The Addiction

The Addiction



Jesus Christ do I need a fix.

I am a strange junky. A cheap liquid junky whose peace of mind comes not from the needle or the freebase pipe. My junk is alcohol and its effects are as deadly as heroin or the like. I sit among the geese and their flock on the village canal. They are the only witnesses to my personal crime. I take a shot from the bottle and feel it burn like liquid fire to its first stop, my glowing belly, where it ventures from there to the rest of my alcohol-hungry bloodstream.

I need to write this. To store it in my head would be like trying to control nuclear fission in a shoebox. I'd like to go home to the typer but that wouldn't feel right: the air-conditioned comfort, the multifaceted stereo system that gives me R.E.M. or Mozart on command, the food and the stove. I need the hunger and the streets. Three hundred dollars a month for rent and I need the streets. I guess in order to be a drunken bum writer one must live like a drunken bum. I pull another shot from a brown paper bag. Nice touch.

Where shall I sleep tonight? In the guilt-ridden, fan-blown comfort of my bed? Or in the inviting comfort of this wet, green grass? I take yet another shot to decide.

The rum is flowing now, good and strong, through my veins like heated embalming fluid, and a new self diagnosis comes to mind: I am an addict; pure and simple ... a most highly addictive personality. No, not a heroin user, not a slave to the needle, no midnight longings for the methadone clinic, but a junky none the less: again, a highly addictive personality.

I can never get enough of anything: booze (as I've already said); dope (ranging from huge, frothing bong hits of cannabis to sleeping pills chased with shotglasses full of dextromethorphan);sex (OH GOD SEX!) be it with a partner or alone; food to the point I puke to make room for more; sleep (when it finally comes) and its dastardly dreams and adrenalin-pumping nightmares; the day with its baking sun; the night with its basking moon; they all get me high in some way and God love 'em for that. In a nutshell, if it gives me pleasure, give me more, more, MORE! If something causes any discomfort at all, even the slightest bit of dislike or displeasure, I shy away like a child who has just learned that fire is pain. I am a hedonistic wreck.

It boils down to the painful fact that I am quite simply addicted to "LIFE" and, like most addicts with an IQ above room temperature, I see my addiction leading to a great fork in the road: quite literally a means to an end. Like an alcoholic who must decide between the bottle and sobriety, or the junky who must choose between the needle and the clinic, I find myself trying to decide between the rough and uncertain path which is "LIFE" and the easy and ever certain road that is "DEATH". Unfortunately both roads lead to the same destination anyway, and I'm bright enough to know it; here, drunk with the geese.

This epicurean disease of mine has been the cause of many trying and turbulent times to myself and those around me over the past fifteen years of my hectic, aesthetic life. My soul has been infected with fever, my mind with Day Glo paint, my very limbs with fire. Sometimes it feels like I am burning with the reincarnated souls of every artist who has ever lived: every poet, painter, musician, playwright, actor, and author are screaming their pleas to be heard through me and my poor intoxicated pen.

I needn't worry where to sleep tonight any longer. These demons aren't about to let me. But they will. I will suffocate them eventually, as they are suffocating me. The results should be interesting. They have been thus far and I expect nothing different...