I just got offered dope, lit & good quality, for the first time in over 26 years after giving it up. Yeah.
I was alone, on the cement footbridge that goes over Morrisey Blvd between Stop & Shop, Subway & the hotel. Â I was eating (bingeing, really) on cheap ice cream sandwiches, a behavior I got from (wait for it) the munchies after getting high. Â The thought had just crossed my mind that I was in a good place to get high.
A guy who had crossed my path twice on the bridge  offered me a lit joint. The quality could not be denied.  There was plenty.  The kid was naive.  I told him my story, that I had given it up.  He didn’t really think it was a big deal, of course.  I told him I was wake-and-bake for over 13 years, that it still bothered me, that the emotion I was backlogging had caught up with one day and it was too much, that I had wanted to take my own life— I’m afraid I was harshing this young man’s buzz.
Well, he told me that “he was going through a lot.”  Yeah, well that’s life.  I’m not being unsympathetic (though sympathy itself would be a disservice.)  It’s just that the human mind is more than capable of coming up with the “drama du jour” and having it be perfectly real, all in justification for doing our own misdeeds (or worse, avoiding doing the things we need to do.)  It’s the abberated, human way.
“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build’em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
Rudyard Kipling
I wonder if Kipling was a good father?
BTW, I can’t say I didn’t want to accept his offer or that, after 26 years, the smell of it in my face didn’t affect me. I was right to give it up.
