More Zoom and Discord

  

   After I got placed into a Single Room Occupancy shelter (SRO), I became, once again, a daily user of the Zoom platform as a place for me to use. Now that I had stable housing, I found myself creating my safe space on Zoom. I nearly stopped meeting up with people in person to get high with and hook up with. Zoom had became my sanctuary. 

    I started forming what felt like some real relationships with people across the world. All people that I would use with online. My real world really only consisted of my life on Zoom. I barely ever left my SRO. The only time I would ever leave was to go and pick up more meth. With my cash assistance and my pandemic unemployment I got every two weeks, I was able to get a whole ounce, which would last me for those two weeks.

    I became a shut-in. A hermit. 

    I became known in Zoom. People knew me. I had friends. I thought that these friendship were real. Some of them were. Like with my friend Dippin' Thots aka Ryan. Ryan and I originally met years before we became such close friends, in the room Twack City. This friendship has been through the wringers. But it stood strong and true through all of the addict behaviors. This is the only friendship that lasted through the time and past our time on Zoom. The only one. Ryan had went from someone I saw daily and said hi to online, to someone I talked to on the phone with daily, for hours on end. We had our ups and downs, but I could always count on Ryan to be there. He was there for me online. He has been there for me in my real life. 

    The Zoom platform provided the space for community. Eventually though, with a bunch of addicts, there seems to come up a bunch of drama. People not trusting each other. People doing shady things to each other. All coming from a place of paranoia and anxiety. 

    This is what made me leave Zoom finally. I thought it was going to be hard to leave Zoom, but it wasn't because the negative started overwhelming the positive things. 

    But I was introduced to a new platform. Discord. Another social platform with an underground drug community. Much smaller. Much more intimate. Much less sexual harassment and scrutiny. What I wanted from Zoom to provide me, I found it in Discord. A true community of people who do drugs and who embrace one another.

    I stayed around Discord for a few months, but with the hassle of Zoom gone now, I found myself happier, but still having my own paranoia and anxiety. Everyday that I was awake doing drugs, I found myself feeling bad. Clearly I needed to get clean from this drug, and fast. Changing People, Places, and Things was not cutting it.