If somebody had told me twelve years ago what I was in for, I seriously wonder if I would have believed them. Of course, that raises the question of whether or not I would have attempted what I've done if I had believed them. You see, twelve years ago I made the decision to change my life from that of an addict to whatever it is I am now.
I had plenty of excuses for being an addict. That's the great thing about being an addict: you can always find a reason for your behaviour. It's usually someone else's fault that you're the way you are, not your own. You never made that decision to take the first drink, smoke that first joint, or whatever.
Of course there are mitigating circumstances that can drive people to try and hide from the pain of their existence by numbing themselves. Anesthetics that come from a bottle, a needle, a piece of blotter paper, or any of the other many splendid means at your disposal – any of it’s the easiest route to take when you're thirteen, scared, and alone.
As a teenager in the seventies, it was far easier to obtain drugs than alcohol; no one is going to ask you for identification when you buy it and in those innocent days, a nickel bag was actually five dollars. It wasn't until the American government, in a fit of moral outrage, starting spraying the Mexican pot crops with the pesticide, Paraquat, that pot prices jumped from twenty-five dollars an ounce to $120.00 for Columbian Gold. (Not to be confused with the Columbian white powder that was worth more than gold in the 1980s.)
But whatever the price, I seemed able to spend my high school years in a complete fog. By the time I entered my second last year, I made the jump to the big leagues and began chemical usage. Making use of the stuff that passed for LSD in those days was always a risky proposition unless you knew the chemist. Potency and contents were wildly divergent even within the same batch.
Still, it was inexpensive, at most $5.00 a hit, and lasted a good long time. If you worked it right you could stay high all day long for as little as $20.00 and not even be too incapacitated to work. I spent six weeks in the summer of 1979 doing just that when I traveled out to Western Canada to work in a resort hotel in Banff, Alberta.
Article comments
1 - chantal stone
an amazing success story, thank you for sharing this Richard.
2 - JELIEL³
Very good article, but I have problems with this sentence.
People who work in the arts are hard drinkers and live hard anyway, so my behaviour didn't seem as outlandish as it would have in other circumstances
People in the arts who are hard drinkers and live hard have failed BEING in the arts and instead are BEING an artist. Sure I drank and partied a lot but a true artist lives more intensly than regular people, but not necessarily harder. But I never touched drugs and I live in Montreal, drug distribution center to North America.
3 - John Spivey
There are so many ways to stay numb and so many excuses. Powerful account of your life, Richard. I hope for continued healing of the wounds and for your personal success as a human being.
4 - Sister Ray
Do you feel like you were addicted to LSD?
5 - Richard Marcus
Sister Ray: I apologise for taking so long to reply to your comment. I think I was more adicted to getting high than any paticular means of achieving that aim. Certainly I would crave the high that I obtained from taking acid, and when I came down I would want to get it back, but the same could be send for any substance I use during the time.
I needed to not be in the world that I was in, and anything that would take me away was ideal, so I maybe wasn't technically adicted to acid, although, or any particular substance at all. It was the escape that the highs offered that I was adicted to.
Does that make sense? I think I know what you were curious about, whether acid is technically adictive, and I think perhaps we need to look at the question, and not just for acid but all substances, from another angle. People get addicted to the sensations caused by the drug, not the drug itself. I thank god I never did heroin because the high is supposed to be amazing and I might never have come back.
But coke is supposed to be this horribly addictive drug, but I never enjoyed it, so never became addicted to it.
It's the same with my pain medication. I take morphine on a regular basis, three times a day, but I hate the sensation of the high it induces (which makes me grateful that I know longer experience it) but that doesn't prevent it from working as pain medication. In times past when I have had to utilize morphine, I have never had any difficulty stopping because I don't like it. Perhaps because I'm using it for a specific purpose and not recreationaly that also changes my perspective of it.
Anyway, I guess that was a longer answer than what you expected, but it's the closest I can come to answereing. Again I apologise for my delay in responding.
cheers
Richard