You Never Know

Perhaps the strangest thing about a cigarette is the fact that nobody accidentally becomes a smoker. We all understand the ramifications of ingesting poisonous smoke and the first drag taste likes brimstone and a punishing buzz. Yet I took another and continued to bum them until I asked our senior friend to buy me my first pack. In retrospect I ask myself why? I love my idols and don’t want to explicitly blame the likes of Kurt Cobain an otherwise inspirational person for igniting the idea of a cig hung from my mouth, in fact Kurt was quite adamant about cigarettes not being cool. Still, I read through the lines of his Camel Light breath. My first Camel Crush was like a tar covered door handle to a room filled with other buzzes, highs, and chemical crimes my 7th grade self would have tattled on my parents to.

What else is a Rockstar if not coated in various forms of smoke, booze, and little orange bottles. I chased a friend group that could supply me with what would be my idealized version of legend in his youth. My peers spent their time practicing scales and learning theory, I spent it expanding my mind with psychedelics and evading suburban cops. I should have seen this coming when I always opted to be the robber when playing cops & robbers in the Callahan’s backyard.

Once cigarettes lost their thrill as well as the grunge era had died in my mind it was my first girlfriend Hayley who brought on the next stage of metamorphosis for this caterpillar, weed and Fall Out Boy. My mind exploded away from ripped jeans, and I don’t care what you think attitudes to skinny jeans, neat bangs, and “can I lay in your bed all day”. No longer was I excited for history class but rather spent my schooldays staring out the window thinking of hiding beneath the branches of a forest huddled around a pipe and getting high on a school night. She wasn’t there often and created my divide between love and drugs. Some after-schools were spent daydreaming of a tame life in her bedroom and other days were spent rolling around the cornfields with our senior friend, the only one with a car, smoking joint after joint and begging him to buy me another pack of Marlboro blacks (I’d graduated from Camel Crush). In middle school I didn’t have many friends and the ones I had I didn’t like it. I spent my afternoons playing video games and watching cartoons. Once the weed introduced itself, I saw the merit of friendship. It was a new avenue to get weed and a safer way to laugh my ass of in company. Finding weed as a 15-year-old in the suburbs was easier than finding a good spot for sushi. What was hard for a young teen was getting alcohol.

Mom has been spending all her time with her new boyfriend and whenever we’re supposed to be at Dad’s house for the week, she’s at his house. My brother Mike and I found a way to share the vacant house. Our friend groups collided his football jocks and my burnout punks sitting around a table passing around a blunt. When we were hungry, we stole hundreds of dollars’ worth of food from the grocery store down the street via the self-checkout and when we wanted the illusive booze and had watered down mom’s vodka one too many times, we’d garage hop. I was trying my best to blossom into the rockstar I envisioned I needed to be, but still retained some of the bashful boy inside me who was fearful of the law and more fearful of getting scolded, but I couldn’t pass up. In fact, being such a worrisome kid and engaging in such a high stakes crime made for a high that topped even the deepest inhale. Drunk was a lot different than high and I thought it made me not question myself as much and instead filled me with the iron clad knowledge that I WAS in Fall Out Boy. My dreams were coming true easily.

Junior year was coated with memories of pill experimentation at lunch and discovering the effects in geometry. It was fun to turn my brain off and become numb to everything, but I liked more was the high-speed abdomen gripping thrill of amphetamines. With the geeking of Adderall came Bring Me The Horizon and ideas of throat covered in tattoos. The high-speed blinding focus of the little blue capsules made the chugging riffs and deafening screams seems so visceral and I would sneak earbuds through my long blonde hair and drown out my teachers urging us to understand the importance of consumer economics School for others was filled with play try-outs, football games, and studying to get into a good college. We spent our’s trading pills like Pokémon cards smoking weed in the bathroom smashing whisky before the bus kissing between classes and ditching cigarettes before the Dean came by. I never want this to end and once I graduate and my band hits the road things will only get better.

In my senior year I fantasized about joining in on what was then the hottest new thing the pop-punk revival. I watched newcomers like Neck Deep blow up overnight and when I saw their singer with a face like mine I knew my path was set and I would slide in with ease. I crushed on the same girl for 4 years and was finally taking her to prom. I’ve gotten everything ive ever wanted. Finally, my life caught up with me when I found myself sitting on the curb with my girl and my three friends still in the car drowned by blue and red lights. With my eyes I tried desperately to signal Damon to take the pill in the center consul before the cops find it. I could go down for the weed but an unprescribed amphetamine pill could ruin my life. Against the wall I watched the cop throw Damon’s hat on the ground and toss us both in the back of the cop car, they pretended to be cool with us and take interest, but we were “fuck the police” through and through my pale white skin shined back at me as I tried to imagine myself covered in tattoos and living a life of city to city. This would just be another chapter in my life. In complete honesty I didn’t fear much, but those pigs called my bluff as they slammed the stakes filled paper on a desk in front of me “Routine Drugs Tests. If you fail even a one, it’s a felony on your permanent record” The school truancy officer said with a smile on his face. Officer Jerry was thrilled to have finally caught me. I suppose puffing my chest out, rolling my eyes and his face, and coughing cig smelling breath in his direction every morning for four years wasn’t exactly building up to a beautiful friendship. Congratulations pig you caught me I expressed to him through shallow eyes. Kids would come up to me and ask for my war story and as if I were living through my first interview on Conan id answer with my full chest and attitude of the cops ain’t shit. I sentiment I still believe. Without the weed I traded an Iraq war vet from my pizza delivery boy job an Adderall pill for a handle of Captain Morgan. I was going though 2 handles a week that summer. My girl loved it but I didn’t love her. She was thrilled to be with a kid who’d been slammed in a cop car before her eyes and drank cups of rum straight up without wincing but all I cared about was the imagery. She looked good on my side, and I looked good with a bottle in my hand. Community college was about to begin, and I thought it wise to stop drinking. It was that first day of college I experienced a panic attack, my girlfriend explained to me what it was and I stood in disbelief. Anxiety is physically real? I thought it was just an emotion like boredom that could be brushed off with action. This was crippling. I would sit in her basement covered in blankets shivering and then breaking into a cold sweat. Switching on and off over and over, I would hug her goodnight and feel my shaking hands slapping her back as I barely held her. I wasn’t the punk she knew, and she left me. After a year at community college, I chose to go to a real school and found my way to Columbia College Chicago. The anxiety brought on from alcohol withdraws was unbearable and I dove headfirst into the Adderall. Sifting through women closing my eyes and pretending they were her and kicking them out before the night was over. The amphetamine pills made me feel nothing and I liked it that way. Feigning emotion to get what I needed. Until one day I found myself perfect. I’m here. Like an empty cathedral I stood alone, college found me m messing up my hair like Robert Smith and wearing baggy clothes and breezing through cigarettes but the only thing I recognized was my own dreams and visions of myself, that and the bottom of an orange bottle screaming for the quack to refill me. What even was my dream anymore? I had reached perfection all my emotions were ones I faked I looked like a perfect Rockstar and women bought into my façade. But when was the last time I even played a show? I was writing songs everyday but the amphetamines made them more technically good than a heartfelt good. The kind I enjoyed in my own headphones. With Disintegration blasting through my headphones on a winter morning I found myself the cure. Humanity. I need to be a person again not an idea coated in imagery. I couldn’t ever remember sobriety. My entire life become sifting through different highs and anxiety attacks. Perhaps the most logical next step was to experience the so-called “natural high” that would make me cringe whenever my formerly favorite Rockstar’s who had gone clean said in their own Conan interviews. I didn’t fear losing the high I feared losing the image, Drugs looked good on me. I was never sexier than coked up on Saturday night explaining to some starry eyed blonde my songwriting process while she drags my cigarette.

I find myself playing a video game on a Saturday morning, I’m not sure if I really enjoy the game itself but its nostalgia is enlightening and it’s a good enough distraction. Half of a beer makes my anxiety spike, and a hit of weed is about all I can take before I freak out. I don’t see my friends as much, but I laugh at their stories. I think she’s doing well but we haven’t spoken since I was going through those withdrawals all those years ago. I feel more lost than I ever have in the comfort of drugs, but one thing is certain I feel things, I feel them hardcore. I’m more human than any of my junky friends. My emotions have become intense highs comparable to any bad trip or perfect high. I couldn’t really comment on the state of my image, but I know that when I step on stage, I look good. What’s even more I play great. I capture that crowd and make them move with me; we’ve never met but they drink up my emotions as if they were their own. We share an evening and I’m that high again, no it’s even better. My songs have twice the heart than they ever did when written through slurred speech. I never made it right after high school and I’m far from an interview on Conan in fact I think he just retired, but I have clarity and I think I’m starting to understand the kind of person I’m gonna be.