NA all the way

You suck in your breath, yank off your hang-nail, and try to find a new design on your shoe because you know you're going to explode if you have to listen to these cuntfucks blather on about how "marijuana destroyed my life," or endure the I'm-not-an-addict-please-someone-tell-me-I-am conversation much longer. Yeah yeah yeah, you know that addiction is addiction, and that there's always a nastier war story out there. In fact, if there's anything you learned from your experience in Narcotics Anonymous, it's that no matter how bad you think you've got it, your'e still a spoiled shit through and through. They call it humility, you believe.

But still, as self-indulgent as it may seem, there is a difference- you can tell just by looking at their faces. Faces that tell you right away they've seen the shit no matter how young or cleaned up they look. We are the ones that sold our cars and pawned our lives away, the ones yellowing with hepatitis and aching with abscesses. Sucked cock for nothing but sweet relief, all the shit that makes for a really glamorous movie but when you see them in real-life with their stained t-shirts and actually smell their sweat and cum you're sickened by them and maybe toss a couple quarters to soothe your sense of civic duty. Often times we have no teeth and appear to be in our mid-fifties when we're really in our mid-twenties, thanks to years of a chronic love affair with meth- We are the ones that weren't phased the first time we stripped the dope off a dead man's corpse. And unconsciously we inevitably seem to drift together, within our sterile little rehab bubble, without mentioning a word, just a look, and we recognize a member of our broken tribe. Like implanted somewhere deep within our rotted veins and decrepit livers we each have our own little dope-fiend radar.

After sitting in these quaint little friendship-circles for several months, upon looking back and deciphering at exactly what point you were undeniably addicted (". . .and our lives had become unmanageable. . ."), you realize that it wasn't necessarily when you got "the shakes" for the first time, or when you were so fucking dope-sick during your college entrance exams that you barfed acidic-chocolate goo all over your test and the honor student in front of you, nor was it when you stole your little brother's bar mitzvah money and closed-out your sister's bank account, or when even your little scenester-friends with their sexy bags of yay-oh and Lucky Strikes wouldn't have anything to do with you, gave you that pitiful "Sorry, we're not into that" look, and not even when your mom finds your old needles or catches you stealing her cash or her pain-pills for the millionth time and instead of hitting and screaming, she just crumples up like a paper-doll and cries. It wasn't even the time when you were leaning upside-down from your bed with a belt around your neck as your beautiful dead boyfriend aimed a spike at your jugular and that little silver spear broke off and just got sucked right in, both of you panicking like hell until Blake could fish it out with a spoon and a pair of tweezers. Although a lot of this shit happened concurrently, it probably really truly hit you when one day as your high seceded, you woke up to the reality of your life and life as a whole, looked around and for the first time aware of and really fully comprehending the sea of shit that it had become, and you know that what you see is so fucking ugly and heavy and meaningless that there's no way in hell that you can endure it consciously.

And this is what it's about: for the life of the junkie is one of constant fleeing, from the sickness, from the cops, from the man, whatever. But it's also about fleeing from conciousness- from something evil- every painful, gruesome realization all rolled together indistinguishably into one huge stinking blob, so you can't fully comprehend all of it but you know that it's there and it scares the fucking shit out of you because you know that eventually you'll be too tired to run and eventually it'll all cave in on you and it's all just too damn much. One thing you know for sure is that no one thinks, "Gee, me and my pals would like to have some fun tonight," and runs straight for a crack-pipe or syringe.

And here you are, running, surrounding yourself with people either paid or paying to make you feel like you actually matter, tell you how strong you are, that by learning how to talk about your feelings everything's going to be just fine until you almost forget about Blake and the rest of your life. You watch how with unsettling ease these people immediately adopt this way of life with their sponsors and their slogans and their emotional confessions and even though you go through all the motions and enjoy all the praise and all the pats-on-the-back as if it's actually going to last, and even though you know it's o.k. to "fake it 'till you make it," you also know that underneath it all you feel absolutely nothing.

So now your'e clean and out in the "real world." Well congratufuckinglations. You get a job and take some classes and give your parents enough material to say, "She's getting over this so well, she's doing great, life is really looking up!" But you're still the same old junkie that you were before, you just don't have the bruises to show it. Your'e still running, in your own way, blocking out thought, trying not to remember as everyone around you moves ahead in life that you're a nineteen year-old coulda-woulda-shoulda been with your heart and all your life torn out. And lately you've noticed that all the sudden there are smells you can't handle smelling, songs you can't bear to hear without being tossed right back into that world of rough sex and vomit and love and mildew and days spent laying on the bathroom floor and guilt and passion and fear and greasy hair and Ramen Noodles and semen and the only person that you'll ever love and that gorgeous, ethereal and divine swirling plume of black-cherry that tells you everything will be alright.

Because red means go, baby, you'll never forget that, and as you look into the mirror and stare at a person that statistically won't live much past 30, you decide to kick-back and wait for it to come.