Beginning of July I stayed awake for six days straight on crystal meth. It was my first time ever on a drug of that power, or a stimulant in general. The first couple days had barely any effect on me, I was so spun out all of the time that I guess I kind of forgot what being sober felt like.

On day three of being awake my vision began to get fuzzy and my hearing was muffled from the lack of sleep, drug use, and not eating since I had started. Basically, everyday tasks became trivial activities that were less important than whatever random thing I was doing. On day four things started to get a little weird… my brain was thinking at maybe 30% of what it was sober, and I noticed it. My speech was slow and slurred. Every thought I had or sentence I spoke either made little to no sense or took me ten times longer to formulate. I remember staring at this coat hanging from a shelf, it was pitch black and almost seemed to be moving as if something were inside it. For a split moment I was sure that there was someone inside of it, but quickly realized I was just a little freaked out and imagining things. Day three was especially hard for me because I had planned to spend it with my family and I realized I had skipped it to do crystal meth and hang out with a friend that was not really a friend.

On day four, it started off as small movements in the corner of my eye that were not really there… seeing for just a split second someone standing behind the curtain or a cat sitting on the windowsill. I wasn’t exactly sure what was happening as nobody explained to me how sleep deprivation can truly affect one’s mind, how it can totally and completely make you go insane. How it can make everything seem mildly distorted and wrong while still physically being the exact same as it was before. I wish that this was the day that I stopped, that I put the pipe down and decided to lay on my bed and let my body rest, but no.

On day five, the paranoia was extreme–those small unnerving sightings turned into “neighbors talking”, which I didn’t realize at the time but it was just voices in my head. I heard them talk about how they were gonna hurt me and my family, how they knew all of my secrets and gossiped with each other about me. I started calling them the Wall People, as I never heard them from inside the room, but through or even in the wall. They didn’t bother me as much as the slight movements of something scurrying away out of my peripheral, though. I saw them more as just talkative beings that had nothing better to do than scare me, but still they did. Hearing your own most disgusting secrets being told to you by something that is not yourself is quite possibly the most upsetting, embarrassing feeling one could experience.

On day six the first thing I saw that didn’t run away when I looked at it was a pair of hands banging on the glass door, screaming “let me in” and “help me” trying to lead me over to the door to open it. I let out a blood curdling scream and ran to hide under the covers.  That very quickly progressed into black shadow figures standing in the corner of the room watching me, observing. I guess the worst part was I couldn’t really do anything about it, my control of the situation lost until I could manage to make myself fall asleep. They lurked in the shadows and rarely came into light, hiding in closets and vents. In hindsight I believe they were benevolent creatures that meant no harm to me. However,  just having to sit there and watch as they watch you was probably the most terrifying experience of my whole life. The sheer lack of control that I had over the situation and that they had over me, truly disturbed me to my core. They whispered talk of death and decay in my ear while I tried to sleep—failing to do so because I was so horrified by the sights that I had seen, that I was still seeing. I ended up passing out at some point that I don’t remember and I suppose that I woke up “normal”, everything was the same but there were no shadow people watching over me.

But there is no happy ending when it comes to psychosis: while they were gone, the paranoia never ceased. It’s been over two months since this happened, and I truly do not believe that I will ever be the same. I can’t perform some basic tasks anymore like going on a walk alone or sitting in a dark room because I’m so scared that I’ll see them again. The dark while once my best friend now is a stark reminder of those creatures that I can scientifically but not emotionally can explain. One day I hope that I’ll wake up and realize I hadn’t thought about them for years, but for now I’ll have to settle for every other day.