Rock Bottom is a Sweet Dream (2007-2008)
I was in shambles about moving back to the suburbs, but you take what you can get.
I bought a 12 pack of Yuengling for the post move-in celebration, intending to drink 1 to 3 as was about my daily average at the time. When all the work was finished, I decided I wanted to get drunk.
So I drank damn near the whole 12 that night and ended up having a good time. In retrospect, I identify this 12 pack as the exact moment when my moderate daily drinking stepped into the next tier and setting the tone for the next year of my life.
Essentially overnight, I went from 1-3 beers a night to 8-12. Rarely the whole 12, but I had to buy a new 12 pack every day as the 2-4 left from last night wouldn't cut it.
Shortly thereafter I attended my cousin's wedding, went back to their apartment in the city afterwards and got trashed. When the booze ran out, I offered to take everyone up the street to the ABC store on Main. Their driveway was in the alley, and while backing out, I smashed my bumper on a telephone pole and ripped it completely off my car, taking one headlight with it. So I had to drive home to the burbs drunk as shit, missing a bumper and a headlight. I had my bumper in the car with me and made it home without getting killed or arrested. That's another theme of these years: I made it home without getting killed or arrested.
When I got home, my roommates came out to inspect the damage, and I took a rubber mallet and smashed the top of my hood with it for no reason other than it was funny. That was the energy I was carrying at this time.
I would drink beer for dinner lots of nights. I couldn't drive past a gas station without stopping for beer. I felt helpless.
My coke use escalated from a every few weekends type of thing to a 2 to 4 nights a week thing. At this point, I was selling herb purely to afford my coke habit. This is also when I had the epiphany a gram or teenager (1.5 grams, not an actual teenager) would last me longer if I didn't sniff it socially, so it stopped being a social thing and ended up with being a "lock myself in my bedroom for the next 4 to 6 hours until the knot was finished" type thing.
Since Reek hated coke, I had to hide it. Since I had to hide it, I felt like I couldn't risk having to interact with him if I was doing it. So I'd bring my 12 pack in my room with me and piss in the bottles so I wouldn't have to leave.
I bought a DAW and started rapping by myself in November 2007.
Sitting in my room sniffing coke, drinking beer, and rapping at the corner where my mic was set up - that was my life for most of that year.
I quit Titan. I was more interested in drugs and booze than the band, for one, and for two, I got tapped to kick Kenny out of the band for not being dedicated. I lost a friend over that, then in the weeks that followed, the remaining band members started slacking off and it made me irate. I blamed them at the time, but it was me the entire time. It was a way to quit without making it seem like that was something I wanted.
That was the last band I was ever a part of. I made the realization that I was incapable of working well with others or honoring my commitments, so I stopped lying to myself. I could rap by myself and only let myself down for having no discipline, it was a win-win.
December 2007, Jimmy 2 Sleeves overdosed on coke and died by himself somewhere in California, if I recall correctly. I mourned his death by sniffing coke and recording a song about it.
By January 2008, I switched from writing rhymes in all my spare time to playing video games half of that time. It wasn't as hard and was way more distracting than music was.
I didn't know it at the time, but I was massively depressed. All my friends were in the city but I couldn't stay sober enough to make it out there regularly and who the fuck wants to drive out to the burbs. my closest friends didn't even have cars.
i remember sitting in my room listening to Marilyn Manson's "Eat Me, Drink Me" record on repeat and wanting to kill myself. The other part of me desperately wanted someone to be able to see the hurt in my eyes and help me, but was too proud to ask for it.
That's were Kathy came in.
To back up a bit, one of the side effects of my social withdrawal was pushing people away before they got too close, lest I hurt them by being a bad friend or they hurt me. I didn't even like it when my parents hugged me. "Don't touch me." was the mantra.
Kathy was a good time girl I partied with on occasion, going through a lot of shit with her situation. For this year, it was super casual, but she wouldn't allow me to run her off and kept being a positive force in my life. This ended up being a life changing dynamic for me eventually, but at the time I had no idea. The plan was to get bored and stop talking to her as was my tendency at the time.
I can't remember much about this year except wanting to kill myself, drugs, The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, and rapping. And the oppressive nature of desperation.
I used Bush's economic stimulus package to buy weight. Sold it. Sniffed the profits like I normally did, and then my connect dried up.
With my last $500, I hollered at a long time friend from the city, fronted him money for a pick up, and he "got robbed and someone stole it." He was a coke head, too. He stole it and we both knew it. I had to talk my big homie out of shooting dudes house up, paid my debts back, and vowed to never talk to this 'friend' again. Fool me once....
That was how my career in hustling came to an end. I was nearing 25 at this point and started watching these "Locked Up" shows and decided as bad as I hated life, I'd hate it in prison even more. Then I had to regret having absolutely nothing to show for the money I'd been making because I had been spending it all on cocaine.
I was still an addict, but couldn't fund it. Which lead to losing tolerance.
Summer of 2008, Me and one of my social coke buddies split an 8 Ball and went out to Murphy's Law to drink and shoot pool. He shared his 1.75 with his friends, I did all mine off my key in the bathroom by myself over the course of a few hours. Afterwards, we went to someone's house and got in the hot tub and I sniffed more of their coke. My friend drove me home and I got inside my room and realized something was wrong.
Funny thing about me as a coke head was that I was reasonably responsible with how I did it. Read up on the chemistry behind it and would regularly check my pulse. I start creeping up past 120bpm for a sustained period and I'd chill until it started to drop.
That night, an hour or so after my last line, I was maintaining 150bpm still and my face was flushed; cocaine fever. I recognized this as early stages of overdose and I was in dangerous territory, strokes and heart attacks happen in this zone.
That was life changing in two regards:
A) I realized I didn't actually want to die; I was scared.
B) I had about 3 to 4 hours of contemplating how I ended up at this exact moment while I worked to lower my body temperature and my heart rate.
I took a cold shower. That didn't work well. So I got loads of water from downstairs, went back to my room, wrapped a sopping wet towel around my head and sat immediately in front of a fan, completely naked. For 3 or 4 hours I sat that way, thinking. "What if I die?" "How will my family and friends feel?" "How's it going to affect Reek if he comes in here to find me naked and dead with a towel wrapped around my head and pissy beer bottles piled up everywhere?"
Eventually, I started to feel my body relaxing. The sun was coming up. I'd made it. Maybe I wasn't close to OD'ing in actuality, but I was close enough to have to confront everything that goes with that.
I went downstairs, sat on the front porch, and watched dawn give way to morning while smoking cigarettes. I made a promise to myself I'd never do coke again (which I almost kept, but I'll get to that part in a couple more posts.)
I used to make it a ritual to listen to "Been Getting Money" by Project Pat when I sniffed my first line out of a knot. My playcount on iTunes by the time I moved out was somewhere in the 80s. That's an average of 2 grams a week for a year and about $5,000 gone up my nose. Other folks have way worse habits, but they're normally rich or willing to rob/take advantage of people. My issues have always been my own.
I did have a few legitimately good times that year, but I consider 2007-2008 the worst year of my life.
Reek had a bad year that year, too, completely unrelated to how I was carrying on.
In July 2008 when we moved back to the city, we couldn't wash the stink of that house off of us fast enough.
I bought a 12 pack of Yuengling for the post move-in celebration, intending to drink 1 to 3 as was about my daily average at the time. When all the work was finished, I decided I wanted to get drunk.
So I drank damn near the whole 12 that night and ended up having a good time. In retrospect, I identify this 12 pack as the exact moment when my moderate daily drinking stepped into the next tier and setting the tone for the next year of my life.
Essentially overnight, I went from 1-3 beers a night to 8-12. Rarely the whole 12, but I had to buy a new 12 pack every day as the 2-4 left from last night wouldn't cut it.
Shortly thereafter I attended my cousin's wedding, went back to their apartment in the city afterwards and got trashed. When the booze ran out, I offered to take everyone up the street to the ABC store on Main. Their driveway was in the alley, and while backing out, I smashed my bumper on a telephone pole and ripped it completely off my car, taking one headlight with it. So I had to drive home to the burbs drunk as shit, missing a bumper and a headlight. I had my bumper in the car with me and made it home without getting killed or arrested. That's another theme of these years: I made it home without getting killed or arrested.
When I got home, my roommates came out to inspect the damage, and I took a rubber mallet and smashed the top of my hood with it for no reason other than it was funny. That was the energy I was carrying at this time.
I would drink beer for dinner lots of nights. I couldn't drive past a gas station without stopping for beer. I felt helpless.
My coke use escalated from a every few weekends type of thing to a 2 to 4 nights a week thing. At this point, I was selling herb purely to afford my coke habit. This is also when I had the epiphany a gram or teenager (1.5 grams, not an actual teenager) would last me longer if I didn't sniff it socially, so it stopped being a social thing and ended up with being a "lock myself in my bedroom for the next 4 to 6 hours until the knot was finished" type thing.
Since Reek hated coke, I had to hide it. Since I had to hide it, I felt like I couldn't risk having to interact with him if I was doing it. So I'd bring my 12 pack in my room with me and piss in the bottles so I wouldn't have to leave.
I bought a DAW and started rapping by myself in November 2007.
Sitting in my room sniffing coke, drinking beer, and rapping at the corner where my mic was set up - that was my life for most of that year.
I quit Titan. I was more interested in drugs and booze than the band, for one, and for two, I got tapped to kick Kenny out of the band for not being dedicated. I lost a friend over that, then in the weeks that followed, the remaining band members started slacking off and it made me irate. I blamed them at the time, but it was me the entire time. It was a way to quit without making it seem like that was something I wanted.
That was the last band I was ever a part of. I made the realization that I was incapable of working well with others or honoring my commitments, so I stopped lying to myself. I could rap by myself and only let myself down for having no discipline, it was a win-win.
December 2007, Jimmy 2 Sleeves overdosed on coke and died by himself somewhere in California, if I recall correctly. I mourned his death by sniffing coke and recording a song about it.
By January 2008, I switched from writing rhymes in all my spare time to playing video games half of that time. It wasn't as hard and was way more distracting than music was.
I didn't know it at the time, but I was massively depressed. All my friends were in the city but I couldn't stay sober enough to make it out there regularly and who the fuck wants to drive out to the burbs. my closest friends didn't even have cars.
i remember sitting in my room listening to Marilyn Manson's "Eat Me, Drink Me" record on repeat and wanting to kill myself. The other part of me desperately wanted someone to be able to see the hurt in my eyes and help me, but was too proud to ask for it.
That's were Kathy came in.
To back up a bit, one of the side effects of my social withdrawal was pushing people away before they got too close, lest I hurt them by being a bad friend or they hurt me. I didn't even like it when my parents hugged me. "Don't touch me." was the mantra.
Kathy was a good time girl I partied with on occasion, going through a lot of shit with her situation. For this year, it was super casual, but she wouldn't allow me to run her off and kept being a positive force in my life. This ended up being a life changing dynamic for me eventually, but at the time I had no idea. The plan was to get bored and stop talking to her as was my tendency at the time.
I can't remember much about this year except wanting to kill myself, drugs, The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, and rapping. And the oppressive nature of desperation.
I used Bush's economic stimulus package to buy weight. Sold it. Sniffed the profits like I normally did, and then my connect dried up.
With my last $500, I hollered at a long time friend from the city, fronted him money for a pick up, and he "got robbed and someone stole it." He was a coke head, too. He stole it and we both knew it. I had to talk my big homie out of shooting dudes house up, paid my debts back, and vowed to never talk to this 'friend' again. Fool me once....
That was how my career in hustling came to an end. I was nearing 25 at this point and started watching these "Locked Up" shows and decided as bad as I hated life, I'd hate it in prison even more. Then I had to regret having absolutely nothing to show for the money I'd been making because I had been spending it all on cocaine.
I was still an addict, but couldn't fund it. Which lead to losing tolerance.
Summer of 2008, Me and one of my social coke buddies split an 8 Ball and went out to Murphy's Law to drink and shoot pool. He shared his 1.75 with his friends, I did all mine off my key in the bathroom by myself over the course of a few hours. Afterwards, we went to someone's house and got in the hot tub and I sniffed more of their coke. My friend drove me home and I got inside my room and realized something was wrong.
Funny thing about me as a coke head was that I was reasonably responsible with how I did it. Read up on the chemistry behind it and would regularly check my pulse. I start creeping up past 120bpm for a sustained period and I'd chill until it started to drop.
That night, an hour or so after my last line, I was maintaining 150bpm still and my face was flushed; cocaine fever. I recognized this as early stages of overdose and I was in dangerous territory, strokes and heart attacks happen in this zone.
That was life changing in two regards:
A) I realized I didn't actually want to die; I was scared.
B) I had about 3 to 4 hours of contemplating how I ended up at this exact moment while I worked to lower my body temperature and my heart rate.
I took a cold shower. That didn't work well. So I got loads of water from downstairs, went back to my room, wrapped a sopping wet towel around my head and sat immediately in front of a fan, completely naked. For 3 or 4 hours I sat that way, thinking. "What if I die?" "How will my family and friends feel?" "How's it going to affect Reek if he comes in here to find me naked and dead with a towel wrapped around my head and pissy beer bottles piled up everywhere?"
Eventually, I started to feel my body relaxing. The sun was coming up. I'd made it. Maybe I wasn't close to OD'ing in actuality, but I was close enough to have to confront everything that goes with that.
I went downstairs, sat on the front porch, and watched dawn give way to morning while smoking cigarettes. I made a promise to myself I'd never do coke again (which I almost kept, but I'll get to that part in a couple more posts.)
I used to make it a ritual to listen to "Been Getting Money" by Project Pat when I sniffed my first line out of a knot. My playcount on iTunes by the time I moved out was somewhere in the 80s. That's an average of 2 grams a week for a year and about $5,000 gone up my nose. Other folks have way worse habits, but they're normally rich or willing to rob/take advantage of people. My issues have always been my own.
I did have a few legitimately good times that year, but I consider 2007-2008 the worst year of my life.
Reek had a bad year that year, too, completely unrelated to how I was carrying on.
In July 2008 when we moved back to the city, we couldn't wash the stink of that house off of us fast enough.