Drugs, Sex, and Rock ‘N Roll, While the World Burns

What’s wrong with a little escapism?

Another tequila shot? On a work night? Fuck yeah. Let’s make it two.

Wait, you’re saying you have an attractive friend, and she’s down to join in? Absolutely you should call her! Here’s my phone.

Hold on, the concert’s canceled? Because of pandemic? What then, the riots, the protests? Not that either. Supply chain issues? Oh yeah, now I recall. The wildfires. Wait, you sure it’s not the flooding or tornados?

Bartender. Another round, please.

Love dies slowly over a number of years, like a cliffside tree sliding inexorably toward the sea. And it certainly takes two to send it at last tumbling into the waves. There’s no shortage of blame to be found. But I’ll own my own part in it.

I had gotten so wrapped up in the woes of the world, so overwhelmed by events and forces beyond my control. And then paired with the frustrations in my own life — the feeling of being trapped — the underwater mortgage, the three hour round trip commute to a dismal cubicle and unsatisfying career.

It felt as though the macrocosm and microcosm were in league, conspiring together against my happiness. I despaired for the future and for the present both, and it made me a dour and miserable son of a bitch, as I slipped ever further into an abyss of existential depression and angst.

I really can’t blame her for growing tired of me. For finally telling me she wanted to leave. I was so down about the world’s inescapable spiral into doom; I’d begun feeling like a monster for having ever brought children into it. Victims on the altar of some upcoming disaster at worst. Young John Connors at best. Guilt and dread were my constant companions.

During that time (and still to this day) I’d gone so far as giving up National Geographic. I had to stop reading it for the sake of — if not my will to go on living — then at least my remaining sanity. It had simply gotten too depressing.

Instead of globetrotting tales of adventure and discovery, of ancient ruins, exotic cultures, and science from the bleeding edge, it had become nothing but pollution, disasters, extinctions and genocides, habitat loss and rising seas. No wonder Atlas shrugged.

But still, it felt like severing ties with a loved one. I mean, giving up AlterNet? Fine. The Raw Story? Whatever. But National Geographic?

We’re talking about a legend. I’d been a subscriber since childhood, and it had shaped my entire life. That one magazine’s almost single-handedly responsible for me having traveled the world, for inspiring my love of photography, and of writing.

And suddenly, after all that, it had become too damned depressing to read. And why? Simply because it’s honest. Because it shows what’s really happening in the world. Nothing less, nothing more.

Wow. That’s really saying something. Now pass me that joint.

So there I sat in divorce court, last on the docket, listening to case after case after case — each unique in its details yet essentially the same tired old story, again and again. COVID was not yet dominating the news cycle, but rumors of the ever-increasing spread of this new “Asian flu” were becoming impossible to ignore.

The elderly judge seemed distracted and impatient. You could see his eyes darting nervously around, the thought behind them clearly shouting, “Get these goddamned coughing people out of my courtroom.”

He’d glance at each fat stack of carefully prepared forms with barely a pause.

“Sounds good. Approved. Next! Sounds good. Approved. Next!”

Two days later the general lockdown order went into effect. I’d slid under the temple door just in time, only to find myself surrounded by angry natives staring me down with their spears and poisoned arrows.

The past two years have been surreal in so many ways. It seems like the world has been a madhouse both forever and barely an instant.

But whatever. You don’t get to choose the time in which you live. Your only choice, in fact, is whether to live in it or not. And often even that’s not your choice.

And yet many people — particularly these days — seem so afraid of dying, it makes them outright afraid of living. They take no chances, do nothing adventurous or exciting or meaningful.

We’ve seen this writ large with the pandemic. The people wearing masks while driving alone, while out on a paddleboard, while hiking a remote mountain trail. Or those freshly single and lonely, yet refusing to date, or refusing to meet anyone face to face if they do. Really?

I swear for some of them mask wearing has become a kind of superstitious talisman to ward off evil, no different than those silly beak masks people in Europe wore during the Black Death. I fully trust in science, but this has become anti-science, anti-common sense. It’s like wearing a banner on your forehead that says, “I’m a coward and a douchebag.”

Or if not driven by fear, then it’s ostentatious virtue signaling. “Look how Lefty I am, how dutiful and obedient. No MAGA here.”

It reminds me of those people back in the fifties, with their fully-stocked backyard bomb shelters. What’s the point? You seriously want to survive the initial blast only to emerge into a radioactive wasteland where everything and everyone you’ve ever known and loved have been utterly destroyed?

Fuck that. Give me a lawn chair and a joint and a glass of scotch while getting a BJ and watching the mushroom cloud rise, and the blast wave rushing toward me as I open my arms and embrace sweet nothingness.

I guess what I’m saying is I’m glad I’d just passed through a personal hell before the society-wide version kicked in. It prepped me, steeled my mind. After the two years I’d just endured, a global pandemic seemed perfectly par for the course.

Is that thing still hitting?

A shaman in Peru once told me, late at night, under the moonlight, sitting around a campfire amidst ancient Inca ruins, deep in the grips of a combined ayahuasca and mescaline psychonautic exploration, that I use drugs as a form of escapism. And that I harbor too much anger.

Setting aside the latter for an essay I hope never to write, I take issue with his assessment of my drug use. I mean, why did he suppose I was even in Peru to begin with?

Precisely to escape the monotony and drudgery of hard, manual labor or a mind-numbing cubicle hell that awaited me back home, that’s why. That modern Sword of Damocles hanging over, I don’t know, I suppose the semi-privileged nonconformist? But regardless, what to me is the epitome of hell. The antithesis of all I’d ever strived for and dreamt of.

What’s wrong with wanting to escape something unpleasant? This is the only life you get. Live it however feels best.

And I know what all the various ancient wise men say. Buddha and his raft. Socrates noting:

How can you wonder your travels do you no good, when you carry yourself around with you? You are saddled with the very thing that drove you away.

Or Hu-ch’iu Tzu:

The traveler abroad is dependent upon outside things; he whose sightseeing is inward, can in himself find all he needs.

Or Seneca:

Instead of travelling you are rambling and drifting, exchanging one place for another when the thing you are looking for, the good life, is available everywhere.

But I don’t care. I like to escape. I need to escape. I shall never make my peace with the cage but shall instead gnash my teeth against the bars until I either break free or die trying.

You know anyone who can score some E?

Who knows what lies ahead? Despite my longstanding cynicism, I actually have high hopes. Perhaps Omicron will sputter, Delta will subside, or everyone will be infected to the point taking precautions becomes as absurd as trying to avoid ads on the the radio. Perhaps Putin will chill out, and Xi will do the same.

Yet my gut and my reason are both telling me 2022 is going to be another rough one. Anything approaching a “new normal” remains lost in the mists of a far horizon.

But I tell you this... I don’t know what’s gonna happen, man, but I wanna have my kicks before the whole shithouse goes up in flames. — Jim Morrison

And I don’t know about you, but I’m with Morrison. So bottoms up, and you can have the greener.

Colby Hess is a freelance writer and photographer from Seattle, and author of the freethinker children’s book The Stranger of Wigglesworth.

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Author’s postscript: I went back and forth numerous times about the title and subtitle for this article, about which should be which, bouncing the idea off a few friends (both male and female) for their input. Until one of them (a male) made the choice obvious, with the simple truism — sex sells.

Yes, yes it does. While subtle goes quietly into a corner to die. So thank you for clicking. I know where your mind resides.

Oh, and for those wondering, why drugs before sex? Always drugs before sex, that’s why.