The Book of Drugs_ A Memoir - Mike Doughty [101]
This is deplorably shoddy proof of a personified, interventionist deity; what it more likely proves is that even the most expansive, nebulous, and mysterious idea of god-consciousness depicts what may be the true nature of the cosmos with less accuracy than a three-year-old’s finger painting of a mountain. What I’m trying to say is that we’re all—from cub scouts to Nobel laureates—viewing existence through our humanity. Which is to say: in metaphor. Some of our metaphors—and our metaphorical systems—are much, much more sophisticated, and meticulous, than others.
Yet. Half an hour ago, I spilled a cup of coffee. My automatic thought: the universe is directly intervening, to tell me I don’t need more caffeine.
I believe in the twelve-step thing about making amends. Making amends doesn’t mean to apologize, and it doesn’t mean obtaining forgiveness. I go to somebody I’ve hurt and express that what I did haunts me. I once wrote something mean and vengeful about that Spin reviewer who scorned my voice; I wrote an e-mail telling him of my remorse. He was receptive, not to mention surprised. There are other people who haven’t even returned my call. All I’m able to do is put it out there, and let go of whatever I want to get back. I wrestle with making amends to people who’ve hurt me. How do I express my regrets to someone who’s done something worse to me? How do I just take responsibility for what I’ve done, and move on?
My closeness to the rooms waxes and wanes. I’m often ambivalent in the real sense of that word: I believe as much as I disbelieve. I’ll blow off meetings even though I know that just going and sitting in one will make me feel better. Sometimes much better, sometimes a little bit better, sometimes just a speck better, but always better.
I have friends. I recommend having friends. Were they in trouble, I’d help them, and I wouldn’t hesitate to ask for help myself. The question, How are you? posed to someone in recovery gets an actual account of how one is, and one actually hears what the other guy is saying.
This stuff sounds corny, right? I don’t want to be corny. But it’s all true.
I’m typing this to you from Los Angeles on Labor Day. I broke up with my girlfriend last month, during a vacation to Cambodia (my advice to you is, should your relationship implode, don’t be 5,000 miles from home). Since coming back, I’ve been spending money madly, trying to alter my feelings via consumption. I paid to fly out here business class; I’m staying in a pricey hotel. The business class flight didn’t make me feel better; there was a movie star sitting a row ahead of me; I sat there feeling like I didn’t measure up to the movie star, who held hands with a handsome boyfriend and was thus mocking me as boring and unlovable. The expensive hotel room isn’t doing it for me, either. I need a bigger room, I need to spend more money. I need to throw more material into this weird hole in myself.
The night before I was doing a track with a producer who smoked weed continually. The kind that you get at dispensaries in California, in pharmacy bottles, with their varietal names—White Widow, Northern Lights, Pancake Throatjam—printed on the labels. As a friend to the demimonde, I can’t fault the racket, but I don’t buy the medicinal-value thing, other than helping chemotherapy patients gain weight by giving them the munchies.
I’m feeling jumpy. I skipped out on the men’s meeting in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, I go to on Saturday nights, my mainstay of late. It’s filled with groovy art dudes, and the occasional Polish guy from the neighborhood’s enclave. Groovy art dudes intimidate me, even though I am one, because I feel their very existence proves me to be a sham. This meeting, because it’s only men, no women to impress, is particularly soulful and honest; hearing the groovy art dudes open their hearts, express their insecurities, is extremely moving to me. But I skipped it, and now there are uninvited, unwanted feelings knocking around me.
I spent the morning moping in