Better Than Sex

(This was written in May of 2004)

This is better than sex. Damn!

A couple of minutes ago, I split an 80mg Oxycontin tablet in half and crushed it with the backside of my cell phone on the center console of my fine European sports car. I ground the tablet into the finest powder I could. The more finely chopped, the better the high. I used the edge of my American Express card to shape the powder into a neat line and rolled up a Post-It note into a small tube suitable for snorting. I had read somewhere that people were catching diseases from snorting drugs through rolled up dollar bills, so out of concern for my health, I always kept a Post-It handy. It never occurred to me that snorting drugs might be just a tad more dangerous than any microbes that one could encounter by using pictures of dead presidents to deliver a high. I inhaled. Everything was good. Damn good.

Because I had awakened only a couple of hours ago, with the onset of withdrawal upon me, I needed to get that marvelous stuff it into my bloodstream as soon as possible. Got to get feeling right. No time to grind the other half. I merely chomped on it, and let the nasty taste dribble down my throat. As long as you chew up the Oxy really good before you swallow, you’ll get every last bit of ecstasy it can provide. Ah, Relief.

I gazed out the window of my car at a big, puffy white cloud against a cobalt sky. How beautiful. Everything is wonderful. I could sit here all day. No worries, no fear, no problems, my dear. I can’t even smell the Mexican border behind me. I can’t remember the face of the bracero who just fixed me up, but I’ve got eight 80s in my wallet and I won’t have to worry about coming here again for at least a week. Well, maybe at least for a few days. No need to think about that now. Everything’s beautiful.

Right now, I don’t care what happens today. I don’t care about what will happen tomorrow. I don’t care about anything at all. It’s all good. The leather seat of my car wraps around me like skin and I am sinking into it like a giant hand, comforting me. I’m gliding down the freeway, part car, part human. I am one with the road. As I approach the secondary Border Patrol checkpoint, about 25 miles in from the U.S. border, I giggle.

My cell phone interrupts the purr of my engine, and breaks up my daydream. I can deal with it. I can deal with anything when I am high. A client? Sure, anything you need. Whatever. But this time, there’s a problem. Something I forgot to do. I was so worried about getting more Oxy that forgot a meeting. This one will cost me some money. Anything that costs me money, costs me Oxy. Now I’m pissed. So, it appears that this little annoyance also cost me a good high. Used to be that 80 mg would last me all day, but after that phone call busted up my buzz, I need to pull over and get fixed up again. It wasn’t always like this.

I used to be able to do a couple of 40s on the weekend and then get on with my life as planned. I miss those days. Now I can’t seem to quit worrying about running out. With each hit I take, I am one step closer to running out. I used to be able to chew up a half tablet, sip a glass of Scotch and enjoy a night of total pleasure. Everything is so pleasant when I am high. The simplest of objects seems wonderful to hold, to look at. Even network TV is interesting. The dullest of companions has something interesting to say. The most mundane tasks are accomplished without boredom. I don’t need food, and sometimes I think I probably don’t even need air. The earth’s crust is a giant piece of foam rubber, and I bounce upon it when I walk, or maybe I am floating. Where there used to be dark clouds of doubt, worry, and frustration, there are blue skies filled with infinite possibilities. But lately, those blue skies have been darkened by a nagging reminder that I am going to need to make sure I have enough Oxy to make it through tomorrow, because if I don’t, tomorrow will be intolerable. I know I’ve got a problem, but I am going to take care of it, tomorrow. What bothers me though, is that deep down inside, I know today is the tomorrow of a thousand yesterdays that I have put off time and time again.

How did I get here? After all, the government had made sure I was warned. I remember my seventh-grade health class in the early 1970s. The teacher, Mr. Clark, would utilize the most progressive teaching tool of the day: the filmstrip. A tape player or phonograph would play an audio text while a strip of 35 millimeter film was threaded through a projector one frame at a time. The narrator of the audio text would pause and a beep tone would indicate to the classroom’s audio-visual geek that the film should be advanced to the next frame. Every week we’d receive another hi-tech (at the time) admonishment of some health related issue that existed in the big-bad-world outside the classroom. We’d learn the dangers of drinking and driving as the narrator described blood alcohol content while the film strip projected horrid scenes of carnage from alcohol related car accidents. When we weren’t viewing the horrors of strewn body parts and blood stained vehicles, we were warned, in Technicolor, of the dangers of “Social Disease” and premarital sex. The filmstrips about the dangers of drugs still stand out in my mind. I remember seeing pictures of Hippies with flowers in their hair at rock concerts having what looked like the best time of their lives. Ultimately though, the filmstrip Hippies would later be depicted with needles in their arms, passed out beside a garbage can or being hauled away to prison. I remember thinking to myself that I would never, ever become like one of “those people.”

In fact, I wasn’t like “those people.” After all, I was driving a fine European sports car, had a beautiful wife, house, and a successful career. I had all those things that made me a good American, but underneath it all, the only thing that now separated me from “those people” was that I wasn’t (yet) lying in a pool of vomit somewhere, and although I didn’t have a needle in my arm, the monkey on my back bore a striking resemblance to the one perched upon the shoulder of the Hippies in the filmstrip some 25 years earlier. Mr. Clark never told me it would be like this.

It wasn’t just the school system that tried to keep me out of this predicament either. The church made damn sure I was warned about the temptations of the flesh. I learned in Sunday school that my body is a temple, a gift from God that I shouldn’t misuse or abuse. I remember being told that pleasure is a sin, and that those who indulge the pleasures of the body would forever be condemned to the misery of hell. I make my tax-deductible charitable donations, give money to the poor, and treat my fellow man with kindness and respect. But here I was, a grown-up man, who never hurt anybody, enduring the daily hell of addiction. I always thought the church taught that hell occurred in the hereafter, not the here and now. Perhaps I should have listened. The devil was on my tail here on earth, any day I ran out of Oxy.

Oxycontin tablets fit nicely in a wallet, on an airplane, in a desk drawer, or a book-bag at school. They require no expensive or cumbersome accessories, like syringes. They leave no unusual odors, like a pipe. Oxycontin leaves few visible signs like injection marks, bloodshot eyes, or revealing breath. And, if anyone becomes aware of your little habit, you can always pass it off as a legitimate treatment prescribed by your very own doctor. Oxy is the perfect drug, with the perfect high. You won’t be incapacitated, won’t stumble, hallucinate, or likely give yourself away. Board meetings are no longer “bored” meetings, isolation is joy, havoc is peace, despair turns to carefree, and all is well. Life is a seat on a big puffy cloud and smiles are easy to come by.

Oxy is perfect, or at least it seems that way. There is absolutely nothing that doesn’t feel better without Oxy. Physically, your body feels lighter, your pace slows down, and you feel comfortable no matter where you sit, stand, or move. You sleep well, eat less, and there isn’t a single pain in your body that matters. How could something so perfect be so bad? When I think about what the answer to that question might be, several possibilities come to mind, but none more important than the fact that: because Oxy makes everything seem so pleasurable, nothing else can ever be so pleasurable on its own. For example, would you really want something to be “better than sex?” If something really was “better than sex,” wouldn’t that “something” lessen and cheapen what most of us consider one of the most important aspects of being human? If you find something that really was better than the most wonderful thing you could ever experience, then whatever that “thing” is will become pretty underrated, and that is exactly what Oxy does. Oxy, in and of itself is not bad. Yet, Oxy, as perfect as it is, makes everything else in life seem less worthwhile in its absence.

For right now though, there are seven 80 mg Oxycontin tablets left in my wallet. So, I’m off to my private heaven. I will stop at the rest area ahead, just off the highway. I will pull over there, park myself on a picnic bench underneath a shade tree and grind up another tablet. There, my busted high will get fixed up and I won’t worry at all about the meeting I missed or the client I pissed off. And isn’t that what we all want: to be free from our cares? I can feel good about disregarding everything I don’t like about life when I am high. Oxy is perfect, isn’t it?