Being Honest With Fiction

I am somewhere now, too far gone from a loaded package, which is where I used to be. I am far from this and further from yesterday, but I do recall.
I remember.
I used to know all too well about tiny envelopes that were packaged with printed names and filled with a beautiful high. I remember how life seemed to fade like the old graffitied trains that disappeared down the subway tunnels in the mid to late memories from my youth in the 80’s.

The City was my playground but the monkey bars and the jungle gyms were not the same.
Neither were the slides and the see-saws or the rides we took.
42nd Street was way different from how it is now
But –

Nothing is like it was and nothing will ever be the way it was.
And who is to say whether this is good or bad?

At the same time, nothing really changes. At least, nothing changes as much as we think.
The events and the issues and the core of us as people are still the same.
Everyone is looking for “the way.”
I know.
We all want to “feel good.”
We all want balance.
We want to be happy.
We want to be “part of” and loved, included, valued, and more.
We all want to live a good life.
But life is life and oftentimes, life as it is does not operate in accordance to the life that we want.

I have seen things.
Good things
And bad things.
I have seen real life happen and I have spent some of my more unfortunate years, chasing the tail of an uncatchable thing.

It is far more than just irrelevant to point out the common junkies with their eyes sinking down, bodies slowly drooping as their lower jaw hangs.
They hang in slow-motion, like dying puppets who dangle from invisible strings.
And ah, the strings
Ah, great marionette or the puppet master, himself, for he is the one who delivers the dosage to provide a terrible destruction that comes with the feelings of such beautiful inertia.
Ah . . .

The ultimate exhale.
The great sigh of relief.
The feeling of weightlessness.
Or the feel of passion and pleasure and the soulful relief of each and every particle in the body, vaporizing like our dying brain cells and releasing their tension to an otherwise altered state.
Ah . . .

All else evaporates like disappearing clouds that vanish in holes in the sky.
It’s time to shove off.
The puncture wound is small and quick but the remedy is amazing.
The world starts up and everything slows down.
The body falls to half-mass, as if to be lost in spiritual submission that takes over bloodstream in waves of beautiful sensation,
All falls.
All drifts
All closes down like the shades to the so-called spiritual window that slowly draws shut.
Ah . . .

It is irrelevant of course, to enter my plea of innocence or guilt and it is no longer applicable to plead no contest to any of these things I mentioned above.
It was what it was.
It is what it is or as I used to tell people, “It is what it is and it ain’t what it ain’t!”

So be it, I used to say.
If I was to die then I would be dead and the bugs and the worms who fed on me would be fat with their own need for excess.
Even the worms and bugs want more.
Every living thing wants more.

It has always struck me as interesting when I listen to people talk about the junk on the streets. I listen with my head shaking about how people believe that addiction is new.
Is it new?
Is it really?

I agree that the culture changes and perhaps the vehicles we use to feel better change from one to another.
Fashions and flavors swing back and forth like a pendulum. And yes, this pendulum swings the full gamut to help us discover the newer ways to reach euphoria.

I admit it still.
I love that word.
Euphoria . . . 
What a beautiful platform to lift from the depths of an otherwise heavy world. 

Euphoria . . . 
to lift off or to be out of this atmosphere or to be anywhere but here.

What an amazing feeling to defy the realities and to be lifted or exalted and absolved from the common feelings of everyday life.

No pain.
No stress.
No weight on the chest.
No worries about the bills.
No thoughts about our simple objections.
No comments about weight, size, shape, or form.
No beauty.
No ugliness.
Nothing else is around to weigh us down or hold us back.
And above all things, there is no fighting and thus, the war machine within can rest or be at peace.
The hunter/gatherer and the flight or fight mechanism in our brain can shut down.

We can be like the old mythical gods who dissipate at the end of Greek tragedies and disappear like pillars of smoke from my cigarette in the ashtray.
Tiny curls of smoke move upwards and just like that . . .
they disappear. 

Gone!
And again, I say “Ah!’

I have seen different sides of my city. I have seen from uptown to the downtown mysteries and the streets with letters in Alphabet City. I have been from the Village down to Chelsea, and up to Hell’s Kitchen, to 116th Street, and 134th Street.
I have seen the variations of different addicts who used different vehicles to reach their altered presence.

I have seen the dangling folks along 8th and 35th street as they wait for their legal doses of methadone, yet they dangle slowly just the same.

I have seen places, like the old murderous rooftops where people dropped like water balloons and burst when their body hit the ground.
Or like the old subways in faded nights, I have heard the stories of those who took the ultimate dive in front of trains to end their struggle or AKA: their life..
I often see someone from the past who was in a coma after a small caliber bullet bounced around inside of their head.
I wonder if they knew this would be them, would they wished they lived differently when they had the chance.
(of course)

Tommy took the hint and got straight to the point. He jabbed the needle home and let the plunger push in to shove his final dose.
This was no accident.

And then there was Mike the Rocket who went down without anyone knowing.
He was my friend and a hero to me in the winter of 89.

And Vito.
And Mathias. 
And Dorian.
And Richie Tats
And yes, the list is long and perhaps I could go one like this, but to believe that addiction is new is very strange to me.

Yes.
Of course, the culture changes. 
The drugs shift from one to another.
Is this really so different from what nearly killed my mentors or those who influenced them?

And by the way, drinking kills far more people than we realize and often, there are more alcohol related deaths than drug related deaths. But hey, why bother with semantics?
Right?

And hey, alcohol is as American as apple pie.
No?

I remember the different cliques in a room we called the fishbowl.
This is where we had our meetings at a place I will only regard as The Villa.
I tried to kill myself there . . .
(twice)
I remember the different people who ended up in the same place for different reasons.
And yet, as different as we were, we all had a problem with the same thing.

We classified each other in different groups.
There was the wealthy and the poor and then there were the needle junkies, the drunks, the speed demons, the Crack heads, the pill-poppers, and yes, all of these vehicles were used to reach a better plateau.
All walks of life were present and accounted for here.

So many differences 
And yet

Too many similarities.
I swear-
There must be something to this sickness….

There has to be something more than what the news tells on television. 

I remember back when crack took over the scene. I remember who this hit the streets in June of 1986.
I remember the shift in the drug market.

There was a basketball player by the name of Len Bias who reportedly died from an overdose on crack.
And just like that . . . the next day,
Everyone who looked to get high wanted to get a taste of the very same thing that killed Len Bias.

I keep hearing people say that we have to raise awareness.
I keep shaking my head when people say drugs and overdoses have never been this bad.
But they have been . . .

Drugs kill
I get it.
Alcohol kills too.
Does anyone get that?

And, if you add both the number of deaths from alcohol and drug related casualties, you still would not equal the amount of deaths that happen due to obesity related deaths.
And smoking?
Smoking is still the big daddy of all killers.
(More than half a million a year)

I suppose my question is this:
What does this say about us as a society?
Suicide numbers are going up.
Not down.
Rather than spend so much time deciphering between the demons, why haven’t we done something to realize that mental health does not care who you are –

What else has to happen for this fiction not to be true?

You know?