Confessions of a Dope Fiend

In many ways, no one is more surprised than me that I ended up an educator. I was one of the worst students in history.

Not because I was stupid, but because I didn't care to be in school and didn't care who knew it.

I just wanted to be left alone to sleep, because I'd been up all night watching movies or fending off hallucinations.

Not to mention that my parents sent me to a weird little private school for grades 6-9. I graduated in a class of 4. I was fluent in French and had read about 400 books (I kept a list).

Well, my parents' marriage went into the sh*tter (thank God) and suddenly my prep school future turned into a public school present. I had been over everything already. So would you please let me sleep? Is it so much to ask???

I never handled boredom well. My sophomore year, I finished my final English exam in 15 minutes. I was gacked on white crosses. The next year I took my PSATs so high they had to tether me to the desk.

And so what?

I find it odd that I am surrounded by good students, since I never was one. These were the people I tried to vomit on during parties.

Because for me it was always a question of when, not if.

I felt that it was my civic duty to prevent the spread of teenage drinking by drinking as much as I could so that other teens wouldn't be tempted by all that booze laying around.

Let's face it,someone had to set the bad example...

By the time I was a freshman in college, I could vomit without concern. It was par for the course; it was 1984.

It was a good way to avoid hangovers, too.

Although occasionally I'd be so blind drunk that I'd end up puking in inappropriate places. Flower beds, front porches, etc.

Then again, what do you expect from someone who used to write his name in the snow with urine? Except Captain Dimwit did it on his ownlawn. And then the next day would try to convince his understandably livid mother that it wasn't him that did it, but someone trying to leave him a message and the 'ink' ran out after the salutation...

She was probably still mad from the time I came in at 3:00AM high as a giraffe ass and she turned the light on as I was going down the cellar stairs and when I looked up her purple housecoat with the high collar made me, in my clarity-challenged state, reflexively blurt out "Aghhhh! Miss Havisham! Nooo!!!!"It's not my fault 'read' rhymes with 'weed'... This is the same dope-addled moron who once tried to blow the darkness out of the way so he could see something. It worked as well as you would expect.

I think that was the same night I hallucinated being attacked by a 12' tall skunk in front of some kind of Nazi headquarters... Which, for Newport, RI in 1982 was highly (!) improbable.

Recently, that shit-heap F@cebook has made it possible for people I haven't spoken to in 25 years to contact me.

One of them put up yearbook photo from my junior year. It's 11:00AM  on a Saturday at a Young Life (evangelical thing, if I recall correctly) picnic.

In the picture I'm actually smiling. I might as well have been; I was utterly sh*t-house drunk.

Hey, everybody needs a hobby.

But drugs can teach you to be a better person. You learn a lot about character and politeness when you've got a head full of LSD and you open the door for the pizza delivery guy and he isn't there.

Until a voice says dejectedly "Down here..." and you look down and there's a little person holding a pizza box.

At least, you hope there is. Because if this is just some vicious hallucination, you're staring at (and talking to) the Pizza Dude's crotch.

Turns out it wasn't a hallucination. Luckily, I kept a reasonably straight face, which was more of an achievement than you might think. After all, LSD takes an hour or so to hit you. So in that hour, why not smoke some weed? Because that way, when you stop feeling stoned, you know you're tripping. Except that we must have been really impatient, because we decided to crush up a hit of mescaline in the joint.

It's like my brain cells were Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and Communists, and I was Hitler waging the Final Solution on my own skull.

Ever watch Aliens? Ever watch Aliensin the cinema tripping on mushrooms?

I thought not.

I'm living testament to the abuse and travesties that the human body and mind can have (self-)inflicted on them, and I hate to say it but it ain't as bad as it sounds.

Still, I don't recommend it. No one needs to see their friend turn into a salad in front of their eyes or to still, even 20-plus years after the fact, reflexively get nervous when you see a cop.

So if I seem a bit harsh at times, or callous, in regards to things like propriety and decency, even/especially in professional settings, it's because I feel like I can vouch for the fact that whatever I do in front of/with/to people now is really not bad compared to what I did or could do...

So if I show my students pornography, I refuse to feel as though I've gone too far. They're all over 18 and signed up for an elective class entitled Media, Sex, and Violence.  I may have made them uncomfortable, but so what?

Comparatively speaking, it ain't so bad.And compared to people I've known, neither am I.