From: pez@manhattan.com (Gizmo) Subject: The Adventures Of Smacks Past (Part 45) So What Does Any Of This Have To Do With Heroin? Date: 1996/12/09 newsgroups: alt.drugs.hard THE ADVENTURES OF SMACKS PAST (PART 45) So What Does Any Of This Have To Do With Heroin? Has Giz completely lost his mind, assuming he ever had one to begin with? Just what in hell does any of this consciousness stuff have to do with hard drugs like smack? The answer, nothing and everything. How's that for a shot at covering all bases? Nothing and everything. Well, yeah. That's about it really. Okay, really really really. Heroin, one of the most consciousness altering drugs out here, does not, it seems, normally attract people into it's lair, who have aspirations to something like (non-drug consciousness enhancement.) But that's what we're doing with it anyway. I just had additional drives going on that kept me interested. You're gonna get hooked on something in life, no matter what it is. Nothing describes a person better, it seems, than the sum total of his or her habitual behavior. So if we can take it as a given that you're going to be addicted to something, than why not get hooked on the ultimate? Whatever that means to us. If heroin can make you feel as good as it does, is it not possible that something can make you feel even better, without all the negatives that go with hard drug abuse? The short answer? There is? The long answer? Getting to it may take, well...long. Or not. Depends on the person in question. Just as a side thought, there's something that's possible for almost anyone, that not only feels better than heroin, but is probably even more addictive. No it's not underwater basket weaving. It's sex. Sex, with the right person and honed to a nice art form, can be much more habit forming than hard drugs. Well, come to think of it, it is drug related. We're dealing with an entire complex of bio-chemical and hormonal interactions that's more complex than a simple shot of heroin into your vein. Come to think of it, I've heard this from many ex-users. You find this stuff in AA/NA recovery programs all the time. You'll hear folks who have kicked their habit, extol the virtues of good sex over and over again. The problem is that when you're just coming off heroin or are recently estranged from it, it's not something that normally just starts happening. Besides, like I said earlier, you need the right person to do it with. But that's getting off subject again, ain't it? I was talking about heroin originally. This is about the "adventures of smacks past," isn't it? So how do we make the jump from a good heroin rush, a good LSD trip, a neat shot of cocaine, to recovery, to great sex, to non-drug related consciousness enhancement? Beats the shit out of me too. I just know that that's the course I've been locked on forever. Maybe I should have died years ago. Sure seems like I had enough opportunity to acquire an early death certificate. But that never happened. Fate, if there be such, seemed to take me down a different road, for now. Although I'm still fairly certain that eventually I'll still get the "death certificate." But for now, it's happy trails. So where was I anyway? Oh, I know. I was relaying more information about this new thing I had gotten involved with a year or two out of recovery. Not to wander too far afield here, I'll jump to a part of this that might help keep me and the story more on tract. CHEMISTRY. We all love that subject, right? At least as far is it relates to the chemistry of injecting those opiate molecules into our bloodstream and enjoying their effects on our brain. Me too. But I wanted my cake and wanted to eat it too, and wanted more for the next day as well. I came to find out through my involvement with this very interesting group in New York, that you could do an awful lot of stuff to your self if you knew how and if you had the desire to do it. The knowing how part was really the easy one. Hell, you could learn what to do in short enough order. The having the desire part, well that's not as simple. Because, here you were working on a feature of our psyche that's tied into the laziness syndrome, that plagues almost everyone to one degree or another. You had to make, god forbid, efforts. Wow, what a concept! I hated making efforts. It's what got me into shooting heroin into my arm three or four times a day. Forget the efforts that were needed to maintain an addiction like this. They don't count, because when your hooked, you're forced to make those efforts. Nooooo, the efforts I'm talking about now, are in the "unnecessary" category. That is, you don't ever have to make them. You don't have to do any fucking thing at all about it. But these efforts, like the one I related in my last story, the one about "not staring," end up having payoffs that far exceed the efforts needed to get the payoff in the first place. But for a long time, and periodically throughout, it's still an effort to both remember to do it, and to actually do it. And it's all tied to chemistry. The chemistry in your own brain. Force yourself to "not stare," and you force new chemical reactions to take place in your brain. Force yourself to refuse to "talk about your problems," and you also stimulate an area in your brain that normally gets overwhelmed by needless dwelling on things. You don't need to go anywhere to do this. You don't need to study for years to learn it. In a sense everyone knows what it is anyway, it's just that most folks don't seem to have the interest in it enough to find out what they can do with it. Recreational drugs are a back door into a place in our brain that can be entered, activated and opened in a much neater way. Recreational drugs are a shortcut that usually, sooner or later, will exact a price that most of us can't afford anymore, no matter how much fun it is in the beginning. Fucking with your on internal chemistry, without outside substances, will give better, cleaner and more lasting results. One of the neatest payoffs while making these efforts came about nine months after I had been playing with this. I most certainly had continuous daily or weekly jolts of delicious new energy, but one day, while riding to work on the New York City Subway train, I had a payoff that I still savor as being something almost mystical. I had been practicing a combination of techniques like, "not staring," coupled with "not talking to myself," for the past few days as much as I could force myself to do it. I kept feeling pleasantly light headed a number of times from doing this, and it seemed that at times I was about to have something like a big blast take place. Well, this one morning, after really making an effort at this since I woke up, I was riding on the train to work, when BOOM....I felt like a bolt of lightening just shot through my nervous system. It was a RUSH. Not like a Heroin rush. More like a good Cocaine rush coupled with a nice LSD high. The blast was so intense that I thought I would have to get off the crowded train and just lie down somewhere. It turned out this was not necessary. I was able to keep it together until I reached 59th street. I got off the train and headed for the stairs to the street. Once on the street, the blast was even more intense. It was pleasurable beyond anything I had felt in months or years. I knew that I could go to my job and work, but I thought, "why waste this on something like work?" So I called in sick, and went to Central Park to see where this state would take me. The rest of the day was spent wandering around Central Park and the Upper West Side of Manhattan higher than I'd been in a long time. High, but totally lucid and in control. I didn't need anything. I didn't want anything. It was just bliss. Also, I noticed that the efforts that I had been making to "fuck with my brain," where not needed right now. That night, I was sure that if I could fall asleep the whole thing would wear off and I would be right back to my normal self in the morning. The good news? This state, with only slightly less intensity continued for about ten days, before it died down enough that I was back to being me again. I knew I was onto something here. Thank god the "adventures," were continuing. Copyright Gizmo 1996