speedball

10/13/2009    

I was more addicted to self destruction then to the drugs themselves ... something very romantic about it.

The red bricked condo on the outskirts of Tempe is a typical small time meth lab. I was the mad scientist. Uncle Fester's books littered my kitchen table alone with thousands of match books and matches. The kitchen counter was the color of a an eggplant, iodine stains. Its unique electron structure allowed it to absorbed certain wavelengths of light and the purple color is what remained after the light was absorbed. Unable to obtain iodine crystals, I produced them from mixing iodine tinctures and hydrogen peroxide. 

I first converted the bathroom into a meth lab, unfortunately the steam from the shower resulted in reduced yields, wet crystals and no ventilation. Next my bedroom, until I found boo-kitty with her face in a plastic bag of crushed pseudo pills. So, I moved everything to the center of what became our world. 

Their World. Fuck World. 

I went through this period when I'd smoke crack from a 6 foot bong, with "friends." I inhaled the smoke from oil burners holding the lighter under the glass bubble twisting it back and forth. As the shards liquified turning into a thick pungent fish market milky kind of vapor. The smoke tasted a bit like turpentine and model glue. If I smell paint thinner, its an instant trigger to either cook or smoke. 

Using drugs is always that way in the beginning all promises, potential and fun. Until the drug becomes your significant other; you've made a commitment and you feel liberated, totally alive... the honey moon stage; just me and crystal.

What started out as a fun diversion and a group of friends degenerated in a few months into chronic drug use. I began to smoke alone, on smoke breaks, lunch at work. I lost my job, that didn't stop me. I'd smoke before interviews and in the bathroom while meeting with potential freelance clients. Basically, it became my world, yet again. 

I'd take Percocet and Xanax or any number of sedatives to calm me down. Then I'd take too many sedatives and have heroine like high, somewhere between nodding out in the bath and curling up on the kitchen rug. I would stop smoking for a few days because my parents were coming to visit, a profound depression would consume me, which slowly manifested into anxiety then a panic attack and I'd be searching my house for a clean needle to shot into my neck seconds after my parents hit the gate code to enter the complex. 

Without any drug, the drab grayness of the world would become crushing, I'd prefer to be reclusive and the boredom of my life would seem ineluctable. Everything became nothing and nothing was worthwhile and fun. James Patterson's crime novels were tortuously slow, movies seemed to crawl. The sparkle and shine had been sucked out of life, so completely that my world came across as a flour-sent-lit albino version of a planet. And my own prospects? Absolutely dismal. I would sit up top my couch and regret all my decisions the sorry career I had yet to embark upon, the losers I associated with and called friends. I'd never amount to anything. Yep, no hope .

I was destined to become a shabby dressed, single, dull mediocrity, short on wit, lacking talent, crazy cat lady, unable to muster the power for a sustained fight. 

X😄😉