From: pez@manhattan.com (Gizmo) Subject: The Adventures Of Smacks Past (Part 37) The Journey Of A 1,000 Miles, May last A Lot Longer Date: 1996/11/21 newsgroups: alt.drugs.hard THE ADVENTURES OF SMACKS PAST (PART 37) THE JOURNEY OF A 1,000 MILES, MAY LAST A LOT LONGER And that's been the story for sure. I may have become just a common dope fiend, but it did not start out that way. Actually, the beginning of this story, while not totally unique, was somewhat different than what you usually hear. Of course I can start with a good disclaimer, in that this means no more nor less than anything else, it's just this story. The beginning of my 10 to 15 year saga with heroin began before I took my first hit. Also, it began in a totally different direction than heroin would normally take one. It began with curiosity. Not just curiosity about drugs, but curiosity about life. From even the pre-teen days, I was always fascinated with how things worked. I wanted to know everything I could. I asked bunches of questions about everything from why the moon was in the sky, to what made a clock tick. This curiosity took several childlike turns in my pre-teen years and started to mature when I entered my adolescent years. Eventually my curiosity in science, chemistry, astronomy, gave way to a curiosity for life in general. It became >important< to me, to understand what the fuck was going on. I guess a number of good pop psychologists have termed this human trait, "the search for meaning." If that's what it was, that's what I had. I had to know why we were here, what the purpose of life was, what you could hope to understand and more importantly, what you could do with the knowledge that you would gain from it all. This seemed exciting enough in the beginning. This seemed like it was going to be a very thrilling ride, to be sure. As I neared my 14th birthday, things seemed to clicking into place nicely. I was young, healthy, exploring teenage lust, into playing music, basketball, and getting cerebral enough to start reading books on psychology and philosophy. Flying High as it were, I was also just as bored with life's more mundane things, like responsibility, getting good grades in school, finding out what I wanted to do when I grew up, etc. I wanted the "brass ring," and it seemed that the "brass ring" was so very close to being in reach, But I didn't want to work at any of the foundations that needed to be in place to sustain the loftier vistas that were starting to be visible to me. The impact of the times probably had a hand in all this. While most of The Bronx, where I grew up was unaffected by the new paradigms that were sweeping a segment of the population, a number of us were getting turned on to it. This was the entire mid 60's period, with it's emphasis on more humane values, free speech, higher consciousness, the right to use drugs, open sexuality, etc. For those of us that resonated to this stuff, it was just what we wanted to see happening. It wasn't long before, even the New York Times and Life Magazine were churning out articles about LSD, and psychedelics and the very interesting effects these drugs would have on your mind and body. I read each new article with growing interest. I started reading what few books had come out on this subject. I started smoking pot, then hashish, tried speed, downs and finally LSD! BAM. It was love at first ingestion. The very first LSD trip, threw me into a very different state of perception. All of a sudden, the "answer" to the burning questions in my head were illuminated in a new way. You've heard all the cliché's, but those cliché's were not totally out of bounds. "You became the answers." You could touch the reality behind life's seemingly mundane exterior. Just the effects of a drug? Lot of folks thought so. But later non-drug experiences would "corroborate" some of what was being experienced back then. The desire was to probe deeper and deeper. More LSD trips were in order. More information was being made available. Tim Leary and Richard Alpert were delving head-on into these new "chemical triggers." One thing that I was dimly aware of back then, but that became more or less common knowledge later on, was that not everyone who took these psychedelics had these experiences. It was more than just a function of the all important "set and setting." You had to have the inner machinery to produce these states. And even though physically, everyone does have it, there needs to be an active working of this machinery for drugs like LSD to work it's real magic. As the year wore on, I jumped deeper and deeper into what seemed like a real short cut into some very powerful understandings and experiences. At first it was great. Then, almost imperceptibly, I noticed that the payoff was less and less profitable. It was my first experience with drug burnout, but I didn't know it yet. I just thought I needed bigger dosages to achieve what I wanted. I really wanted it to last forever. The higher state, that is. But as was becoming clearer and clearer, even in the literature of the day, this was not possible. The chemical shortcut could throw a person into these more pleasurable and exalted states of being for a while, but they were not going to keep you there. As all this was going on, I of course continued to shirk my ordinary teenage years responsibility. I slacked in school, got thrown out of school, couldn't hold a job etc. I was also starting to get a bit neurotic. Too much grass and LSD were burning me out. I had some very strong gut level feelings that I needed to stop NOW or I was going to cross over this threshold into something more debilitating. And of course, being the smart ass that I was, I didn't stop. Instead, I ventured into trying harder and harder drugs. Never thinking I would get addicted to opiates, I found them to be very soothing to my frazzled nerves and adolescent fears. And this is the maturity thing I've talked about in earlier "adventures." This is were it was time to put into practice some of what I saw as the path to a richer life. This is where I fucked up. I didn't need a recovery program to tell me I needed to chill out. It was right there in my own brain. Did I listen? Altogether now, FUCK NO. Hey, I was young, brash, invincible etc. I had full control of my dope intake. Sure enough! But the dream of a richer life stayed with me. As I went head-on into one layer of addiction after another, the dream of what I could do, went right along with me. It's just that there was no actualization at all. Just a lot of "adventures," and a bigger and bigger mess. Did I need all this additional drama to get to where I really wanted to go? Well, for a long time, into my 20's I thought so. I rationalized that I needed to really put my back up against the wall in order to finally get going. I was always inherently lazy about doing the mundane stuff. I knew it needed to be given every bit of importance that the loftier things needed, but I hated doing them. Ordinary life responsibilities, like working, saving money, etc., were loathsome to me. I was sure there was a shortcut. I didn't think it would be through drugs forever, but I thought there was one. I sometimes thought my addiction to drugs would force me to confront these stuck spots in my psyche. Perhaps it was all a self-fulfilling prophecy, but that's exactly what happened. As the addiction to and the trouble with hard drugs wore on, I started to stir that inner turmoil that eventually not only led me out of this mess, but eventually into that "higher state," that I wanted all along. In my next story, I'll cover some of how that happened. The plot thickens, as the mystery novels like to say. Stay Tuned and don't nod out yet. Copyright Gizmo 1996