Themes:
Drug addiction
Mental Health and Sanity.
Waking up from dreams
Relationships along the way
freedom
Sections
Intro: How Could Hell Be Any Worse?
MCJDC
2021: Practice Note
Beginning of History: The Descent of Man
Beginning of beginning:
Driving Dakar 1983; Riding Dakar 2021
Shelter (cycle) in Place 1991; Shelter during Sandy 2012
Strapped into the bed. The color of the mattress
To Germain, the engines are running. This is it.
Fitting In: Ballad of Blair Ficklin, Glenn Johnson, Richard Conklin and becoming white.
Learning what it means to be a 90s-era, suburban, white kid, while being black
Middle of the Beginning: High school glory days: Intoxicating coolness: Doyle
Dover in the Summertime
High school fight
Worsening drug addiction
Rehab at Daytop
End of the beginning:
Turning Point
Smoking cigarette in chains out front
The MAP clients
The Dudley House
Desperation: prostitute
She dreams in digital
White Knuckle Reintegration
Roma food; Janus and understanding low wage work
INtroduction to landscaping where I’d once been relatively privileged
Middle of History: False Gods
Bob Kenyon; Getting Back On Heroin; How I spent My Summer Vacation
Turning Point and the Flynn House
End of History: Waking Up
Wake up in cell at MCJDC dope sick
The ideas that drive me:
Women.
Success.
Unnecessary obligation.
I still remember that my joints felt like there was no cartilage between them and that the tingling surged relentlessly like electricity across my fragile nervous system. I’d just woken up.
the overwhelming sense of dread — and shock, I guess — I the night I woke up, in the middle of the night, at Morris County Juvenile Detention Center. It was cold and dark and clean in an industrial bleach and incandescent lighting sort of way.
Mom advocating for me to go to Jail - it was a joke - last bag of heroin in transport.
Wake up from a daydream while writing medical marijuana practice note
wake up from daydream while Drafting the marijuana practice note
Middle class —privileged sitting out the pandemic in relative comfort
Smoking weed is easy —
practically legal for the privileged for some time.
I also don’t overdose as easily—its a positive experience.
wasn’t always that way.
Wake up as a child in Dakar
Wake up in a shelter bed in Montana
Wake up sleeping next to Germain at Grandpa’s house
Wake up in a shooting gallery in Newark
Wake up in a halfway house in Elizabeth
Wake up before AA speaking engagement in Bethlehem, PA.
Wake up vomiting during finals week in Montclair
Wake up after having my heart broken in Gewertz at Georgetown
Waking up near Area 51 and passing the bar exam
Waking up to go from 4278 Moraga Avenue in San Diego to get food stamps.
Wake up in Stephanie Leopold’s apartment in Manhattan
Wake up alone at 308 3rd Street
Wake up in 2015 in the midst of a precarious marriage
Wake up in quarantine
Opening
Marijuana overdose —> panic attack at Richard’s house
Not the only time I overdosed —> drug addiction discussion begin but —> go to history
Only black person — marijuana —> how I’m perceived
Privilege of growing up in white suburbs
Story of drug Addiction
Starts with my generally feeling bad about myself—compounded by religious upbringing.
Also, self absorbed and selfish growing up.
Why I began smoking weed—why I loved it: friendship; meaning; belonging; coolness; connection with friends that was missing in my life; so vital given the experience of trying to fit in and catch up in that white suburban environment.
How this evolved into harder and harder drugs and greater and greater arrogance (even with cocaine) until I ran up against immovable object—heroin
Tell story about novelty of being arrested while high which dissolved when I woke up
Waking up as beginning of road to recovery
Rise and Fall of Grace: The Failure of Moral-Based Sobriety
AA was an excellent fit given my CUT background.
Religion and AA saved me from addiction but the deist worldview was precisely why I could never stay stopped.
Cycle of detox and cessation; rehab and sobriety; AA system —> self loathing premised on faulty morals and ethics and system of socially imposed fear; ostracization and relapse; repeat
Breaking the Cycle
Never was shown how to challenge the ethical and moral system that exacerbates cycle of addiction.
Breaking the cycle means rejecting: dualism; deism; self-absorption; magical thinking; free-will.
Breaking the cycle means developing a personal philosophy of life premised on: rationality; science; humanism
III. Conclusion
Marijuana and privilege —> privilege of being able to be average
Drug addiction as a disability rather than a moral failing