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Everyday Objects
Mar. 2nd, 2019 10:25 amMy piece "Everyday Objects" just went up at The Manifest-Station: https://www.themanifeststation.net/2019/03/01/everyday-objects/
I started this piece 3 years ago in Grace Talusan's Grub Street class "6 Essays in 6 Weeks". I am so excited to see it out there in the world!
Writing secrets
Mar. 18th, 2018 12:49 pm“Unguardedly honest and painful confessions between people who have just met are forced and false” -Robert McKee, “Story”
This is why so much of what I read is memoirs by women and gay men.
Because this relationship both to secrets and to what you can assume the reader will know does not in any way reflect my experience as a human or my experience in writers’ groups.
The vast majority of stuff that I would consider common knowledge (or at least would expect of someone who reads the newspaper) about sex, drugs, and various subcultures is totally baffling to a group of Boston area women age 50-70.
Also think of the amazing meet ugly between Wade and Vanessa in Deadpool, where it becomes a competition of trauma and gallows humor. Though I would agree that these are not the kind of secrets that drive plots. In Deadpool, the secret that drives the plot is Wade’s inability to face the vulnerability of someone caring for him while he is dying.
Or the boyfriend I met when I was 23 who when I told him I used to shoot heroin was like, yeah, I pretty much assumed that. But he was shocked when he saw how nice my father’s apartment was, because I was trying so hard to survive without my parents that I didn’t act like a rich girl.
I love characters who are trying to pretend that everything’s fine while it is really clear to the reader and most of the other characters that they’re a fucking mess. And those characters often have secrets that they wield in various ways and secrets that they try desperately to keep but that are obvious or mundane to people around them.
So, yeah, experiment with telling as little as you can get away with. But also you need to have a piece workshopped or betaed to actually figure out what is confusing people. And then write a really long version and keep rewriting it until it’s one or two amazing sentences. Show don’t tell doesn’t work for othered groups the way it works for straight white men.
I also love the idea (which I haven’t tried) of squeezing exposition in in the form of mansplaining.
This is why so much of what I read is memoirs by women and gay men.
Because this relationship both to secrets and to what you can assume the reader will know does not in any way reflect my experience as a human or my experience in writers’ groups.
The vast majority of stuff that I would consider common knowledge (or at least would expect of someone who reads the newspaper) about sex, drugs, and various subcultures is totally baffling to a group of Boston area women age 50-70.
Also think of the amazing meet ugly between Wade and Vanessa in Deadpool, where it becomes a competition of trauma and gallows humor. Though I would agree that these are not the kind of secrets that drive plots. In Deadpool, the secret that drives the plot is Wade’s inability to face the vulnerability of someone caring for him while he is dying.
Or the boyfriend I met when I was 23 who when I told him I used to shoot heroin was like, yeah, I pretty much assumed that. But he was shocked when he saw how nice my father’s apartment was, because I was trying so hard to survive without my parents that I didn’t act like a rich girl.
I love characters who are trying to pretend that everything’s fine while it is really clear to the reader and most of the other characters that they’re a fucking mess. And those characters often have secrets that they wield in various ways and secrets that they try desperately to keep but that are obvious or mundane to people around them.
So, yeah, experiment with telling as little as you can get away with. But also you need to have a piece workshopped or betaed to actually figure out what is confusing people. And then write a really long version and keep rewriting it until it’s one or two amazing sentences. Show don’t tell doesn’t work for othered groups the way it works for straight white men.
I also love the idea (which I haven’t tried) of squeezing exposition in in the form of mansplaining.
I basically accepted most of Sherlock’s hallucinations as plausible (depending on what drugs he’s supposed to be on), but I hated the walking on the wall effect, and I’m not sure why. I think it reminded me too much of the dead baby scene in Trainspotting. Too literal, and not really how hallucinations work.
I have heard of some really elaborate delusions/hallucinations from speed psychosis, so that seems plausible to me. Or maybe some kind of withdrawal? But that doesn’t really make sense in context.
So, back to the perennial question: what exactly was Sherlock supposed to be on? Definitely heroin. But what else. When he’s coming out of the bathroom at the hospital, Sherlock uses the word psychedelic. So is he supposed to be mixing all kinds of drugs? Which is something I didn’t really buy in TAB, and don’t love here. Mycroft says his kitchen is like a meth lab, so heroin and speed? (My long dead boyfriend used to call this a San Francisco speedball). I think cooking meth is pretty rare in the U.K., but if anyone could do it, it would probably be Sherlock (and Wiggins). None of the recipes I’ve seen for cooking meth include actual lab equipment, so I don’t know if they got the set up right.
The needles bugged me. Why is he using high dead space (two part) syringe/needle sets? Insulin syringes are superior in basically every way. This may just be a props issue. Syringes without needles are much easier to get than the one-piece sets people actually use. I might chalk this up to regional differences, but based on Nigel Branson’s Injecting Advice series, I don’t think it is. I’ve heard of syringes like that being used for femoral injection, and I guess John never checked Sherlock’s groin. ;)
I had to remind myself that light brown is the right color for U.K. Heroin.
I liked how they did Sherlock’s track marks. Obvious but hidden under his (dark to hide the blood stains) shirt. And those are good veins to pick. Probably the second tier after the inner elbow veins are blown (unless he was rotating injection sites, which I kind of doubt). So a plausible level of track marks for a month long binge.
I liked the comment about having more than one high point to your day. It rang really true to me as a kind of druggy gallows humor.
I don’t like the idea that Mycroft is using all his money and power to protect Sherlock. I don’t like the idea in general, and I particularly don’t like it in the context of Sherlock’s drug use. It is really just a head canon issue. I want Sherlock to have this one area of competence, even if he’s not very functional in other areas. But the show is clearly making Sherlock more and more dependent on Mycroft, in a way that can’t be good for either of them.
I have heard of some really elaborate delusions/hallucinations from speed psychosis, so that seems plausible to me. Or maybe some kind of withdrawal? But that doesn’t really make sense in context.
So, back to the perennial question: what exactly was Sherlock supposed to be on? Definitely heroin. But what else. When he’s coming out of the bathroom at the hospital, Sherlock uses the word psychedelic. So is he supposed to be mixing all kinds of drugs? Which is something I didn’t really buy in TAB, and don’t love here. Mycroft says his kitchen is like a meth lab, so heroin and speed? (My long dead boyfriend used to call this a San Francisco speedball). I think cooking meth is pretty rare in the U.K., but if anyone could do it, it would probably be Sherlock (and Wiggins). None of the recipes I’ve seen for cooking meth include actual lab equipment, so I don’t know if they got the set up right.
The needles bugged me. Why is he using high dead space (two part) syringe/needle sets? Insulin syringes are superior in basically every way. This may just be a props issue. Syringes without needles are much easier to get than the one-piece sets people actually use. I might chalk this up to regional differences, but based on Nigel Branson’s Injecting Advice series, I don’t think it is. I’ve heard of syringes like that being used for femoral injection, and I guess John never checked Sherlock’s groin. ;)
I had to remind myself that light brown is the right color for U.K. Heroin.
I liked how they did Sherlock’s track marks. Obvious but hidden under his (dark to hide the blood stains) shirt. And those are good veins to pick. Probably the second tier after the inner elbow veins are blown (unless he was rotating injection sites, which I kind of doubt). So a plausible level of track marks for a month long binge.
I liked the comment about having more than one high point to your day. It rang really true to me as a kind of druggy gallows humor.
I don’t like the idea that Mycroft is using all his money and power to protect Sherlock. I don’t like the idea in general, and I particularly don’t like it in the context of Sherlock’s drug use. It is really just a head canon issue. I want Sherlock to have this one area of competence, even if he’s not very functional in other areas. But the show is clearly making Sherlock more and more dependent on Mycroft, in a way that can’t be good for either of them.
(no subject)
Sep. 28th, 2015 10:10 amI want to be completely nonjudgmental about fic writer’s weird porn writing ticks and tropes.
But I cannot help getting a little annoyed when character’s pupils react the wrong way to opiates and stimulants.
Though, this is also part of the reason I had to turn off Requiem for a Dream (the rest of the reason being that I actually cannot handle depressing movies, and I was watching it with my baby brother, who didn’t know about my history of drug use).
So it’s not like fanfic writers have a monopoly on getting this wrong.
(no subject)
Oct. 18th, 2014 03:39 pmSo, I FINALLY started watching Breaking Bad, and, yes, Jesse, Jesse, Jesse!
I’ve been listening to these “making of” podcasts, which, are, of course, 100% spoilers, but who knows when I’ll next have a chance to watch the show for real.
The podcasts are actually kind of disturbing, in the way the writers and producers lump all the meth users (besides Jesse) into this brain-damaged zombie category. Also, I guess it hadn’t really occurred to me that the meth cooking in and of itself is supposed to be one of the evil things that Walt does. I thought it was mostly about the lying and killing, and the unquenchable prideful anger. But whatever.
Also, Aaron Paul is some kind of crazy method actor. He is actually smoking sugar (which explains why his pipe looks like crap despite him smoking super pure shit). And to keep the TV-14 rating, they can’t show him inhaling; just exhaling. Also driving a 1983 RV down the highway at 60mph, and giving himself a concussion in one of the fight scenes. Not to mention researching shooting heroin on Youtube to get it just right, because in real life he is super squeaky clean.
With a tech boom lubricated by VC cash, a startup culture cranked up by fiercely competitive VPs and adrenaline-driven coders, and a corporate model that encourages stressed-out managers to look the other way, illicit drugs and black-market painkillers have become part of the landscape here in the world’s fountain of tech.
I feel like this article is really lacking context.
You get this sort of thing pretty often. Some shocking revelation that people you didn’t think were doing drugs actually are
And I’m sure people who work in silicone valley do drugs, just like people in all kinds of fields. They say in the article that they don’t have hard numbers, but there is data out there breaking down drug use rates by industry (http://www.samhsa.gov/data/2k7/industry/worker.htm) and tech workers are not at the top of the list.
I would like to see them compared to other white collar workers. Or to other white suburban kids (who currently have a higher rate of non-pot drug use than other demographics)
Heroin use is up all over the country, and is most likely related to the crackdown on prescription opiate diversion. Also maybe related to panic over meth. These things tend to go in waves as a certain drug gets villainized and people move onto the next one.
And I am concerned by an article that uncritically suggests that we should be moving towards more random drug testing.
And this quote really bugs me:
“You see very few of the old-school addicts; most of these are college-educated folks” like that is something new. Of course the rich high tech workers are seeing other rich, educated people at their NA meetings – the meetings are organized by where you live or work. So if you live and work in an affluent, expensive area, you’re most likely to be in a group with other affluent people.
Anonymous asked: What do you think of students who take unprescribed Adderall/Ritalin to get through college work/studying?
So, I’ll preface this by saying that I’m old enough to remember when doctors were saying that amphetamines had the opposite effect on people with ADHD than they did on everyone else (i.e. focused vs. manic) and that amphetamines could essentially be used to diagnose ADHD (i.e. if the drugs worked, you had ADHD). I don’t know, maybe doctors are still saying this – they certainly seem to use the same logic with anxiety and depression – but it seems like there is finally starting to be an understanding that ADHD drugs are not pharmacologically different than street amphetamines (see Carl Hart’s work), and that different people having different reactions has to do with the concept of drug, set and setting, as well as preexisting social inequality and the stigma a street drugs.
From a harm reduction perspective, I think that diverted pharmaceuticals are safer than street drugs in terms of consistent dosage and lack of dangerous cuts. Also, swallowing a pill is generally going to be safer than snorting, smoking or injecting a drug. (I should point out, though, that when drug companies start adding anti-tampering compounds to pills to keep people from snorting or injecting them, they may no longer be the safer option.) Since on average, a minority of people who use a drug end up having serious problems with it, more people using a drug may mean more people with problems with that drug, even under the best of circumstances, so honest, non-propaganda-based, drug education and resources for recovery are really important.
But I think that students using ADHD drugs as performance enhancing drugs has a whole other problematic aspect. To the degree that the drugs actually do enhance performance, they create a situation where some students (usually the ones who are already the most privileged) have access to ADHD prescriptions (because they know how to work the system, and are not immediately seen as suspicious and drug seeking) and other students don’t. Apparently some ridiculously high percentage of kids at elite high schools have ADHD diagnoses, presumably because their parents were willing to do anything for them to succeed academically.
(no subject)
Mar. 20th, 2014 04:07 pmI’m trying on the idea that when I was younger, I thought about drugs as some kind of rite of passage. It is dangerously close to “peer pressure” and “gateway drugs” and “hanging out with a bad crowd” and a lot of other health class nonsense. But also says a lot about why I wanted so badly to try heroin, why people’s attempts to protect me from it felt so alienating and patronizing, and made me want it even more.
And the first time I did heroin certainly felt like an initiation, including Ian telling me, “Now you’re a junky for the rest of your life.” (Which also mirrors the 12-step idea that you are always an addict, just active or in recovery.)
And I was doing drugs in a subcultural context (though I’m not sure exactly which subculture – maybe scruffy goth?) And in that context, having done certain drugs, having used needles, definitely gave a sense of belonging, like I immediately had something in common with people (even as it alienated me from other people).
"I had left my San Francisco postdoctoral position disillusioned by the whole concept of craving. Some addicts certainly reported drug craving: there was no doubt about that. But it didn’t really predict whether they relapsed, according to the majority of research. Sometimes people would report severe craving but not use drugs; other times, they’d use drugs in situations where they said they’d experienced no craving at all. It seemed to me that it would be much more useful to study people’s actual decisions about whether to take drugs, rather than focus so much on what they said about what they wanted or craved in some hypothetical future."
—High Price: A Neuroscientist’s Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society, Dr. Carl Hart
I hate cravings. I hate how, even after 14 years, certain drug dreams can send me into a total tailspin. My skin feels wrong, tingling and crawling like all the hairs are sticking up on end. And my back and neck and shoulders tense up. There’s a real obsessive/compulsive quality and my thoughts start spinning in on themselves, and I can’t focus on anything else. If there were a well-studied treatment (with established risks and benefits), I would seriously consider it. I think a lot of what I now experience as drug cravings existed before I ever did any drugs, but at that point, was focused on wanting to cut and hit myself and peel off my skin. And was probably related to a lot of my drinking and random hook ups my first couple years at college.
But, no, there’s not a one to one relationship between cravings and getting high. (Did the researchers actually believe that? I guess so.) For me, trying to get heroin was a long game, involving cultivating relationships with people with drug connections, trying to avoid getting lectured and guilt tripped but also trying to avoid being constantly surrounded by drugs, trying to give myself more control over when I used. So by the time I actually got my hands on the drugs, there was never a simple path between the craving and the high. And I think, after I first got the idea of doing heroin into my head, there was pretty much never a time when I didn’t want to do it, just times when it seemed like a better or worse idea.
Coke was different because I didn’t like it (and never craved it) but if people offered it for free, I didn’t say no. And speed was also different, because I started really not liking it (I hated not being able to sleep), but finding it hard to say no when everyone around me was getting high, so that seemed like the situation where I had the least control (though a lot of that had to do with being in a very fucked up living situation, and also the fact that I never stopped liking heroin, so doing it never seemed so paradoxical). Also, not being able to say no to something that is right in front of you would probably be considered distinct from cravings.
(no subject)
Dec. 23rd, 2013 01:50 pmI had been wondering if my mother really was oblivious to my history of drug use (as opposed to suspecting but not wanting to talk about it). But all the bottles of pain killers all over her house pretty much answer that question. It’s actually a little distracting.
And also a little worrying. She’s so incredibly nonthreatening (if you ignore the military-grade passive-aggressiveness) that I don’t think her doctors have talked to her seriously about the problems of taking high doses of opiates for so long. At one point, after she’d gotten a cortisone shot for her knees, she decided to stop taking all the other pain killers for a week and told me that everything hurt and she was worried that her arthritis was starting to hit her other joints. I told her to talk to her doctor because it was probably just a reaction to stopping the oxycontin and she just blew me off.
And also a little worrying. She’s so incredibly nonthreatening (if you ignore the military-grade passive-aggressiveness) that I don’t think her doctors have talked to her seriously about the problems of taking high doses of opiates for so long. At one point, after she’d gotten a cortisone shot for her knees, she decided to stop taking all the other pain killers for a week and told me that everything hurt and she was worried that her arthritis was starting to hit her other joints. I told her to talk to her doctor because it was probably just a reaction to stopping the oxycontin and she just blew me off.
(no subject)
Dec. 23rd, 2013 01:49 pmI really like my therapist. She is kind of flaky , and the first time I saw her, at a postpartum depression group, I thought she was a patient. And she never cross-examines me about being late or about tearing up sometimes. And she is, for the most part, really good about drug issues despite (because of ) it not being her specialty.
But then I started talking about the time that I almost ODed in New York, and how scary it was in retrospect that I didn’t even know how close I was to ODing. And nobody had Narcan back then, and nobody knew rescue breathing. And my therapist misinterpreted what I was saying and started talking about denial or something, and I had to cut her off. Because, yeah, I had that too, after Michael died, and I got a lot more freaked out about ODing, but I would push it out of my head until I had actually pushed down the plunger so it wouldn’t get in the way of getting high. But when I think about that time in New York, I’m mostly just angry. Narcan existed; they just wouldn’t give it to us. We were left with cold baths and walking someone around outside. No one at a needle exchange ever said anything about rescue breathing or how to recognize the early symptoms of OD (e.g. weird snoring sounds). And all the information about where it was safe to call an ambulance and where it wasn’t was strictly word of mouth.
But then I started talking about the time that I almost ODed in New York, and how scary it was in retrospect that I didn’t even know how close I was to ODing. And nobody had Narcan back then, and nobody knew rescue breathing. And my therapist misinterpreted what I was saying and started talking about denial or something, and I had to cut her off. Because, yeah, I had that too, after Michael died, and I got a lot more freaked out about ODing, but I would push it out of my head until I had actually pushed down the plunger so it wouldn’t get in the way of getting high. But when I think about that time in New York, I’m mostly just angry. Narcan existed; they just wouldn’t give it to us. We were left with cold baths and walking someone around outside. No one at a needle exchange ever said anything about rescue breathing or how to recognize the early symptoms of OD (e.g. weird snoring sounds). And all the information about where it was safe to call an ambulance and where it wasn’t was strictly word of mouth.
(no subject)
Sep. 12th, 2013 03:57 pmI kept my drug use out of my medical records for a long time because no one asked, and because things that were drug related (like ending up in the ER after an overdose) never got connected to my real medical records.
But when doctors started asking (10 years after the last time I’d done heroin/ speed/ coke, 2 years after the last time I smoked weed) I told them the truth. I guess I have internalized enough of the recovery dogma to not want to lie, though I know that telling the truth is dangerous. When I was pregnant with my daughter, they never asked, and I was really conflicted about opiate pain medication. I thought it had the potential to make me really depressed if I took it, but I didn’t want any kind of appropriate treatment to be withheld. (In the end, by the time I had filled out all the forms and they had gotten in a nurse who could get the IV into one of the rolling veins on my arms, it was too late for an epidural, and I experienced the much vaunted, and completely overrated, “natural” child birth.)
And, thanks for the congratulations. I’m feeling really stressed out right now, but it’s not like I got pregnant by accident or anything. I think I had just pushed off all my ambivalence because I am so old that I wasn’t sure it would happen anyway.
So, my first reaction was that this person was asking, are you (or have you ever been) that most vilified kind of woman, the mother who uses drugs. And the answer is no (though I know it had more to do with privilege than some great strength on my part).
But there is maybe a relevant question in there, which is, when am I going to tell my daughter about my history. Clearly not right now. She’s in preschool and doesn’t have any idea what drugs are. She hasn’t even asked about sex yet. She keeps asking me what tampons are and then getting really bored by my answer. But I don’t want to wait so long that she feels like I was lying by not telling her earlier (which is how I felt when my mother told me about her drug use in the 60s). Maybe when she hits puberty, if she hasn’t already asked about it by then.
I recently got a lovely note, saying that the Toxic Friendships in my writing are one of the most relatable parts (particularly for someone who hasn’t done heroin/speed/etc.). And I really want to write about friendships, because, for me, everything about drugs was mediated through various relationships, and I don’t really see that in most men’s writing about drugs. But I’m not really sure what people mean by toxic, in this context. My mother uses toxic to mean someone who is critical and undermining (someone who makes her so depressed and anxious that she has to hide in bed for three days), but Kate Zambreno, in Green Girl, seems to use it to mean someone who is toxic to herself or maybe someone who gets you into trouble. (Actually I’m not really sure what Zambreno is talking about there.) So is there some cultural reference that I’m missing?
ELSA: I was hoping to get your opinion on something drug/recovery related.
I don’t know if you’ve heard of X, but I went to school with him (but didn’t really know him), and he later became somewhat famous for publishing an article about his struggles with heroin on Salon.com. He has since gone on to be a relatively famous journalists on non-drug issues (his latest book is about anti-vaccine activists). I had always been kind of annoyed by his fame, feeling that, because of his mother’s literary connections (she and he published back-to-back articles about his addiction on Salon) he had managed to parlay his drug-confessional into mainstream fame. I also felt jealous that he, by being a major screw-up and a major problem for his family had gotten a lot more famous than I, who had always tried to keep my shit together and protect my family, would never have.
But I recently found an article he wrote about the first time he shot up, and he talks about Kate by name (and calls my beautiful Cambridge apartment “dingy”).
I know intellectually that Kate did a lot of reprehensible things, particularly when she was dating Ian, and that she shouldn’t be shielded from the consequences, and that X is telling his own story, not intentionally attacking my friend. But it still really pisses me off. Why didn’t he change her name? What kind of self-important arrogant ass-hole is he? Am I being totally unreasonable?
Thanks for letting me vent, and I would be interested in what you think about the article.
SAM: I just got your message. And read the article. from what you have said, that this is a person who has made a living as a writer, it seems extremely irresponsible and unethical to have used someone’s real name without their express permission to do so. Regardless of whether anyone could identify or connect Kate to this article, it seems like very poor etiquette, to say the least.
As far as your expressing jealousy over his notoriety turned fame, I can understand what you mean. I find the sensationalization and marketing of addiction repugnant. This seems like a great example of sensationalization. For example, had he said “I was in a sunny ground floor apartment…”, it wouldn’t be as dramatic would it?
You are known for something far greater than this dribble. He paints a compelling picture of what using heroin is like. Woo-hoo. So could many people, you and I included. What is the greatest contribution this article may have to society? Maybe it will serve to be the inspiration for someone to decide to use. Or go back to using. I doubt it will serve as any kind of deterrent to a person who reads it.
What you have done, and written, you worked hard for. You did it all despite being in the same place (literally) as this schmuck. When I was looking at your published articles I noticed that one was from 1998. I know where you were and the things that were going on at that time. I had no context then, but now I do, and it makes me have all the more respect and admiration for you. That really is saying a lot, because I have always thought the world of you. I wish I had been were I am now, when we met then. I have so much respect for you, for following through with what you set out to do. On a daily basis, I fight the temptation to contemplate the things I wish I had done differently, that I would have used the opportunities I had in different ways.
You will be an amazing role model for your daughter. Your decision to protect your family and yourself during the ‘adventures’ you lived was wise and reflective of the kind of person that you are. You have integrity.
I don’t think you are being unreasonable, and you can vent to me anytime.
ELSA: Before you are too impressed by the paper in 1998, I should tell you that my contribution to it was pretty minor (that’s why my name is in the middle of the author list).
I would also say that reading X’s other articles about heroin, I have to think about how lucky I was. His trajectory from trying heroin to 10 bags at a sitting was so incredibly rapid. I have always known that I have a lot of will power, but I don’t think I can take any kind of credit for that. So I made all the same stupid choices as X (or Kate for that matter) and my life never got as desperate as theirs.
I should also say that I am really impressed by you and so happy that you now have a happy and good life. And I wish we could spend as much time together now as we did in the bad old days.
On the topic of protecting my family, I am still really conflicted about that. Was I noble in not telling my parents about my drug use, or just sneaky and selfish? X also tried to hide his drug use from his parents and he has become my new model for how to do everything wrong.
I have also read some of X’s mother’s writing about drugs, and it makes me scared for my daughter.
I would love to talk to you some time about how you are planning to talk to your daughter about drugs.
Also, I think you’re absolutely right about the triggering aspect of the story. I think that has been contributing to my black mood since I read the article.
SAM: Hm. Minor or not, that you were a contributor is amazing and took hard work.
Did you have some protective factors in place which helped you avoid the same depths as some of the people you knew, yes! Whether it be that you had goals (which I can recall you mentioning at some point as a motivation to keep your proverbial sh*t together), family resources (emotional or other) or any other number of protective factors which contributed to your resilience, is an interesting question, and one that fascinates me in general with people.
Whatever your motivations were for not telling your parents, you did what you thought was best. Which scares you more, the thought of your daughter using drugs or that she might conceal it as effectively as you did?
I am scared to death, but trying not to be, about the whole drug thing. I am kind of hoping that my daughter will become some mildly religious cheerleader or yearbook editor or something which involves social involvement and motivation– and that she will remain abstinent until married and never feel the need for drugs…lol. just kidding. mostly.
I am not sure what I will say to her. Heroin is crazy here also, were I to try, I could probably find it very easily. We have been seeing more and more young kids come in strung out on it, for significant amounts of time. And the odds are not terribly great for her, I guess, if you buy in to the genetic theory. My partner went to a coke-infested Catholic upper-middle class private school. I am still not terribly comfortable with his drinking beer every night.
I do not know what the balance is. That article– heck yes, triggering. I can totally understand what he meant. This is one of the many reasons I opted to get out of being a drug & ETOH counselor for now. I can relate, and understand…and I am tired of using that part of my brain for now. I know what drove me to use drugs the way I did. I also believe in recreational use. If my daughter ends up trying some things, so be it, but I am going to do my best to make sure I do not give that girl any reason to believe that life hurts too much to bear, like I did.
Yeah, I kinda wish you were not so far away!!! I would love to be able to sit and have coffee with you. And meet your daughter!!!
ELSA: I think the thing I’m most worried about with my daughter is that she will die or get brain damage or some other thing that will stop her from being able to get on with the rest of her life. I’m sorry that Kate didn’t live up to all the expectations that her parents had of her (famous writer, artist, farmer and all around super-genius) but she’s alive and happy and working her ass off and doing art and teaching high school. But there are so many points when she could have died. I guess that’s true for all of us. I can’t imagine what effect it would have had on my family if I had died that night in 1997.
Also, the idea of having a child who you have to wash your hands of because he is stealing from you and blatantly lying to your face is pretty horrific.
Sorry to pass along the triggering with that article. I was so angry I wasn’t really thinking clearly about it.
Thanks for all your advice.
SAM: re: the triggering– no worries!! I told clients more than once- I didn’t stop using heroin because I no longer enjoyed it, it was because the costs were too great (my drive for it, oblivious to the many other things life has to offer). I stay away from it now because I know how much I love it! There are few things in life that can be counted on to be consistent…..how sad that heroin is one of them!
ELSA: Here’s a transcript of another story [from This American Life] that scared me about parenting teens. I can relate so much to the run-away train-hopping daughters, and the mother tries so much crazy shit to get her daughters to behave. I really don’t want to be that mother.
SAM: I still regret, every day, the hell I put my poor mother through. I remember at one point she told me to either remain in consistent contact or never contact her again. She hated not knowing where I was, or how she would even know if I were dead.
(no subject)
Aug. 8th, 2013 03:13 pmI was making a giant pot of lentil soup last night (I’m stressing out about money because we have to move, so I am trying to bring lunch every day) and thinking about Diane Di Prima’s description of her cheap stew (I think she called in menstrual stew but, of course, I gave my copy to Sam years ago, so I can’t check) made out of potatoes and tomato paste, and how that part rang so true to me. So I think it would be hilarious if, in my hypothetical book, I included recipes for all the crappy stuff I used to cook. Of course lentil soup and mushroom barley soup and lentil and spinach curry, but also egg drop ramen and mac and cheese with canned chilli and Michael’s gourmet pasta sauce made out of garlic powder and white Worcestershire sauce and what to do when you get 10 pounds of tomato sauce in a giant plastic bag from the food pantry and how badly it screws up your crappy nonstick pan when some guys you just met (but who swear they are Irvine Welsh’s connect when he’s in town) use it to make burnt sugar to cut their heroin with.
Writing yourself into drug cravings
Jul. 19th, 2013 01:28 pmAnonymous asked: Oh well... I deleted your site from my newsreader feed. I like it in many ways but on occasion it triggers me. After 17 years clean that's uncomfortable. Why is that your concern? I don't know. I guess I'm curious about something. How do you avoid that? Especially as your material is sometimes sexy in a dope way & you don't have clean addicts (and NA) in your life to detox your thoughts with. Do you ever write yourself into dope nostalgia / craving? I SO don't want to go there myself.
I’m really sorry that you had a bad reaction to my blog. I need to be more careful about tagging things, and I’ve been pretty resistant to using “continued after the break" as a way to warn people. I guess I’ll need to think about it some more.
For me, the writing has been really helpful. I have a great CBT therapist and I’m on zoloft, and I think that unmanaged depression was probably putting me at the greatest risk of relapse.
I had built up this gulf between the person then who did the drugs, and the person now who was having drug dreams and decompensating. Two nights ago I had a dream about meth, and I woke up at 5 in the morning and couldn’t get back to sleep, and it put me in a really fucked up mood. But I told my husband what was going on, and took a long walk over lunch, and took some advil for the headache, and listened to my favorite music, and wrote about it, and last night, I was able to tell myself, Just go to sleep; this won’t feel like such a big deal in the morning. It actually seemed like something of an accomplishment, considering that in the past, that same sort of drug dream has sometimes snowballed into weeks of feeling like shit.
But I totally understand that it was hurting you, so unfollowing me was probably your best choice.
