There were other, obvious things to like. Speed was cheap and it lasted a lot longer than coke. For a 28-year-old freelance writer struggling to pay the rent, that made a difference. Sure, it burned like a motherfucker when you snorted it, but you got used to that. I scored some from the machinist and shared it with my friends and girlfriend, using it, late at night, washed down by many a beer, to break on through to the other side of socializing, that place in the wee hours where the down and dirty stories of your life get shared and acquaintances become recognized as soul mates.

And so it went for a few months. Then, one morning, I sat in front of my computer monitor, utterly uninspired. I had an assignment to write a 1,200-word piece on a suite of software applications known as Microsoft BackOffice. It was borderline P.R. for a trade magazine -- a critique of Bill Gates as evil monopolist wasn't what the editor was ordering. And I didn't want to do it.

I considered the fact that some speed remained from a blowout the night before. That there was any left at all was unusual; typically, the night ends when the last trace of powder has been licked clean from inside the baggie. I decided to do a test -- in the interests of science. Hadn't I watched my friend the machinist operate tools on speed that required total concentration and delicate control? And it wasn't as if I was trying to create lasting prose that would awe the poets of the land.

I did a couple of lines.

Two hours later, my story was done, the dishes in the kitchen sink were clean, the laundry was folded, and the house plants were watered. I had started a grocery list and a to-do list and was trying to decide what was next: reorganizing the icons on my desktop, alphabetizing my CD collection, or spending the rest of the afternoon organizing a master plan for getting healthy, wealthy and wise. Speed, without alcohol as a buffer, or friends to interact with, was something completely new to me. On speed, I could get shit done.

Right away I knew I'd never met a drug more dangerous.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Speed, like any other stimulant, is fun going up and miserable coming down. And once you've done too much, the focus and precision go out the window. Think about the feeling you get when you've drunk one cup of coffee too many. You're a little jittery, a little headachy. Multiply that by 100 and you've got an inkling of what it's like when you're maxed out on speed. You're grinding your teeth, your mouth is feeling dry, your sweat starts to feel toxic and metallic. You take a shower, to try to get clean, but it only works for a few minutes. You start drinking water and find that you can't get enough, but it seems to go through your system without even stopping for a chat with your inner organs.

The crash is horrific. Massive headache, depression, dehydration. Speed is not good for you, and your body tells you that in every possible way. But your mind... your mind is more amenable. Your mind is always saying, just a little boost would be OK.

From the get-go, I was aware that I was dancing with the dark side. Even as I continued doing it socially, now that I was using it for work, I wasn't putting it all on the table, so to speak. I was setting some aside, secreting away baggies inside obscure audiotape cassette boxes. I didn't want anyone to know that I was doing lines in the middle of the day by myself. I also didn't want to share, even with my girlfriend. Getting high with her was a blast, but meeting my deadlines was a necessity.

But it was good for my work. Making a career as a freelance writer in the teeth of a recession is a challenge, and I needed all the help I could get. I was working seven days a week, for anyone who would pay me, always under deadline pressure.

And the stuff I wrote wasn't bad! At least, not judging by what my editors and readers told me. It was quality shit. I was my own best editor and critic on speed, scornful of lazy writing. Transitions had to be perfect, arguments airtight.

I once finished a massive, hundred-page project in a four-day-long speed-fueled frenzy, doing huge fat lines every couple of hours, from early in the morning until past midnight, sleeping uneasily for three or four hours at a time. Midway through the home stretch, it occurred to me that there was an underlying tension in the piece that, if drawn out and made explicit, would tie everything together in one brilliant stroke. Only problem was that it would require rewriting the entire thing from top to bottom. My speed-intensified brain couldn't back away. I did a couple more lines, and rammed my way through, like a hopped-up fullback knocking tacklers hither and thither as he rushes for the end zone. Nothing could stop me.

Yeah, there was that one moment on the fourth day, when, moments after a line, I sat at my desk feeling my heart beat like a tribal drum and I thought to myself -- I am in complete control. I could stop my heart from beating with a single thought right now. But I soon dismissed that fleeting epiphany as paranoia and returned to my current task of removing every single passive construction in some 40,000 words of writing. And making sure the margins were just right. And the footnotes. Don't get me started on the footnotes.

Some months later, I went to a bar where I had arranged to meet a guy -- let's call him "Al." Al was a little shifty. He had a nice grin but a hard time keeping a job as a landscaper. His shoulder-length hair was a little scraggly. I didn't know him all that well -- he had worked for another friend of mine who was also a landscaper.

Al was supposed to know a guy who could sell me some speed. My machinist friend was getting a little flaky and wasn't returning phone messages. There was another guy I knew, a biker dude whose claim to fame had been playing bass for the third incarnation of a second-rate Southern rock band, but he was in jail, and there was no telling when he'd be out. So I was down to Al.

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