Drug life

[Kevin Solway]

I've previously posted some links to videos about life on the streets in Hastings street, Vancouver.

Here are a couple more videos which I find very powerful. The guy in these videos is a very intelligent and lucid junkie, and his analysis is quite impressive. This guy could be just about any one of us here on the forum, given a few twists of fate:

Video 1

Video 2

[maestro]

This guy could be just about any one of us here on the forum, given a few twists of fate:

This statement means nothing. He could have been Queen of England given a few twists of fate.

[David Quinn]

Such hostility, maestro. So closed off from the spirit of Kevin's observation.

I'm surprised that your new-found observational faculty didn't pick this up.

-

[Relo]

Thanks Kevin for the videos, I can honestly appreciate people like that who have a story to tell.

[Trevor Salyzyn]

Don't be mislead: without the cocaine, he'd be far less coherent. Even with it, he comes across as helplessly introverted.

[Carl G]

Very ordinary insights, really. Not worth watching.

[Kevin Solway]

I thought he got down to the nitty-gritty of the psychology of it all quite admirably. There wasn't too much beating around the bush like you see with most people.

However, I concede that the cocaine would lend the fellow a degree of confidence and candour that he probably wouldn't normally have.

The thing I liked most about this video is that it represents a stark condensation of the whole of normal human life. His drug of choice was crack cocaine, but for many others the drug is sex, alcohol, love, food, music, sport, money, shopping, entertainment, religion, etc. The psychology of all these things is exactly the same — living in the moment and avoiding consciousness — even though the consequences are sometimes not so immediately obvious to the untrained eye. (Although in the case of love and alcohol the consequences can be just as immediately obvious as they are in the case of the crack junkie).

[hsandman]

I have addiction to posting stupid comments on teh interweabs... lucky it's not illegal, and so I can afford it.

It's soooo saaaad..for this guy...seems intelligent. :-(


Nerd Life(*pic)

Nerd Life(*pic)

Nerd Life(*pic)

[PeterL]

Thanks.

[brokenhead]

If he was going to throw his life away on a drug, he at least could have picked heroin.

[maestro]

Why? How about weed or LSD?

[brokenhead]

Why? How about weed or LSD?

Weed and LSD are not addictive. You can stop using them with much less direct agony.

Alcohol and crack are both addictive, but neither ever pays off. At least heroin does, even though its up front.

There are different levels of addictiveness, as you know. They can get lab rats to dose themselves with coke and smack to the exclusion of pressing a lever for food. (The rats will press the lever that delivers the dose instead until it dies.) But not so with pot or LSD. Or even alcohol, and I think it has been attempted.

I myself was addicted to crack 20-some years ago. I had used cocaine, but never free-based it. The crack showed up on the streets of NYC before it hit the news. I bought a couple of rocks from the same guy I had been getting my dime bags of pot from. I had never heard of it. I was addicted within a day or two, virtually instantly. I was a smoker at the time, so I knew what an addiction was. But I didn't have to go prowling around Harlem or the Upper West Side after dark to buy cigarettes, and cigarettes weren't costing me $25-50 a day.

I was one of the safest white guys in Harlem after dark, because a lot of the brothers knew me and knew I would keep coming back night after night with cash. They weren't bad guys, it was just bidness. If I had been wealthy, I might have eventually killed myself with crack. As it is, I spent money I didn't have and somehow managed to crawl out of the nightmarish hole that I dug for myself.

You see, I had used cocaine before and liked its effects. But I wan't blown over by the effects. I wasn't in love with the drug, so to speak. I did not see how it could become a need. I should have realized it was like the cigarettes I smoked, only much, much , much more so.

The nightmare is unspeakable, really - and my case is far from the most horrifying as it lasted only 2 or 3 months. Fighting the addiction requires drawing on a resource of inner strength that you normally do not need; at the same time, the addiction compromises that very strength itself, so that when you go to draw on it, it's not there. That's the true horror of addiction that people who have not gone through it often cannot understand. The young man in this video clip has absolutely no choice at this point but to behave as he is doing. It's as the saying about crack goes: "It gives you wings to fly , but then it takes away the sky."

My addiction was before the age of pagers and cell phones. Now the crack distribution system is such that a salesman will come to you, as long as you have cash. You do not need to leave your home. Back then, I knew a few crack houses In Morningside Heights and Harlem, with mostly dealers and crack whores. The dealers didn't use, and the whores didn't have to pay. "You smoke the glass pipe, you smoke the human pipe."

Only addiction could have made me put myself in this kind of situation repeatedly, panicking all the while. I was panicked, but not frightened, although maybe I should have been. When crack hit the streets of New York, there was a marked difference: gone were the amiable pot dealers you could usually find; the drug traffic was suddenly all crack cocaine, more organized and armed.

The only thing I can compare addiction to is hunger. It is an artificial hunger that you create for yourself. No one in his right mind would do this. The idea of stopping fills you with absolute dread; rationally, you know it is an addiction and you existed before without the substance, but it feels like not breathing and hoping the manic urge to breathe will eventually go away and you'll be all right. You resolve this, of course, by breathing; that is, an addict somehow procures the next hit.

The young man in this video is the rat hitting the lever that delivers the dose. Whatever it takes for him to get to the lever, he is going to do. It is that simple. That's what he is trying to tell you. Has he given up? He wants you to know that his ability to make that choice is no longer there, even if he refuses to admit it to himself.

Pot and LSD do not take this ability from you. They may damage you in other ways. Alcohol and nicotine also take that choice, that ability to make a choice, away from you.

It's like skating on ice. You know the ice may be thin, but you skate anyway. It's not until you fall in that you understand what "thin ice" really means. Not everybody gets pulled out or can climb out.

It's a matter of degree. The ice is thick enough under alcohol for most people, and snorting cocaine or heroin is where the ice is a good deal thinner. Smoking cocaine - freebasing or crack smoking, it's the same thing - is where the ice gets thinner yet. When you mainline any heroine or cocaine preparation, you are on the thinnest ice of all.

Once you fall through, even the possibility of ever getting out falls into doubt.

If there is a Hell on Earth, the young man in this video is living in it.

[maestro]

Hey Broken,
You seem to have had very interesting experiences.
One thing I could not understand is that if a thing is pleasurable, then it should be addictive, especially if it is lying around. Thus if you have weed or LSD within reach should not they be addictive also?

Your description of addiction to Crack and Heroin is really amazing. Not taking it feels analogous to stopping your breath! I wonder if an enlightened one can draw the inner strength to stop the addiction.

[brokenhead]

Hey Broken,
You seem to have had very interesting experiences.
One thing I could not understand is that if a thing is pleasurable, then it should be addictive, especially if it is lying around. Thus if you have weed or LSD within reach should not they be addictive also?

Your description of addiction to Crack and Heroin is really amazing. Not taking it feels analogous to stopping your breath! I wonder if an enlightened one can draw the inner strength to stop the addiction.

Weed and LSD are not always pleasurable. LSD can be frightening and weed is weed. I generally don't talk too much about my drug use, as I am selfishly just enjoying my life without drugs. I know I'll never smoke another cigarette, it has been over two years now, and more than three for alcohol, which I hope to make peace with at some point in the future.

The bottom line is there are degrees of addictiveness that drugs have. A drug does not have to be pleasurable to be addictive. There is nothing pleasurable about being an addict. Repeat: nothing.

Of course, those with unlimited funds could have a cocaine "habit."

You do know that the first rush is the best, right? The guy in the video is not getting high. He has rewired himself in a fundamental way. He needs his "fix" simply not to suffer unbearable agony, to be normal.

Luckily for me I managed to go through withdrawal on my own. It is really tough. It's like being thirsty as hell and telling yourself the best thing to do is not drink anything. I cannot put it into words sufficiently to convey what it's like to be thirsty and realize you can never have another sip of water again. I just clung to the belief that the craving itself would go away, which it did.

Pleasurable? After all these years, I know how great the high from the first rush of smoking crack can be. It's not as good - IMO - as snorting heroin, but it would seem while I first smoked it as a bargain at any price. That's because my body/brain chemistry is probably very near normal now.

But I have to tell you I would not smoke crack again if you put a gun to my head. I would choose the bullet because it would be quicker.

[brokenhead]

Needless to say, anyone who is enlightened would not become addicted in the first place.

[maestro]

But I have to tell you I would not smoke crack again if you put a gun to my head. I would choose the bullet because it would be quicker.

You mean once is enough to induce such terrible cravings. What a fragile system the body/mind is!

The enlightened question was hypothetical. If an enlightened Buddha smokes heroin for one year as an experiment and then tries to quit, would it be possible for him?

[Dan Rowden]

Of course it would. It's possible for anyone. It would easier for the Buddha as he wouldn't have all the emotional baggage to deal with, but it would still be difficult because it's a powerful physical addiction.

[Carl G]

Why would an enlightened person even touch beer or wine, let alone heroin? It would be delusional, wouldn't it. It would be like having a woman, and thus becoming one, for that time.

[maestro]

To broken:
Also I know people who have quit smoking cold turkey and some who only drink on the weekends. So how did you put these two in the same category as Crack or Smack?

[maestro]

Of course it would. It's possible for anyone. It would easier for the Buddha as he wouldn't have all the emotional baggage to deal with, but it would still be difficult because it's a powerful physical addiction.

How would the Buddha do if there is a hypothetical button in his house, such that pressing the button brings a dose.

[Dan Rowden]

Why would an enlightened person even touch beer or wine, let alone heroin? It would be delusional, wouldn't it. It would be like having a woman, and thus becoming one, for that time.

That's what makes the hypothetical unrealistic.

[Dan Rowden]

Of course it would. It's possible for anyone. It would easier for the Buddha as he wouldn't have all the emotional baggage to deal with, but it would still be difficult because it's a powerful physical addiction.

How would the Buddha do if there is a hypothetical button in his house, such that pressing the button brings a dose.

Um, if he was smarter than a mouse, he obviously wouldn't press it.

[maestro]

Aren't you bringing in a self, through the back door. When the craving becomes stronger than the logical mind he will obviously press it.

[Dan Rowden]

Aren't you bringing in a self, through the back door. When the craving becomes stronger than the logical mind he will obviously press it.

I never bring myself in through the back door; it's plain rude. Such a craving can never become stronger than the logical mind that perceives the nature of the craving.

[Kevin Solway]

The guy in the video is not getting high. He has rewired himself in a fundamental way. He needs his "fix" simply not to suffer unbearable agony, to be normal.

Yes, I thought it was notable how he injected the drug and then continued talking relatively normally. I think if any non-addicted person injected themselves with this drug they would be unable to speak.

I think that one of the most non-addictive but dangerous drugs is psychadelic mushrooms. Such mushrooms are non-addictive because they are not very pleasurable, and probably don't contain a highly addictive chemical like nicotine, but they are so extremely mind-altering that the mind may never come back from the altering. The rewiring may be permanent.