In Russia, Harsh Remedy for Addiction Gains Favor (NYTimes)
Thank you, drive thru.
Life after Hollywood (powerhouse agent to drug & alcohol counselor)
So, yeah, for a ‘drug blog’ 23rd Street has traipsed a bit in the entertainment business arena possibly more than its demographic would prefer… but here is a little token of a lovely half and half bastard love child of both (kinda like the Tiger Woods of links… or like his children… because its best when trickled down a further generation mixmixmix!!!!):
Hollywood Agent Lisa Hallerman Makes Life Change: Leaving WME to Help Addicts (DHD)
That’s it, man.
Well, no, that’s not it. I actually didn’t read the article until just now. The whole thing sounds fuckin’ fine… but a bit too Dr. Drew to me.
Eh, whatever…
Drug Kit from the ’60′s
Some people like vintage clothing (including your author)… but this is what I’m talking about:
Courtesy of xaXor.com. Don’t really know what it’s [web page] about… don’t really need to, because everything about this is amazing.
Misconceptions about Illegal Drugs
It’s Saturday. The folks at 23rd Street usually do some version of crash & burn on the weekend. Currently, I find myself not in exception-mode. But this is fun:
List of Misconceptions about Illegal Drugs (wikipedia)
Gotta love it.
No you don’t.
I’m so burnt.
Aspara-Crack
Straight from the “What the Fuck?!” files, we bring you snortable asparagus.
Aspara-Crack!!
As mind-blowingly ‘what the fuck’ as this is, it’s kind of awesome.
Alcoholic Whipped Cream
Okay, obviously, I’m all for imbibing spirits. I also like creative culinary creations (in the vein of molecular gastronomy).
Sangria or Mojito Ice Pops… Genius! The bastard child of 2 of my favorite things. Alcohol and Ice Pops. Really. Its sort of crazy… Ice Pops, though probably not really “food” is in the top 5 of my favorite foods.
But may I be the first to say that everything about Whipped Cream infused with alcohol is fucking disgusting. Especially when the marketing department calls it “Cream”.
Thank you, drive thru.
http://givemecream.com/
Jamba Juice (the junkie way)
Time for a story!
Circa early- to mid- 2005.
the JUNKIE way
Pretty new to Los Angeles and new-ish to relative sobriety (the first time), your author, in an attempt at some sort of fidelity, creates a new habit. Jamba Juice (the junkie way). Maybe that’s weak… but, then, it’s weak. I worked at my first ever talent agency during waking hours and a west coast version of The Olive Garden on weekends (some nights, possibly)?
Meth is a stimulant. And all of the sudden, I had to be on time and on the ball, constantly. And all of the sudden (well, less suddenly than that)… I did not have Meth.
In a time of getting high (or rather, trying to be functional) in a legal manner, I improvised. I took 2 psuedofed in the morning. You know, the stuff that they use to make meth. The little red pills that are literally just psuedoepinephrine. And consequently is now behind the pharmacy counter. Boo!
One down.
I didn’t enter Jamba Juice one morning looking to get high. That’s comedy. But like bad comedy. In any event… it was on my way to work and, again, in my search for some sort of fidelity, I’d become a bit of a minimalist when it came to meals. I thought health… juice… on my way to work… try it.
Now, in 2005, the Jamba Juice offerings were much slimmer. So, I choose from what I can. Always a small, the base was a “classic smoothie” called Peach Pleasure. Okay, fruit blahblahblah, no bananas… whatever. Smoothies are misleading… they can often be crazy-ass sugary calorie-laden concoctions. But, this was great. safe. no bananas.
“You get one free boost with that”.
“huh?”
I had yet to become the ADD-fueled morning person that I would. So, it’s a bit fuzzy.
But, what isn’t fuzzy is “the boost”. This is the gateway to Jamba Juice (the JUNKIE way)!
I look at the menu or the board all confused-like (as is sometimes my default disposition that I am trying to shake). The disposition that I have no idea where I am, what to do, that this question that I’ve been asked is possibly high-level mathematics related and I could never even conceive of it’s existence, even.
But I digress.
“ummmmmmmm….. how about Energy boost?”
And a habit is born. So, this altered smoothie with Energy Boost and 3G Charger Boost (though I’m sure it was called something different at the time) plus my psuedofed plus the office’s coffee. And I am good to go. I eventually ask if they sell the “boosts” in powder form separately. They do not.
I achieve something very similar to a low-high.
But it is great! Not because I achieve aforementioned low-high in order to achieve some sort of high, but precisely the opposite. I am an adult that has a day job with a dress code. I have vacation days. Health insurance. Overtime pay. I am never late. I own a car. All this is possible. I am a contributing member of society (somehow)… furthermore, I am actually a functional human being. My one-time faraway mostly theoretical wish of walking amongst the normal people in hope of one day becoming one is not only possible… but actually happening.
So, that’s the story. This only lasted as long as I worked at the company. The head of the company is crazy and tends to clean house every two years… give or take word of an agent interviewing elsewhere*. In any event, with no agents, I really had no one to assist.
*yeah, I hate to say it… or maybe I don’t care… but “Entourage” does not get anything incorrect. People are FUCKIN CRAZY!!! And I kinda love it. I mean, not to say that my judgement is the best… but WTF?! Tens of millions of dollars are based on crack headed decisions… eeek. But that’s what I love!
And the laying-off was catastrophic because it wasn’t really about the job… it was the entire idea that I had assimilated into society… that I could do it. Of course one really doesn’t directly have to do with the other, and everything ended up being okay… sort of. Hysteria.
I never really did go back to Jamba Juice.
Such is the mundanity of dysfunction cascading as sobriety.
unsustainable
Not like sustainable fuckin’ local ass food.
I mean, I’m all for it actually, but that’s not what this is.
This will be short and to the point. One thing has become clear to your author:
We, at 23rd Street, have been living an unsustainable existence. We can’t keep on going on like this. Nothing (we wouldn’t say good) but productive will come from it.
Most of these posts are the same. Touch on the same concepts and fears and blahblahblah-rapateta. They blur. They sometimes illuminate. But it’s repetition… repetitive. The same thing over and over and over again.
And sometimes… just sometimes… in a minute fragment or a secret-hidden sentence, a point is made that we, at 23rd can actually say is insightful. Whether we listen or choose to act on it or not, is another story.
Because, you see, this isn’t about you or a “community” of drug users that are in recovery or not. This is the most selfish of endeavors.
…and with that, maybe we’ve alienated the 1 1/2 individuals that actually read this.
But we, at 23rd Street, are trying, somehow, to save ourselves.
The Motherf*cker with the Hat
still staring at the hexagons
It was a Wednesday. Mid-week. I am best, theoretically-speaking, mid-week. I have a couple of hours to kill, so I decide to do what I’d always done when I find that I need to kill time. I walk approximately 30 blocks down Madison Avenue toward 23rd street, stopping by a Starbucks here and there to end up at Madison Square Park. I sit on the bench. And stare at the hexagons on the ground.
It all sounds very easy.
I had done this a million times before. Different parks. Usually, it was Union Square Park. Yes, so I had done this a million times before… until it was second nature… but this is now. I hadn’t killed time in this manner in what seems like a million years.
And, I am buzzing.
Not drug-buzzing (though, there is a part of this that we will get to later). The natural internal buzzing. The inability to ‘just be…’, to blend in with what surrounds one and give way to time. That buzzing of years past. I’d include the poem here, but this author is too protective of random things that keep the world in place.
Anyway, that buzzing. The buzzing of indecision and uncertainty.
Somehow, I go with it. Sit on the bench… initially stare at the hexagons… look toward the hexagons almost for some semblance or answer or something. I think cerebral thoughts. I remember that I sort of cherished this sort of moment. My brain crazy with stories. Currently, though, I am blank. Just stare… blankly outward. And I wonder, god, what have I done?
Catastrophizing as your author does.
It isn’t a catastrophe, however. I take the uncomfortable-to-write-in moleskin notebook that is small enough to carry places out of my bag. I write, “so, I don’t know what the middle-ground is. Maybe there is no middle-ground”.
deep.
At this point, though shifting, I am still primarily in cerebral territory.
Yes, I acknowledge the buzzing. This misguided sort of energy. I also acknowledge the blankness in my head. Then, I think of the ADD drugs. The speed in a pill. And this is what I speak of when I say, “middleground”.
I, for the most part, in the broadest of definitions, finally got what I want… what I once thought that I need. …in a legal way that is regulated, even.
And now?
Now, I write, “I can’t do it without the drug… I can’t do it with the drug, either, maybe [as evidenced by today]. By “it”, I mean, “life”.”
Eventually though, I shift (or rather, my cerebral found some cerebral spinal fluid to float within), and as always, it is time that has determined everything. Time. Don’t misunderstand, I didn’t again become the bursting-at-the-seems, artist-writer, of years past. This would be impossible. I can never go back. And though, I could barely wrap my head around how it is I am how I am now or how this version of me has evolved from that one, I recognized the fact and had to light a candle for it’s death.
Metaphorically, speaking.
Kind of like when people die in dreams or whatever. The whole representation of a death of a part of one and the resulting opening of a door. It’s always sad.
But, I guess… “deal with it… because this is just how it is now.”
So, as I sit, wait, stare at the hexagons and increasingly become more a part of my surroundings; I wonder how I could possibly proceed from here.
This [post] would possibly be more interesting if it were more ‘multimedia’. And we do have something.* But… this is a writer’s post. And thus, you get words.
*update (04 Jul 2011): Okay, fine… at 23rd Street, we are a glutton for multimedia:
Just another parable from the folks at 23rd Street.
