Andrew Spiess

Listen, you need to focus! Stop pacing aimlessly in your kitchen. Stop talking to yourself. You must find your wallet, your cigarettes, and your cell phone. You need to find a lighter. Get money fast. If there isn’t any money in your wallet, use your bank card at the ATM. Don’t worry about overdrawing if your account is low in funds; you can pay it back later when you get hired somewhere after submitting those job applications to the several restaurants around the city like you’ve been meaning to do. There is also a phone number on a strip of paper lying around for a bike messenger job that you ripped off the bulletin board at the Laundromat that you go to. Relax. Maybe the Laundromat is hiring.

Your wallet is probably under all the trash on the coffee table. Check under the magazines, ashtrays, and empty cigarette packs. Your cigarettes are probably mixed in with all the empty packs. Shake them all until you hear something rattling inside other than loose scraps of tobacco; search for something solid. There is a chance that you might find a single forgotten cigarette. Nothing? Nevermind. There’s your cell phone, under the photograph of your mother smiling and drinking iced tea on the patio back in California. Put that in a place where you won’t see it. You will not think about your mother. You will not miss her.

Call that guy Pockets. You should have his number. Did you see him a few days ago, or was that last week? Nevermind because there is his number. He told you he would front you again if you paid him back. He likes you. Don’t ask him for his real name even though you want to because it’s not a good idea to get too personal with people like him and it’s all just business anyway so forget about making friends for now. Just find your wallet.

Search under the couch cushions. Nothing but some pennies and plastic wrappers. Are those your cigarettes? You must feel so relieved. Now, find yourself a lighter. Move the couch and check underneath. Don’t put the cushions back because it’ll add that little bit of weight and you don’t want to strain yourself. You are too tired for that, and you don’t have time either. What do you see under there? Nothing but crumpled plastic bags, fast food trash, and cigarette butts. There’s a lighter! Reach for it and test it out. Is it empty? Shake it up. It must be completely dry. Forget it. Just find your wallet.

Look around on the floor. It’s that simple. This place is a mess. Everything you see belongs in the dumpster. And maybe you eat too much fast food. You should take care of yourself. You should vacuum. Make a note to clean yourself up and organize your belongings later. Is that the number for that bike messenger job? What is that tiny piece of red material behind it? It’s a portion of a pill. There must be at least twenty milligrams left. That’s all you need to balance yourself. Once this is in your system you won’t feel sick anymore. You don’t have enough to get high, which would be ideal, but at least you won’t feel this disease and depression that has been dragging the skin on your face down all night and causing your eyes and nose to leak like a sieve. Your bones won’t feel so hollow and fragile. You’ll even be awake enough to begin submitting job applications, and you should probably call your mother.

But you need a dollar bill and something to grind the pill with. First, rub the red casing off with some spit and a tissue. If you can’t find a grinder, find the closest Wal-Mart in your immediate proximity and buy some hose clamps. It works as a miniature grate to grind a pill into a pile of fine white dust. In order to buy these, you need to find your wallet. Buy several hose clamps for when you lose one, because you will lose one. You will lose them all eventually.

Remember: there might be a dollar bill in your wallet. Just relax. All you need to do right now is smoke a cigarette, but your eyelids are falling. Maybe you should make some coffee. You shouldn’t sleep even when you’re tired, when you’re too exhausted to function properly.

Alone on a dark pastel neighborhood. I drop and stand tall on a friend’s porch while casual, caustic cop cars watch and pass by. They have nothing on me. I am simply a standard presentation of Young Eccentric Humanity. The mad eyes in my mad head glow with specks of black and grey like a static TV. I feel enlightened and can’t stop laughing. My only plan is to smoke a pack of cigarettes and maybe try to sleep, though I know I’ve just sacrificed the ability; I smashed my machine with a single tab, disconnected for only a momentary holiday. Squads of thought invade me like an imaginary charge. It’s almost too much to handle, but I can’t stop laughing. Music leaks from an open window with warmth and happiness swells inside my stomach. As I perch myself on a ledge like an alert cat, I only begin to notice the significance of light from streetlamps smeared on shiny parked cars. I begin to notice significance. I lose sense of time and deconstruct myself while I try to confide in burning tobacco. My vision becomes profoundly stylized and smoke always dances with the liveliest temper and the shadows drape under trees and everything feels great from up here and I can’t stop laughing.

I have heard some striking stories on the effects of LSD on a person’s rationality and logic from people that I know. These are people whose minds have been slightly warped due to a thriving market and culture. Consumers crippled by the products they demand so fervently. It is fairly well known today that marijuana smoke is extensively more harmful than tobacco smoke, yet I frequently come across flyers around campus suggesting an organized effort to legalize marijuana. The conflict seems to be amusement vs. health. But civilization has been infused with passion and excitement with the rise of intoxicants. Risky impulses have been fulfilled with the rise of intoxicants. Every day life isn’t such a droning, bitter and bland routine when we disintegrate and disorganize. We hold infinite perspective in the palms of our hands. Recreational drug use is a way of life among the curious youth that cannot be willingly resigned. How can we give it up?

The perceptions of the effects of drugs on people today are radically different than they were in the 1960s. Back then, the psychedelic van strolled down the American road full of loving animals. Psychedelia first became a lifestyle and a major component for the intellectual type. Drugs were the right way to increase creativity and mental power. They were imbued with a spiritual nature and were not illicit. Drugs were innocent. An entire culture of people tightened its affectionate bear hug around mind alteration and kissed the pipe. Hippies weren’t even the first counterculture to compete with mainstream structure; the Beat Generation embraced marijuana and mescaline, among other drugs, as a means of perspective as well.

Drugs have now become, for the most part, a venture of escapism much like our beloved television, video game console, and fantasy novel. Maybe it has always been that way. I cannot say that this is either good or bad. Most classrooms are too dull, most jobs are too repetitive, most lines are too straight, and most people are too bored. This is a matter of simple pleasure. It is the cold numb space that I drift in when I’m high. The self-inflicted glitch in my machine. It paints the walls with intense technicolor, adds action to my stable life. I close my eyes and watch strands of radiance swirling like a screensaver. And as it wears off, I get dragged down to the solid world. Indole alkaloids, such as acid and psychedelic mushrooms, have more than once left me as a sickly sewer rat in the dull grasp of The Ordinary by the end of the day. My throat dries up. The nutrients in my body get depleted. Everything that could be considered good about it is entirely fleeting. We soon regain strength, replenish. Wait a few weeks and you figure out that the feeling is so utterly temporary and all you want to do is buy more products. Maybe the impermanence doesn’t even cross your mind, but either way you still want more. Sometimes I don’t know if I need it more than I want it, or vice versa, but it feels good and that’s what really matters. The key word is hedonism.

Aside from abusing drugs for the sake of amusement, we self-medicate with them to muddle through cruel emotional troubles. Alcohol is one, if not the only socially acceptable means of self-medication. Drugs are a coping mechanism. Those prone to fear tend to lift off in illicit shuttles. Depression rises from our fiery bodies for the street merchants to extinguish. Sometimes we feel guilty when in a stressful state, as if depression and rage are simply the wrong emotions to feel. We could blame this societal approach on a frustrating dependency upon demanding institutions, vague and deceptive advertising, public relations scams, fake primetime comedies, etc. Commercials for fresh medication tell us how to function and offer their pricy comforting solutions. In a consumerist society, we as average citizens are given a small number of options in life and are persuaded to buy supplies for bliss. If we are not fully aware of what we’re hearing and why we’re hearing it, we end up convincing ourselves of how we should think and feel based on what snake-tongued profiteers say. Thus, we resort to self-medication in order to obey and fit like puzzle pieces within typical human organization. Many drugs are stress relievers, but the fact is that some are legal and some are not.

But there is more than one type of salesman: the above mentioned Street Merchant. I’ve heard the argument that drugs are first and foremost a financial institution. Cocaine is powdered cash and marijuana is as green as the dollar bills that may or may not be in your wallet or bank account. Criminal organizations all over the world are fueled by feel-good toxins. Street gangs in dirty urban areas frequently release blood over drugs. It is a thriving, violent market. A dealer once told me he is a businessman before a junkie. I’m almost surprised that marijuana is still illegal when considering our capitalistic society and all the pill commercials on TV and all the stocked medicine cabinets across the nation.

Many components of popular culture have and will always embrace marijuana as the safest jail breaker. In the 60s, a kid could tune in to any radio station and hear lyrics of drug romance: the Grateful Dead, The Doors, etc. Weed still emanates from the words of hip hop and reggae, and there is a following in the genre of stoner metal. In any case, censorship has taken these references off of the airwaves. High Times is a strong proponent for recreational drug use, though it can be difficult to take this magazine seriously. Hollywood targets smokers with the outwardly delightful stoner movie, such as Half Baked and Friday. Reefer Madness, a film from the 1930s, is an anti-drug film yet it is regularly grouped in with stoner movies as ridiculous entertainment. In this sense, popular culture and the media can be subtly expressive and indirect of what is acceptable in the world when regarding recreational drugs.

Still, society is torn on how to handle drug abuse. Vast amounts of research have been conducted on all types of drugs since the late 60s. Physical addiction is the cold essence that our blood envelopes. Therefore, cocaine and heroine will never detach from a hard stigma. Our entire population is fully aware of the harmful possibilities of recreational drug use.  Information like this can be accessed all over the media. There are anti-drug websites with archives full of personal drug narratives. One could simply open a magazine or turn on his or her television and see an anti-marijuana public service announcement. These PSAs are also on posters and billboards across the country as well as all over the Internet. Media claims like these spit in the bloodshot eyes of drug inspired entertainment. Everyday we are subject to so many mixed messages on the topic of drugs through popular culture and popular news media by separate organizations with separate agendas. The key word is contradiction.

I’ll leave you with one last thought: consider the groups of people who flock together and assert themselves as “straight edge”. This basically means they take no part in substance abuse of any kind. They represent a conflicting subculture, coinciding with the punk music scene, to that of drug junkies. Thus, sobriety has become more of a definition, a lifestyle rather than something natural. It seems that society sleeps in constricting cabinets as we begin to dichotomize the natural aspects of our lives. This may signify how permanent drug culture has become and how it will continue to solidify over time.

I haven’t slept all night and I’m not going to
Bear with me as I feel this town
Feels like a stuck pig
A rat actually
You are domesticated matter of some kind on a garnished platter
and I can’t relate.

Get laid immediately or get sedated or cut these open
But it only ever feels good for a moment.

Some don’t understand how much filth and rain there is
They are not convinced
They don’t think
It is past six
It is not early, it is late
and don’t you forget that.

This is important
I can’t stress that enough
and there isn’t enough space
there is structure.

I took a walk and saw two birds fighting
This kid I know, he is a fight
He doesn’t wake for simple pleasure
Those accepted conventions and cute sitcoms are placebos
Don’t you forget that.

Poor little city mops wear a lot of greasy t-shirts
and almost nod off by the stalling clock
and miss their mothers
and only want the feathers to expand as they flutter

I can’t sleep because of all the colors
Swimming in the thickness of values
Trying to dodge lapses of thought
I keep my red-hot confidence locked in a jar
and set my stomach on fire
and seethe while the authorities spit warped judgment

I don’t want to speak with them
I want to talk to you
on the telephone.
and as I blink my pink eyes, I become a god and evaporate
Consume this and fuck mediocrity.
and what is that medicine smell?
Get it away from me
I’m going to go take a piss and be disgusted.