How long did it take you to get addicted to coke ? How much were you consuming daily/weekly ? How long did it take you to realise you were addicted, and then, how long before you decided it had to stop ?

I have some friends who take coke once a while, and some who may be doing it a bit too often, it seems like some have been doing a few lines every other month or something and seem to not have any trouble, while some others just start doing it many times a week very quickly.

Thanks for doing this thread, and glad you've recovered.

I feel like I play amazing poker on addys but every time I take a bad beat I have a mini panic attack and contemplate suicide.

Greggy first off congrats on the sick run!! and good luck at the final table of the main event. I am also addicted to blues, I like mostly all drugs but percosets are hands down my favorite drug in the world. The purpose of me responding to this post was not to brag about the drugs i do, but to ask you a few questions on your experience playing on drugs and eventually your progression to getting clean and eventually going on the ben lambesque circa 2011 heater you went on this summer. So for my experience Im a live cash pro and i pretty much smoke weed every day and when im into doing blues and not on subs do about 3-6 blues a day.... I have found that while I think these habbits probably do affect my poker game I've had 3 of my biggest winning sessions this year basically on like 150 mgs of roxy and on the flip side two of my biggest losses... Do you think you played that much off of your A game when on blues? Did you go on any sick heaters while on them or even crazier have you ever felt that you may play better when high on pot or blues if it helps you relax a little bit or whatever the case? (i have serious back problems so while sometimes I think I give up a little bit mentally I also gain a lot by not being on edge from having my back hurt while sitting in an uncomfortable chair in the casino for 6 hours) lastly what was the final breaking point that made you go clean and what do you do when you have the cravings to do blues? For those of you that aren;t familiar with the drug you probably can't understand some of my view points or questions but blues are probably some of the worst most highly addictive drugs around and they really destroy lives, most people that do them will usually end up going into rehab and eventually usually come back to the drug or turn into heroin heads or dying way more than staying clean

While you're busy answering this question, what is a more painful process? stubbing your toe, or getting shot by a gun?

On a serious note,

How long/serious was your roxy addiction? Hard to tell from the OP.

A lot of things were being "determined" 4-5years ago about weed that are now proved to be bs.

As for the gateway topic, I dont think weed is a gateway to harder drugs. Ive been smoking weed since Im 15 and I never did anything else. Youve no idea how many times Ive got offered harder stuff (all the time for free) and I always said no. Weed doesnt bring you to coke, heroin or LSD, it brings you to the entourage of people doing those drugs, they are now "accessible". Its all about choices and personality from that point, nothing to do with previous weed abuse/usage. My 2c.

Weve the same history w father and school too ;o It ended like you too, really close to my father now. I would be interested in hearing how is/was the relationship between your father and your grandfather alike?

Prop to you for this thread and VGJ @ WSOP

Glad you got clean. I agree with the no drinking. I've had friends relapse w/oxy when just trying to drink socially, it lowers your inhibitions and you just want the high. Same with pot, it seems like a safe drug, but when you're already aware of the high other drugs give you, pot eventually just makes you crave the more intense high.

This is a great thread. Ive used adderall alot while grinding and luckily it never got too bad as i never had my own script. Luckily i stopped doing cocaine before i started grinding because i could see how amazing it could make grinding seem! GL all

What? Adderall is basically meth and just overflows your mind with dopamine. I am recovering/trying to kick it to this day.

Adderall is the devil. I was up to 300mg/day on xr30s alone and chewing IR30s inbetween. Im at the point I think without adderall I don't produce the dopamine as you should. If I don't have my addys ill just be a log.

Def not +ev in any way, oh and that excuse to get "laid" comment is horrible and disgusting.

All this is after my 2-5grams of coke usage I kicked cold turkey.

Just be responsible guys. GL everyone with any disease they are fighting at this time.

Marijuana is not a drug. Legalize this **** please

My experience of going clean from weed was that after a very brief period of time, I'd say like 7 days, I had no craving for it at all, and started to feel really good. Kind of sharper and cleaner. I even won a Karate tournament that was kind of a big deal for me, and I hadn't smoked in a week as I recall.

So then, the fact that I WASN'T smoking weed started to boost my self-esteem, like, I feel good because I'm getting these impurities out of my system and "getting back to myself." Of course I was getting really extreme into yoga at the same time in the ashram, so, that is a different scenario. But I definitely felt good that I wasn't smoking it. It wasn't like "do it" or "don't do it" but just more that I felt like it was clearing out of my system, and so I was building up my purity with time, so that felt good. I know it supposedly takes like 6 months to clear THC from fat and nerve cells or whatever.

I will say that over the course of that first year, and maybe 2nd year or even longer, hard to say exactly, but there were times when I was more tired or irritable... especially like irritable sometimes. It's like my mind was recalibrating to reality, while simultaneously my cognition was altering by not being run through this weed/THC filter any more. If that makes any sense.

Since then, I haven't felt like smoking it. My ex GF smoked all the time, I would just leave the room, she smokes, then I **** her. Or I get out of the car, she smoked, we go to the movies. or whatever. I got heavily involved in computer programming and became a total code monkey, as well as some other things, and so now I wouldn't smoke because I feel like it would **** up my multi-dimensional thinking abilities or whatever, my high level logic or whatever. I've sometimes wondered if smoking would inspire me or shake out the cobwebs and give me some awesome insight, but looking back, in my teens it ultimately did no such thing, I was just watching TV and tripping out, or boning some white cotton panties for two hours thinking I was rocketing to mars or whatever.

Minus the weed, everything is the same, but I just have a better handle on everything, and I don't have these weird solipsisms or "ugggghhhhhh" like heavy head rushes or whatever where I'm just going "woooweeeee." For me, everything is better without weed, and although I think it is a fine drug and should be legal, I'm just at a place where I for sure wouldn't do it, because it wouldn't help me and seems to have a very complex distorting effect of some kind. Even if I was 90 I really doubt I'd do it, even if I was dying, ugggh, that just seems like a very scary and not fun trip. Be all high and look in the mirror and say "****, I am 90" or whatever, then watch teletubbies and go "whoa, dude."

But yeah... I don't know if that helps at all, and sorry it was kinda rambling. I haven't smoked in 20+ years, and it doesn't even cross my mind. I will have a few drinks now and then.

I do have a bit of interest in "nootropic" nutrients, for instance I like lecithin and choline/inositol. I've tried the more concentrated phosphatidlycholine, and the alpha GPC, which both I thought were good mental stamina boosters. I've heard about others, for instance Piracetem, which sound beneficial, however I am very, very cautious about taking anything which could affect my neural receptors or enzymes, or alter the neuro-chemical balance of my system or whatever. As long as I know it will just was clean and is natural, then I am ok with it; there are some new nutrients being concentrated, but I'm always slow to try new things. I would never do adderall or ritalin or that stuff; like there is always a cost I think, the energy isn't in the powder it is in you. I see some players in vegas and their pupils are so dilated, I mean, fine, go for it, but you are ****ing around with your brain. I wouldn't do it.

Thanks for responding anilyzer.

I disagree with this. how did you get to 300 mg per day? were your using it for recreation? how long and often were you using it?

any prescription drug that's abused will become the "devil."

explain how cocaine is overall +EV. really interested in your response.

Started off by the docs writting me legal scripts and then it became one of those things I couldn't kick. 2 xr30s 5 times a day becomes useless after sometime.

Its like the steroids for poker players for many.

agreed, but I'll also add one more reason that its seen as a "gateway drug": Because kids are told that "drugs are bad" and that weed is a member of the "drug" group, kids will take weed, see that its a mostly positive experience with few negative side affects(for most people), and then assume that the adults were similarly lying about the drawbacks of taking other drugs.


For every story like this there are literally hundreds of people who have tried weed and not progressed to harder drugs as a result.

Some people want to "escape" life and they do drugs in order to achieve this. That they start out with a safer drug like weed and then progress to harder stuff does not mean that weed is the culprit for them turning to harder drugs(although as I say above, after seeing how harmless weed is, it is possible that this causes them to dismiss some of the similar warnings they are being told about other drugs).


agreed. People who want to "escape life" through drugs will get tired of weed and move on to harder stuff. But these people almost always had this desire to "escape life" independent of their weed use. In my experience people who use weed(and other psychedelics) as a means to improve themselves, improve their objectivity, and to minimize their ego will very rarely progress to harder drugs as a result.


Would you say that you approached drugs as a means to educate/better yourself or as a means to party and escape life? I'm pretty sure its the latter, right?

I certainly am not going up to young kids looking for an escape and advocating weed use. However, I think that for many intelligent adults who aren't looking to use drugs just as a means to party, psychedelics are one of the best forms of self-improvement.





Anyway, gregy sorry to hijack your thread with pro-weed talk(I can't help myself sometimes). You've always been super cool to me, and I'm rooting for you both at the FT and to never fall back into your addictions. I'll also echo Aaron's sentiments about not knowing how open you were about all this(I knew just because we have so many mutual friends in Toronto), but I think the ability to openly discuss your own faults/shortcomings is admirable.

this tolerance must have built up over a prolonged period

the first time i took addy in 2008 without knowing how strong it was and i had been clean for nearly a year at the time, i ended up playing 23k hands in one day and was scarred ****less to take it again since it made me so high. Then after i relapsed in 2011 i started taking them for live games only cause i would find myself being bored cause I'm used to playing 1500 hands an hour. I started by taking 10 mg and eventually moved up to 20mg which i took every single day for the wsop last summer. For me, addy was like being on steroids and i crushed the nl games for the first 4 weeks. However the last 2 weeks, including a bobbys room shot i took, i started noticing severe mood swings that effected my thought process and tilt control. I've always felt pretty good about my ability to not tilt or snap quit when i feel it coming on and i completely lost control of that towards the end of the summer.

If you don't have an addictive personality i think they are fine to take on a rare occasion for enhanced performance, otherwise they are basically synthetic cocaine and the XR's are like a 4-8 hour high on blow essentially.

The biggest downside for me was not being able to sleep at night so i would smoke my face off to pass out and then wake up the next day burnt out on weed and have to take an addy regardless if i was playing that day or not just to have energy to do anything. It was a viscious cycle that i was so ****ing happy to get myself out of.

Hope your friends don't end up on the same path it took me down.

gregy

For me and for most addicts its 100% roxys. Coke is not physically addicting like roxy's are, so the withdrawal from coke is all mental. My withdrawal from roxy was the worst 24 hour depression I've ever experienced along with throwing up, diahrea, sweats, chills, headache, muscle pain, couldn't eat. Most of which lingered for nearly 8 days before feeling normal.

The 2nd time i tried coke i was addicted, i just completely fell in love with it. In college i was doing whatever i could afford at the time which was at least a gram a day but when i relapsed last year with access to unlimited amounts i would do as much as i wanted so kinda hard to know how much i was doing each day. Last year i was more into addy then doing blow every day and only did blow when i partied for the most part.

My first time around with blow i knew i had a problem about 3 months in. You rationalize your problem for a while by saying its not that bad, or i don't do it everyday, and once you do it everyday, well i only do it at night ect ect.
I came clean to my parents and checked into rehab about 3-4 months after i realized how bad it was and was now dead broke and 25 pounds skinnier.

Ive done blow with friends who can do a line and then never feel the need to do another one the rest of the night or for 6 months or whatever. Just depends on the person, since it is a mental addiction, some people have much more control over that part of there brain than others.

I've never been a believer of drugs making you play better, although with people who had ADD i guess addys can really help them focus and play better. However, any type of depressant could never enhance your performance in a game of high intelligence. It can help you relax and not feel the stress/pressure of the swings of gambling but to actually improve the way you play just isn't possible. I believe people assume they play better high on weed/blues/other downers because when they try playing off them, say the next day or two, there brain is so chemically inbalanced to the point where they can't think clearly without being under the influence. Therefore there under the assumption they play better high when if they got clean and gave there brain time to recover from the inbalance i think they would see even better results.

8 years, give or take a year

300g/day of addy sounds so insane. Wouldnt that make your heart explode?

VERY VERY interesting stories/experiences/viewpoints ITT.

This just isn't true and is severely limited to certain gametypes. Just a quick example, I had a friend who was an extremely aggressive laggy 6max cash reg who tried to transition to DoN's when they first came out, and downers made him significantly more tight/passive (more optimal for that game type). The same example can be made for people who just can't lay off the pedal, I mean it would have to be +ev to have something that stops your aggression a bit even if it clouds your judgement/decision making process.

What was said about being lied to about weed is true, many of my friends who heard weed was equivalent to heroin, then when it wasn't were inspired to try other stuff. When they realized they were lied to about lsd/mushrooms/mdma as well, it led to them trying basically everything/eventually oxy/meth and those are just so hard to not get physically addicted to.

Personally I've never found anything more addicting for myself than alcohol and am really glad i was able quit drinking hard liquor before it was a real issue in my life. Nicotine i've had no problem using casually for many years even though its supposedly more addictive than anything but something about alcohol just grabs at me worse than anything else.

Good post man, I agree with most of this, however, for the bolded stuff :Although you know this, just wanted to clear it up :
This is the fault of the people who lie about weed and say it is very bad for you etc...
Some of my friend's parents took a very good approach imo and told their kids "Listen, weed isn't that bad etc..., it's better not to do it, but it's not gonna **** up your life etc..., and they they also educated them properly on the dangers of other drugs.". Most of these guys tend to stay away from hard drugs a lot more than the people who's parents told them weed is the devil etc...

Here's an article my friend wrote about Greg in the University of MD newspaper

http://www.diamondbackonline.com/new...0#.UBG6xVE8D8s

Great thread, thanks for being so honest gregy, and everyone else whos posted. I've smoked weed almost every day for 10 years, the only other drugs ive tried have been mushrooms and lsd which i cant say i regret because theyre a diff type of drug, not something u use everyday and ive had great experiences on them. I barely ever drink. I do agree that weed can be a gateway, unfortunately a decent amount of my friends have over the years done harder stuff which ive always told myself id never do. Almost a year ago i lost one of my closest friends to a heroin overdose after he relapsed and its still painful to think about, and really made me think a lot more about quitting even weed. for me tho, weed has always balanced me out and stabilized my mood, helped with tilting and get thru rough times, and it seemed very compatible with the poker grind lifestyle because it doesnt have strong enough of an affect to make you play bad. Another big problem with harder drugs is that even years after quitting, going thru a negative phase in life can always trigger a relapse. With weed, no matter how depressed one is and no matter how much u smoked, u can never die, so thats a plus. I havent smoked in a week which is a lot for me, since ive been sick, its always good to take small breaks, but since like all my friends smoke its hard not to get back into it. I do find it disturbing how common diff pills are in poker nowadays particularly xanax/percs/addys, at my local casino found a syringe in the bathroom once too that was pretty ****ed up. Not related to poker at all, but i saw a disturbing short documentary recently about a new drug growing in russia thats a more dangerous form of heroin. http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?desktop...H8llvTZo&gl=US