What it feels like to smoke weed, snort coke or shoot heroin

What it feels like to smoke weed, take coke or inject heroin

The effect of heroin, according to a forum user recounting a friend's experience, can be summed up in five words: "the soul detaches from the body." The effect of a joint is more akin to eating half the fridge while laughing. Those seeking to know what it feels like to smoke a joint, snort coke or inject heroin face an uncomfortable difficulty: there is no single answer, but as many as there are organisms. Between these two extremes appear peace, sleepiness, euphoria, palpitations and cold sweats. The underlying question, admitted in the initial query itself, is not what one feels, but why one goes back.

Effects of heroin, cocaine and hierba, substance by substance

Opioids are described with a vocabulary mixing well-being and clinical terms: peace, sleep, a sense of well-being and, in some cases, an orgasm. In others, the same compound causes delirium, dizziness, nausea, vomiting and dysphoria. Everything depends on the dose and how accustomed the body is. When tolerance rises, the effect reduces to reversing withdrawal: well-being is no longer pleasure, but the absence of discomfort.

Cocaine receives a much less epic definition: a very strong coffee. It doesn't matter if you are tired; it leaves you feeling brand new. The price appears on the other side, with psychosis and paranoia in acute intoxications. Ketamine ranges from sleep and well-being to hallucinations described as very bad. Amphetamines move in similar territory.

Hierba has its own catalog. Relaxation, laughing at anything, extreme hunger —some admit to having emptied half the fridge—, tunnel vision, echoing sounds and the sensation that even a bad record sounds like a masterpiece. At high doses come palpitations, cold sweats and episodes of distress known in slang as bad trips (or "amarillos"). A casual user summarizes their experience without frills: confusion, dizziness, hunger and sleepiness.

Is a joint the same as a shot of heroin?

The comparison is the most debated point. Some argue that equating hierba with heroin is a scale error, and that alcohol and tobacco, both legal, cause greater social damage than the four users of illegal substances. Opposing this is the argument that any drug produces physical harm and mental deterioration, and that the distinction between soft and hard drugs serves mainly to reassure consciences.

The recurring example is coffee or beer: normalized substances that also alter the nervous system and that nobody puts in the same bag as a shot. The discussion heats up when someone recalls that hierba also leaves sequelae: memory, attention, retention issues and mood changes that scare people.

"I'm in control": the breaking point of self-control

Daily use appears in accounts with a recognizable pattern. Some describe people over 40 who need three, four or five joints a day —breakfast, lunch, snack and dinner— and who, in lucid moments, admit they should smoke less but cannot. Others cannot sleep without smoking beforehand. Tolerance forces an increase in dose to achieve the same effect, and this applies to any substance, including coffee.

Here the fracture is diagnostic. Some place the problem in the substance; others, in the person. The most repeated argument in the second camp is that some get hooked on anything —joints, alcohol, pills, glue— because they don't know how to measure, and that most moderate consumers go unnoticed because they live their lives without fuss. The warning is the same in both cases: daily use has consequences.

Testimonies that don't fit into statistics

One of the longest accounts does not speak of the substance, but of living with it. It is the story of someone who fell in love with a polydrug user, socially well-adapted, and believed they could change them. They describe sens, music, cinema and beach life at full estimulante ilegal, but also the selfishness and disintegration that ended the relationship. They say they left because deep down they knew she didn't love him: she only loved herself and the drugs.

At the opposite extreme is the memory of a neighborhood hit in the late 80s, then presented as the European capital of drugs. Out of an entire youth group, only two survived. Between both experiences slips a geographical comparison: someone living in the Netherlands for almost seven years observes that consumption there is residual and visible, while upon returning to Spain the feeling is the opposite, with a selling point less than 500 meters away in cities. And a reading recommendation, Flash, by Charles Duchaussois, for its description of the addict's spasm.

The account of consumption rests on a border that no one draws the same way: the one separating recreational use from abuse, and abuse from dependence. Almost all testimonies acknowledge that the body holds out until it stops holding out. It remains unanswered whether that border is marked by the substance or by the person consuming it.