Speed bugs, picking, and formication
"awesome. I just wrote like three paragraphs and the
stupid site randomly refreshed and deleted it.
AAAARGH. let me try this again
writing in notepad so i don't lose my comment again.
I could write a book about this stuff.
I could write a book about this stuff.
I used to have a
really bad problem picking my skin when I used drugs. I was an active heroin addict for 8 years,
started doing coke 2 years after the H, then used meth for the first time 5
years in, and had a triple habit shooting heroin and meth every day and also
smoking crack for 3 years on and off. I
picked the hell out of my skin the very first time i used meth, I also pulled
out so much of my hair that i had a huge bald spot in the back of my head and
had to shave all my hair off. At first
it was the meth that made me pick but eventually i would pick whenever I got
high on any kind of drug even downers like heroin and benzos. It's a really terrible cycle. In addition to picking I was diagnosed with
something called 'trichotylomania' which means to pull out your hair. Picking is sometimes serious enough to be
diagnosed as 'dermatilomania' aka pulling / picking at skin compulsively.
Dermis = skin, mania = insanity / compulsion. I could spend an entire 24 hours
sitting on my floor or standing in front of my mirror picking at my skin or
pulling out my hair. It was very common for the sun to come up on me while I
sat in the same spot picking, having started doing it the night or even day
before. I would pick with my fingernails, tweezers (always had a pair on me and
i owned like 20 different pairs), syringes, razor blades, exacto knives, a
metal 'skin care tool' that has a hole on one end that you drag across pimples
to pop them out, sewing needles, pocket knives, and all sorts of sharp metal
things. Sometimes I would pick so bad it
would look like i had road rash on my face from a car accident. i would also pluck out my eyebrows (every
single hair) my arm and leg hairs and even
my pubes. When I would pull / pluck out
hairs it was because they would sometimes have these clear or white 'gel'
looking tubes either attached to the hair root or stuck in the pore / follicle
itself, these would pop out after i plucked a hair out. When I picked it was because I saw little
white worm looking things and black specks coming out of my pores. I would collect these 'bugs' / 'parasites'
and stick them to pieces of notebook paper as proof of my 'infestation'. When I got sober I threw out like three whole
notebooks full of this crap. It's a
really disgusting and scary habit. Once
I started nothing could stop me, i would only stop when my fingers hurt too
much to keep going or my hands would cramp up.
I was terribly ashamed of doing it but I couldn't control myself. I would do it in front of my friends and even
in public, if someone asked me to stop I would get mad and do it more
frantically. Most of the time I honestly
believed that there were bugs in my skin and I didn't connect it to the drugs. I thought I had morgellons, or scabies, or
bird mites, or some kind of nanotechnology virus engineered by the government
to drive me insane. My mind would play
weird tricks on me while I picked. i
would think i was playing a game that someone had invented to test me and the
object was to collect as many 'bugs' as possible in my notebook, or that if i
collected enough 'specimens' i would make money off of them somehow, or take
them to a doctor and help discover a new disease. I would often see them moving under my skin
or outside of it, sometimes I could feel them biting me or hear them make
hissing noises. Weird crazy SCARY shit
that made no sense.
I once got MRSA so bad from picking that I was told at the
ER that i was days away from dying of sepsis.
I had to be held for three days and given tons of oral and IV antibiotics
and had to take special showers several times a day. Staph is common with pickers because it lives
under your fingernails. You could also
get cellulitis, blood poisoning, necrotizing fasciitis (flesh eating virus) and
all kinds of terrible infections. to this day i am covered in scars. They are the worst on my arms and legs, they
have gotten a lot better since I stopped picking obviously but in the right
kind of light, when it's cold, or when I get a sun burn you can see that every
inch of my arms are covered in overlapping scars. There are scars from when i cut myself as a
teenager, years worth of track marks, abcess scars, and layer upon layer of
picking scars. my nose is always red
from times when i picked all of the skin off it trying to get rid of
'blackheads' and 'clogged pores', kids in my hometown sometimes make fun of me
by calling me 'Rudolph' which is extremely embarassing. The scars will never go away, but they do get
less and less noticeable as time goes on, thank god.
The stuff that you
see happening to your skin is going on for a reason. One reason is that you are
hallucinating. Meth and other stimulants
make you hyper focus on things and make you want to do something repetetive or
detail oriented. They also cause
sometimes subtle and sometimes very vivid visual and auditory
hallucinations. I have been locked in my
second story apartment and heard dozens of people in the street whispering
about me. i once heard someone climbing
the wall outside my window and thought i heard them trying to open my window, I
have heard people pounding on my door trying to break it down, I have walked
down the street in San Francisco and literally every single person on the
street was talking about me. I have been
chased by cars, people on bikes, and worst of all 'shadow people' *shiver* I
once pulled a two inch long black worm out of my armpit. The scary part about that one is that I put
the 'worm' in a drawer and it was still there the next day and I showed it to
some sober friends and they were freaked out by it and couldn't tell what it
was. Looking back on it i think it was
probably a long strip of skin and dried blood, but it came out of my armpit
when i was picking, kind of popped out of a hair follicle, when it popped out I
was so shocked by how long it was that I screamed and started to cry. Meth causes psychosis, it is very seriously
damaging to your mental functions, it is no joke. So anyways, if you are hyper
flocused on your skin, seeing things that are not real on or in your skin, and
compelled to do something repetetive; that is the neurotic and insane
combination that leads to picking. There
is also formication and delusional parasitosis that occurs when you use
stimulants.
Here are some methods
i have found useful to heal and repair skin as much as possible after really
bad picking episodes. First of all it is
essential that you wash the skin as much as you can. It will hurt but you have to do it. I suggest using 'Hibiclens', this is an anti
bacterial soap that really works wonders to prevent and treat skin infections
and it is very gentle on the skin, just try not to get it in your eyes! Pour a decent ammount of hibiclens on a
washcloth and gently wash your skin. Use
it instead of body wash in the shower.
When I had MRSA and sepsis Hibiclens is what the doctors had me wash my
skin with at the Denver hospital i was staying in. You can buy hibiclens at Walgreens, duane
reed, safeway, etc. Another product that
works really well is called 'Prid', it is a homeopathic 'drawing salve' for
abcesses and infections that have pus or bacteria in them. You put a huge glob of it on the wound and
cover it with a non stick gauze pad and tape it up. I have put Prid on abcesses before, left it
under gauze overnight, and in the morning the abcess had drained and was almost
completely healed. I have given a
container of Prid to several of my actively using friends and many of them have
healed their own abcesses using it. Prid
is really an amazing product and it is one of the essential things I always
kept around when i used to pick. Prid and Hibiclens are your first line of
defense against serious skin infections, both of these products can be bought
at Cvs, walgreens, rite aid, etc. some
holistic products that work really well are cold pressed Neem oil for topical
use (it smells bad but works wonders) and Colloidal Silver for topical and oral
use. Many people who suffer from
Morgellons swear by Colloidal Silver.
You can get Colloidal Silver at whole foods and gNC but i buy mine
online because there are alot of fake and low quality CSilver products out
there. Nutrasilver is a good online
version. Colloidal oatmeal and lavender
bath soaks for eczema are great. Tea Tree oil is anti-parasitic and anti
bacterial but should not be used in deep open wounds. You can buy diatomaceous earth 'clay' which
is good for topical use on abcesses that have not opened yet or started
draining. the diatomaceous clay works
like a drawing salve and will bring the abcess to a head. For healing I use neutrogeena naturals
moisturizer and Aveeno excema therapy lotion.
Bathing or soaking your skin with lavender epsom salts can help reduce
itching and irritation but is not good if you have a lot of deep open wounds. Lavender oils and lotions provide a lot of
relief for pain and itching as does Dr. Bronners lavender soap. Grape seed oil and grape seed capsules are
amazing to heal and soothe wounds from picking and to fight infection. Milk Thistle capsules are good for your skins
healing when taken orally once a day. Grape
juice is good to flush the toxins out of your system as is cranberry
juice. Try mixing sea salt and lemon
juice and soaking your skin. Swallowing
a clove of garlic like a pill once a day or just eating a lot of garlic in your
food will flush toxins out of your system and fight bacterial infections. Swallowing a pinch of cayenne pepper in water
is also good to detoxify your body.
Drink alot of water. Soak in a
warm bath. Wash your face with a warm
wet washcloth and lots of soap, Hibiclens or something for sensitive skin like
cetaphil or a kind of soap without harsh dyes and scents in it, then lay on a
thick coat of moisturizer and sleep with it on so it can sink into and
condition your skin. Steam and heat will
reduce swelling and pain. Cucumbers laid
on the skin will reduce swelling, soothe, and provide relief. Cut a potato in half and place it over a
pimple, bump, ingrown hair, or abcess and it will draw the poison out of your
skin. These are just some methods that I
have used and found to be very effective.
Do a search for morgellons and eczema home remedies and you will find a
lot of other things that will work for healing wounds caused by picking.
Lastly i just want to
say that if you are tired of being at the mercy of your addiction maybe it is
time for you to seek help to get sober.
I was about as bad as it gets with my addictions and i am currently in
therapy and AA and things are getting better slowly but surely. It is important to have a support system if
you want to get clean and sober, nobody can do it all by themselves. NA, AA, SMART recovery, and Life ring are all
support groups that will help you work towards a drug free life. Reach out to somebody else who has been
through it to hear their experience, strength, and hope. You can recover, people do it every day, you
just have to want it and do whatever it takes to change your life. I sincerely wish you all the best of luck and
happiness no matter what you decide to do moving forward. Take care of yourselves and try not to hurt
yourselves. Your health is very
important and you are worth taking care of, don't let society and stigma about
drug use make you feel worthless. Do
some research on harm reduction to learn how to use drugs in a safer and less
destructive way.
http://zenithchasing.blogspot.com
>>> This is my blog about my recovery if you want to learn more about
what i am doing to change my life and try to live without drugs and alcohol and
also to heal from the painful events in my past both drug related and not. If you need someone to talk to please know
that i am always here to listen and offer whatever advice that I can. Good luck, take care, stay strong, and stay
blessed. <3"
- Zenith Chasing
