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11 Oct 2005

You forget when in pain, every breath is bastardly, this beast on your back.

These friends were like family for I had known them for so many years, and the memories we shared were priceless. They were changing now in ways I could never have imagined before. They drank straight from hard liquor bottles, some smoked cigarettes, while others indulged in the high of marijuana. This was the reality of the Western culture, and I do understand it with a stolid acceptance. I had a great time last night being sober, and laughing with once uptight friends about life. It was easier to communicate with these people, but as I looked into their eyes I saw a glaze of indifference and desolation. They were there, but their head was vacant. It was not them at all, but instead they were being taken away by these intoxicants that were meant to relieve them of reality. What were they running from? Life is beautiful. In a gorgeous Sikh Shabad Guru Ji states, ” Dukh wich Sukh maniye.” Even in sorrow and despair I found happiness with God by my side.

One cannot escape the depths and rigors of life by hiding or running, because if not today, tomorrow will come rushing in even faster, and this time with a hangover. I do not persuade or even suggest to my friends to stop doing what they do for I believe life is a personal venture, and everyone has their own path to lead. I thank God that I was given Sikhi as my foundation to remain strong, and more powerfully to stay true to myself as much as possible taking me one step closer to the infinite truth of God. However, do I have a duty to tell my friends, who are more like family, to reconsider the beauty and depth of life without hiding behind the veil of intoxication that is nothing more than a poisonous and self destructive vice in which to escape? In my gut I want to tell them that there are other things in life to do, but they already know. They took this step for a reason and their justification for doing so may prove righteous to them. I am no one to judge or preach my own values that I feel are universal. As a friend I will always be there to support and uplift my friends, and that is my true duty.

Escape trouble, despair, anguish, frustration, and hardship through consciousness. Some find this in religion and spirituality while others find it through self-discipline. It hurts me to see such good people trashing their lives and littering their good fate to a virulent culture and peer pressure. Instead I need to stay true to myself and always fight a constant conflagration of my own temptations. I am no one to judge or set values for anyone other than myself. I have my own conscious, God, who tells me what is right or wrong, and it is my decision to chose for that which I will sow is what I will reap with my karma.

God is all present and infinite and I pray for all my great friends, because they are all the great children of God. My brothers and sisters, and their parents mine. Lets all move past the obstacles and enjoy the temporary sensory life given to our transcendent souls in this present life untainted by the illusion of maya intoxication. In His mercy and grace I put my past, present, and future.

Plant your weed in your own yard Dennis the menace, Mr. Wilson has enough to deal with.

I went to see both of these movies last night.  We started to watch a third, but Bunny started getting a migraine.  The good news is she's feeling all better today. ;) Now, on with the movies. :)

The Dark Knight was first at bat (HA! I kill me, not).  I knew they were going for a darker Batman, but I had no idea how serious they were.  I was totally caught off guard by some of the places this movie went.  It was dark, it was dirty and it was good.  Heath Ledger delivered an amazing Joker unlike none you've ever seen before.  I was on the edge of my seat holding tightly to the arm rests.  There was a grown man sitting near me doing a lot of "OMG"ing and other such exclamations that took away from my viewing pleasure, but I couldn't really fault the guy.  They movie had that effect of people.  Unfortunately for me he was a bit more vocal that other and just off to my left.  All in all a very good movie with a rather sad ending, but fitting.  No disappointments here.  The Dark Knight earned every ounce of it's PG-13 rating, and I'm sure it was teetering on the verge of becoming a rated R movie.  This Batman movie might not be suited for the younger young ones, but I'll leave that decision in your capable hands. ;) If you haven't seen it yet, it is well worth the price of admission.

Next up at bat (not funny at all this time, go figger) is Wall-E.  Wall-E was everything folks had lead me to believe, but with a little more dialog than I expected.  They way people were talking I was expecting a handful of words during the whole movie, but there was a bit more than that.  Still I was not disappointed.  Wall-E was fun, lovable and left you with a few things to think about.  The health and wellbeing of the earth was the moral of the day, and it was tackled quite well, poking plenty of fun at us silly humans.  It took me so long to see this movie that I would suggest waiting for it to come out on DVD for the simple fact that I'm sure that time is right around the corner.  With that being said, it was worth the price of admission, but it was shown in a tiny little theater due to its being on the border heading out the door.  Sill, well worth watching and good fun for the whole family. :mrgreen:

I can't blame you for hiding behind smoke from the end of the world.

Outside the Horseshoe Café is an eclectic gathering of weirdos, drug addicts, and drunk kids jabbering at the weirdos and the drug addicts, and my naïve, bumpkin eyes cannot help but watch them all through the floor-to-ceiling windows as I wait on that sourdough and stir my coffee. My friends are boring me. Kim and Pat have been playing Guess the Gay for what seems like an hour, a “game” in which they pick out a person in the restaurant and decide if he or she is gay based on appearance, demeanor, and company. They think everyone is gay. They want everyone to be gay, because it’s the only way the game is fun. I don’t know what it means for someone to look gay, at least not by the fit of their jeans or the length of their hippie-stubble. So many of my friends have come out to me in the past three or four years that I have started to believe that maybe everyone is gay, in which case this game of theirs is just… redundant. There is a weirdo/drug addict outside the window with a full-grown tabby cat perched on his shoulder. For reasons I assume are both safety and fashion, they wear matching, attached collars around their respective necks, but the cat shows no interest in doing anything but crouching on his shoulder with its yellow eyes half shut. It’s probably high. Everyone in here and out there is probably high. God knows I’m high, and that I want my sourdough round, but judging from the service here God really only cares about that first part.

So I declare out to everyone in booth: “God has better things to do than get us our food. Like give out cancer.”

Pat looks at me with eyes wide with alarm. “Dude. …That was a haiku.”

I’m in the back of a taxi leaving the Horseshoe Café, the fourth person crammed into a back seat made for three, and our taxi driver is channeling John Candy. He doesn’t just look like John Candy or talk like John Candy, though he does. Both. Eerily. He’s actually performing an “Uncle Buck” monologue for five strangers he will only ever know for six minutes. We got on the subject when he said his friend played the clown in the movie. That was the second thing he said after asking us for the address.

“My friend, he’s a real clown, too. He’s not just an actor. He’s still a clown.”

No one cares about the clown. Or, if they do, they are too drunk to understand or so drunk that they think they care about everything. They’re laughing and clapping and asking for another impression. The taxi driver swings into a Jack Nicholson. “Heeeeeeere’s Johnny!”

Am I the only one afraid? Am I the only one who saw “The Shining”?

He’s in the middle of saying something about Christian Slater and Jack Nicholson when all suddenly he flips on the interior light and turns full around, shoulders, neck, and all, the bright light casting deep shadows on his fat face, and he says, “I’m gonna kidnap you, girls…just kidding.”

He pretends to swerve by jerking the wheel back and forth, and maniacally laughs, “Heh. Heh. Heh.”

They’re all still laughing and clapping. I think we are going to die. I think he is going to murder the innocent, silly, drunk girls in this taxi he must have stolen so that he can skin us and mount us on his wall.

Am I crazy? Are they? Am I the only one who saw “Taxi Driver”? He may look like John Candy, but now I know he’s Robert DeNiro.

Before we reach home he threatens to kidnap us again. He tells Lillian to ask him how long he’s been driving a cab.

“Ask me how long I’ve been driving a cab.”

"How long have you been driving a cab?”

“Oh, about five minutes. On my way to Mexico right now with my first and last customers. Heh. Heh. Heh.” He clicks the interior light on and off so it flickers as he laughs.

I can do nothing. I’m glued to the seat, convinced I’m about to die at the hands of a very fat man in a polycotton blend. There are worse ways to die, but there are also better ways to die. This afternoon I saw a newspaper article about a 50-some-year-old woman who was struck in the head by a stingray when she was riding in her father’s boat. The stingray just leapt right out of the water and BAM! It smacks her in the face and lodges its barb in her neck, killing her almost instantly. The Fish and Wildlife expert in the article said that stingrays are not aggressive, and that they only use their barb in self-defense. “It’s very rare for them to collide with objects,” were his words. When the object is your neck, I guess you would kindly beg to differ. The stingray died on impact, too. The photo showed it lying at the bottom of the boat wearing a skipper’s cap. I want to know: what sick fuck puts a hat on the dead stingray that just killed a woman? Now that is a better way to die. I’ve always wanted one of those caps.

The taxi driver is still laughing, “Heh. Heh,” and everyone else is laughing uncomfortably, not sure what else they can do but appease him. But not me. I have to get out, have to, have to. There are lights all around us but no people, cars all around us but no cops.

“Heh. Heh.

“LETMEOUT you crazy FUCK I don’t wanna DIE.” I yell just as he pulls up to the house and says, “Have a nice evening, ladies.”

Lillian pays him for the six minutes that felt like hours and gives him a big tip because I called him a fuck, but I swear he never even noticed.

She went out for milk and came home $15 million richer. Overnight, they had private jets, expensive trips...then what? What you need to know if a windfall comes your way.

Within a couple hundred feet of us, I noticed something scurrying under a park bench. As we got closer and the tail got larger, it became apparent that it was a Roger Clemens/Barry Bonds-sized rat nibbling away at what appeared to be the remnants of a cheeseburger. I've seen rats before, but never one that had bicep muscles and took an interest in keeping up its protein intake. We kept trekking and I thought that would be the end of it. I was weirded out, but became even more weirded out when I took a step over a sewage grate/air vent/thing that women in heels can't walk over or they will bust their ass. I looked down and noticed enormous cockroaches coming up out of the ground into the night like this was a Sci Fi channel horror movie. I high-stepped like I was running into the end zone for a touch down and immediately began shaking off my clothes. I knew there were no roaches crawling on me, but I was absolutely disgusted. Had I stepped on one of these behemoths, I would have been traumatized. I'd be hearing that crunch for days.

The excitement didn't stop there. We walked a bit more and I noticed a man posting up/standing somewhat suspiciously and a woman huddled in a corner of a storefront behind him. I looked closely and realized she was smoking crack. I was shocked. The street urchins were out. I had never seen a person doing crack before. It was like I was at the zoo or some urban street exhibition. I still see the image of her huddled in the corner with that plastic pipe in her hand. But what was the grand finale of the night as we finished our tour? What hadn't we seen so far in our trip back to the car? The answer to this was on the corner in a short dress with a cigarette in her hand. The red light specialist was workin' the block, looking for that gwap.

I don't know what else I could have seen that night, at least that wasn't of a violent nature. I've seen some of the great things about Boston and the city during the day and when the nightlife is buzzing. But this...this was an eye-opener. After 330am, it transforms into something ugly that I don't want to see again. The late night streets really do have a life of their own.

Lots to think about, much to write...but for the moment I have to wrangle the six-year-old into a swimsuit and go see my sisters.

For now let me leave you with this thought...a lot of the stability I have in my recovery is based around habits and routines that I've developed in my life at home. As soon as I got taken out of that environment...hell, even when I was just thinking about being out of my home environment, my brain started scheming, thinking bad thoughts about other people's medicine cabinets and how I was sure to be in a lot of pain after such a long flight and and and...

I caught myself and put a stop to that runaway train, but still - I was kinda suprised that I went in that direction at all. I've had it so good with the Suboxone treatment, and I hardly ever have cravings anymore, so I guess my defenses were down. Taking me out of my safe little life and then heaping on the stress of traveling (on my own with the kid no less), not to mention the whole visiting-my-family thing (They put the FUN in DisFunktionaL! har-dee-har-har) - well, let's just say I probably could have seen that coming.

Lucky for me, I'm really starting to enjoy my new life and I don't want to mess it up. Not for a feeling, a fleeting feeling that never really was as good as the joy I get to feel nowadays. I'll prolly go to the library or the bookstore and get some kind of inspirational reading to do while I'm here (Hat Tip to the fabulous Erin who gave me that idea!) and I'll do my best to make time to chronicle the wackiness that is my family over the next two weeks. Sure, they're on their best behavior now, but the vacay has only just begun.

We'll see how things are in a few days.

Love to you all, I'll be thinking of you as I lounge by the pool eating lobster and trying to avoid skin cancer. Kisses!

Cop films generally seem to follow the same linear storylines, whether it involves a family of police, corruption, or simply a tale of heroism and rising above the challenge - each will somehow twist and turn through the same well-told situations. We Own the Night is little different, portraying an on-screen family with ties to the force. Burt (Robert Duvall) is the father of Joseph (Mark Wahlberg) and Danny (Joaquin Phoenix) - where Joseph follows in the footsteps of his police-chief father, Danny is instead enticed by the drug-world of the late 1980s. Danny is played up as the black-sheep of the family, a scar upon their name as respectable cops. Obviously this puts a bit of distance between the family.

Underneath all this is a tale of New York in the 1980s, where Russian immigrants have flooded the city, and begun to take control of its drug trafficking. Surprisingly no Cold-War-ethics were shown on-screen, no red-scare-slurs used at any time. Little of the Russians characters were shown (save for a few) and instead they were mostly nameless and violent thugs. New York's lavish night-clubs and dim streets are shown, contrasting the so-called lavish lifestyle of its drug elite - or those benefiting from their associations.

In a way much of the films storyline was pretty see-through. Danny's girlfriend Amada (Eva Mendes) is quite in love with not only the lifestyle of a drug-user (though she's never seen using), and the perks of living with an up-and-coming Danny. This motivation is shown later in the movie, and eventually her character is all but forgotten - even though she never had a huge part to begin with. Duvall is horrible under-utilized and instead used as the by-the-books old-school cop; in other words: he's old, and no one knew how to deal with it. Wahlberg's character too is little developed. In all reality the movie is more about Danny than anyone else - it doesn't try to hide this, but sometimes his story alone wasn't strong enough to carry the entire film.

At several points I could either see a development coming, or characters weren't used how I was expecting. Nowhere were corrupt cops shown, even though several scenes could've hinted at it, and eventually led down that path. Perhaps these moments were simply red-herrings, but we don't know. All in all We Own the Night was a decent movie, nothing special, but not horrid either. Its a standard 1980s New York cop drama, so in that sense is works quite well - but otherwise it needs some polishing around the edges.

High On Life: Transcending Addiction
A Visionary Arts Museum Exhibition
October 5, 2002 - August 31, 2003

Curated by Tom Patterson

As human beings, we are hardwired to experience ecstasy, epiphany, laughter, and bliss. Little children twirling in the summer sun to experience the altered state of becoming falling-down-dizzy are not very far removed from whirling dervishes seeking spiritual attunement with the harmonious spin of the planet. If the pull upward into ecstasy is mighty, human frailties dictate that the ascent will be an imperfect one, with use sometimes leading to the hell of abuse. The National Institutes of Health put the total cost of alcohol and drug abuse at $245 billion in 1992, up 50 percent over 1985. The human toll is incalculable.

Because the urge is biological, and because the distinction between licit and illicit drugs is not based on harm, legal attempts at prohibition seem doomed to failure. Albert Einstein's 1921 words on Prohibition ring as true of the "War on Drugs" as they did the War on Alcohol: "The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the Prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this." The War on Drugs is a war that does not go away, is not won, and does not end. It is a war with an economic and emotional price tag that exceeds the costs of all the wars in which Americans have fought and died. In a new millennium with age-old problems escalating exponentially, taking a compassionate and searingly honest look at humankind's long history of addiction and self-medication, along with positive efforts toward spiritual transformation, is the only way to formulate enlightened actions and compassionate responses. If human beings are intrinsically flawed, they are also endlessly transcendent. Addiction is a spectrum in which we all participate, whether our drug of choice is caffeine, nicotine, morphine, sugar or shopping. To paraphrase Pogo, "We have met the addict and he is us."

Temptation
I can resist everything except temptation Oscar Wilde

Western culture's notion of temptation is twinned with its concept of sin: Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden for eating the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge and their subsequent offspring have borne the burden of that original error ever since. Implicit in this viewpoint is the suggestion that heeding the call of the senses, and of drugs that affect them, is inherently anti-social, self-destructive, or deviant. In Eastern cultures, the notion of attraction to or dependence upon the material world is viewed as a loss of self-mastery. Yet humans are biologically programmed to seek pleasure and avoid pain. We are not lone creatures in this urge: As UCLA psychopharmacologist Ronald Siegal noted in his 1989 book Intoxication, "After sampling the numbing nectar of certain orchids, bees drop to the ground in a temporary stupor, then weave back for more. Birds gorge themselves on inebriating berries, then fly with reckless abandon. Cats eagerly sniff catnip then play with imaginary objects. Cows browse special range weed then twitch, shake, shudder, and stumble back for more. Elephants purposely get drunk on fermented fruits. Snacks on Œmagic mushrooms' cause monkeys to sit with their heads on their hands in a posture reminiscent of Rodin's The Thinker."

The natural desire to feel good-sometimes most powerfully experienced precisely when we're not feeling good-renders us ever-receptive to anything that promises to improve our sense of well-being, no matter how temporarily, and in many cases regardless of the cost. The works in this section of High on Life illustrate the powerful allure that certain drugs, habits, and compulsive behavior patterns exert.

Opportunity may only knock once, but temptation leans on the doorbell. Anonymous

Descent

TIntoxicants may promise a quick-fix paradise, but the promise comes without a guarantee, and for some users repeated attempts to visit paradise wind up leading precisely in the opposite direction. Drugs can transport one for a while to realms of bliss, ecstasy, and sensual delight; they can also plunge the user into deeply disturbing chasms of horror and psychological or physical pain.

The works in "Descent" stem from a variety of motivations and contexts, but they all reflect, either literally or metaphorically, the "hellish" aspect of drug experience and human experience in general-a dimension of consciousness, also associated with nightmares, that is inherently disturbing and sometimes terrifying.

If ever there was a room made by the devil, it would be a shooting gallery.
Social worker Michael Carbone

Dispensation

From the standpoint of the legal system, there are only two classes of drugs-legal and illegal. Classification is not based on harm but on history, custom, and economics, and the lines shift like sand from place to place and across time. After coffee was banned in Egypt in the 16th century, dealers were punished and stocks were burned. In 1777, Frederick the Great of Prussia banned coffee roasting except in official government establishments, saying, "Many battles have been fought and won by soldiers nourished on beer, and the King does not believe that coffee-drinking soldiers can be relied upon to endure hardships in case of another war."

In colonial America, liquor was "food, medicine, and social lubricant." Laudanum, an opium derivative, was widely used throughout the eighteenth century, for everything from soothing a teething baby to easing the arthritic aches and pains of the elderly. Nineteenth-century America has been described as a "dope fiend's paradise," where opium, morphine, and heroin were all as legal and accessible as aspirin. Brilliant Johns Hopkins surgeon Dr. William S. Halsted, who became an addict after pioneering local anesthesia, used morphine daily. In the early years of the twentieth century, members of the Women's Christian Temperance Union railed against the dangers of alcohol but consumed quantities of opium-laced patent medicines like Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup or McMunn's Elixir of Opium at their temperance meetings. Today, marijuana is illegal in the United States, but in the European Union and Canada, authorities are moving to decriminalize or legalize it and medical uses are already permitted in many of those countries.

The artworks in Dispensation deal with the wide range of substances whose use is legal and socially sanctioned for medicinal or recreational use in the United States. They include sugar, nicotine, alcohol, and prescription drugs, as well as other legal, socially sanctioned substances and activities, such as food and shopping, often associated with addictive behavior.

Just Say Know
If there is a war on drugs, then many of our family members are the enemy. And I don't know how you wage war on your own family. Michael Douglas as the newly appointed Drug Czar Robert Wakefield in Traffic

Former Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke called the war on drugs "our domestic Vietnam." Like the Vietnam War, Schmoke said, the War on Drugs has "lasted too long and cost too many lives. . . . It's time to bring this enervating war to an end. It's time for peace."

Few topics of public discourse since the Vietnam War have proven more contentious than drugs. Several U.S. Presidents in a row have supported the heavily financed, highly publicized war, with results that have been, in the most generous estimation, dubious. The phrase most often associated with the endeavor is the slogan coined by former First Lady Nancy Reagan to discourage young people from using illegal drugs: "Just say no." However, when it comes to drugs, as with sex, young people tend to be curious, inquisitive, unwilling to settle for oversimplified answers, and suspicious of the advice offered by their elders. As Ogden Nash put it: "Oh, what a tangled web do parents weave/When they think that their children are naïve." The millions of young people and adults who regularly consume illegal drugs aren't the only ones who have rejected the "Just say no" approach and questioned the wisdom of the War on Drugs. Increasing numbers of ordinary, non-using citizens, as well as respected leaders from across the political spectrum have urged rethinking our society's punishment-oriented approach to drugs in favor of a "harm reduction" approach that acknowledges that there is no ultimate solution to the problem of drugs in a free society, and advocates lessening the harm of drugs through education, prevention, and treatment.

The works in Just Say Know embody with imagery and texts just a few of the many arguments that have been offered to support various positions in this ongoing societal debate.

Constant Craving
Junk is the ideal product . . . the ultimate merchandise. No sales talk necessary. The client will crawl through a sewer and beg to buy . . . William S. Burroughs, Introduction to Naked Lunch

What makes one continue to push the pleasure pedal long after pleasure has turned to pain? In a 1954 Bulletin on Narcotics, the U.N. Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention defines the Spanish word for drug addiction-toxicomania-as "an irresistible urge towards poisons, in particular narcotic substances." A drug is commonly defined as any substance that in small amounts produces significant changes in the body, mind or both. Definitions of addiction vary, but most include the element of loss of control over use. Essentially, drugs overwhelm the body. The issue is less one of free choice: An addicted person is biologically reprogrammed and will continue to use even when recurring physical or psychological problems outweigh the pleasure.

In a speech titled "Why We Are All Addicted," Andrew Weil, M.D., describes a patient with a six-gram-a day cocaine habit. The only pleasure shooting up gave her was in the first few minutes immediately after the day's first injection. The next five or six hours were filled with paranoia, violent shaking, insomnia, and palpitations. Describing her addiction, she said "I want not to want it." Weil traces the root of the craving to the origins of the universe and the evolution of human consciousness. "It's that fundamental. It's that much a part of our humanness. Not only is addiction universal, not only are all of us in it, but it's the essence of our being as humans." Given that addiction is part of who are, Weil says, the only solutions are to try to shift it so that the forms of its expression are less harmful-substituting exercise for cigarettes or a 12-step program for heroin-or to try to get at the root of the problem through intense introspection and meditation.

The primary drugs referenced in this gallery-heroin and cocaine-are derivatives of plants whose pharmaceutical properties have been known and exploited by human beings for millennia. Dependency on these drugs is probably just as old, but modern techniques for chemically refining them and self-administering them by intravenous injection are relatively new, developed only in the last two centuries. These highly efficient methods of concentrating and administering these drugs at very powerful dosages have substantially exacerbated the problem of dependency and abuse.

Plants of the Gods
The shamanic plants and the worlds that they reveal are the worlds from which we imagine that we came long ago, worlds of light and power and beauty that in some form or another lie behind the eschatological visions of all of the world's great religions . Terence McKenna, Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge (1992)

Shamanic use of plant-based hallucinogens-including cannabis, mushrooms, peyote, and ayahuasca-was central to the religious lives of people in parts of Africa, China, India, Tibet, Siberia, Mediterranean Europe, and the Americas. To the shaman with expertise in their use, the experience that rational science interprets as hallucination is an interdimensional interaction with supernatural beings and visible, sometimes audible energy forms-in other words, nothing short of a direct encounter with God or gods. For this reason, some modern students of these drugs have termed them "entheogens"-activators of inner divinity.

The widespread ritual use of these substances was demonized in Europe and in other parts of the world with the rise of the monotheistic religions and dominator cultures whose prevailing drugs of choice were alcoholic. European explorers and the missionary clergymen who accompanied them to the Americas-home to the widest variety of plant hallucinogens in the world-continued the campaign of suppression. They were so successful that the existence of most of these naturally occurring drugs-cannabis being a notable exception-remained virtually unknown to the modern Western world until their rediscovery in the mid-twentieth century.

This rediscovery took place first in the scientific and therapeutic communities, then spread quickly during the 1960s into the popular arena. The suddenly widespread, indiscriminate, and uncontrolled use of plant-based hallucinogens and their synthetically produced chemical derivatives-such as psilocybin, mescaline, DMT, and LSD-resulted in occasional public incidents and innumerable "bad trips." The ensuing sensationalizing by the mass media, and prompted a fierce legal and political backlash, resulting in the blanket legal prohibition of them all by the end of that turbulent decade. As with the prohibition of alcohol in this country earlier in the twentieth century, prohibition didn't dampen the public fascination with and inclination to use them. While the U.S. government put an end to virtually all legitimate experimental tests of these drugs, they continue to be used for private recreational, psychotherapeutic, and spiritual purposes, as reflected in the contemporary artworks that dominate this gallery.

The Third Eye
The third eye is the director of energy or force, and thus an instrument of the will or Spirit . . . . It is the eye of the inner vision, and he who has opened it can direct and control the energy of matter, see all things in the Eternal Now, and therefore be in touch with causes more than with effects, read the akashic records, and see clairvoyantly. Alice A. Bailey, A Treatise on Cosmic Fire (1925)

Drugs precipitate changes in brain chemistry. Such changes have also been associated with visionary states of consciousness achieved solely through mystical disciplines, without the aid of drugs. For many centuries adepts in spiritual disciplines ranging across virtually all religions have spoken of the transcendent, ecstatic states of consciousness achieved through the dedicated pursuit of meditation, fasting, dancing, and other arduous spiritual practices.

Divine Mother of Guilt by Eric White

The enlightenment or divine illumination experience is perhaps most poetically characterized in the image of the newly opened "third eye"-a metaphor rooted in the pre-Ayurvedic oral and visual traditions of India, typically illustrated by an image of an eye positioned in the central forehead. This is the Ajna-Chakra of Tantric yoga, which teaches that this chakra, or energy center, forms the boundary between human and divine consciousness. Its actual location is within the brain, at the upper center of the skull, anatomically corresponding to the pineal gland, directly above one of the crucial byways for cerebrospinal fluid and in close proximity to the crucial emotional and sensory brain centers. Recent neurochemical theories have suggested a correspondence between the mystical enlightenment experience and the spontaneous release of the hallucinogen DMT, or N,N-dimethyltryptamine, within the pineal gland, and have also connected such endogenous DMT production with the spirit's departure from the body at the moment of physical death.

The works in this gallery allude in various ways to the precipitation of spiritually beneficial changes in brain chemistry in the absence of drugs, and point to the possibility that each of us has the innate capacity to self-regulate our brain chemistry in order to produce such changes and gain regular access to visionary consciousness or divine wisdom.

http://www.avam.org/index.html

Then, when others quit, they do it by waning themselves off through the patch and that nicotine gum?

Well, I've never smoked in my life.

However, since I'm approaching 30, I think it's high time I start!

Most people start smoking by just smoking. Essentially, they start their smoking habit cold turkey. However, for myself -- being older than most who pick up their first cigarette -- I might need a bit of assistance.

And these Nico-stoppers might very well be the answer to easing my transition into life as a smoker!

Okay, so here's the plan:

I start light with some of the gum for a couple weeks to introduce low doses of nicotine into my system here or there and build up some cravings. Then, I work my way up to the patch, so I'm getting a continuous stream of nicotine in my system and I'm really getting addicted. And, finally, after a couple weeks of that, I go to the gas station, grab me a pack of smokes, and -- BAM! -- nearly choke myself to death on my first "cig!"

(A cig is what all the cool kids refer to a cigarette as. Duh!)

That first one might be a bit of an obstacle for my lungs but, hey, at least I'll already be addicted to the nicotine!

Next thing you know, my lungs will be continuously blackening, I'll be investing tons of money in this new hobby, and I'll be allowed more and more extra breaks at work that the non-smokers don't get to go huddle outside in the cold with all the other Nico-crazed addicts!

I can't wait!

However, if for some reason I don't like smoking -- or I decide I'd really like to resume the exercise regimen I gave up to start smoking -- I can just quit. Just throw away the cigs, go back to the patch, work back to the gum, and -- BOOM! -- be done with smoking.

Then all of a sudden, everyone's giving me all sorts of praise for having quit smoking that I never got before I started for not having started in the first place!

Hooray smoking!

So, I suffer from migraines. They hurt. I spend a lot of time sleeping, taking pharmaceutical drugs, usually both. Lately I've been worrying about the damage they're doing. More and more of the stuff I take fails to even dent it until all I'm left with is the kind of stuff which makes the world pulse with my heartbeat, my breath start to stutter and my brain totally incoherent.

I've tried a lot of alternate therapies. I've been to a neurologist, and the most effective treatment I've encountered is drugs and sleep. I worry that my liver will fail. I resent spending so much of my time offline. I'm just about ready to try botoxing my head because I've heard that might help. I'm looking for a miracle.

Having said that, I'm not sure how I'd cope without them. They've been my constant companion for three decades. They have moderated, dominated the shape and pace of my life. I am defined by my pain in many ways. I want to be without it but I'm not sure what would take its place. For now, I embrace the drugs, feel the worls slipping around just out of my grasp, wait for a time when I can touch it again.

Everything looks peachy. Relationship may finally be dead after 8yrs but we were co-dependent and no matter how much I feel for Marisa - it's better if we learn to get on with our own lives. So, I been busy kitting out my batchelor pad. I was terrified at prospect of joining the ranks of disaffected middle-eged male misfits who are happier alone. It feels almost unnatural, not having a partner. Doesn't evolution dictate that to be the natural state of affairs.

After 8yrs of total extremes and because of our illnesses Marisa and I have something unique, but also, painful. Sure we will be best mates again if nothing else, but anything can happen. For an an opiate addict the habit comes first, although many people have multiple addictions.  Conventional relationship's for addicts, are impossible.

Alice Cooper has seen his share of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. But even he admits that Amy Winehouse and Babyshambles leader Pete Doherty are pushing it beyond the limit of excess.

Alice Cooper tells The Sun:

"You're indestructible in your twenties. Except I wasn't playing around with things as destructive as they are."

Those two do make Motley Crue look like little choir boys.

We all know it controls the pain better, and if anyone was in my situation, they would take the pills. I am grasping onto this, hoping I will be able to walk and resume my life as it was, prior to discontinuing the medication. I will be able to work, I will be able to go back to college, I will be able to conquer the world, etc, etc. However, it also fucks with the head better as well.

People don't like you on it to be quite blunt. Or they just didn't like me.

MS Contin covers up pain, but it does not cure it, so while I was out dancing, every morning, I woke up with the repercussions of my actions. That, in and of itself, is abuse of the drug. Abuse of myself.

My diet included a bag of candy, which was usually on sale for less than two dollars, Coke Zero, and coffee in the morning. Sometimes I had biscotti with the coffee. I lived on sugar highs, drug highs, and caffeine. Once a week, I would literally eat four plates of sushi. I was hungry by then. But, by golly, I lost weight. I am, to this day, extremely surprised I never passed out on stage considering the heavy narcotics and the lack of food.

Abuse? Yeah.

Whenever ST was cooking, he force-fed me (he made comments more than once about the fact that I wasn't eating), and occasionally, I escaped this. He was a great guy despite his reputation.

MS Contin breeds a certain apathy in your life that is hard to tame. It's difficult for people to emotionally affect you at all because you are gone, you are altered.

I was told that major changes to my personality would happen when I started hard antipsychotics (back when they weren't promoted to be so user friendly) like Zyprexa (which makes you eat like a fucking racehorse). Nothing so exciting happened. I would fall asleep for six hours, and I would wake up hungry. Still hungry. More hungry. (The official time when I lost that perfect 36-26-36, hey, that's no fucking joke.)

Until morphine, drugs never interfered with my relationships; it was always the illness.

"Are you drunk?" Customers would ask. "It's in your eyes."

This would make me so angry, I would excuse myself, and hide in the dressing room. You don't struggle through two weeks of intensive talk-talk-talk, AA, group therapy, team of doctors to escape alcohol to constantly to be ask every single day, "Are you drunk?" when you're not! No, I'm not! You can't tell anyone you're a fucking cripple, right? The cripple stripper, that's a fucking joke.

Weird thing is, the few people I confided in, I asked them, if they could honestly tell, on stage, that I was injured.

The answer was always the same: no.

You could just tell I was high, high as a kite, but with Marilyn Manson playing in the background, it's okay.