crazy

I used to do drugs destructively. 1

Parties were the only fun and copious amounts of whatever anyone could get their hands on were consumed. Alcohol was a constant thing; Things that were boring, such as work and school, were usually done drunk. Sitting around as a kid thinking "Jee, I wish I could speed up time!" Well we found that fairly quickly.2

The alcohol started to show immediately- more than half a bottle of vodka one night that almost killed me couldn't stop it. I got alcohol poisoning twice actually.3

When I wasn't drunk, I was high. Well, being high was the norm. With alcohol, I got louder. With pot, I got quieter- weirder, but quieter. And I'm a weird dude anyways; nobody noticed when I was high. I started selling pot to support a habit of what became around thirty bucks worth of good weed a day. I bought in ounces, sold until I broke even, then smoked the rest.4

I soon had moved onto selling crack. My quiet, introverted tendencies when I was that high all of the time made me seem innocent, I assume. I was the only drug dealer around here I was aware of who hadn't been caught. 5

Dealing with attempted robberies every day, dealing with crazies who become homicidal for a 20-minute high... Not my scene. It really is much more trouble than it's worth, and I became a paranoid wreck. I was watching out for everyone, always high, and I now know this became what my higher mind saw: paranoia. This depressed me.6

I believed in nothing. I didn't consider myself a nihilist- I didn't think about religion, or consider myself any part of a religion. I went through five rather short relationships in a desperate attempt to find someone or something to anchor myself on. Very soon, a cocaine addiction started to build up. I started losing myself and what I was; Both my parents are alcoholics, and my father has been through, it seems, every drug addiction. This made me more insecure still; drugs are nothing 7

to anchor your life on. The good drugs are the ones that amplify things, such as marijuana and magic mushrooms. The bad drugs are the ones that people do try to anchor their lives on. 8

I'm glad I live where I live, and was able to do what I did.9

One warm day, I woke up bright, and decided to stop.10

And stop I did. I threw away the numbers of my drug connections and I stuffed all that I had into my closet.11

I slowly stopped drinking, and while still a nervous wreck, I ate, slept and worked for the entire summer. I tried to pick up BMXing, one of my favorite pastimes before, and I couldn't do it. Slowly but surely, I started to rise up from my incredible low.12

The pain and depression it brought about set the stage for this new point in my life. I slowly found a new set of friends and found my roots in music, and got serious about the guitar. I have always been an art person, and I started to take interest in almost all forms of it.13

Slowly I started drinking and then smoking pot again, but this time I came with a different approach: drinking is for parties, weed is to inspire. Me and a bass player formed three bands. I started to get a huge hold on my artistic side. Enter trippy drugs- shrooms, acid.14

I tried acid first. It suddenly made me aware of an entire new thinking. A complete mind-fuck, as it is usually called, it definitely lived up to its name. I had the idea, I just didn't know how to execute it.15

Music slowly rose from a lot of fun to my life. By playing at the local open mics I met a huge range of incredibly talented musicians, all of which inspired me and made me say "I want to do that!" While I had played guitar by myself for hours before, I started to play with the bands, sometimes for entire days. 16

One day, I took shrooms with a couple buddies and walked down to a lake.17

It was utterly the perfect day. The sun shone perfectly on one of the first spring days. It was hot, but a cool wind was blowing. The lake was still all ice in the middle, but it had a ring of water, then reeds.18

I seemed to be zooming into the lake continuously. I could look at the ice, then at the water and be transported into an entirely different place. To me, the lake became a metaphor for the three ways of thinking: Being (tree), following (bug) and creativity/insight (eye). I contemplated each of them, coming to the conclusion that there are three types of insanity:19

Insanity one - excess of being. Being is attached to ego but not quite the same. The ego you can, and must strive, to live without. But too much being and a person's ego will expand. Following and appreciating will plummet, leaving a haughty self-centered, delusional fool. It has no affect on creativity, although a creative individual with this insanity is hard to find, for as a person gets more creative, they usually start to lose ego. This madness is usually harder to spot because its victim is very well grounded.20

Insanity two - excess of insect. One will become lost in an endless loop of paranoia. The loon will know they're crazy; this in fact is the root of all their problems; they worry that they're crazy, then know that seriously worrying about it usually means you are. One becomes tense, shivering and unsure, delusional, their mind will slowly be lost in ego and become a well without a bucket. New experiences are feared. Nervousness reigns. 21

Insanity three - excess of creativity. There will be no more instinctual tendencies. This is the only type that will collapse ego. This type of crazy is also classified as a genius. The mind spouts forth new ideas by the second. 22

Insect reduces creativity. Creativity reduces being, and being reduces insect.23