It’s probably my mom’s fault I escaped the lures of the white powders. She always seemed the most put together of anyone I knew. Driven. Above. She didn’t make me not want to try any drugs, it’s just that the difference between her and her family was so stark. The only difference I could see was the powders, so I steered clear. Or maybe that’s all bullshit and being around addicts is the best way for some people to learn how not to be one. I still haven’t done coke or meth although I have done plenty of other things. Addiction was a bit of an extreme. While I was around plenty of drugs my margin was skewed. Nobody I was around considered someone an addict until they started hurting other people to get their fix. If you weren’t causing other people harm you were recreating and anyone who said different just didn’t know how to party.
It wasn’t until I was fourteen that I learned why addiction is considered a disease. Ha nah that’s when I wish I would have learned. My dad was fun, ice cream and movies for no reason fun. Turns out he was fun with his friends too until his wife threatened to leave him. Then it was no more fun. Then it was apologies and the Twelve Steps and lots of Jesus. My sister was disdainful and pissed although that was kind of her go to mode so maybe she was ambivalent. I did some pretty extraordinary mental gymnastics to make it all not his fault in my head. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. This is not my beautiful life.
The addiction portrayed on screen is so severe, Blow or the Godfather. Or the one you see lying on the sidewalk wrapped in dirty blankets under the overhang. Of course they have issues, who would choose to live like that except those who were not in their right mind or had no mind left with which to comprehend anything other than where their next fix is coming from. Those are easy to judge and dismiss. “See I am not THAT bad, I’m doing ok, I have a job, a house, a family that loves me.” The addiction I am intimate with is quiet, mostly controlled, secret, and above all functional.
For those of you who have never been a cigarette smoker I feel bad for you. There is something exquisite about that first drag. The long inhalation of smoke deep into your lungs, the sharp taste filling your mouth and leaking out your nose. The extra inhale of fresh air at the end just to make sure you can feel the smoke push into every seam in your body. It’s delicious. I definitely don’t think anyone should start smoking just to feel that but it is a pleasure you have missed. My first boyfriend was a smoker, he came from a family of smokers. He and his friends would gather up all the used butts when they were out of tobacco, squeeze the dregs of tobacco out and roll new ones. There is a goddamn slang term for this that I can’t remember, I just tried to google it but nope only one I got was snipe and that was certainly not it. Anyway I managed to avoid this habit until I went to Europe. You try hanging out with a bunch of desperate models and not smoking. It was weird enough that I wouldn’t do coke. I couldn’t be a complete goody goody. I had dabbled before Europe, I loved that most girly of cigarettes, the clove, but hell those were expensive. Anyway after three months hanging out in clubs with insanely beautiful people trying desperately to fit in or at least blend a little I came back to the US a full fledged unapologetic smoker.
In Retaliation 