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Cool turkey
Advice on kicking drugs from someone who s been there
MARK BALDRIDGE i* a
senior English major.
Stumble on your 12-step pro
gram?
When you’ve fallen off the
wagon so many times you’ve been
banned from the hayride, when
you’ve had the power to change and
the serenity to accept it but you’ve
lost the wisdom to know the differ
ence (HINT: serenity is easier to do
lying down) then it’s time to take the
cure and a bit of advice from one
who’s been there, or:
How I quit doing drugs in 8 easy
lessons and so can you:
Lesson 1
Last night I sat out waiting for
my neighbor to come home. He’d
gone off somewhere on his motor
scooter, left his door standing open
in the hall and I’d sat up for him like
a faithful hound dog.
Noticing (now what was it I
noticed?) as I drank another beer, oh
yes, a star, up high and moving
quick!
I bent my back into a classic
Hatha Yoga position, leaning off the
balcony of my beautiful 47th floor
apartment...
(As I write this sentence, the mop
I’d braced the door with, the rein
forced door at the top of the fire
escape where I hunker, a candle
burning in a bottle, writing this —
the mop, a bit of failed zengineering
on my part — falls (company com
ing) and the heavy, splintered door
swings, banging, shut. If I have for
gotten my keys I am locked out and
barefoot, a predicament.)
... leaning back, leaning way
back, swaying back on the banister (I
knew a man who fell that way, once)
to catch a glimpse of that star, fol
lowing it in its cryptic longitude ...
At the Drug Bust
Try this experiment: At your next
drug deal, when there’s someone else
also buying, a party unknown to you,
pluck the money from his hand and
inspect it before a bright lamp for
several seconds while your mark
stares at what you’re doing to his
money, undecided whether to bolt
(you are a cop) or shoot you (you are
a chump) and then you hand die
money over to the dealer, declaring it
cash.
“It’s cash,” you’ll say. “Give this
man some drugs!”
day 100
Write “This morning began at
noon and never got any farther” once
for each calendar day of which it was
true last year (this one’s easy cause
you don’t have to get out of bed.)
Marijuana never did me any
harm
I did what I was supposed to do: I
talked too much, know what I mean?
Lived in a bam (bom in a
manger.)
It made me laugh, paranoid, to
think you’re thinking what I’m think
ing. That as you read this (snicker)
you’re reading my mind (larf) or that
maybe the world is just an atom in
some giant’s nose.
Change! Move, dead
Clod!
Hire a grave digger to follow you
to parties and laugh like Ed
McMahon at your lame-ass jokes, all
the while stuffing food, booze and
drugs until he stiffens and dies (or
pretends to) on the carpet.
“What are we goon ta do? The
grave digger’s dead!”
“You’ll have to prop me in the
pantry” he smirks, winking his Xs
for-eyes.
dare to wear
Pour a cellophane sleeve of
Planter’s Peanuts into a ‘/4-full Coke
bottle.
This was said to get you high
when you were a kid and maybe it’ll
work for you now but to help it along
a little, why not add a couple fingers
of Smirnov’s?
A drink I call a Pebbles and
Bam-Bam and which I recommend
as a light breakfast to the hangover
sufferer or the otherwise nauseated.
Chew your drink.
Wear your Dare to Keep Kids off
Drugs T-shirt tight over the dynamite
strapped to your chest and head
downtown on a Saturday night.
Wear sunglasses.
If anyone offers you drugs, set
off the dynamite.
If anyone looks at you funny, set
off the dynamite.
Set off the dynamite.
And don’t go home until you’ve
accomplished something (who says
winners don’t use drugs?) or died
trying.
WARNING: Caffeine and alco
hol are drugs.
Lesson 7
Another time, while your grand
mother was puttering around among
the weeds and wild leaves of her
yard, you reached into the warm
bladder of her big, leather purse and
took out a wad of bills smelling of
granny, and out you went, going to
meet the man.
It felt good to have the cash up
front, not to be standing at the bar,
tossing off another hot check, your
puckered poker face no better guar
antee than your sullied name.
You even had enough for a drink
or three and so you sat, from p.m. to
a.m. nursing an Old Style, waiting
for a connection that never came.
And it suddenly occurred to you
that the history of the world could be
told in terms of one guy waiting in a
bar for another guy to show with the
stuff.
Panic, as it got close to closing
time and you still had not scored.
But if you left you might miss your
man.
The clock, fifteen minutes fast,
said 1:00 and you felt the tension ris
ing behind your teeth like bile ...
And Last of all
I takes more muscles to frown
than to smile.
If life gives you lemmings, make
lemmingaid.
We all face setbacks, when you
face yours, look them square in the
eye and say, “Looks like I picked the
wrong week to give up sniffin’ glue,”
and just go to it
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