Friday Story Bazaar ~ Tale Sixty-Eight

Drug Chronicle

One Hell of a Disgusting Tale

by
Alexander M Zoltai

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My first drug was the instant food my mother was encouraged to feed me—started back in the 50s—Mom was encouraged to feed it to us kids because we were just this side of poor and it was relatively cheap and, more importantly, fast to prepare—Mom also worked outside our home…

You may not think instant food is a drug, or at least that it’s not addictive…

Do a bit of research on it—it sells like hotcakes—companies that sell things want you to keep buying them—why not make them “tasty”, in somewhat addictive ways?

Sure, instant food (or, even, fast food) isn’t as addictive as heroin; but, those foods, just like heroin, are absolutely not good for your body…

So, to move on, my first beer was consumed in somebody’s garage while I was out with my early high school chums; and my first cigarette was around the same time, in the break room of the library I worked at.

It took till my brief stay at my first college to become actually addicted to beer and cigarettes.

Fast forward to my time in Vietnam—much more beer, other kinds of alcohol, and, what seemed to me a blessed substance, marijuana. That time, “serving my country”, in an exotic foreign land, established the benchmark against which to raise the stakes on drug consumption…

After the Navy, I lived in San Francisco—the American drug capital in the 60s.

I’d joined the military because, even with only a couple short jobs under my belt, I knew I wasn’t cut out to work for other folks—I joined the Navy to have the disciplined structure of its life train me how to hold down a job…

I’ve never learned how to hold down a job working for other folks; and, those three years in San Francisco unconditionally set the pattern for the next 50 years—get a job, do well for a week or two, do increasingly poorly, quit—all while juggling work against my other job—getting drugged-out…

Naturally, over the years, many sweet women successively grew tired of mothering me and/or watching me commit employment-suicide…

I tried my hand at a number of self-employment schemes; but, damn it, they just kept getting in the way of my main profession—staying drugged-out and feeling like I was protecting myself from the evils of a society that pressured me into being a druggy—nice little addictive round-about, eh?

I really can’t tell this tale properly without mentioning some of the most dangerous “addictive” drugs I’ve taken…

I put those quotes around addictive because the drugs I’m talking about are from dealers that we call doctors; and, most folks actually trust these kinds of dealers with their lives—taking their pharmaceuticals out of fear instilled by the medical “priesthood” who are, mostly, happily jumping in bed with the corporate gods of the “legal” drug world…

Those drug-dealing doctors, over many years of prescription multiplying and switching, literally killed my mother…

Think I’m drug-bemused and imagining the doctors killed my Mom? Latest stats have the third most killing thing in the U.S.A. as “doctor error”…

So, pharmaceuticals are “addictive” like stopping at red lights is addictive; or like, when you’re young, doing what your parents tell you to do becomes addictive—so addictive we can keep doing some of those things long after we’re grown and should know better…

Why did I call this, “One Hell of a Disgusting Tale”?

Because I’m in my seventh decade and I’m just barely holding my life together, just barely doing some things of actual worth, just barely being able to deal with folks with a sense of justice and compassion…

Just barely…

And, that, my friend, is Disgusting………

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