Do You Know Why I Quit?

Do You Know Why I Quit?
By. Steve Zwilling

I
I have been smoking marijuana for over three years now. My mother say’s it’s going to kill me, but fuck her, what does she know? An average day for me is to wake up from a deep, stoned slumber for my day of school. I am not your typical stoner though; I enjoy school considerably. When I smoke weed; I am the smartest man on earth. What your classic student will strive to complete in an hour, I can do in ten minutes flat when I am high. The problem is my choice of friends, or that’s what my parents say.
In the eye’s of the lord, I am all right; in the eyes of my parents, I am going against the lord. What provokes me to write like this? That is a good question, let me think; When I was 14 years old I threw a birthday party with 6 of my best friends, but you see I had two sets of friends. I had my hockey friends and then I had my “S” friends. I know what your thinking what is an S friend, well let me explain, An S friend can be an assortment of things, they can symbolize the smoke going into my lungs or they could symbolize their status as being a stoner. It is up to interpretation, so I just label them as my S friends.
It all started in the back of my shed, my friend Ron, a skinny blonde kid who dresses himself like a country club degenerate with a collared shirt and acid wash shorts in March, brought over some weed.
“Want to smoke some weed” he asks suspiciously.
“No thanks man” I say nervously.
“Ah! Don’t be a pussy you will be fine,” As he drapes his cold skinny arm around my neck. “Besides would I let anything happen to you?”
Well he did. I became obsessed. There is nothing better than that first high. You want to laugh like you have seen the funniest thing in the world, but you can’t even move; you want to eat a life supply of assorted snack foods, but you can barely open your eyes to walk. It was exhilarating, like a child getting his favorite toy for Christmas. The feeling runs through you like an analgesic elixir spreading through your veins like wildfire. Things would never be the same again.
My bedroom was in the northeast corner of my house on the middle floor, just below my parent’s bedroom; the only spot in the house where the window doesn’t sound like nails on a chalkboard when opened. My friend Zak, who was an average height gentleman, has brand new muscles from buying a powerhouse gym package, wore a set of blue jeans and a white t-shirt, came out to the shed with Ron and I. It was also his first time smoking green, and it would be his last.
“Come on you faggets!” exclaimed Ron rushing us so I did not get in trouble. That was the thing about Ron. He never got in trouble because of his paranoia; he always thought somebody was watching his every move. This will lead to further problems, which I will discuss later.
We reached the back of my shed and began to smoke the joint. We all hit it, inhaling every thing we could and coughing to the point to where our throats felt like tubes with fire being pushed through them. The funny thing about coughing with smoking is that it always makes you that much more high. That is why it is a shame when people smoke to much marijuana and develop the tolerance to the hot array of smoke going down their throats.
As we finished the circle session, we floated back to my room and fell asleep like three inebriated disasters washing through the room. Come the next morning, I never slept as well as I did any previous night, I had to get up and do it again; I was hooked. When I awoke from my deep slumber I called my friend Anthony, whose father smoked weed often and always had a batch in his sock drawer. I went over to his house and we stole his dad’s weed while he was at work and smoked a joint each at the very back of his garage, which looked like an underground railroad where slaves used to hide, but it was above ground. It was so run down in the area that it felt like you sunk underground.
That night I went home high as can be and sat on my bed looking for something to do. You see there are many different kind of stoners: lazy stoners, the most common, who just like to smoke and sit; then you have your active smokers, who smoke weed all day everyday to function or else they feel lost, unfortunately I was the latter. I smoked before I went anywhere, hockey, football, school, cousin’s ballet recital, it did not matter; I was a machine. It kept me going and I do not regret it at all because I did develop a talent of which I admire more than life itself, my ability to write.
I may not be the best writer or the most fluent, but, by god, I love to do it. Emphatically, I would get stoned and write in my journal for hours, it was an amazing time in my life. I felt free when I was writing in my journal, I could say anything I want, draw any pictures that arose, and most importantly, reminisce about weed. Weed set some major high points in my life, but unfortunately, it also clear a path for larger narcotic events.




II
They say that marijuana is a gateway drug. When I smoked marijuana, I found this statement to be irrelevant and invalid. How could marijuana possibly be a gateway drug? Well this experience made me a believer.
When I was 16 years old I had just gotten my license and was a regular pot smoker. I didn’t get my license to drive, I got my license to get a car, where I could smoke as much as I wanted without having to find a corner so I could light the joint, or a wall to lean against when I am to fucked up. This turned out to be a burden to many of my friends.
You see I was the first one of my S friends to turn sixteen so I was the designated driver. If you needed weed, I was your guy; if you needed smokes, I was your guy. Unfortunately, we started to go straight to the source. I will explain the drug process to you, briefly: first, you would either find a middle man to get you the drug or you could get it straight from the source. When getting it through a middle man you would get less weed for more money, whereas, when you went to the main source you would get more weed for less money because of your effort of coming to them. So my friends and I started going to the source, which was in Detroit. Detroit’s drug scene is truly a malicious place filled with people hunting for the next fix of drugs or money. It was like seeing what Armageddon did to a certain part of the scene, truly a horrible scene.
It was down in Detroit where other drugs were also sold. My friends and I were down in Detroit buying a bag of weed, when a man walks to my driver side door.
“You guys want some pills.” Nervously I declined, but my friends wanted to pursue it.
“How much?” I said having no idea what the drug even was.
“It is 4 dollars a pill.” He presents the pills like they were in assorted pill cases.
“We will take one each.”
So, we paid the man and swallowed the pills like senseless amateurs just diving into a new abyss. I was driving home and was beginning to feel a sudden rush of energy.
“Do you guys feel weird?” I questioned.
“I cannot stop clenching my jaw and I feel like I could run 20 miles.”
“Yeah that’s how I feel.” I said with all the other agreeing.
It turns out what we were illegally prescribed were amphetamines. I broke into a whole other scene that I never even knew, or had the intention, of dabbling in. I was driving well over the speed limit because I felt like there was somewhere I needed to go quickly, but there wasn’t.
On amphetamines, your mind is at full speed, but your body cannot catch up. My friends and I, being freaked out by the new feelings, went to our houses to try to come down slightly. It was an astonishing feeling in the least; it felt as if you took a pill and any problem you possessed or have to do can be completed with ease, whether it’s talking to the other sex or finishing a long homework assignment. For me, this meant some intense writing time.
When I was on the amphetamine, I wrote well over 11 pages in my journal talking about my day in such descriptive detail that while writing I often overlapped my own words forming some new literary dribble that pieced together to look like scratched Chinese symbols. The amphetamine gave me the drive to write more, but the actual intellect in my writing seemed to falter. I was too worried in the abundance of writing rather than the aesthetic of my ideas. Although, I did jot down many valuable ideas that I could later form to piece together a work that satisfies in its totality.




III
It’s an interesting thing being on psychedelics; it can make you crazy. Crazy is not even the perfect word to describe the feeling. Mystification is a better word to suite what I went through with the first time I did psychedelics.
Everyone has watched the old 60’s movies where dirty hippies are parading around in their hemp clothing, looking like they haven’t washed for days, trying to “find” themselves. I am not going to lie, it looks like a wonderful time. Psychedelics were at their peak in the 60’s, but every since then the potency of the drug became worse and worse, due to improper techniques in producing it and the cutting of the substance with others in the distribution of it.
When I was 18 years old, I had my first encounter with a psychedelic. My friends and I were going to a Steve Miller Band concert and, as usual, I was the one chosen to drive. This ended up to be the worst idea that we have pursued, or it goes down in the record books. Coincidentally, one of my friends decides to bring a bag of psilocin, or better known as mushrooms. At this point, I have never done any kind of psychedelic and was not looking to start, but of course, in the honor of experimentation, I ate the mushroom’s, lucky to have bitter taste buds from the numbing beer.
“How do you guys feel?” says my friend Ron unconfidently.
“Nothing yet.” I said curiously because I was expecting a direct hit.
About an hour later, I was looking at the stage and it began to turn upside down. I was thrown in the biggest mind-altering rabbit hole in my entire life. I felt like dancing, laughing, puking, and running all at once, just to take in every smidgen of this encounter. I felt like I was on top of the world and then in an instant I thought I saw the devil making his way through the crowd to smite me.
“You guys I’m bugging out!” screams my friend in a nervous frenzy.
We take a long stare at him and all break in the biggest uproar of laughter a group of fucked up people could muster.
“Look how big his head is,” Ron says with a silent choked chuckle, “he looks like a gay mad hatter.”
Hilarity ensues again and we fall to the ground, it was lawn seats at an outdoor venue, and start rolling around like children. The drug made us inebriated, perplexed children that were oblivious to the world around us. At times, it was a golden riot, but other times it was like we were walking down the main road to hell and we can’t side step the visions.
In this state, I clearly was unable to drive, so we had to take a cab an hour in a half to return home. God bless the cab driver that drove of us home, he probably went home and downed the finest bottle of Brandi that he could find, or any intoxicant of his choice. We were like wild hippie children dancing in the tiny yellow chauffeur taking us to the end of the world.
You would think when I got home I would be drained from the wild night, but I was fascinated. I have found a drug that touches me in a way that even marijuana cannot. I realized the problems it could have, but I didn’t care. I grabbed my journal and started writing a story. The story of which I could hardly read in the morning, but I wrote for a good hour, a dribble of nonsense about a boy and his experience with an abusive father. The kick was that he had a closet that took him to a magical land of talking creatures and edible plants. The psychedelics definitely pushed my creative ambition to a new height.

IV
When I was 19 years old I encountered the most senseless experience I will ever see from a human being even to this day. It was a hot summer day and I had just joined a band with some guys from high school. We used to get some weed and beer before each session, just to chill out; calm the nerves, but one of us liked to push it.
My friend Joe was always taking everything to the extreme. When it came to any new drug, I was always down to try, but he entered a world for which I will never even dip my finger into. The insatiable world of opiates is a place for internal degradation and external homicide to the body and mind.
On this particular day, we were driving down to Detroit to grab a bag of weed. It was a typical day before practice, if we were short on weed. We did it countless amounts of times before, but today was different; Joe was feeling a little frisky.
“Hey, lets get some different stuff.” He said with a look of assurance from me.
“Like what?” excited for the new experience, but also overtly concerned.
“How about some smack?”
I could not believe-my-ears. At first, I knew he was joking, but I took it in that form, “Yeah right-“
“I am serious, lets get some.”
“No man, I don’t want any part of that.” Says another friend.
“Yeah dude, why?” he asked concerned.
He explained that it was different and he knew a guy who sold it just down the street from where we got marijuana. We drove in front of the house and parked waiting for a guy to come out. The guy was a tall, pale man with a very dark complexion under the eyes like he hasn’t slept in years. His arms were wire-thin with scabs all up down his arms. When he entered the car, he wreaked of old moss and cat urine. It was clearly the smell of a vacant house, otherwise known as a shooting gallery. If you didn’t know what a shooting gallery was, I will explain. A shooting gallery is a place where junkies all gather to shoot up heroin together with needles. I have never personally been to one, but I could imagine the detrimental scene of the useless corpse-like individuals lying like cold statues daydreaming of a better day.
“Hey guys, you ready to get down?”
“You’re not doing it in here are you?” I said in an earnest, yet upset scowl, “that is not something I want done in here.”
“What? Fine dude we will go outside.” Said Joe
They sat at the side of my car, on a curb, and it was clear that Joe has dabbled in the opiate situation before. It looked like a walk in the park to him. He tied off his arm with his belt, flicked his arm to get a vein, cooked the heroin in the spoon till it was a amber liquid, and he was good to go. The other skinny fellow followed the same process. I sat in a shocked daze just waiting for reality to kick in. I could not believe I was witnessing this slap in the face of humanity, this waste of the human figure stabbed by the harsh trident filled with an analgesic monster, but junkies don’t think that way. They think of heroin as an escape; a way out. They think of the drug as something to guide them through the hell that they think life is.
“They both laid down on the grass behind them as their butts remain on the concrete curb. They looked like to bodies’ unconscious from a swift kick to the head.
After a few moments, the lifeless man went back into the house and Joe got back into the car.
“Alright, let’s go.” He said in a slow slur.
There was a silence almost the whole way home. We could not believe our eyes. All I could think of is that I was riding in a car with an actual junkie; I almost felt like a junkie myself because of how close I was to one.
“Are you serious man?” I said with a concerned glare.
“What?” he replies in defense
“What do you mean what? I explained, “You just shot heroin into your arm and it was clearly not the first time!”
“So what, lets just go play music.” He calmly uttered.
I stared at him for a solid thirty seconds, thinking of whether I should beat him up or just let him kill himself, but he was my friend I tried using words.
We arrived at the house and began to practice. Heroin tends to make your body, especially if you’re a new user, go in slow motion. Every chord, or note, that we hit, he was one behind. It was like he was a little boy trying to keep up with the big boys on the bikes. The ironic thing about this is he is the best musician of us all; he is the one always on his game, hardly ever missing a beat. It was a crying shame to see such a promising creative soul falling to the squanders of such an illicit drug. His creative ambition was tarnished and his ability was almost completely out the window. I also wrote about this experience, but not much. I could not even describe my notions in words; it was that uncomfortable.