Mind Play

"The creation of something new is not accomplished by intellect, but the playing instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the object it loves" - Carl Jung

Does a woman find her life in drugs for the same reason? I guess now my time as a user is all distant memory. In the moment, I found drugs a colorful arrangement of temptations for which I could play and be played with. I was not initially uncontrolled or completely dependent on the substances which I surrounded myself with. I found them an inlet to another state of mind or sense of emotion. It was much like the way I view artwork, granting it a power of influence great enough to arise various feelings. Art fails when it creates no alteration of it's viewer's emotion.

For a moment when I was eleven years old the world felt right. I had taken my first hit of marijuana and actually felt like i'd let it drag enough to feel that high. There is nothing in this world quite like the first puff of sweet, sweet green and the way her scent lingures. I think my interest in marijuana was out of curiousity at first. I was big into poetry then, too lazy to read novels, and I can remember it vividdlythat I'd been reading a book of Whitman when a friend passed the joint toward me. I inhaled, exhaled and thought for a few momemnts that I'd reached that point in life where it truly is as good as it gets. The next line I read was, "to be surrounded by beautiful, luminous, laughing flesh is enough," and it was on that day.

Later the weed I smoked was never good enough. I had smoked so much so frequently in a craze that my tolerance had built up and in many ways peaked. I could smoke in a circle of friends watching as they'd get high. I could smile, laugh and feel decently but I wasn't getting high anymore. I didn't feel anxious or paranoid and my laughter was not that of a mind on drugs. I thought about leaving and never coming back because I needed to find something that would make sticking around worth the while. It got to be hard to fly.

I suppose my first addiction was to pills. Opiates could kill me and not in the same context that they'd kill most users by overdosing. I am fatally allergic to them. I think I took ecstasy because I longed for that company of mind and would settle for the company of body which rolling brought. I needed to be with a lover those days and I never actaully knew what a lover was. Ecstasy was an entirely more complicated sense of awareness than just that of strangers and the contact which I desired from them. The lights were better; the music became enhanced. It created a surrounding that urged my body to move; to dance. I would breathe faster than I could think and often felt overheated. I remember a few times when there were sober, clean kids around just wanting to move and shake. They would offer water to users including me but too much water could be dangerous. In fact, everything in life seems potentially quite dangerous especially love and that is primarily what I was after. People's emotional lives are not linear like their waking lives. I wanted to find a source for all of the emotions of abandonment and loneliness I was going through. I figured if I had sex it was the most secure and passionate thing I could do. Instead, sex provided a certain numbness. It was that feeling of nothingness that made me feel tremendously uncomfortable and so I sought new medication.

Methadone is a prescribed drugused to suppress heroin addiction, often in amounts so high that hardcore junkies can harvest addictive qualities for it. I had a friend that was messed up on the needle and she never took the meth to get better so I took it because it was there and it was inexpensive, comparatively. I suppose it took about a week to become addicted and then it wasn't a matter of getting high, but being happy. Meth was one drug, one aspect of my life, that never wanted anything from me. I liked that for once in my life, I was the user.

LSD was a way to get away; it was a place I could visit and leave my body all together. I did some crazy things in this state. I remember taking showers fully clothed on a number of occasions and thinking I was somewhere very diffrent. Then I would lie on my bed or upon the floor drenched and wonder why I was so cold. It never dawned on me that I had just been in the shower. In many ways there is a part of me that went missing when I became hooked on LSD. I got caught up in discovering just how many areas of the brain are used for vision and I needed more than life to expand my line of sight. I'd hallucinate before I would ever consider closing my eyes. In some respects, I still feel this way only it is much more readily available to paint or draw than it is to take an acid trip. Now I can think back and it makes fair sense. I feel like I'm back on the right track but the reality of it is that I was not living then in this reality so I will never truly have those years back. It's just a memory of them which is difficult to take in sometimes.

There is a part of me that thinks this was crazy and irrational behaviour. I find myself thinking back on my life in the past only to discover that I've left every aspect behind without any hesitation. Every past relationship and many friendships, I have just taken off and figured the other individuals involved could use a little neglect seeing as I had endured a great deal up to that point. I guess, despite the loss of memory, rages and pits of depression which I'd gone through back then, I turned out okay. I might have a skewed way of laying it all out and I find myself restless with people more than I'd like to admit, but I have survived it and many people that care so much for junk like I did, don't survive. Twenty escasty tablets could have killed me and there were nights when they ought to have. I certainly don't know the reason that I breathe tonight, but for once, I can safely say that I'm okay with it. I'm a pretty damn thankful lunatic.