{"id":157,"date":"2009-07-19T21:28:02","date_gmt":"2009-07-20T05:28:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.quinnnorton.com\/said\/?p=157"},"modified":"2009-07-19T21:28:02","modified_gmt":"2009-07-20T05:28:02","slug":"a-poet-on-addiction-maybe-its-what-sweet-would-be-without-sugar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.quinnnorton.com\/said\/?p=157","title":{"rendered":"A poet on addiction: “Maybe it’s what sweet would be without sugar.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nabbed off the web, here is an except from Dale Pendell’s wonderful Pharmako\/Dynamis, part of the indispensable Pharmako<\/a> series, which you should go buy at once. This is probably one of the most vivid and beautiful descriptions of the disease to be rendered in the English language.<\/p>\n

Stealing From Tomorrow<\/strong><\/p>\n

A peculiar clean taste, slightly chemical, but not unpleasant.\u00a0 Once you taste it you’ll never forget.\u00a0 Nothing else quite like it.\u00a0 Treble notes.\u00a0 Trace of metallic, trace of bitter.\u00a0 Tongue numb.\u00a0 Maybe it’s what sweet would be without sugar.<\/p>\n

Seems like a convenient mode of ingestion of small quantities.<\/p>\n

Keep wanting
\nto get back
\nto where things were clear.<\/p>\n

“So good that if you use it once you’re hooked.”\u00a0 Talk about good advertising!\u00a0 Did the cartels pay for that line?<\/p>\n

The free amine base is simply prepared by basifying.\u00a0 The rule of thumb that alkaloid salts are water soluble and bases oil soluble hold well for cocaine.\u00a0 A few drops of ammonia in an aqueous solution of the salt precipitates the base.\u00a0 Extract the base with petroleum ether (not diethyl ether) or naphtha.<\/p>\n

Add a layer of solvent, cap the container, and shake:\u00a0 when the solution turns clear the precipitated base has dissolved in the solvent layer.\u00a0 Draw off the solvent layer with a pipette (like, an eyedropper) and squeeze into a wide, flat-bottomed dish to evaporate off the solvent.\u00a0 The crystals are quite beautiful.<\/p>\n

This much is well documented.<\/p>\n

The first flash is the best. Never
\nquite that good
\nafter.<\/p>\n

The fleeting quality of the hit\u2026how an interruption, a word or request from someone else, the telephone ringing, your spouse wondering about the shopping, any outside engagement can dispel the brief enchantment.<\/p>\n

So you try to avoid the interactions.<\/p>\n

You go again, but as the metabolic half-life of the coke far outlasts the duration of the rush, the stimulant continues to build up in your system.\u00a0 So you need a downer.\u00a0 Something to take the edge off.\u00a0 Some way to get leveled.<\/p>\n

We’re talking poisons here.\u00a0 But poisons going nowhere.<\/p>\n

But you do it some more.\u00a0 We can call it an Experiment.<\/p>\n

Finally you do it even when you don’t like what it does to you.\u00a0 You get too much edge.\u00a0 You get too many jaggies.\u00a0 So maybe you take something to take the edge off.\u00a0 Speedballing.\u00a0 Except maybe you take slightly more than you needed because you wanted to feel it and now you are drowsy, so you toke some more crack, or base.\u00a0 That puts you too far on the stimulated side, so you try the cycle again.\u00a0 Eventually you get leveled.<\/p>\n

Brain won’t work.\u00a0 Too jumpy to read.\u00a0 Too bored to do nothing.
\nToke.<\/p>\n

Plenty late enough to go to bed.\u00a0 Just one more hit.\u00a0 Just one more lift.\u00a0 Maybe a small one this time.<\/p>\n

Small one didn’t do it.<\/p>\n

Siren,
\nyou hide your pain in the blinding whiteness
\nof your crystals.\u00a0 You hide the night.
\nAlready I can feel it:\u00a0 tasks undone,
\npapers left scattered.\u00a0 A slow accumulation
\nof flotsam.\u00a0 Or a word too sharply spoken.
\nA craving that calls me, through any job or meeting.
\nduring an evening with friends,
\nfrom my bed where I went thinking to sleep.
\nSo quickly she makes her bed in your ear,
\nbut she is not the singer, she
\nbringeth not the lyre, but the lie.<\/p>\n

To keep the vapor
\nfrom condensing in the stem
\nI warm it first,<\/p>\n

moving the pipe
\nback and forth slowly
\nover the flame<\/p>\n

trying to heat
\nthe whole pipe
\nevenly.<\/p>\n

Brushing the long stem with a flame must be the lightest way to touch something.\u00a0 It’s like polishing, or cleaning.<\/p>\n

You can see the spots
\nthat haven’t gotten hot enough
\nfrom the crud and stuff
\nin the pipe.\u00a0 Stroke
\nthe bowl a few times
\nand then come back
\nto the stem, twist
\na little left or right
\nto try to get
\nthe sides.\u00a0 Wait till
\nit’s all hot to
\nput the sustained
\nheat to the bowl.<\/p>\n

I like to see
\nthe crystals melt
\nbefore emptying out
\nmy lungs, exhaling, then
\nthree or four
\nfinal stem passes,
\nback to the bowl
\nand inhale slowly, you want
\nthat vapor to hit
\nthe bottom of your lungs, pal,
\nthen hold it in,
\nand hold, or even when
\nyou can’t anymore just
\nbreathe shallow.<\/p>\n

The flame is like a brush.\u00a0 It bends when I move the lamp.\u00a0 I can bring the lamp around and along the stem and the flame tip follows precisely, always a little bit behind.<\/p>\n

Like a tongue tip, lightly licking all along it.<\/p>\n

You love it.\u00a0 You want to do it again and
\nmorning come and again and ever
\nso closer and ever and
\nI still haven’t slept.<\/p>\n

If I could just find some activity that didn’t require concentration.<\/p>\n

Morning is morning, but now is now.\u00a0 Should quit this stuff soon.<\/p>\n

Freebase is the hardest substance to leave in the cupboard that I know of. That doesn’t mean you can’t quit, you can.\u00a0 But you’re going to have to leave town.<\/p>\n

Buying in small quantities is safest.<\/p>\n

No.\u00a0 There IS no “safest.”<\/p>\n

Coke can overpower the Critic, but in whose service?\u00a0 It can put aggression on auto-pilot, a much-valued state of mind in our culture, but in whose service?<\/p>\n

It turns out that stealing from tomorrow is just the first stage.<\/p>\n

Stealing from tomorrow is like going into debt, spending tomorrow today, or tonight, actually.\u00a0 So you’ve wrecked tomorrow.\u00a0 Stolen all of its energy, stolen its waking hours, stolen its good will.\u00a0 Tomorrow you will be behind all day.<\/p>\n

If you get up at all!<\/p>\n

After stealing from tomorrow for long enough,<\/p>\n

weeks, maybe for months,<\/p>\n

you start stealing from today.<\/p>\n

Stealing from today means that the ally is not giving you power or aid or assistance in accomplishing some task.\u00a0 Rather, the ally takes today for her own service.\u00a0 Ingestion, filling the bowl, the preparation, the scoring.\u00a0 And just the time taking the hits.\u00a0 A little bit of time to space, to flash or level, and that’s about it for today.<\/p>\n

Just the worship service.<\/p>\n

Weren’t you supposed to get something from all this?<\/p>\n

You’re doing your part for her.\u00a0 That’s for DAMN sure!<\/p>\n

But you’re not at the end.<\/p>\n

Next is stealing from yesterday.<\/p>\n

The third stage of the ally’s conquest.<\/p>\n

Your savings, your bank accounts \u2013 nothing very esoteric there.<\/p>\n

Sometimes your friends.\u00a0 Sometimes your marriage.<\/p>\n

Sometimes your children.<\/p>\n

Your reputation.<\/p>\n

And your memories.<\/p>\n

Nothing very esoteric there.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the best writing on the effects of cocaine is by David Lenson in his book On Drugs.\u00a0 Lenson writes about the “runaway engines of desire.”\u00a0 He suggests that the American power structures reacted with such intensity and virulence against cocaine because cocaine presents such a clear image and parody of consumerism.\u00a0 You buy it, it’s gone, more makes you want to buy more.\u00a0 But buying cocaine is buying the desire itself, the desire itself is the product.\u00a0 A devilish perfection.<\/p>\n

The desire, the consumerism, is too blatant, too obvious:\u00a0 a parody of the holy rite, and hence condemned with all the fury of the Inquisition.<\/p>\n

A citizen set fire to a house because it was a “crack house.”\u00a0 Though he admitted setting the fire, the jury found him not guilty, using jury annulment:\u00a0 an auto-da-f\u00e9 for the Holy Cause is not a crime.<\/p>\n

The hard part.<\/p>\n

You do it instead of eating.
\nYou do it instead of sleeping.
\nYou do it instead of doing.<\/p>\n

The hard part.
\nis stopping, sitting down.
\nThe hard part,
\nthe hard part concerns time.
\nThe hard part is just sitting,
\nwithout inspiration,
\nwith no ideas and not knowing\u2026<\/p>\n

No, that’s not it.\u00a0 Lots of ideas.
\nThe hard part is doing it.
\nAnd there is so much to do:
\nmuch more than you have time to do.
\nIt’s easier to keep the accelerator pressed
\nand to keep rushing, touching this, touching that,
\nand to keep doing that.<\/p>\n

The hard part is quitting.<\/p>\n

Clear enough?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nabbed off the web, here is an except from Dale Pendell’s wonderful Pharmako\/Dynamis, part of the indispensable Pharmako series, which you should go buy at once. This is probably one of the most vivid and beautiful descriptions of the disease to be rendered in the English language. Stealing From Tomorrow A peculiar clean taste, slightly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[73,30,74],"class_list":["post-157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-neurology","tag-addiction","tag-brains","tag-infinite-jest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quinnnorton.com\/said\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quinnnorton.com\/said\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quinnnorton.com\/said\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quinnnorton.com\/said\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quinnnorton.com\/said\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=157"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.quinnnorton.com\/said\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":159,"href":"https:\/\/www.quinnnorton.com\/said\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions\/159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quinnnorton.com\/said\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quinnnorton.com\/said\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quinnnorton.com\/said\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}