Drugs are bad?

 When I moved to Melbourne in 2003 (this in more detail later) – I felt a bit lost and alone and I remembering doing a google search for dance music websites – which led me to inthemix… yes… yes indeed… -laughs-

Anyway I made this totally awesome group of friends – online and physical.  I personally pissed a lot of people off – oh hai ^_^  This is probably the period in my life what I have been the most social I have ever been.  I am still so incredibly thankful that a lot of the friends that I made are still around now – it may only be virtual – they are still my friends… we’ll get into my horror years eventually.

Oops I forgot to post this!  Yikes!!! This is just a brief foray into some of the insanity I have gone through while enjoying myself! ;)

Sssssssooooooooo a bunch of us on the inthemix had been stalking an Australian dance act called infusion.  This was in 2005 so the cyber-stalking laws don’t come into play… So anyway it was a bit of a fun – and then OMG!!! Jamie from Infusion emailed a couple of us…. HE BOUGHT ME VODKA!!!!!  Seriously you buy me vodka I’ll hump your leg or something…  So we got to see Infusion live – I think from memory I was asked to look after one of our group and he was asked to look after me (he was so fucking wasted) but OMG! OMG! OMG! I got to meet Jamie from Infusion and I got to have maccas with a very drunk man at roughly 3am at Kings Cross McDonald’s… 

This weekend was literally all kinds of fucked up…

The following night we had a BBQ at a friends place – the view was freaking awesome harbour everything so on… the guy I was looking after the night before and myself were told to not do any drugs… yeah… about that… THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN – so I escorted him home and I’m getting messages from the girl I was staying with that she was at this hotel which was on my way home… yay lines of speed in the toilets and when we get home I have a gentleman (straight) reading poetry while there is house music on the stereo.

FESTIVAL DAY!!!!!

I have no idea why I went to Parklfe – I think it was more around just getting to see Infusion for me.  Anyway, it was probably one of the funniest days I’ve ever had – hugging trees, stupid amounts of drugs, NICK WARREN, me trying to dance to dubstep and suddenly not caring… People trying to find me, people losing me, people finding me again.  Me trying to find people,  ohhhh music, sorry who are you?  Me getting dragged off a dancefloor…

We’d arranged to meet at a pub near Moore Park and when I showed up I was asked if I had any sleep – I was honest and said no… I was still speeding off my dial from the night before – Starship Troopers makes just as much sense when you’re totally fried.  It pretty much all went downhill from there – tree hugging, “OMG YOU’RE NETTSU FROM INTHEMIX”, trying to dance to dubstep (I still don’t get it), having someone sent to look after who leaves me two fat lines of MDMA on a toilet seat and then disappears – there’s something ironic here, someone being to sent to drag me off a dancefloor (NICK WARREN BITCHES) – I wasn’t happy about being dragged off the danceloor (NICK WARREN BITCHES) as I couldn’t understand why – when I could… I couldn’t string two syllables together.  And there’s Jamie and I couldn’t string one syllable together – I think pretty much everything came out as a ba-ba-ba.. which set to the right beat could have worked.

So we then go to a kickon and yes well… I crashed and burnt for about half an hour and when I woke up – oh look Michael’s awake let’s give him more drugs… I think at that stage I did pretty much have a reputation for being a massive trashbag.  I’m getting phonecalls from the girl I was staying with and I pretty had to put an end to the weekend.  I show and her housemates are looking at me – “when did you last sleep?” – still looked that trashed apparently… I go home the following day, my boyfriend at the time picked me up from the airport dropped me home – gave me a valium and said here you need to sleep – I’ll talk to you tomorrow… when you think about it – that’s actually pretty awesome!

Friends used to hold a free techno event in Catani Gardens in St Kilda – they were generally off-tap enough.  Techno and beers – yes beers… so this one particular day it ended up getting rained out.  So we end up at a bar in Ellwood drinking beers and playing pool.  Some of us were starting to get bored so we end up at a friend’s apartment snorting lines of E.  What could go wrong?  Another group of friends had a regular party in Melbourne’s CBD so we decided to go that – and it got messy from there – lines of drugs off people’s work desks – awesome, awesome techno – jelly wrestling… the friend who got dragged into doing the jelly wrestling asking all of us all night why was she wet?  I have a photo of me and her somewhere… it still makes me laugh.

Then was the memorial flame on St Kilda Road – I went to Queer Nation which had come down to Melbourne to do a party.  I decided to go – I thought it would be something different… oh yes! Something different it was… I took my first pill – it didn’t seem to be working so about 30 minutes later I took the second pill… after another 30 minutes – I was still bored – so freaking bored… I decided to walk home (I was living in Prahran so it was a manageable walk) – I got as far as the memorial flame and –bam- literally for the next 3 hours I was staring at this stupid freaking flame and of course it’s across the road from the police headquarters –ahem- there was a couple of police that came and asked if I was ok.  I think by the time they saw my eyes – they figured I was probably ok… I was having fun – I was sitting there listening to mixsets – my legs also didn’t seem to be working particularly well… so yeah… I’ve done some truly stupid shit.

There is a question someone asked me once how do I balance being a parent and having the extensive drug history that I have.  I will say this much – I am obviously not going to be the model for abstinence or moderation.  I prefer the harm minimisation view – I know you can’t always know what you are taking, try to be smart.  That’s pretty much it.  I’d say it’s what I have tried to do in my life but that is FAR from true.

I’ve done illegal stuff – bar the actual taking of drugs, that seems to be much less frowned upon these days anyway… I went to Sydney for a work function and Armand van Helden was playing at a nightclub so a bunch of us (a lot of my partners in crime from Parklife) were going – I had some ask me if I needed any drugs and I did have a bit of a reputation for being a speedqueen – so I asked for speed and a price – I was informed they could get me an eightball of speed for $150 – so I thought wahey why the hell not… -laughs- I really need to buy a clue more frequently – I had no idea of how big an eightball was.  

I was flying back to Melbourne on the Sunday afternoon and I still had more than half the eightball left – so in the sock it went.  Of course because I was coming down from the night before I wasn’t a paranoid mess, you’re a paranoid mess!  Probably one of the dumber things I’ve done.  I’ve sold drugs that I had because I needed the money, I brokered deals – oohhh middleman.  I’ve done drug runs (which is delivering the drugs basically).  Probably the worst – I flew into Tasmania with 3 points of meth “cheeked” or in want for another term “shelved” – so yeah stupid, stupid mistakes.  Do I regret them?  Not really as I (obviously) have a very liberal view on drugs – do I think they were good decisions?  No – would I have made them if I was sober, not-high and not-coming down?  Most likely not.  They were choices I’ve made and like a lot of choices I’ve made – I’ve learnt from them (or I hope I have). 

Something I am quite proud of

I’ll share with you something that I personally was incredibly proud of – I have already detailed my weight and weightloss battles.  I don’t know who owns the rights to it now – back when I did it – it was the BRW Corporate Triathlon (400m swim, 10k bike ride, 5k run).  I thought I trained my arse off for this… yeah well… maybe not!  I spent about 3 months training for this but my main focus was still on weights and I learnt that muscle fitness does not equate to cardio fitness.  Something a lot of guys in prison I found weren’t aware of… anyway.  I had also stopped drinking, smoking and switched to a vegetarian diet – I was obessed!

So I would go for a swim in the morning before work, it’s funny as a child I was a great swimmer, as an adult I wasn’t and I found myself struggling/floundering… I’d walk to work (probably should have jogged) and I’d go to the gym after work – do my weights and finish with a 5km run which would completely knacker me.  I don’t like running never have.  Regardless of the amount of sneakers I own (20 at last count) I don’t run, I sprint which for distance events is really hard.  I would get home and I would jump on my bike and ride what I thought was about 10ks.

So I did this for about 3 months – I was also a vegetarian at this time.  I looked great, I felt great and I thought I could meet the challenge.  Prove to myself that I could do it and hopefully shut the fat me up for a while… 

This is where it gets funny.  So the night before I am trying to fit my bike into the back of my car… a 1986 Honda Prelude… 2 hours, a hell of a lot of swearing and I got the bike in… I considered that a massive achievement – even though I could have cried so many times!  The rational practical 20/20 hindsight equipped part of me should have realised that I should have done a trail run of trying to fit my bike in the car – I should have! I really fucking should have…

So I get up at some ungodly hour to drive down to the Gold Coast for the triathlon… all sweet, find a parking spot, spend a good 15 minutes pulling my bike out of the car.  Lesson here – car may look pretty, functionality is shit.  So I then found out I managed to bend the handlebars either at some point the night before or that morning.  So my bike kept pulling to the left… it made for an interesting 10k ride.  I don’t like running – I never have – I honestly thought that the 5k was manageable – HA!  I wasn’t expecting that about a fair bit of the run would be on sand… so what does Michael do?  Powerwalks the last bits of the run – some would say powermince, hey I got there in the end!

I managed to do it in under 1 hour which I was quite proud of myself for – I will be honest and say I had no idea of what to expect.  I also made the rookie mistake of not doing a practice run of the triathlon so I wasn’t expecting how tiring it was going to be.  Mind you I set out to do something and I achieved it, which until that point in my life I had never done – yay me!

A couple of funny things – when I was leaving, I was walking back to my car and there was an industrial bin – I threw my bike away… I wasn’t going to spend hours struggling to get the damn thing back in my car.  One of the girls I worked with was absolutely dumbfounded and also by my attitude of,  I didn’t pay much for it anyway, I did explain the length of time it took to get it in my car.  When she saw the Prelude – she got it!

One other thing I forgot to do was stretch when I finished the triathlon, I spent a few hours afterwards just standing around watching, chatting and so on.  It took me about 90 minutes to drive home… I went to get out of my car at home and I crumpled as my legs had seized up… I rang my flatmate to see if he was home and he was at work.  I lay next to my car for a couple of minutes trying to get my legs to work…  I managed to eventually get upstairs to the apartment and I would say all was hunky-dory which it kind of was.  I decided to celebrate with a six pack of beer and a meatlovers pizza with extra bacon.  The only thing I really missed during my whole vego period was bacon!