Why Do You Think They Call It Dope?

"I have the solution to the drug problem in this country. Nobody wants to hear it, but I have it. Not less drugs, more drugs. Get more drugs, and give 'em to the right f#$%ing people. " - Denis LearyDrugs are one of those marvelous social phenomena that expose hypocrisy in such a way that it becomes impossible to deny. Kind of like Col. Walter E. Kurtz' acerbic take on the nature of war:"They train young men to drop fire on people. But their commanders won't allow them to write 'fuck' on their airplanes because... it's 'obscene'!"Drugs are a lot like that. You're not supposed to take drugs. At least, not illegal ones. Oh, and you're not supposed to take legal ones in an illegal fashion.

Can I get a legal definition ofthatparticular thought?

If you have a headache, you're supposed to take drugs. If your life is a headache, you're supposed to take drugs. Ask your doctor about [drug name], even though they don't tell you what it's for, and the ad just shows people on a beach.

The last time I asked my doctor about one of these drugs, she wanted to know why I was interested in menopause treatment.

So apparently, the answer really is more drugs and not less. Which, for years, I never argued with. I suffer from "Prescription Dyslexia," a condition in which I juxtapose the particulars of certain drug applications.

If it says to take 2 every 4 hours, I take 4 every 2 hours. You go through the pills a lot faster, but for that period of time you are high as a giraffe ass...

I once dropped the cap from my cough syrup during a movie. It skittered away to parts unknown (and dark). I had the stuff because I had one of my chronic winter chest infections and so I had a (vaguely) medical excuse for my red tongue and unusually easygoing demeanor. My solution to  a now topless bottle of opiate?

- Digression: Topless bottle of opiate or a certain woman holding a bottle of Johnnie Walker? Our lines are open, you be the judge...

My solution to a now untransportable container of 'codeine liquer' was to simply drink the remaining 3/4 of the bottle in one gulp.

But the movie I was watching wasKung Fu Mahjong 3, so it was actually a good idea.

I bring all this up because I am forced into a rather ambivalent and yet necessary relationship to drugs on a daily basis. Well, the legal ones.

Mostly.

As a kid, I never had asthma or allergies. As an adult, I didn't either.

Until I moved to Hong Kong. Now I have both in abundance.

Oh, and sleep apnea too...

Every morning I wake up and remove the mask I have to sleep with. I shut off the air filter. I go in the kitchen and take an allergy pill, use eye drops (to unglue them), and take a hit from my inhaler. I carry another inhaler on me at all times.

For freshening up when needed, like any good basehead would do.

The problem is that the pollution is getting stronger but my drugs aren't. And I don't like thinking about what that means.

1. Leave the best place I ever lived (except for the air you need a fork to breathe). I don't want to do that.

The whiskey holders in this town are amazing...

1. Increase my drugs. I don't want to do that either.

At least not the boring ones.

I admit, as a recovering dope fiend, that I find it extremely difficult to see the line between right and wrong here.

Partially because of all the allergic sh*t in my eyes...

I don't like taking drugs.

Any more.

I sure as hell don't want to take more drugs.Or stronger drugs. Just better ones.

I'm tired of looking like I have Parkinson's because the inhaler makes my hands shake.

I'm tired of allergy medicine making me either groggy or twacked, neither condition being accompanied by clarity of sinus.

I'm tired of taking steroids because my chest infections are so bad, and I'm reallytired of how every year they start a month earlier because I get sicker sooner: 12/05, 11/07, 10/08...

Soon I'll be taking them in summer.

I'm tired of coughing up large green masses of something vile, an actual living organism that looks at me, gives me the finger, and crawls down the sink drain loudly proclaiming it's intention to 'cornhole' a roach... I'm tired of walking around in a narcotic haze because I need that much cough syrup to keep from destroying my throat with hacking so bad it actually impressed (albeit negatively) my doctor.

I'm tired of walking into any number of pharmacies and, like a neighborhood bar, they recognize me and put the cough syrup on the counter as 'my usual.'

I'm even tired of knowing which brands of cough syrup are the strongest. It's good to know, but then again maybe it ain't.

I don't want to take any more drugs. Which would be fine except that I know it is not a necessity. What I mean is, I'm not diabetic, so I don't haveto accept a life of mandatory medication. I'm just asthmatic.

But only in polluted air.

I don't like thinking about how happy I was in Tokyo to sleep without a mask, to leave the drugs in my hotel bathroom (like the old days), to breathe freely and deeply, and not cough myself hoarse on a daily basis.

I don't like knowing that I don't handle certain side effects of drugs well. Like their impairment of my judgment.

Which is obviously poor enough to begin with.

It's one thing to sit here now and say I won't buy cough syrup, but it's another to tell yourself that you shouldn't when you're walking through Mongkok unbearably twiddled on your allergy meds and coughing up a lung, but only when you're not wheezing and feeling like you're breathing through a towel drenched in rusty water. At times like that, relief is a lot stronger pull than principle.

Breathing freely all night, while wide awake, is not necessarily better than sleeping stuffy but soundly, as it were.

You know what? That's why I don't drink. Because if I have one, I may as well have two, and if I have two, I may as well have three...

And once that starts, I may as well call my lawyer...

People often ask if I ever want 'just one drink.' There's two answers to that:

1. I never wanted just one f@#$ing drink in my life.

2. Yeah, in a 10-gallon bucket. That's just one.

So God in his infinite wisdom (and magnificent sense of humor) has asked of me to bear this burden; to do without overdoing, to appease without indulging. I've never been any good at moderation. But I have to do it.

Still, sometimes it gets to be a real hassle. And it doesn't help that my reprehensible history (and being so frigging big) means that I can handle the more pronounced side effects rather well. That night I drank all the cough syrup? Watched the rest of the movie, went for dessert, walked around Mongkok, went home.

I should have been in a coma.Sometimes I get sick of being me, but I'm the best candidate for the job, and I can't blame anyone for not wanting to take it on. But still, sometimes I really get sick of being sick. Today is one of those days, and yesterday was too, and if you can read this, thank you for 'listening.'

• The Unrepentant Dope Fiend