Comedown

The sensation of slow withdrawal from the effects of a drug. Comedowns vary from drug to drug, but in general, with downers they're like a slow reassessment of reality, all the bad things and all the good are overwhelmingly intense. A bit like waking from a pleasant dream.

From uppers, the comedown leaves you numb, cold, lifeless and astonishingly fragile as well as physically sick.

To be avoided or slept through if at all possible.

It's the pits, man.

Like a halftime show between awake and asleep stretched out forever, band still playing and cheerleaders still dancing at the faintest edges. Like a sequence of words you need to say that won't come out right, their every iteration looking less satisfactory than the last. Like staring through the window of a cosmopolitan restaurant in winter, the inside filled with warm colors, smells, and people as your breath forms condensation on the ice-cold pane. Each interpretation maddening if only because it's impossible to make out clearly, each subtly but tangibly reminding you of the blissful state that so recently went away.

Comedown is one of those sensations which, at the time, you never want to experience again. But by its nature it is easily forgettable, and invariably, you end up in the same place, coming down once more. In the first hours you wonder how long until the drug leaves your system, you estimate times and plan diversions. Soon you begin to wonder if you'll be whole when it does, or if you're irreparably damaged inside. Finally your reason mostly ceases, and you simply wonder if it will ever fucking stop.

Eventually you find sleep. Fitful at first, sleep so light that you don't feel it come and go, only getting more tired as the glowing red bars coalesce into different numbers. Later, you sleep the sleep of the dead, after which your girlfriend will ask why you didn't answer her calls and your boss will ask you why you missed your shift.

And later than that, by hours or by days or by months, you will do it all again.

Comedown is both physical and mental.
Examples of drugs which will have a strong physical comedown are alcohol (obviously) which will probably leave you with a headache and sometimes aching joints.
Many drugs will leave you with both physical and mental punishment.
Ecstacy will do this, the physical is often magnified by the fact that many xtc users will be raving or clubbing so the body gets overtired, but you will also become scattered. In other words, it will feel like the electric impulses in your brain are dull and you will generally feel lost, confused, and depressed.

There are also drugs which will leave you with a primarily metal come down, shrooms are an example of this, because they are extremely taxing on the mind.

Earlier in this write up i mentioned that drugs punish you.
I said this because I see comedown as a form of punishment for doing something bad for you.
In other words, what goes up, must come down.

Further, although this stage is called 'come down ' it can also be seen as a come ^up .
By this i mean that your body comes down in a short space of time, then spends several hours after that trying to come back up, and bring itself to speed.

It can also be noted that comedowns are relative. The more psychoactive the drug you take, often your mind will be tired afterwards, if the drug induces more of a physical effect for example speed, your physical state will be more affected in comedown.

Come"down` (?), n.

A downfall; an humiliation.

[Colloq.]

 

© Webster 1913.