I just discovered I had many blog entries that never got posted. I wrote them in Google Keep or Google Docs for various reasons when I wasn’t online to post the blog.
This is one of them
I was always obsessed with the taboo idea of getting high, but my circle of friends were not. I never smoked, didn’t drink and my home life was reasonably normal for a kid growing up in the 70s and 80s. Because I had severe ADD before anyone knew it was a thing, it meant my parents were always disappointed in me and my father would yell. This apparently caused me to change my entire lifestyle around the fear of being yelled at. I became focused on being as perfect as I could. I only learned much later in life that not being perfect didn’t mean I was failing. The world never expects perfection and the discovery that everyone was perfectly ok with adequate and satisfactory, my mind was blown.
When I discovered the race scene in Toronto and finally got to try acid and 90s ecstasy, that was it. I was a secret drug user on weekends and a normal computer tech by day. Nobody knew except some of the online nerds in rave culture newsgroups.
I loved the alternative thinking that drugs offered. My overthinking obsessive anxiety were put on hold to view and experience the majesty of my palm, and “the colours”.
I did a lot of acid. I have stories. 90s raves in Toronto were among the best. Only Detroit and Miami were in the same class.
Then I aged out and raves changed. In 2000, the acid vanished because the two guys making almost all of North American acid flipped out and turned each other in. Raves moved to clubs with booze and 2am closing times. I didn’t get high for many years.
My wild days came late in life when I lived alone on the subway line. With no people to hide my drug use from, I started using more, and trying everything. Writing. Getting into trouble as an intelligent white male in the Canadian city of Toronto isn’t really scary.
Even my worst stories were not too bad. I was still living with my need to at least appear perfect to friends and family. My risks were minimal, even while smoking crack at 4am with strangers in a crack house.
I have never been to the Principal’s office, never been arrested and never even been in a police car. I’ve talked my way out of a mugging and fights multiple times. I have a unique way of being. I understand people.
I write this while sitting at a train station on my way back to Toronto for a day trip. I will almost certainly buy drugs and end my 5 month dry period. I’ll get high tonight with a mix of creative flow, combined with guilt, doubt, sexless masterbation and Tumblr posts.