The Left Column

Politics for Poets

Wake up!

I asked a young man today about the deaths at Mansfield this week. He was a clerk working in a local store. I asked him 'Hey, how come you're so responsible?' From there I inquired about the two kids ending up dead at the Mansfield shows. This young man informed me that he had been at the Mansfield show and saw the activity around one of the victims. When this is going on people don't always know that the person laying there is dead. Maybe they can revive him?

I think I said something stupid then. I was trying to stress that people don't have to die if they take drugs. They ought to be paying attention to doses. There is no need for death.

I asked the young man what the deal was with the kids at Mansfield? Didn't they know about dosing? and that the problem with time release drugs is that if you take a bunch of them over a period of hours, and you have a threshold level of the little capsules, then you might think that you are fine, and then, all at once, a bunch release and there is a sudden overdose. Not good.

I am not a fan of happy pills. They leave me with a terrific hangover. Maybe it is because every time I have done them it has been a wild time with drinking. It was only a few times in college, because I had hurt my ankle and was on crutches. Someone gave me a Quaalude. That was 30 years ago. I have not done them sense. It makes me a little bit of a maverick as far as some people seem to believe. I cross over into that other world as an observer. But people on pills don't really need to have a straight person around jamming up their parTy. I don't parTy.

Back in college I quickly realized what a jerk I can be. Ya, when high like that I think I am funny, outrageous, outspoken, in your face truculent, charming, witty, rightgeous. I quickly decided after that that I don't like being a public fool. I chose to not be happy on happy pills.

But that didn't stop me from drinking and being foolish. It took a long number of years to get past that.

I remember unimpressing people after that with my heavy drinking. I would drink too fast and get sick. I remember falling asleep on the bed with the coats. After a time I knew that I had to leave, drunk or not. It was a group of people who were friends with another engineer, all their friends from Tuffs. After that I really thought hard about drinking with semi-strangers. I just don't do it anymore.

I pretty much gave up drinking like that a long time ago. But I could still binge if I lapse. The last binge I had was probably two years ago. It was because someone had died. We were on the hillside where the crosses are. It's a private cemetery. Everyone was chugging whiskey. I even took photographs of it. It was a celebration of life. Alcohol presents a good opportunity for communal behavior: blood of the lamb and all of that.

But outside of the ceremony or the summer Burning Man festival, there are those who need to do the substance, whatever it is, every day. Maybe to them it is just a necessary part of feeling normal. They get their fix and they feel like things are sane again. Why put themselves through the hell of withdrawal, they might argue. But how it goes is like this: at some point the substance may become a problem. How would it be a problem? Do I need to go down the litany of things that can happen? Mostly the list would be health and behavior issues. If you are a [some type of addict] and you go to a store, or a gas station, or your driving down the road, and your high on the stuff and your reflexes aren't working and you kill someone. Or you show up at work all screwed in the head and you can't get your job done. You talk stuff to your boss and tell him how you feel. You say outrageous things to strangers. The list goes on. It's the stuff of dissipate fiction. It's a fact of life. People that live this way usually don't make it a problem. They know enough to not bring their crazy ways to the public. They know to dose themselves properly. It can be a lot of fun for them. Yes. Drugs and alcohol can be a lot of fun for people.

Are you shocked to read this? I doubt it. If you are then you dwell within a fantasy world of approprium. You simply have not observed what is happening with the people around you. The world is full of addicts and alcoholics. And yes, it is not a preferred lifestyle. I recommend against being an alcoholic or an addict. But the fact is that people are and do still lead meaningful lives. And yes, they are chasing a dragon, and they will never get that same crack high again like they did that one and only time. They will never feel that same way like they did that first time they shot up cocaine. Yes, they chase that dragon. They want the high. They can't get it. They won't ever have it again. Sot hey do more and more. Or they try combinations. And a percentage of alcoholics and addicts end up dead at an age earlier then actuarial tables suggest is an appropriate age for folks to die. They die young. It's a fact.

And in Rock-n-Roll they even name a song that. Everyone loves it that hears it. Jonesing junkies make really heart-felt music.

So what is up with the kids at Great Woods? I get back to that because that is where I started. It is like amateur night for them. The young man, the clerk, said that the kids were taking random samples of different things. Amateur stuff. Very very stupid thing to do. And they end up dead.

It is hell for the people who have to save them. Think of it the next time you take some beans from the bean salad (there not beans). If you are going to take drugs don't take just any drug. Dozens of other people were hospitalized. How many others went home and didn't get help?

There is a book called The Major Ordeals of the Mind and countless minor ones, by Henri Michaux, that explores the mind's collapses into raging seas of dementia. This book, written in the 1940's or 50's is available, translated from the French. The book provides a clinical approach to the use of various mind altering substances. Mr. Marchaud details various stages of consciousness. I suppose The Mystics would have called them stages of hell. These states of consciousness were not unknown to the ancients. There were always things that people took to dabble and 'achieve altered states'.

The mythology of demonology is detailed in how it explains various aspects of the various characters that one may encounter when put under the spell of a chemical of one kind or another. If people decide that they want to experiment with such things, some gurus, and other shaman types will assist them, if the shaman or guru decides to take the one as a pupil. In the case of people just using substance for the hell of it, without even the delusion that maybe they are on some kind of spiritual quest, a short-cut to the higher known but not by the seeker, those people willing enter into an unknown place. What they experience might actually be similar to as described in ancient texts about various forms of hell. The journey into the inner mind is fraught with danger and not a place for people to dabble. For crying out loud . . . it's your own head by the way, don't you know? You're shoving sh in it and you're feeling good maybe. But it changes you. It changes things. It clogs up the rivers in your own body. You have to know how to let the rivers flow free. If you stuff too much sewage in the river, the river may become toxic. You poison your organs.

Very few people will say it out loud, in public, that there are serious consequences of taking too much; or just a little of too many different things; all at once. Over use substances may result in various failures of organs. Just because the substances are legal, or even over-the-counter, you can still overdose. If you are taking drugs you ought to at least pay attention to these things. You could live a long time as a junkie if you always shoot clean drugs, keep your works clean, don't do dangerous sex when high, don't bring it out into the public. Read about William Burroughs if you want the heads up on all of that. Again, I'm not endorsing it. But I'd rather have a living junkie than have to go to another funeral or read about some bright and promising child who dies needlessly on the lawn in Mansfield in full view of his generation.

So, any of you smart kids who like to dabble. Say you've found my blog here and you are reading this. You are maybe curious who I am. Why do I have a need to put in my two cents about drug addiction and renal failure? Well, because some of the most brillient people who I would have wanted to know, and talk to, would still be alive if they had not abused their bodies. I am not saying that they abused their minds. I won't judge them like that. They were the Spirit that used that body. Now they are gone.

I can of course talk to them if I want in my head. I would then hear the voice that some part of myself imagines they would be. But it would be a fabrication of mind, self-hypnosis in a hypnogognic state. I can get there. I can commune with good thoughts. But I don't really know them. I can't know them except through what they left behind, what I read other people wrote about them, what people say about them. There are a bunch of them. They are dead.

Gore Vidal was of the same generation as these folks, or a generation before. And he recently passed. Sad for him. Other people younger than him passed long long ago and I can never really know them.

It isn't just the 27 club. It is also the middle aged guy who dies suddenly because an organ gives out. Abuse of drugs.

It is possible to use and take drugs without risking major damage to vital organs. Don't mix your drugs. Don't consider that over the counter drugs aren't really drugs (don't mix the drugs!). Don't drink to excess. Don't put your body into starvation mode. Don't stress yourself out. Dose yourself properly. DOSE YOURSELF PROPERLY. Most drug deaths these days are from overdoses. DOSE YOURSELF PROPERLY.

My purpose here is so that you can stay alive. Stay alive and be in love with the world. And when you are older, an old man, you can give your wisdom to the youth of that generation. You can warn them about the people who you knew who died too young. There will always be some. The cliche: The Lord takes the best ones first. It's a kitsch thing to say when a young person dies, and then everyone breaks down in tears.

Aug 3, 2012

well . . .

I think I've blogged enough today.

Life goes on.

Thank You Veterans!

~ OK Now.

 
  This is despairation
    and grasping at straws
 trying to sell you a heart 
    of sadness that you don't want anyway.

   This is just a clinical event.
  I need a shot of sunlight and clean ocean air.
  Just the scent of the sea
    will be enough for me.

  So it's off to the shore.
   I'll be leaving by the back door.
  Don't need to stop at the store.

   This is just self-indulgent nonsense. 
    what makes things funny?
   Writing a play with a magic marker and a whitee board.
   Using voice recognition software.

   And I've got mic in hand.
  Gee, isn't it grand
   this depression.
 
        
  Pretty sunset in the camera lens
   I searched for you all day.
  I waited in the donut shop
    with little more to say.

   I thought you gave your best
     to the wide world around
   and happy bird singings in the grassy park
      a melodious Springtime sound.