2003-07-07 - 7:52 p.m.

I've had an... interesting few days, as some of you no doubt know.

The last time I wrote was Friday. Jane came over to my place on Friday night, just to hang out- something which we haven't had a lot of time to do recently. Or to be more precise, I drove halfway across Sydney, picked her up from work and drove her back to my place. We'd had a couple of inbetween days, both of us feeling insecure about one thing or the other, and I really wanted to do something to show her how much I cared. Or something. So I picked her up from work.

Jane and I know we're going to move out together at some point, but she was feeling insecure because I wasn't as keen and proactive as her when it comes to actually doing something about it- she would have liked to look at places on Saturday morning, and I was trying to explain how important it was to me to have a few days at home and how I wanted her to be there too, and I didn't want looking for a place to live to be a chore as it would have been if we had got up early on Saturday, looked around and come back down my way for my Mother's birthday. I don't know how well I got across what I was trying to say and she was worried that I didn't want this as much as she did, but I obviously went the right way about putting her mind at ease, because she said that she has these worries and then I do something as sweet as pick her up from work and she knows she has nothing to worry about.

The problem was simply that we hadn't talked enough about semantics. For Jane to decide she wanted to live with me was such a huge thing for her (hell, for her to decide to go out with me was such a huge thing) that when she knew it was what she wanted she did her usual thing and did something about it. I started getting links to rental places on a regular basis. It wasn't that I didn't want it, it was simply that deciding yes we're going to do that, and soon, was one thing, but soon for me means about a month, definitely after Splendour- and I don't really want to look at a lot of places and potentially get attached to them if I'm not ready to sign on the dotted line. I'd hate for Jane to fall in love with a place and me say "ummm, yeah, but... not right now" when I've already said I want it right now. It would have confused her because to her right now is right now, for me it means I'm ready to set the wheels in motion (yes, yes, John Farnham quotes are not cool). Once we'd talked about it, she was completely okay- but for a while I was ready to pick her up and take her back to her place so we could look at places the next morning, because I knew how much it meant to her, and staying at my place that night wasn't *that* important to me.

So anyway, we had dinner and a bottle at the local pub- I forget I have a local, I guess because it's a lot more extravagant than your average pub, it almost doesn't feel like one- plus *shock horror* it's on the other side of the railway line.

It was nice to have a quiet night, and sleep in together, and then the next day we had a BBQ late lunch for my Mum's birthday before heading into the Inner West for dinner with friends from Uni.

Start of a very weird night.

After dinner we had a few drinks at the Rose, and it seemed a lot later than it was. I was keen for a biggish night as our original plans had involved a party that was put back a week. I SMSed my pal Shortie as she's always good value and I figured if she came to the townie we might be able to drag the night on a bit longer.

A bit.

After a lot of red wine, I find myself asking Shortie if she has any speed. We've had this conversation before. I've never done anything illicit bar the odd drag of pot that did nothing to me, and I'm at a point in my life where I want to find things out for myself- make informed choices, base my life on my own experiences.

My own.

Yes I've heard some pretty fucked up drug stories. The worst of all being Annie, but from a very personal point of view I find it sad that Jane's experiences became excessive, because I'd like to share my self-discovery with her, but it's something in her past, something which became a problem, and it upsets me that she wasn't concerned about her well being the way she is now. She's going to have to be wary of her blood pressure for the rest of her life and I think that's got a lot to do with excessive recreational drug use (plus her year as a smoker), and she is going to have to start curbing her lifestyle more than she should have to now because she didn't curb it enough earlier.

I have a Science degree with honours, essentially specialising in drugs, I know exactly what these drugs do to the body in a very dry textbook knowledge kind of way, and I know the side effects (put it this way- I have a desire to get stoned by smoking pot *once* just so that I have that life experience but I'd sooner pop pills than fuck my lungs up like smoking does)- I have an education in these things but there is only one way to get life experience. By living.

Too many of my friends and their friends have had their lives scarred by drugs for me to ever let them be a problem for me. That might sound naive or arrogant but I believe in myself and I'd like those close to me to as well.

I'm interested in the chemical affect the likes of pot, amphetamines and hallucinogens might have on me but I care about my health too much to get into a habit that involves screwing up your lungs or your nasal cavities, let alone your brain. If I end up trying pot more than the intitial experimentation I'm looking at sometime in the next few months I would be a busy little baker because I'm so anti smoking; if I do speed (well, I have now but I'll get to that) or coke (which I doubt I will) I would eat it rather than snort or smoke it because I'm not that fucking dumb, and if I ever ever try acid I won't even leave the house because it's a personal exploration thing and I'd rather not end up walking off a building or in front of a car thank you very much.

It upsets me that three of my closest friends (well, I guess I'm kidding myself if I still think of one of them as a friend) have had significant drug issues in the past, and I guess I need to know why they went there- I know all the bad stuff, but not the good stuff- and I have too many people that are close to me and care about me that have been there and done that for it to ever be an issue for me even if I wasn't as controlled as I'm confident I am.

Okay, rant over :) Back to the night in question...

So Shortie says she doesn't have any Speed on her, but she has some Ice back at her place- such a tiny amount and she's not even sure what to do with it but if I want to go back to her place and get it I can have some. For anyone who doesn't know- Ice (aka Crystal Meth and Glass) is exactly the same chemical as speed- it just looks different. And people smoke it in its crystal form, which is far more intense and addictive than doing speed normally. But since I'm not that stupid I just ate it, so essentially I just took speed. The form I took actually lends itself to being taken orally better than the common form if my Uni knowledge served me correctly at all (knowledge not pertaining to illegal drugs- just the knowledge that most pharmaceuticals are sold as the hydrochloride salt of the actual drug (which is what ice is), because it aids absorption into the bloodstream.

In hindsight I'm more comfortable with the idea of Ice than pills (maybe because now I'm familiar with one and not the other) because (yes, yes I am a chemistry nerd) it's a pure crystalline substance while e's are cut with anything under the sun, and the powder form of speed is more likely to have unwanted remnants of the process they made it by.

So it was a very gradual thing, started off feeling like I was happily drunk (and let's face it, I already was), but I was a bit jittery and I didn't stop talking *all* night, and time just went so fast. Jane and I were standing in the same spot talking (well, one person babbling, the other listening) for *hours*, by the time we got home it was close to 5am, and neither of us could even contemplate going to sleep until 10am, and even then for no more than two hours.

The first bit was more what I'd associate with my impression of speed. The part when we were at the Townie. Back at Jane's house I felt more like what I'd associate with e's- "visions of pills that put you in a loving trance". I just felt all warm and fuzzy and allegedly had the cutest 5 year old grin and kept telling Jane it was all about how good our skin felt together.

And (okay, I'm going to give you the opportunity not to read this if you don't want too much information)...

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I soooooo can relate to the MGF song "Drugsex" now. Enough said.

*attempts to wipe permanent smile off face*

*fails dismally*

So after a couple of hours sleep we walked down to Leichardt, bought the paper and some Oporto's, lay in a park under the blue sky and I just felt so incredibly content. This wasn't about the drugs, this was about being able to find an afternoon to just do nothing with Jane, in beautiful winter weather. It was such a nice weeked, such a nice feeling, it was something special that I think would be ruined by doing it all the time (and while your brain thinks it can do without sleep for 2 days your body knows something isn't quite right), and I can't even contemplate how you could function properly doing e's every Friday night the way Jane did for a while last year (I guess I don't need to mention that there is not even a thought that you could function properly doing drugs in the frequency that Annie did, let alone what drugs they were).

I'm really happy that I can do this and talk like this at a time when I know enough to know "enough". I often regret how sheltered I was as a teenager, but the way I'm approaching these things now is so much more me, I'm not one for ill-advised and ill-informed excesses.

I'm still as sweet and innocent as I was last week.

Hugs and good vibes to all of you man.

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