HARD LESSONS

Readers have responded to our request for personal experiences with P:

It got to the stage I couldn't step into a shopping mall or go anywhere because
I felt people were staring at me or laughing at me.

It had created such a high intensity of fear in me. I locked myself away from
everyone.

It has taken me over a year and a half to recover. That's not to say I am fully
recovered, but I do feel 100 per cent better than when I was on it.

One thing I stress to you all out there is never get into an argument with a
person high on P. The results could be fatal.

Anonymous, Manurewa.

The father and I became good friends. I started to notice the black eyes, cuts
to him and his girlfriend's face, their cars kicked in and the fighting with
each other when on P.

He told me coming down on P was so bad that suicide seemed a better choice. He
took his life.

He left a simple note saying he loved his children but "wasn't a good man".

For me he was a good man. He just took bad drugs.

My sadness is for his children, who had to bury their dad because of P.

Anonymous, Whangaparaoa.

I was hooked. I used it to assist with sales at work. I used it to wake up in
the mornings. I used it to go out at night.

Rapidly she became my mistress, and I was hopelessly infatuated.

I was convinced that I was being watched, that I was undergoing some sort of
test by an unidentified secret society. I was sure all my phones were bugged,
and would go to extreme lengths to foil the people who were following me.

Eventually, I attended the funeral of a friend I had not seen in quite some
time who had killed himself.

He had experienced paranoia, had heard the TV speaking to him and eventually
hung himself. I decided to stop using.

Steven.

I was on it for eight days straight, night and day. My boyfriend was also doing
it and we both knew that we had to stop as it was affecting not only our
relationship, but our state of mind.

The after-effects were unreal. I was anxious, angry and extremely stressed.

I thank God and my own strength for getting off it before it took control of my
life.

It has a sort of freaky way of taking hold of you. I went cold turkey and
stayed strong.

Worried Kiwi, 22, female.

I haven't had a good sleep in days. I sleep with a golf club next to the bed
waiting for the inevitable to happen.

No sound goes unnoticed in our bedroom. We are constantly watching the footpath
outside, waiting for the crashing of glass - we don't know what's going to
happen.

All we did was accept a family friend into our home. We didn't know what the
boyfriend, who followed, would bring.

What do you do when you have reason to believe drugs are being distributed from
your home? Do you tell the police?

Anonymous.

In 1995 four mates and I moved to Sydney. We got involved with drugs and soon
discovered that the most evil and addictive of all was speed.

I can clearly remember at the time all of us thanking our lucky stars that New
Zealand didn't have a problem with speed as there were already enough lunatics
there.

Anonymous.