We all have something

I am an addict. I self-medicate my depression with drugs and alcohol because I am too cowardly to seek help. At least, that's what I think my parents would say. To be honest, I've always been fascinated with altering my own consciousness. My whole life I've had an issue with hydrostatic pressure, it's a common ailment involving low blood pressure that can cause you to black out after standing up rapidly after a period of inactivity. Since I was a kid I've found myself waking up on the floor after watching my whole world fade to static and then blackness, out before I even hit the ground. But you know what? Even before I knew what the problem was, it didn't really scare me. I was concerned, sure, even thought that maybe I had a brain tumor, or an aneurysm. But mostly it was just exciting. For those couple of seconds before unconsciousness my whole experience was shifted, filtered through a brain fighting off hypoxia. Now of course I know that that's incredibly dangerous, and that every time I woke up on the floor I was flirting with permanent brain damage, but as a kid I didn't know that. All I knew was that there was more to perception than what we experience on a day-to-day basis.

My first fling with psychonautics came about by accident, a product of my inferior physiology, but I think it was those experiences, coupled with an immense curiosity about my own mind and consciousness in general, that led me to my love affair with drugs. And it is a love affair. I have never felt more alive; more in touch with myself and the cogs ticking within my own psyche than when my mind is pouring through the sieve that is LSD. Cannabis taught me patience and tolerance and simple joy in the mundane. Cocaine and Vyvanse, Ritalin and MDMA brought me to the heights of manic passion and unshackled me from depressive introspection. Playing with the chemical stew that is my brain and my being has been the most rewarding journey I've ever undertaken.

That does not mean that I am not an addict. I've come to rely on the convenience of slipping into a altered state to escape the pressing realities of my life. I drink to steal a few hours away fro the weight of responsibilities that I never wanted. I dream of the days when I could trip and spend a day just spinning through the void, relentlessly deconstructing my own ego. I will never be able to pass a day without, at least momentarily, longing for the escape of chemical adulterants. With the right knowledge and hook-ups you can dose your brain into letting you be whoever you want to be. No more shyness or introversion, say good-bye to closed-mindedness and jaded condescension. With the right drugs, the doors of perception are flung wide open and the labyrinth of the mind is yours to shape and reshape at a whim. ...But only if you keep it up. The drugs have their demands, and what they want is your every moment. When you come to abhor sobriety and cling desperately to every altered moment in their chemical embrace, you will know addiction.

I have been privileged enough to have a support system sturdy enough to keep me off the streets; to keep me more or less focused and within the bounds of social expectation. I could very easily have ended up one of those lost souls dying in the gutters, wasting their last breath to cry out for one last filthy syringe, loaded with the cheapest, most adulterated smack, but I haven't. I have my vices, and I always will, but addiction isn't the inescapable black hole it's made out to be. You can be an addict and persevere. You can be depressed and soldier on. All it takes is something larger than yourself. Those poor bastards in AA call it God. Plenty of people find it in family, or in art. I'd like to think I had some noble ideal to live for; something that kept me from washing down a fistful of pills with a swig of Johnny Walker, but the truth is that my God, the alter of my self sacrifice is just a few good friends. I make peace with my demons on a daily basis in the hope that someday I will be worthy of their friendship, and that they may know the depths of my gratitude.