From: pez@manhattan.com (Gizmo) Subject: The Adventures Of Smacks Past (Part 35) So How Do You Get Out, And Stay Out Of This Mess? Date: 1996/11/15 newsgroups: alt.drugs.hard THE ADVENTURES OF SMACKS PAST (PART 35) So How Do You Get Out, And Stay Out Of This Mess? All right, I'm going to take a break from the body of this work for a minute. Let's forget the "war stories" for a moment and let's try to cover something that can be just as important as the stories. The question in the header occupied my mind for many years throughout all the so-called "adventures." I wondered about it over and over again, because it always occurred to me that something much better than the dope life was possible. I gotta say that during all the times that I was actively using, I continued to come across certain types of people that I was almost jealous of. These were the types of people that seemed to have resigned themselves or accepted their fate as a dope addict. I met many of them. Folks who, no matter how bad it got, seemed to have a prime directive geared toward simply getting and doing more and more dope. Anything that interrupted the flow of opiates or cocaine was viewed as an annoyance, a brief inconvenience, but never any kind of blessing. In a way I thought that "they" had more together than I did! I reasoned, "man, I wish I was like that. I wish I could give up the silly idea that I could live happily without dope." But this was not to be the deck of cards I was dealt. And retrospectively, I can see that the turmoil was a blessing in disguise. In fact, "THE TURMOIL" was key here. Where it not for that turmoil, I don't think I would have steered myself clear of the waiting disasters that were looming just over the next few horizons. As an aside, I might add that all the folks I knew who seemed to have totally given themselves over to the dope life are no longer with us. Nor does this mean that I'm any better than they were. It just means that I was different. It just means that I needed other types of experiences in the game of life. So, let's assume that some of us have the turmoil. Let's assume that some of us, have gotten seduced by this femme fatale of addiction but that we felt the need to extricate ourselves from it's clutches. What does it take to do it? What does it take to break the pattern and more importantly, to enjoy being clean? Like I said in the title of this story, I grappled with that question a lot over the years, both before and after I quit. And I think that now I can see some things that have been of value in doing this. I've mentioned this before somewhere, but I think a kind of maturity has a lot to do with it. For me anyway, this meant dealing with being alive and all that it entails without resorting to burying life's little annoyances, pains and hurts with chemical substances. We live in a time and have for the past hundred years or so, where push button pain relief is considered the way to go. Like everything, this has it's place, but when you do it over and over and over again, particularly with drugs like heroin, you kill off the ability to deal with life head on. And I'm going to call this a lack of maturity. Again, not better or worse, but different! If you can deal with life's bullshit, i.e., the fear of new challenges, shyness, fear of rejection, the pain of a broken heart, the sensation of being not good enough, anger, jealousies, nameless suffering, death, the seeming meaninglessness of life, fill in your own demon, you not only get stronger but you are able to enjoy more of the cherries and you won't choke on the pits as much! That's what I mean by maturity. Another thing that worked for me in a big way, is what I like to call stepping outside of oneself. That could be described in words as the willingness to do that which you ordinarily would not do. It almost doesn't matter what it is, just as long as you do it. So, if you're afraid of a job with a lot of responsibility, go get one. If you feel that you don't have enough education, go forth and educate yourself. If you're a guy and you're afraid to go up and talk to woman, just give it a try. Perhaps you've always been a very emotional type of person. Fine, go out and do something that's either very physical or intellectual. You get the idea. The thing is to push the limiting envelope that everyone has to one degree or another. What this seems to do is to broaden your capacity for enjoyment. You end up finding that you can do shit you swore you could never do. And if you're really lucky, you find that you get "HIGH" off of it. Holy shit, a new concept. Getting high without using the spike or the pipe. How the fuck could that happen? All this coupled with time away from your old life can sometimes insure that you'll sorta kinda be cured. Oh, I know that in the great wisdom of AA/NA and other drug rehab psycho bullshit, no one ever really "gets cured." But then again, what is the definition of being cured? How many years of clean time do you need to merit the gold ribbon with the word cured written on it? Besides most rehab systems are in sales, just in case you haven't noticed. The facts speak for themselves. If you've had the turmoil and you're wondering what to do with it, perhaps you'll find a way. The folks I've known that have broken the tie of addiction and made some type of active effort to add new layers to their interaction with life are usually pretty happy with it. The more stuff you can find pleasure in outside of the instant fix of a shot of smack, the less you'll be interested in the shot of smack, especially since if you've done enough smack for long enough, you're bound to have notice that addiction is not always fun. Also there's the possibility of controlled usage. I think I'll cover this in another story. But rare though it be, it does occur. Usually not right away. The expansions and growths cited above most assuredly need to be happening, else you don't find enough joy and delight with being clean to be able to roll the big dice on something like occasional usage. But it's possible. Oh well. Smack me if I've smacked to much of pretentious pontificatusness. Copyright Gizmo 1996