Monthly Archives: January 2009

The Evolution of the Pill-Popper

 

“I can see you totally being a pill-popper in the future.“

“…really?!“

This is T and me in Chelsea. My crackshack. Circa 2001 or 2-ish?

I don’t know what we are doing… I don’t believe that there is a needle in my arm. It’s before that… well, before and after, I suppose. If we are in the crackshack, it means that I’ve already stuck a needle in my arm… in my life, I mean… previously.

But as chronology goes, I spiked by myself for the first time in my place on 25th and 1st, not Chelsea… which lasted all of, maybe a month and a half… maybe less. My cute little training-wheeled dance with the devil. I stopped everything. For a bit. Moved into the Chelsea crackshack. Then found myself back in Washington Heights… this time sans spike to procure coke. [but this is another story].

So, it was around this time. Despite the needle, still pretty novice. And certainly broke. Intermittent coke… here and there. We could have been doing anything. Whatever we may have been doing, apparently T is very confident that I will, one day,  join the ranks of the pill-poppers.

I take this as an insult, somehow. I’m much more interesting and artistic and sophisticated… well, maybe not more sophisticated, but, evolutionarily moreso than a pill-popper.

This string of thought made sense at the time. You know, I was a psychonaut. And youth trumped age in the image of the pill popper.

Though the image of the UES or UWS, high-society, adult pill-popper was truly a lovely future image… what, with the martini in hand at noon and the largest pharmacopeia one could ever wish for, it was really something, indeed, to strive for.

This being said, however, there was something about this statement that felt off.

I was never really a ‘pill-person’. Statistically-speaking, given a cross section of drug users, I would fall under the non-pill-person category.*

*pills with minimal to no binders, ie Dilaudid, that could be crushed, dissolved and sucked into a barrel and unleashed into my veins to cross the blood/brain barrier excluded.

Now, that being said, at that time… the specifics weren’t so specific. We really weren’t at liberty to choose the type of drug-person that we were. I mean, I’m pretty sure we theorized [dreamed] our preferences in all their fantastical glory in a world where everything was obtainable.

Coming down now… we were more than ecstatic with anything resembling anything that came our way… especially in the early days. Still, as with everything else, I was relatively selective about everything I ingested… though to balance this, I was up for experiencing everything that I’ve never experienced at least once… still am.

So Now:

  • T is partially correct. I do have a small but veritable pharmacopeia at my disposal. Pills. …that I take. …for reasons that span from recreation to post-recreational illegal drug use pseudo-necessity.This could be described in some circles as pill-popping. Not the fantasy image we all dreamed about in our youth-youth. But, I have pills… I “pop” them. And, for around, just under two years, these and alcohol are the only ‘drugs’ I’ve injested… give or take a week in Raph’s Ballfield** or so…. rendering T correct in this sort of superficial vein… capillary, even.

**my own pet name for methamphetamine in non-pill form. More specifically, California meth… good enough to be insufflated, cut enough that it really does not go well with the needle. For more info, watch a few episodes of the first season of USA’s “In Plain Sight” [enough to understand the thread of the A-line story that runs through until the season finale]. Or watch the entire season sequentially, whatever. …this is sooo not a plug, seriously.

  • As much as I may be a pill-popper or not, with the current epidemic of over-prescribing quick-fixes “we have a pill for all that ails thee!”, the lovely aforementioned pill-popper of yester-year somehow ceases to exist. Well, I mean, I’m sure that they still exist [I'll take you bathroom-cabinet-spelunking on the UES one day]…. but psychiatry and society’s need to categorize… take symptoms and create syndromes, semantic disorders, then diagnose because ["now that I've created this disorder that doesn't really exist... we know what's wrong!"] then treat, has rendered everyone a pill-popper. Muddying the waters of the true, aristocratic pill-popper and crushing many a dream.

The conclusion: yes, T is correct in a certain light. But the world of the pill has evolved to a place where… a shift has occured and the definition of a pill-popper has shifted along with it. T can’t be right…. isn’t right. Not yet anyway. My pill usage right now falls within this shift and my recognition and exploitation of the current situation.

The true, aristocratic pill-popper still exists out there. And yeah, maybe one day, as T said, I “will totally be a pill-popper”. And, then, hats off, T will be right… but don’t count on it. :P

Bluelight

For all psychonauts looking for information or a ‘community’, please visit:

BLUELIGHT

I haven’t frequented bluelight for a loooong time, but for the years that I did, it was a great resource for all things associated with drug use. Intelligent, insightful information, trip reports and anything else one could want… and one would need.

I believe it originated as an Ecstacy/Rave board, but during my time on it, it had evolved to include all other drugs, trip reports, meet ups, prescription drugs, physical/psychological addiction, methods of administration, etc. Even help and/or recovery… if one were into that sort of thing.

I’m not sure how it’s evolved further, but on the surface, atleast, it seems to be even more comprehensive and specialized. Check it out.

sparklr

 

Public Transport aka Night passed Night

Public transportation in New York is a… not given… not anything… it’s just how you do it.

One takes the A, C, E, the 1 and 9, the F… I don’t know. One dreads the L at every moment that they are forced to take the L.

fuckin’ grey shit.

… because the L is only ever taken by force. The borough of Manhattan is only 2 miles across. Walk that shit. One finds themselves on the L or more likely, waiting for the L. It’s never a conscious decision.

Unless one lives in hipster Brooklyn… in which case… well, enough said. You don’t live in New York… you live in gentrified Brooklyn… The ‘hip’ can’t actually be ‘cool’.

Plus, many of these aforementioned gentrified Brooklynites own cars.

Cars? In metropolitan New York?

Ha… fuck you.

But I digress.

after 10, 11pm … just like…

…night passed night. Yeah, you know, THAT time; 4am in the morning, for example. I don’t know when the frequency actually stops. When the urgency of people cease to matter. And the people must adjust their urgency to the frequency… or lack-there-of, of the trains.

One better like the wooden bench-chairs… the emptiness… and the clack-click…woosh of all the distant trains that aren’t theirs [one's]. They better like that.

Oh and the cold… I always forget about the frigid freeze.

Because they’re gonna be there a while. And a while passed that while. They better be pretty fucked up. And wake to the noise of the train roaring into their station at last.

My car is dead… sort of. Monetarily; for the foreseeable future. On the IV drip that is mechanical life support. I believe it is on the accelerator donor list.

and… I, now, live in Southern California.

And as NY is to subways; CA is to cars.

But fuck that.

I don’t need the car.

I just need a really cool mix to listen to as the bus takes me where ever.

That’s another thing, what the fuck is a mix cd? Ha.

 

so… does it make sense now?

… the junkie/doctor fork…

the road less traveled?

I don’t know which road I took. less traveled… more traveled. I don’t really care. quantity… quality… quality… quantity…

I just… I’m through. I mean, if I choose no longer to be a junkie… and the voice I’ve found, through the writing that I’ve done… through the people that I’ve met… enticed… kept… lost… love…

I found it.

I’ve searched. And I’ve found it.

The thing is…. I don’t need it anymore, maybe.

I mean, the crutch of the ‘voice’.

I have learned to speak. Maybe it’s time to screw the training wheels off…

Bittersweet.

It renders my absolute crushing need for writing and creating images…. for everything that I felt I was not and for everything that these words and images reassured me that I was at a time when magic was king and the image superb.

The time when I felt so much more than I could understand and express.

That time.

Like a neuron in the prefrontal cortex suddenly jolted with electricity. For seconds… maybe minutes?

I could express, empathize… feel

just something. Something that was important.

Maybe I was fool, maybe I was young, maybe I was sad.

Maybe at the time the blinding white glowing node in my heart ached for something that my brain didn’t understand.

It’s time to move on…

 

The Crimson Cloud

The following is a short tale written [in terrible form... passive constructs, inconsistency, all the jazz of a young writer with the widest eyes and the most slender skill set] circa… I don’t know. Sometime after I popped my virgin veins by shooting coke, stopped, hitched back, stopped, hitched waaay back, intranasally back, 9/11, the hospital, the pick-line directly into my vein, then stopped. Before any meth. This happened… or I wrote this sometime within this aforementioned time-line… somewhere… something like a…

Hey, man… nice shot.

I mean, the crimson cloud! It’s important. This was then. A thousand years ago, but still holds true. And describes it in better terms than I believe that I can right now.

Without further adeiu:

ALL THE FALLEN CAPS
a short story
by
the author

“…back …
… forth… back…
… forth…
back… half-way under the bed again, it hides, then rolls back to reveal itself, then back again…
and forth.
A small cylindrical orange cap, an uneven section of carpet in a hotel room, and a wide-eyed, dark-haired, sweet girl sitting Indian-style on the firm bed, unaware…no, unconcerned by what possibly might be occurring just a foot’s length or two beneath her: the momentum of the cap slowing with each roll; the distance closing in on itself.
POP!
She often dropped the caps. On this moment’s surface, down it would go, a slight sway, perhaps, before it slowed to a still. After the split second of her always-careless released grip, she missed the orange cylinder suicide lemming as it took the plunge like all of it’s brothers that came before.
Never slowing to a still, its continued roll was brought to an end with a grand, inaudible plunge to the unfamiliar ground below.
Though for all of its efforts, its impact with the ground was as inaudible as its fall to it. No poof, or smack, or crash. Upon impact, it did nothing but relapse into the repetitive groove of ‘back and forth’.
blowuptheoutside
And in this way, for the past few days, the bright orange would scream its existence in this unseen tiny dance against the sea of pastel blue carpet upon which it fell.
But for Sedge, there were more important things to attend to.
The room was nice. Nice. What is nice?
This, this was nice.
Comfortable. Homey.
Most importantly, anonymous.
Yes, the infamous impersonally warm hotel room ambiance.
A scent, just a scent. Sedge boiled it down to the complimentary anti-bacterial soap cake in the bathroom. These days, it was all about ‘boiling-it-down’. This ambiance, though comforting, was not immune.
The television flashed off her face. Across from her, an alterna-grunge, mid-nineties, Chris Cornell somehow found itself on the screen. Though muted, she knew what it was. It was impossible for the matching voice to his moving lips not to reverberate somewhere in the back of her head. blowupthe Other than this (and the cap, of course) however, everything was achingly still.
She used to wonder if she existed at all at times like this. Though she learned to love her un-detectibility on the radar.
She wanted to be still for just one second more and breathe the untainted air, before she was to make herself the defining characteristic of the room, undetected still, but now rendered detectable. Rendering herself detectable.
Actor-guy was gone. Working. On a set. In a trailer? Waiting? Memorizing lines. Refreshing his acute awareness of what he looked like, and therefore, what he was supposed to be. And, of course, how he was supposed to let others know this by making an even larger outward caricature of things he genuinely once was. Actor-guy was an actor…in the literal sense.
And so there were these days in the deafening silence of the huge room. Sedge, not responsible and unconnected to anything in this hotel room, to anything in this town, somewhere in the vast unnamed mid-west, where this person she felt somehow equally unconnected to, invited her, while he was working. And the cap rolled somewhere between the bed and herself and the carpet and dresser and…
Now it was time for protocol, procedure, exacting steps carried out in perfect succession. It was time for that.
Exiting the bathroom after a thorough scrubbing of the hands with anti-bacterial soap that seemed to pervade every public and private restroom these days. “C-fold” paper towels went down on the surface of the now empty room-service cart. Followed by a bottle of 70% isopropyl rubbing alcohol. Then, saline solution. Cotton Balls. Q-tip. All ordered, exact, and in it’s place. Then…
…a spoon and slick, aerodynamic Zippo… flame. As important as any one of these components were, it was the next which stood most essential and intriguing…her extensive, intensely obsessive knowledge of phlebotomy, anatomy, and general medical procedure.
And the stage was set: all the characters in their place, all the pieces aligned correctly on the chessboard… and Bobby Fischer at its helm. Though this wasn’t true. Bobby Fischer she was not. A man who went deeper than anyone else before him and found art at the core of what seemed an impersonal game of strategy. Numbers, math, combinations, logic. Sedge was the anti-Bobby Fischer; trading choice and fear for certainty and structure. And her opening move involved rubbing alcohol that bled into a piece of cotton that she would use to clean the spoon.
She continued like this, step after step in perfect succession, as impersonal and robotic as medicine can be; as medicine had to be. And it was something about this… no, it was this that was comforting.
One last item… a sterile syringe.
And POP, placed on the room-service cart, rolled the orange cap and fell into the vast sea of the carpet beneath.
In a few seconds, a distended vein would arise, followed by a stringently comforting cool alcohol swipe, and gentle prick. And then… ultimate confirmation. Confirmation that all these steps were carried out successfully; that she did the things that she had to do. The confirmation that upon the slight tug backwards of the plunger, a flood of rich, maroon liquid would cloud into the otherwise clear, thin solution still in the body of the barrel.
The crimson cloud.
Literally, just confirmation that she was in the vein, but, somewhere in the distance, behind the bells ringing in her ears, she could hear, “good girl”.
It was about order, routine, the feeling of success when these tasks where carried out. Certainty, consistency… trust. It was the way there had to be half a pack of splenda in her six ounces of iced green tea at eleven AM, everyday. It was about her antiquated eighth grade social studies teacher and his ‘system’ of clothing… alternating colors on alternating days. “green on wednesdays”. It was the customer who came into the restaurant who insisted on the ‘ritual’ of certain combinations of food.
It was the fact that if nothing else, if no one else, it would be there when she needed it.
Of course, one could witness the release of unconsciously held muscles as her jaw dropped slightly. Of course she could have told you the effects of the drug itself was certainty enough as back she fell, all of the indecision focused for just minutes to…
One…
…simple…
…rush.
Blowuptheoutsideblowuptheoutsideblowuptheoutside… releasing the mute button, the song came from outside her now, the single sound that engulfed her. As a short while later, the Actor-guy, burst in unexpectently on her laying on the bed, commenting on the sweat on her brow. This, to which she justified with an afternoon jog and a nap; she, an actor in the figurative sense (a liar in the literal).
She could have told you about the semantics of an iridescent, flaky, purple-white, powder-esque mass. Commonly referred to in many parts of the world as… cocaine hydrochloride. Or for the lazy of tongue, coke. And the paranoid of mind, blow.
She could have told you any of this. But mostly she would just smile a lot and nod while somebody else spoke about something else. She was happy enough with her letter of confirmation, her successful operation.
But for right now, all she needed was what she had: a place in which she could disappear on the radar to find certainty and forget for a while about the rolling orange cap she dropped.”

Hopefully, this clears up a bit of what the crimson cloud actually is.

Now, on with the story….

 

Pre-med; Med; WTF!?

I have written many times that instead of becoming a junkie, I should have, oh, you know… gone into medicine.

This might not make sense.

I use the term “junkie” very specifically. Syringes, vein puncture, the spoon, all the fallen caps & the wondrous crimson cloud. For example, my last stint in drug bliss… I was an intranasal meth user. 2 years approximately. I didn’t then, nor do I now, looking back, consider that ‘being a junkie’.

A couple of years before that, I was shooting the purest ice [meth] one could ever dissolve in saline in a spoon, daily, for two years. This is junkie behaviour.

Simply, junkie = syringes.

I like the spike. I am or was that person who would shoot innocuous saline [with no physical 'high' value] when I ran out of drugs, just to witness the crimson cloud.

And now we get to the crimson cloud. Oh, the lovely lovely… I am getting chills just by thinking about it… crimson cloud.

How to define it to do it justice?

 

Old

it’s weird when you first realize that there are people that are younger than you are.
…that’s a lie.
it’s completely normal when you first realize that there are people that are younger than you are. normal when you realize that there is like a entire generation, maybe, that is ‘youth’ rendering you ‘sort of adult’.
it’s not the knowing; it’s the feeling… the getting or something… it’s not so much the realization that there is this baracade beneath you that has been raised in a way that you and your peers categorically weren’t.
I’m not even old. it’s just… i think i feel something different now.
you’re reckless and young and it’s grand.
it halts…
you continue life… young and grand and reckless.
maybe a bit less young. less reckless… “I used to be really crazy, et al.”
STOP. somehow.
still reckless. alot less young. less invincible. but never, still, understanding the ‘whole thing’.

nothing has changed.
evolved, maybe. in evolution’s undetectable turtle crawl.
nothing has/had changed.
I learned stuff, yes.
but stayed the same.

and, maybe, now it’s different.
Maybe, now…
maybe it’s chronological age, maybe its ‘where’s the drugs?’, maybe it’s…
…stop…
maybe I’m like thinking or feeling or….
all the things that I said that “I don’t understand” to;
maybe now I understand….

and, now… there is no excuse.

 

its never too late to be what you might have become

I mean, really?

Of course.

just, just if you don’t think. Just if you just do. go. go.

it’s an outstanding idea. outstanding.

just go.

but you can look back. you have to look back. you need to comprehend ‘back’.

unlike before. and before that and before that.

because if you just do… you need to atleast know that there is a ‘back’.

or else you/one ends up…

…here.

 

Vestibular

There was this guy.

No, he wasn’t my guy.

He was my guy’s guy. His mentor.

And this mentor’s guy wasn’t really my guy anyway. Really.

I mean, you’re young or something. Vacantly stare/work at a ‘coffee shop’ on the corner. You feel good. For the first time in your entire existence. Just to vacantly stare. The buzzing in your head just a memory. It’s okay just to be.

But EXPLOSION and possibility of impossibilty.

You know, with the fact that you’re okay enough just to be.

YOU can be with someone. Because you now are good enough.

There’s a pang in your stomach, maybe. But the pang = the vacant stare = the okay. No buzzing. The ‘pang’ transformed…

months… years, ago into ‘yay’ somehow. But it’s never really an absolute ‘yay’ somehow. Because a ‘pang’ is a Taiko drum. The semi-stiff marshmallow head on the long stick [like smores without the campfire and the burning, melting and sugar] strikes the stomach deliberately and richly.

But it doesn’t matter. Or you can care less.

If there is a difference, or if you would be able to discern.

Still-ness.

Okay.

Okay to be around others… to be with others.

Human.

None of this has anything to do with VESTIBULAR things of course. I’m working up to it. It will ultimately have to do with my guy’s guy.

 

Bruised

I presently have a noticeable purple bruise on the back of my left hand. A circular central subcutaneous bleed right where the surface veins fork.

I don’t like it.

I don’t know how I got it. But I don’t care. I don’t like it.

I’m not ashamed of my spike past, but if I’m going to have a noticeable bruise so veinously caused… the least I could do was get high.

But that’s not true. I don’t know why this bruise bothers me. I just don’t want it.

I don’t care if people see it and direct their brains to travel the vein-bruise-as-junkie route. As no one ever does anyway.

There’s just something.

It’s not allowed.

This is different. This is not I bumped my knee and bruised-bruise. It’s not even I punch a wall in drunken rage and bruise-fuckin’-bruise.

This bruise specifically stems out of the veins in my hand and creates a bleed directly under my skin.

It’s not allowed to look this way, be this thing, if I didn’t push through the delicate vein. It’s small, but I never asked to look through my yearbook. But more importantly, I never allowed it to look back.