

That said, apparently there is still a federal law in the US (drafted in the 60's duing government LSD tests) that states that I've taken enough LSD to be labled as clinically insane...