I would not call this a note of my most inspiring times, and nor would I consider this the glories of my youth. There is nothing romantic or cool about this time in my life and I would never say that this was me at my best. Not at all.
To be clear, this entry is more for my own discovery to trace myself back to a lineage where I was always booking for “something” to help me feel better.
I saw myself through a case of mistaken identity.
I was unsure of myself and my body.
I was unsure who (if anyone) would ever look at me with an interest that extended further than a handshake or a simple introduction.
Of course, I wanted to be cool.
I wanted to be beautiful.
Who wouldn’t want to be seen this way?
Thus, I tried to find ways to soothe the worries and solve the panics which came so frequently.
It has been said to me that once an addict, always an addict.
And maybe this is so.
It has been said to me that if I was that way “once,” then I could be that way again. Yet, I have not entertained an extracurricular drug nor sipped a drop of alcohol since April 1, 1991.
It has also been said that sex is an addiction, which I can certainly understand why.
Anything can be a drug, the same as gambling, drinking, food, or any other number of the unhealthy outlets that can be used as an escape.
I am certainly not the way I was and nor am I the same as far as my mindset is concerned. I have grown since my days of drug use. Perhaps I have grown since my days when I misused sex or mistook love for lust, or vice/versa.
However, and in full transparency, I am still in search of “something.”
I do not ever want to misuse anyone or anything again.
I have too many dents in my armor and too many have paid the price for my mistakes, including me!
I want to feel something better than just the average thrill. And equally, I want more than the status of feeling “high” because to me I want more.
I want the ultimate euphoria or like the mindset of “Godhead.”
I want to feel the ongoing completeness of sublime living, high and untouchable, but grounded in a state of permanent balance.
But again, I suppose this is not real and nor is it realistic to assume there is a way to feel that ongoing state of bliss without the downfalls or everyday life.
But still, I wanted something.
I want to find a balance that can never be shaken or disturbed.
I wanted to feel more than just “alive” or more than present. And yes, I did enjoy the trance-like experiences when my mind was expanded. Of course I did.
Drugs are not addictive because they feel bad . . .
I want to slip into a heightened form of weightless and painless superiority.
I wanted to feel life without pain and joy without the downfall of deceit.
I wanted to be untouchable or better, I wanted to be impenetrable or unreachable and untouchable by the fingers of failure or despair.
I was too young to understand and too unsure of myself to express my thoughts openly.
I was scared. And I understood the value of liquid courage.
I understood the temporary salvation that came with quick–fix highs that changed me into a different person.
My entry into the teenage drug culture was as common as any other story. There is no need to spew boredom to the world with another concept of gateway drugs or how one thing led to another.
But yes, one thing led to the next and in my search for the ultimate high or to feel so lofty that nothing could hurt me, I started to lose myself.
I lost myself in pieces, as if my entry into the forest of exploration ran too deep. I took too many turns and my exit strategy grew more impossible than I assumed.
I have heard the stories of people leaving trails of breadcrumbs to be able to retrace their steps home, —however, the crows and ravens are like scavengers in places like this. They were the demon’s scoundrels who picked up the pieces I left behind—and thus, I was far more lost than my assumptions had led me to believe.
I was always “missing” in one way or another. There was always something “off” or off-center about me; therefore, I had to try and find something to balance my scales to either keep me comfortable or keep me sane.
And I swear, it’s amazing how insanity can do such things.
But this is the bitch about insanity.
Even more, this is the crazy part because the truth is, —crazy people never think they’re crazy. No, they just assume the rest of the world is crazy (or wrong.)
I can say that I fit into this category quite well.
At times, I assume it was as though I was invisible.
I walked by the world as if to be unseen, yet I was obvious.
I would be hidden in plain sight and wondering why it was that no one could see or hear me.
“Is it just me”
“Does nobody else see this?”
“Can’t anyone tell that I am drowning in thin air?”
“Or is this just me again?”
I am (or was) the oddity of all men.
Or if this was the case, was it just another day when the voices in my head would convince me into believing another lie?
Was this it?
Would this be the best I could be?
I would not call myself invisible, like the way air is unseen but obvious and known.
No, I suppose that my kind of invisibility was more sentimental or emotional and thus, I wondered if I was simply unnoticeable like the faint description of a shadow that no one cares about.
Or maybe this could be fine enough to create a misconception about myself and the escape I planned through chemistry would be fine to vaporize the mind so that I could somehow disappear.
Would I call my dance with the demons or the tours with drugs a love affair?
Would I call this sexual?
Not per se.
Yet, I would explain that the orgasmic nature of “feeling high” was connected to an extension of an outer bliss.
Was I truly invisible?
Maybe I was unthought of, like the common disregard of trash that was refused or unimportant to keep.
Maybe I was like the dying leaves in fall who were pretty at some point but now, they lay dying in piles of an unwanted mess.
I saw myself like this, used and pointless or otherwise, discarded and meaningless.
Was I invisible?
Was all this unseen or unnoticed?
Perhaps not, but this is the trick which my loneliness and depression pulled on me.
I suppose the volume of my behavior was to echo the content of my inability to speak my mind. I acted out.
Of course, I did.
I was wild and dangerous to myself.
My acts reflected a feeling or the state of my outrage.
I was incapable of speaking and unable to report or convey my true emotions.
And though I was young, I was tired as if I had been aged or tested and tried. I was just a kid but to me, I seemed worn down a thousand times, and still, I wondered if it was me.
Is it me?
Was it all my fault?
Am I so wrong or unworthy?
But the highs helped.
The drugs helped because I was otherwise unbothered by the social pressures that wore me down.
Was I to blame?
Was it my fault that I was uncomfortable or awkward?
Is this why no one looked or cared enough to see?
Or in the case of visibility, and if I was just invisible or unseen and like a decision that no longer requires attention, then I wondered, “was it me?”
Was it all my fault?
Was it my fault for stuttering when I wanted to speak clearly?
Was it my fault that I was unable to understand the lessons in school?
Was it my fault that I could not play sports as well as the others?
Why was I so small or weak or thin?
Did I do something to deserve this?
Why was I used by people who supposedly loved or cared about me?
It was not too much of a stretch for me to find myself in the concrete stations or battlegrounds on different corners that thrived on the drug trade.
Where else would I be?
At least this made sense to me.
If the cops chased me, I knew why.
If I was hit or hurt or busted, I knew why.
I wanted to find my way and be whole again, the only route between me and my state of bliss was sold in packages at places like B17th Street, or on 134th Street and Willis.
There were other places too, like the spots in East New York, which I saw the deadliest of things and met the deadliest of people.
I met the world’s worst. These are the people who could step over dead bodies or worse, pick the pockets of dead men and thrive on the discards which were left behind.
I suppose the first time I heard a gunshot that rang with the intention was at a place, not unlike anywhere else in the jungles of the drug culture.
I saw violence.
I saw this up close, and personal.
Of course, I did.
Besides, these were the 80’s.
Technology was not like it is today.
Not by any means.
There was no such thing as camera phones or video surveillance on every corner like it is today.
No, there was no proof or evidence of death
No, the years and the description of this epidemic were different. The culture was cruel and infectious, like any other contagious disease—or so I suppose.
Only, this disease was a cancer of a different kind. This was the emotional kind but in all; this was equally as deadly
And as for me, this cancer came with demons and beasts.
And mine?
My beast grew wings, which formed an apron that blinded me to my truths. I did not see myself. I did not realize that I was fading and withering away.
My beast wrapped its wings around me to blind me with thievery and lies. I fell for the tricks and failed to recognize the scenes of violence. I ignored the death, and overdoses.
I never looked left or right.
Only straight ahead into my own abyss.
My demons had me on the run.
Always running.
I had to evade and escape the officers which were run by a crooked Gestapo, also known as T.N.T. or the Technical Narcotics Team. Those cops were VISCIOUS!!
They were equally brutal or wicked as the dealers and yet, they were on the opposite side of our justice system.
I was 80lbs and scrawny as ever.
I was sick all the time . . .
This is when my worst time came around.
My fascination for the fast-paced high changed to the envisioned status of a retreating flag that sunk to half-mass, —or me, nodding slowly, and spiraling down.
My body bent like a nodding creature, lifeless and hollow of my soul because the opiate gods had taken their price.
And yes, part of their toll was my soul—and so it was, me, another soul, taken away in batches to get high, and cooked up in doses, one spoonful at a time.
I remember the summer of 1989.
This was close to an end of my madness. This was me before an involuntary submission.
I was about to face a change.
There were nights spent with a glass pipe in hand, speeding the free-based cocaine blitz, which came in lightning speeds.
I remember the crystals. . .
I remember how they sizzled when the tiny torch hit the pipe and burned the little white boulders that were loaded in the chamber.
I lit the end of the pipe and inhaled smoke that numbed my spine and thus, the high removed me from my soul.
This was good
But the flashy high was too short-lived.
I needed to elevate myself more and yes, I needed to do this longer than just a few minutes.
And here lies the problem with the cocaine gods.
They are all too quick and fast.
I could not take the fiendish feeling or the angst in me. I could not take the crash or the electrified regret that came after my high went away.
And to add substance; as high as I was, my low was doubled and far lower than before.
I remember this.
I remember me, crawling around on the floor like some demonized zombie who’d been enslaved to the weightless abandon that flooded my bloodstream.
I was part of this machine that fueled the epidemic
This smoke in my lungs was an annihilation that was inhaled from a glass pipe. And here’s another bitch . . .
The glass from the pipe burned my lips.
I looked possessed
But the high and the crash turned me into a dangerous consideration that would have willingly died or killed for a small vial.
I would have died or killed for a high that forced me into slavery – this was the Crack epidemic.
This was the plague which sold us to the beast and used our seven deadly sins for the beast’s cheap thrills
I don’t know how and nor can I say when the unthinkable became likely or acceptable. I lost my way. I lost myself.
I did unthinkable things which still creep up and haunt my dreams.
I still see faces.
I still hear sounds.
I remember my sins all too well and the beast is always free to leave reminders that I can grow and move far away, but I can never get away from me or myself.
The high I used to love turned degrading; and when the speed of light turned against me, I saw no other choice than to abandon the chaos by reversing the polarity to find a high of its total opposite
Heroin. . .
This was the beast’s wings, all encompassing, and blinding me to death.
I suppose I guessed that it just made sense
I remember the girl I dated. Or I assume we can call this dating. She questioned my looks or why I had burn marks on my lips. She asked me about the nod she saw, which was me, possessed by a different demon at an alternate speed.
By the way, either demon was equally deadly.
Cocaine demons with their evil bigs or the opiate gods and their slow moving assassins.
Deadly, either way.
However, the difference in speeds depicted the differences in death.
And should I have died, then fine.
So be it.
If I died, then I’d have died in the euphoric galaxy between twilight and the last scene of our fading sunlight.
The girl asked me, “Do you even care?”
“It’s like I’m dating two of you.”
She told me, “I’m dating you and the drugs.”
“Aren’t I enough?”
No . . .
Nothing was ever enough.
Hence, the beast and me, we danced until I nearly died.
I never thought I would see or find the feeling of handcuffs around my wrist as a lifesaving device
But had this not have happened, I promise you—
You and I would have never met.
The Written Addiction 