#4

Divide and conquer, a mantra that my generation is all too willing to buy into, for many of us are all too willing to give up so we can gain. Many of us equate loss of innocence with the gaining of maturity. We somehow believe that if we ram our skulls into a brick wall enough times we get more credit for realizing that it was made of brick. And how can we not? How can we not be tempted by all our friends who look at us with those dazed and glazed and confused expressions and tell us how much fun they’re having, how trippy it was to sustain a skull fracture, how much more expanded their mind is now that they know first hand the durability of brick, which compared with the thickness of their own skulls is laughably malleable. Since that night wherein I rocketed into that much-touted totalitarian state of mind known as drunk, there were others like it, most specifically my 21^st birthday party, an event at which I had to purchase the alcohol since I was the first of my circle of friends to turn 21. Here is what is curious about the months leading up to it, and what was precipitated by my first time drunk – up until the time where my friends saw me drunk, there was not much talk of alcohol, but seeing in me in my state of pure inebriation catapulted curiosity into my friends’ minds. I’m a person who takes full advantage of any situation, and I’ve noticed with my drug trips too that anyone sober who observes me in my deliberate delirium immediately desires to join me. This goes along with what I have always believed – part of my purpose on this Earth is to entertain others, and I have always gotten a kick outta that, but the problem with my drug trips is that I wasn’t just an amusing theatricality, it was a promise to the spectators that if only they could ingest said substance they could indeed experience the same rush that I was. However, I’ll get to all that later. For now, what is important to note is how at my university of choice I was the one who made alcohol appealing to my many friends. From that point onward, whenever we had a party-like gathering, it would involve at least fifteen minutes wherein we tried to get alcohol. Of course, once I turned 21 I gladly supplied the need to intoxicate ourselves so the “real” fun could begin. At the time we all gladly accepted this as the inevitable transition into adulthood, that promised promised land of milk and honey and booze, finally booze, to jazz up any given night into a guaranteed good time. None of us really stopped of course to think about all the previous good times and fun nights we had where alcohol had not even a whisper of a presence, where “getting drunk” was something other people did, those wacky and wild weirdos on TV and in movies which always portray getting drunk as the most legal fun anybody could possibly dream of having, unless of course Hollywood decides to give a token cautionary tale about that poor child who died in that drunk driving accident or some other such sob story designed solely for the purpose of reminding you that drinking is AWESOME except when it isn’t, and when it isn’t it is earth-shatteringly evil and wrong. This black and white dichotomy leaves no room for the in-between, where the true insidious soul-sucking occurs, where the alcohol approaches you like a new friend, all smiles and high-fives and winks who is so much fun and so lively that you don’t notice, and you could care less, when objects start disappearing from your home, when suddenly your wallet feels a little lighter, and all for the sake of that fearless fun, and that is what is so insidious about alcohol, and drugs in general – they really are fun, they can and do and will enhance a good time, but there is that inevitable tipping point where all the apparently generous giving transforms into taking, where like a tricky magician with drunken sleight-of-hand the intoxication will point your eyes in one direction while its other hand picks the pockets of your time, where it dives into the future and sucks all the fun out of a room that is not swimming with substances. It becomes a carrot that is ever-dangling on a stick swinging before your eyes, promising outrageous fun, if you’ll just reach out and grab it. And how is my generation supposed to resist the allure of such a simple formula for fun and relaxation? Why should we be expected to notice the colors that drain from our lives as everything turns to a boring sober black and white? Our lives are truly one big canvas of whirling pastels and precisely painted pictures all chaotically cavorting in a swirl of madness and desperate joy, and our meaning can only come from the inimitable interaction of all these dancing frenzies furiously competing for space. What drugs do to this canvas is color the rest of it with thei gaudy shine – they conform the amazing colors of our lives not into a more varied variety but a mass-induced catharsis garnered from the same-ness that can only come from intoxication, a state of mind so radically different from sobriety that we all immediately take it as spicy variety, as one more crazy color to add to our wide canvased experience of life, but this is a red herring. When we let these daredevil drugs into our lives they right away taint the rest of our beings with their tint, so instead of looking more unique and wonderful our selves turn into droves whose every move is a motion grasping at mere drugs. How…adventurous. How can we not see this? How can we miss it? Drugs do not enhance our personality or perception, nor do they do something as harmless as add to it another notch on our belt of experience. What they do is suppress everything unique about us into a predetermined mold of parties and addicts, that sect of society so bent on screaming to the world that they have an identity, even as they give it up to be lost in a drug-addled haze that is so easily mistaken for fun or enlightenment when it should be more accurately called a predictable parasite injecting you with euphoria unparalleled so you don’t notice it as it sucks your blood, as it drains you of you so that only it and the search for it remains. Alcoholics, stoners, smokers, and druggies all have one thing in common – without their drug of choice they are not having their maximum amount of fun, because that drug is constantly living like a leech in the back of their brain whispering soothing sick words of promised relief that the hoped for fun is waiting just around the corner, if only they could get a hold of that drug. Over the course of my experiences with drugs I have so often listened to this voice and assumed that because I was hearing it inside my head that must mean it was coming from me, that my desire for any given drug was a part of me that I could not risk denying, for the risk of lying to myself was just too great. I didn’t realize that just because I had invited the monster in did not mean the monster was a part of me.  This monster, unfortunately for me and my generation, is a chameleon. It can insinuate itself into any crevasse in our brain or lives and blend in perfectly with its surroundings, complement every part of our being with a matching color that leaves it hidden from our view until it is too late.  And while it sits there in our brains, calmly biding its time, it injects its own colors into the rest of our selves, until there really is no distinguishing feature between it and us.  A few years ago I went with Rocky to visit her boyfriend in rehab, and was introduced to my first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting outside of the movies. One thing that struck me was how everyone spoke of the alcohol or whatever particular drug like it was a creature of its own volition that had taken over their lives, and to me this reeked or shrugging responsibilty off of their own shoulders. “It wasn’t me, it was the alcohol!” Now, sitting here from a point of being about three months sober, I can understand exactly what they meant. It was not a mechanism of blame – describing the drug as its own entity is, in fact, the most accurate way of describing it.  Drugs are a creature that exist, that float around on tabs or leaves of green or in cylindrical cancer-causing suck-sticks or in the swirl of a bottle. As soon as we inhale, drop, roll, or drink this drug, it enters into us, becomes a part of us. Once intoxication is part of our life experience, it will always be a part of us, but what drugs do is an admirable parasitical infetion on par with how the xenomoprhs go about infecting their prey in the “Alien” movies.  Once we decide to introduce the drugs into our lives, they slowly seep themselves a bit at a time into our psyche, until we no longer define the drugs, the drugs define us. My generation is so quick to assume that because it was indeed them who first made the choice to indulge, then it must be them who made every subsequent choice, and they are WRONG.  This is the ultimate tragedy of me and my friends and anyone stil caught in the cycle of alcoholism or stoner-ism or whatever-ism you can think of that involves drugs – the transition from you controlling things to the drug controlling things is so slow and patient and subtle that you don’t even realize when it ceases to be you and begins to be the drug, but I guarantee you it happens. I guarantee all of you who are reading this with an addiction, the addiction is not you. By definition, if it is an addiction, it is the drug having conquered your brain triumphantly and sitting smugly in your cerebellum’s throne room as it issues commands to the rest of you to go ahead and smoke that cigarette, toke that bowl, drop that acid, take those three shots, because you’re having fun. You are a toy, a tool for the drug to use as it seeks to create more slaves made up of a doe-eyed, dead-eyed slack-jawed population of zombies zooming in on the quickest fix possible to that they can quiet the screeching voices in their heads demanding the indulgence for the sake of what is so quickly labeled as fun.  Think of the high of any substance as the death cackle-gurgle of your drug of choice.  That thing in your head is not you, nor has it ever been you, but the fact that it has convinced you means it won.  We as humans are more than just reaction and instincts, but the fact that drug-use is literally nothing but reaction should give us a clue as to its plans for mental takeover. Maybe you think you have it under control. How pathetically predictable. It’s claimed your mind, and the tremendous tragic irony is that you can take back your mind at any time. It will be tough, but it is within your power, because it is still your mind, don’t listen to its convincing lies. It had me convinced for awhile, and even though yes, alcohol did make an appearance in my life early on, what really got its hooks into me was the ganja, that perfectly harmless plant that so many stoners swear by even as they give you a red-eyed vacant stare that desperately wants you to admit that their highs mean something. These days are full of reminscings, so indulge me please, consider the words I am spouting onto an internet page in a sea of billions, as more than just the sum of my experiences but as warnings to those of you caught up in the false and dangerous belief that your drug is a part of who you are – it is not. It is a worm that seeks only your destruction.