Click Here for PART THREE
Do I begin with the usual bunkum? I am born to a mother, from the loins of a father; I weigh such-and-such pounds; I am so-and-so inches long…
Do I start at that climacteric moment, when I first ingested a chemical, setting me along on a railroad bent for fervid self-destruction?...
Or perhaps we can meet in between…
My declivity did not initially spring forth overnight, rather it was a sluggish obstacle course of feckless profligation, where the starting line was not my picking up, but long before then, as an early teenager.
I’ve always been told in 12-step programs, that the problem lies not in the bottle, or the syringe, or the baggie. Instead, the problem lie within myself. The drugs were a minor peccadillo compared to the larger issue of what was wrong in me, inside me.
My formative years were plagued by long episodes of chronic awkwardness, and heady attempts to be, in the most unadulterated of terms, cool. I felt I was shorthanded in nearly every aspect of life. My parents were divorced, neither were wealthy, and my father moved my sister and I all around, into homes in neighborhoods I deemed not good enough, or rather, as good as everybody else’s. I was scrawny and not athletically inclined, I didn’t have the right clothes, either. I was habitually protean, constantly trying to find out where I fit in, shifting shapes, like a puzzle piece that could not find his place in the cosmic jigsaw of life.
I had popular cousins in school with me. Popular and attractive, and all that I was not. My skin felt like a shell made from camouflage. I may have been noticed, may have had a few friends, but I was noticed for the wrong reasons, and didn’t have the right acquaintances. But what was this scale that I measured everybody and everything against? And who calibrated it? Who crated these expectations that I was having such a difficult time reaching?
It was me. I made a profession out of hammering myself down before I even had a chance to begin.
It did not help that I struggled with diagnosed depression on top of all the internal madness. And it should come as no surprise then, despite all my efforts to titivate all I was given to work with, that my self-confidence, my self-image, and my self-worth, quickly deteriorated into deleterious shrapnel, sunk deep into the tissue that was my teenage career.
I could go into specifics. I could chronicle instances and characteristics to portray a more vivid image of what all this chaos looked like, but for the sake of brevity, let me say that, very far back into my memory, I can recall most finely, that I was the epitome of uncomfortable malady. Volumes could be written on: what happened to me this, or what happened to me that, but what’s important to know bears repeating once more; the problem was me.
*****
A
sort of salvation came when my best friend, Clara, and I were invited to a
party, and not just your typical high school soiree (although I should note I
wasn’t invited to many of those, anyway). No, we were going to a college party. And at 15, we were to be
the youngest in attendance.
It was during this occasion that I got drunk for the very first time. Extremely drunk. In the past, I had drank the odd beer, oftentimes even feigning inebriation to come off as—that word again—cool. But this time was different; I didn’t need to fake it. Nope. Not one, tiny bit. I chugged the beer like it was an antidote for the faulty hand the word had dealt me, from a deck of cards made up entirely of Jokers.
The alcohol filled me like an empty reservoir. Each beer went down quicker than the one before it, and the fervent warmth that is so unequivocally alcohol’s, began to course throughout me like an oil slick. I could feel my face flush with the potion, and abruptly, just like that, it clicked. No, not just it… it all clicked. Suddenly, I had resolve. Suddenly, I knew the answers to all the questions I had ever asked. Suddenly, I had the answers to questions I hadn’t even thought to ask yet.
I drank, and I talked & socialized. I drank, and I danced. I drank, and I was ok. I drank, and I didn’t care, I drank, and I wanted more. I never wanted the feeling to go away. Hours later, greasy cheeseburgers and so many “Oh-I-love-yous” later, that feeling did go away, and it went away hard.
The next morning, I had the pleasure of being graced with my first hangover. I felt, quite literally, that my brain was playing at fisticuffs with my stomach, and the price to pay for the loser would certainly be death. Well, I was half right, and my penalty was death by vomit into the porcelain pee-hole.
I foreswore, then and there, huddled over a spot meant only for bare asses, retching what I thought looked like the contents of a sack of rotten meat from a slaughterhouse, that I would never drink again…
I drank the next weekend. And the weekend after…
I can remember, at one of these parties, there was a closed door. I did not like closed doors. They felt like so much more than mere doors. I saw them as barriers between me and the certainly (or so I believed) fantastical goings-on behind them. Closed doors were Great Walls of China, and I positively had to know what happened on the opposite side.
On this instance, I asked someone nearby what they were doing in that bedroom, in that bedroom behind the Great Wall. Several people were in there, after all, and all my thinking told me, was that something important was going on, and I was not wanted.
You see, I would come to find out later on, that all these thoughts and voices in my head, all the varied lines of one-way conversation that reigned supreme, were called “committees,” and together they formed a lecherous chorus that constantly filled the caverns of my mind with verse & codas of uncertainty.
I had found out that they were smoking pot in that bedroom, and since I had never been stoned before, it probably would not have been the brightest of ideas, to have then and there be the first time I toked. That moment came a short while later, and the story behind it is an ironical one.
I had volunteered to work at the smoothie bar of a café of sorts, sponsored by a local church, where Christian rock bands came to play. I had become a pretty steady drinker by then, and had little by little started to break out of my cocoon. After all, as I stated previously, booze had been an antidote to my standoffishness, so I felt comfortable enough to be able to work at this gathering ground, and blend up fruity concoctions for teenagers wearing studded bracelets and tees splashed with the image of Christ on the front, with slogans like “Jesus is my homebody,” emblazoned on them.
While working one night, a boy and girl came up to the “bar” and struck up a conversation with me. The two didn’t seem so different from anyone else, with the exception that their shirts didn’t bear crosses or silhouettes of the Holy Ghost. They asked if I wanted to hang out for a bit after I was done working, and I said I could actually leave then. So left we did, and in Willy’s (the made of the duo) car, they pulled out a pipe with marijuana in it. I was half-exhilarated, half-terrified.
When they asked me if I had smoked before, I tried to think of some quick repartee to disguise how unsure I was of how I should tell them I hadn’t, so I just blurted out, “Yes! Of course I have!” Well, there was no going back now. I thought, I’ll sound like a moron now if I confess I really have NOT smoked pot before, and I am going to LOOK like one when I try to use that god-forsaken glass contraption!
I was relieved, though, when I was not expected to take the first hit and, focusing on what they did, by erudition I was able to light the damned thing myself, and I inhaled the first skunky cloud of what would be many to come.
I didn’t think I had done it correctly, but very quickly, I was downright stoned, completely geeked out on the sticky green stuff. Any lover of ganja can attest to how I felt my laughter could not be stopped. I remember how tingly my body felt. We went to a park, and despite it being Midwinter, with snow on the ground, I recall not caring at all that I was playing in the snow in nothing but flip-flops. I was having the time of my life.
I’m sure I don’t need to tell you what happened next, but I will anyway: I began to feel a hunger growing in my belly more ravenous than any hunger I could being to memory. Just like I had gotten a hangover after drinking the first time, now, after smoking pot for the first time in my life, I had the munchies. If ever Dracula lusted after a virgin’s blood, I was going to eat.
And it was at Krispy Kreme that I consumed the best donut I ever had. Actually, the best half-dozen donuts. Each bite was an ambrosia that my taste buds cried out for. My stomach seemed bottomless, and even after my new friends dropped me off at home, I gorged myself further on anything I could get my paws on: I was a pig at the trough.
It was during this occasion that I got drunk for the very first time. Extremely drunk. In the past, I had drank the odd beer, oftentimes even feigning inebriation to come off as—that word again—cool. But this time was different; I didn’t need to fake it. Nope. Not one, tiny bit. I chugged the beer like it was an antidote for the faulty hand the word had dealt me, from a deck of cards made up entirely of Jokers.
The alcohol filled me like an empty reservoir. Each beer went down quicker than the one before it, and the fervent warmth that is so unequivocally alcohol’s, began to course throughout me like an oil slick. I could feel my face flush with the potion, and abruptly, just like that, it clicked. No, not just it… it all clicked. Suddenly, I had resolve. Suddenly, I knew the answers to all the questions I had ever asked. Suddenly, I had the answers to questions I hadn’t even thought to ask yet.
I drank, and I talked & socialized. I drank, and I danced. I drank, and I was ok. I drank, and I didn’t care, I drank, and I wanted more. I never wanted the feeling to go away. Hours later, greasy cheeseburgers and so many “Oh-I-love-yous” later, that feeling did go away, and it went away hard.
The next morning, I had the pleasure of being graced with my first hangover. I felt, quite literally, that my brain was playing at fisticuffs with my stomach, and the price to pay for the loser would certainly be death. Well, I was half right, and my penalty was death by vomit into the porcelain pee-hole.
I foreswore, then and there, huddled over a spot meant only for bare asses, retching what I thought looked like the contents of a sack of rotten meat from a slaughterhouse, that I would never drink again…
I drank the next weekend. And the weekend after…
I can remember, at one of these parties, there was a closed door. I did not like closed doors. They felt like so much more than mere doors. I saw them as barriers between me and the certainly (or so I believed) fantastical goings-on behind them. Closed doors were Great Walls of China, and I positively had to know what happened on the opposite side.
On this instance, I asked someone nearby what they were doing in that bedroom, in that bedroom behind the Great Wall. Several people were in there, after all, and all my thinking told me, was that something important was going on, and I was not wanted.
You see, I would come to find out later on, that all these thoughts and voices in my head, all the varied lines of one-way conversation that reigned supreme, were called “committees,” and together they formed a lecherous chorus that constantly filled the caverns of my mind with verse & codas of uncertainty.
I had found out that they were smoking pot in that bedroom, and since I had never been stoned before, it probably would not have been the brightest of ideas, to have then and there be the first time I toked. That moment came a short while later, and the story behind it is an ironical one.
I had volunteered to work at the smoothie bar of a café of sorts, sponsored by a local church, where Christian rock bands came to play. I had become a pretty steady drinker by then, and had little by little started to break out of my cocoon. After all, as I stated previously, booze had been an antidote to my standoffishness, so I felt comfortable enough to be able to work at this gathering ground, and blend up fruity concoctions for teenagers wearing studded bracelets and tees splashed with the image of Christ on the front, with slogans like “Jesus is my homebody,” emblazoned on them.
While working one night, a boy and girl came up to the “bar” and struck up a conversation with me. The two didn’t seem so different from anyone else, with the exception that their shirts didn’t bear crosses or silhouettes of the Holy Ghost. They asked if I wanted to hang out for a bit after I was done working, and I said I could actually leave then. So left we did, and in Willy’s (the made of the duo) car, they pulled out a pipe with marijuana in it. I was half-exhilarated, half-terrified.
When they asked me if I had smoked before, I tried to think of some quick repartee to disguise how unsure I was of how I should tell them I hadn’t, so I just blurted out, “Yes! Of course I have!” Well, there was no going back now. I thought, I’ll sound like a moron now if I confess I really have NOT smoked pot before, and I am going to LOOK like one when I try to use that god-forsaken glass contraption!
I was relieved, though, when I was not expected to take the first hit and, focusing on what they did, by erudition I was able to light the damned thing myself, and I inhaled the first skunky cloud of what would be many to come.
I didn’t think I had done it correctly, but very quickly, I was downright stoned, completely geeked out on the sticky green stuff. Any lover of ganja can attest to how I felt my laughter could not be stopped. I remember how tingly my body felt. We went to a park, and despite it being Midwinter, with snow on the ground, I recall not caring at all that I was playing in the snow in nothing but flip-flops. I was having the time of my life.
I’m sure I don’t need to tell you what happened next, but I will anyway: I began to feel a hunger growing in my belly more ravenous than any hunger I could being to memory. Just like I had gotten a hangover after drinking the first time, now, after smoking pot for the first time in my life, I had the munchies. If ever Dracula lusted after a virgin’s blood, I was going to eat.
And it was at Krispy Kreme that I consumed the best donut I ever had. Actually, the best half-dozen donuts. Each bite was an ambrosia that my taste buds cried out for. My stomach seemed bottomless, and even after my new friends dropped me off at home, I gorged myself further on anything I could get my paws on: I was a pig at the trough.
*****
The
following day, I felt revivified. I was completely relaxed, I was completely
free, and I completely just did not give a fuck. And so began my foray into the
stoner, hippy culture.
I grew my hair long (yes! believe it or not, I used to have a full head of shoulder length hair back then), and I started listening to classic rock like Led Zeppelin and the Beatles, although I’ve always been a Rolling Stones kinda boy at heart. I wore braided hemp necklaces with pendants of tiny little mushrooms embedded into orbs of glass. I spent weekends traipsing around Yellow Springs, perusing the head shops for Nag Champa incense, and yes, every stoner’s requisite scent: patchouli oil!
All the while, I was getting high every day, and drinking as much as I could. I immersed myself in an attitude of not really caring about anything: schoolwork, rules, etc. I totally abandoned any disputatious tendencies for a more “by-stander” stance. The only things that mattered were getting stoned, and hanging with my friends (with whom I now had a plethora; potheads all seemed to have that open-minded, carefree cadence I had adopted, and it seemed if you were “a joker, a smoker and a midnight toker,” you were always welcome to join the group.
So while I blossomed into a fairly social butterfly, all else fell by the wayside. I had great difficulty in balancing the various areas of my life. I had either too much, or too little. While I Was reveling in allowing my tegument to fall away, by going out more and more to party with friends, seeing how much trouble we could get into, other aspects of my life suffered. I cannot say how many times I’ve heard the phrase, “If you would just apply yourself…” and looking back, I see how true that was.
During the summertime of my 16th year, Clara (still my best friend) and I dove headlong into cocaine abuse. With Willyfromchurch and our other companions, we spent every Friday & Saturday night snorting up the insalubrious substance. I had gotten my first job, and every paycheck I received, went straight up my nose.
For years I dabbled with omnifarious drugs: more cocaine, acid, benzodiazepines, cough medicine, always smoking pot and drinking alcohol. But it was at 18 that I picked up what some would consider one of the harder drugs: crystal meth…
Click Here for PART TWO
Click Here for PART THREE
I grew my hair long (yes! believe it or not, I used to have a full head of shoulder length hair back then), and I started listening to classic rock like Led Zeppelin and the Beatles, although I’ve always been a Rolling Stones kinda boy at heart. I wore braided hemp necklaces with pendants of tiny little mushrooms embedded into orbs of glass. I spent weekends traipsing around Yellow Springs, perusing the head shops for Nag Champa incense, and yes, every stoner’s requisite scent: patchouli oil!
All the while, I was getting high every day, and drinking as much as I could. I immersed myself in an attitude of not really caring about anything: schoolwork, rules, etc. I totally abandoned any disputatious tendencies for a more “by-stander” stance. The only things that mattered were getting stoned, and hanging with my friends (with whom I now had a plethora; potheads all seemed to have that open-minded, carefree cadence I had adopted, and it seemed if you were “a joker, a smoker and a midnight toker,” you were always welcome to join the group.
So while I blossomed into a fairly social butterfly, all else fell by the wayside. I had great difficulty in balancing the various areas of my life. I had either too much, or too little. While I Was reveling in allowing my tegument to fall away, by going out more and more to party with friends, seeing how much trouble we could get into, other aspects of my life suffered. I cannot say how many times I’ve heard the phrase, “If you would just apply yourself…” and looking back, I see how true that was.
During the summertime of my 16th year, Clara (still my best friend) and I dove headlong into cocaine abuse. With Willyfromchurch and our other companions, we spent every Friday & Saturday night snorting up the insalubrious substance. I had gotten my first job, and every paycheck I received, went straight up my nose.
For years I dabbled with omnifarious drugs: more cocaine, acid, benzodiazepines, cough medicine, always smoking pot and drinking alcohol. But it was at 18 that I picked up what some would consider one of the harder drugs: crystal meth…
Click Here for PART TWO
Click Here for PART THREE
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