My views on drugs and alcohol ....
The one I have dreaded since the beginning, really before I even started. It would be so easy just to say screw it and not answer this one. I don't even know where to begin with this.
I can start with my own litany of drugs. I have used alcohol and smoked since high school, had and addiction to cocaine, spent time in rehab, and had a few legal problems. I said had an addiction to cocaine even though I know that once you are an addict you always are one. I should add that I would die without caffeine and I have been known to smoke a certain herb that looks surprisingly like oregano. I seem to have a love hate relationship with drugs. I know I drink too much but I like to drink and I also know I shouldn't smoke but I have to admit it's my crutch. I have tried to quit a few times in the last ten years and it just doesn't happen owing to the fact that deep down I need to smoke, I need the crutch.
My views? I'm not so sure that I have any views on the subject that matter. I am far from the one to damn anybody for using any hard drugs because I've been too far down that road myself. But for now I don't let myself be around people that do use because I just won’t let myself be tempted again. Not that I haven't been offered some, I have, but not by friends or even acquaintances and so far I have reacted more with revulsion than with temptation. I lost two months of my life because of cocaine and rehab. Two months I barely remember and never am going to get back to that. I wouldn't wish it on anybody.
Yet I could give you a list of reasons I used coke, excuses actually. Excuses I would tell myself over and over again every day. People just didn't understand me, they don't have my problems, or my loss. I'm just using it to calm my head until I don't need it anymore and than I'll quit. I can still function, drive, and nobody seems to even notice. In my deepest darkest days I figured I was going to die anyway so why did it matter at all. And I believed every one of my excuses until it was too late.
And finally there is the artistic angle. This tends to cause more debate than any of the so called excuses do. When I paint I drink it's that simple, it's how I paint, sometimes I don't eat just drink and smoke and paint. When I was in rehab I had a therapist who tried telling me over and over that I only thought I needed alcohol to paint. He said that if I stopped drinking I would find that I was just as creative or even more so. Not long out of rehab I had my own final therapy in painting what I consider one of my best works. In the process I drank two bottles of tequila. The other side of all this is the fact that when I was using cocaine I didn't create anything. Not a painting, not a sketch, not even a single photo I know of. The artsie part of my brain just shut down so completely that I thought it was gone.
So there are my thoughts on drugs and alcohol if not my views. I’ll add a quote because I love quotes, it’s one of my favs, and it fits ....
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."
Hunter S. Thompson
Except when they don't ....
30 Seconds To Mars - Attack
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