DRUG LIFE
When no one agrees on the rules, you can’t lose
Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. On our path, we avoid “hard drugs” and alcohol while indulging in weed and psychedelics.
Or we drink socially, smoke weed, and avoid all other fun. Or we smoke weed and then forget we smoked it, convince ourselves our cocaine is vegan, or only drink for the ‘gram.
It depends on who you ask, and when, and who they’re trying to impress. We don’t agree on the rules, so we can’t lose. The name of our path is “Cali Sober.”
Those who do not succeed at Cali…
You’re not stuck. You have options.
You can manipulate your reality and change your perception of things. You can open new possibilities in your life, your career, your relationships, and beyond. The tools you need to fundamentally change yourself and your life exist right between your ears.
Making optimum use of them isn’t too hard. You only have to change the way you think about everything. This starts with doubting everything you recognize as “real.”
To perceive is to deceive
If we perceived reality “as it is,” we’d be stunned and overwhelmed all the time. Our lives would be ongoing acid trips. We’d find it difficult, if not impossible, to establish…
Hanging out with people is stressful for me. I’ll need to start drinking ahead of time.
It’s my birthday, 2010, June 16th, Bloomsday in James Joyce’s Ulysses, and I’ve been on a bender since Memorial Day. The best way to celebrate anything is getting drunk, so I text a few of my friends, including a couple of people I’ve known for ten years, and let them know I’ll be at a dive bar that evening and they can join me if they like.
Then, I take a shot, read the morning news, lots of bad stuff about the economy, take another shot to offset the stress of that, and prepare myself for a day of drinking.
…
If you’re a writer, you’ve probably thought about quitting. Here’s how to know when it’s time to give up writing.
If you’ve ever written, or tried to write, or thought about writing, you’ve probably also thought about giving up on writing. It’s easy to quit writing, it’s tempting, and there are plenty of reasons you should.
Writing well is hard, humbling work. Compared to a lot of the other things you could do — podcasting, TikTok, insurance fraud — it’s less lucrative and more labor-intensive. …
When I come out of lockdown, I’m going to have to learn to be social again. It’s going to be rough.
As I write this, COVID-19 has been an inescapable part of my life, and probably yours, for nearly a year. The global pandemic, the local stay-at-home orders, and the general atmosphere of paranoia and hypochondria have caused a dangerous reduction in my feel-good chemicals. My last COVID-19 test was negative. I haven’t been tested for oxytocin, but I bet it’s low.
Now there’s hope on the horizon, in the form of a possible vaccine in 2021. That means I’ll…
As that disgusting beer runs down my gullet, I feel something in my abdominal area go, ka-BOOM.
Sunshine pours through the windows, bouncing off the dust and cat dander floating around my apartment. I look over at my end table and see a half-finished bottle of warm Mexican beer. I think, “Let the day begin.”
I take a swig, and as that disgusting beer runs down my gullet, I feel something in my abdominal area go, “ka-BOOM.”
My guts recoil. Pain shrapnel penetrates my intestines, flies up into my chest and throat, and radiates into my back, and I find myself in the worst physical agony I’ve ever experienced or imagined.
My first thought is, “Maybe this…
You don’t know who I am. You can’t. But you know who I was. I died in 2014. Like you, I got very sick. Unlike you, I didn’t recover. That’s why I’m dead now.
Being dead has really given me a sense of perspective.
I keep track of all the silly things you do. There’s not much else for me to do with my time. I’ve only been dead for a while — I haven’t made a lot of friends.
Part of me wants to caution you against spending so much of your fleeting energies fretting about your social status…
I loved drinking. It brought me out of my shell. Then I passed out in the sand and couldn’t find my shell again. I had to pay $350 to get my shell out of impound because it was abandoned in front of a fire hydrant.
When I started drinking, I was funny, charming, and gregarious. I made a lot of friends. Then I kept drinking and alienated all of them, except for the ones who were only there for the booze.
A bit of booze made me feel better. It opened my heart, drove me to take risks, and made…
May you be happy. May you be safe. May you have ease. May you be loved.
Thank you for being a hero to me. Thank you for your arrogance and your pure expressions of rage — I took much strength in them. Thank you for letting me know I could get this close and no closer. I grew to resent you, to want to lash out at you and betray you, and you have my sincere gratitude.
May you be happy. May you be safe. May you have ease. May you be loved.
Thank you for loving me and for…
Before I learned to meditate, William S. Burroughs gave me a gentle crash course in pacing myself.
“D.E. is a way of doing. D.E. simply means doing whatever you do in the easiest most relaxed way you can manage which is also the quickest and most efficient way, as you will find as you advance in D.E. You can start right now tidying up your flat, moving furniture or books, washing dishes, making tea, sorting papers. Don’t fumble, jerk, grab an object. Drop cool possessive fingers onto it like a gentle old cop making a soft arrest.”
- William S…
Emerson Dameron
Levity Saves Lives, Los Angeles
