In the midst of my chronic back pain and depression, drugs have become a bigger part of my life than they used to be. I made it all the way through my 20s being basically almost straight edge, with the occasional alcohol. But now I’m on painkillers, antidepressants, caffeine, kratom, and “medical” marijuana *winkwink nudgenudge say no more*. The latter of which I never even tried for the first time until around my early thirties. I feel like it’s enhanced my intellect and made me much more existential, even when I’m sober. It’s better for mental issues than physical issues though. Anyway, a brief history of my addictions:
I got addicted to coffee at my hellish call center jobs, when I was looking for something, anything, to make my day any less tortuous. Coffee was made very easy to come by in the break room. It’s been years now since I worked there and I’m still addicted. I kind of regret getting addicted to it, because really all it does is create the problem it cures by giving you an energy boost while being the reason you feel drowsy and irritable in the first place via withdrawals, but it’s really cheap and easy to come by, you can even buy it with EBT, so I haven’t had a good enough reason to try to kick the habit, as the withdrawals will make me miserable, and no fun to be around.
Kratom is something I got hooked on at the many kava bars of St. Petersburg, Florida; an Indonesian powdered leaf not unlike coffee which is usually mixed or filtered into drinks, boosting your mood or relaxing you. At its strongest it feels a little bit like marijuana. It’s much cheaper to buy the powder and brew it yourself than to frequent kava bars for it. My wife and I never quite unlocked the secret to brewing a really strong drink with it. Highly addictive, unfortunately, and a lot pricier than coffee, not to mention harder to get since you can’t exactly pick it up at the grocery store. The withdrawals can be as bad as opiate withdrawals, so I’ve been told. I tried to kick the habit once due to being too broke, but because my wife did not quit, I relapsed after a month. The withdrawals were horrible, about three days of involuntary twitching, mood swings, nausea, headaches and insomnia. I know I’m going to have to quit it one day.
Fortunately I don’t plan on going on anything heavier than the aforementioned drugs. Wouldn’t want to follow the path of some of my favorite grunge singers. And since it is playing a bigger role in my life, I decided, as one of my main methods of artistic expression, to make a 90 minute mixtape focused on the topic of drugs. Perhaps as a way to organize my thoughts and opinions on them. We start with the D.A.R.E. theme song. As a 90s kid I grew up with their cheesy anti-drug propaganda, sitting through their lame assemblies at school. I bought into it back then. As a kid I viewed drugs as this ultimate evil, that I would sooner die than ever use. I thought the people who did them were evil too. I of course grew up, and gradually realized that it was all a load of bollocks, and the only reason marijuana was ever illegal was as an excuse to throw ethnic minorities, the poor, and hippies in jail. Not to mention to ensure the pharmaceutical industry’s monopoly. After all, why ban that but keep much more harmful substances like alcohol and tobacco legal? Now of course I didn’t want to waste any more tape on this awful song than I needed to, so I only included the chorus. From there we get the title track, “Fun With Drugs” by Velvet Acid Christ, a song that I first heard and recorded on a mixtape off the radio way back in 1999 during my local radio station’s Goth Industrial Show. I wasn’t ready yet for most of that music, but this song always had an allure to it, a window into something quite forbidden. It resembles a dark acid trip, punctuated by voice samples from the film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Jumping straight to this song from the D.A.R.E. theme was something I found hilarious. A middle finger to those D.A.R.E. idiots. This energy is continued through the next two tracks, “The New Drug” by Vomito Negro and “Just One Fix” by Ministry. This is the “drugs are cool” section of the tape.
But, as the mix goes on, you might start to wonder if those corny do-gooders at the beginning were right about some things, at least when it comes to the heavier drugs. In the next few songs we gain some insight from the likes of Ozzy Osbourne, Michael Jackson, And One, Alice In Chains, Nirvana, Skynd and Nine Inch Nails into the many dangers and pitfalls of addiction. This is me forming an educated and balanced opinion on drugs in general, settling for a position of balance in all things; it’s okay to dabble in the less harmful drugs, but don’t get carried away and get addicted to heroin, meth and the like. It becomes a slow suicide, as mentioned in both Ozzy Osbourne’s “Suicide Solution” and Mad Season’s “Wake Up”. I view it as less a moral issue and more an issue of balancing practicality and self preservation with pleasure and pain relief. It’s better not to get addicted to anything at all really, but well, mental illness and chronic pain being what it is…you know you only live once and it’s not forever (reincarnation notwithstanding). Might as well make this truly horrifying cosmic experience we call life a bit more tolerable.
As is my new policy, I created a corresponding YouTube playlist of the tape, mostly for me to listen to on the go but for anyone else who wants to step into my consciousness for a bit and form their own opinions.
Side A
- The D.A.R.E. Theme
- Velvet Acid Christ - Fun With Drugs
- Vomito Negro - The New Drug
- Ministry - Just One Fix
- Alice in Chains - Junkhead
- Ozzy Osbourne - Suicide Solution
- Michael Jackson - Morphine
- And One - Take Some More
- Velvet Acid Christ- Lysergia
- Minuit Machine- DRGS
- Cab Calloway - Reefer Man (for levity)
Side B
- Skynd - Tyler Hadley (darkest song on the tape)
- Marilyn Manson* - The Dope Show
- Nine Inch Nails - The Perfect Drug
- Nirvana - Pennyroyal Tea (1990 demo)
- We Are Temporary - Medication
- Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb
- Alice in Chains - Again (live)
- Nirvana - Moist Vagina (for levity again)
- Nine Inch Nails- Hurt
- Mad Season - Wake Up
*I know he’s an abusive douchebag, but it isn’t as if I paid for his music. I could probably do a whole other blog entry about artists who I used to like that turned out to be douchebags in real life, and how I’m supposed to react to that after imprinting on their music for years. My policy in short is to not pay for their music. I was never a huge fan of Marilyn Manson to begin with, but this song had an effect on me when I was about 13, an allure into immorality.
