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There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance—that principle is contempt prior to investigation.

Herbert Spencer

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Pills - St. Vincent

From healers to dealers and then back again From guru to voodoo and voodoo to zen

With an echoing melody enough to make anyone feel like they need a Xanax, the track delves into a thoughtful narrative that’s supposed to be alarmingly relatable to a society running on prescriptions. Model and ex-lover Cara Delevigne makes an appearance on the song’s dizzying chorus. x

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Reminder

Five times a day for the past few days, an app called WeCroak has been telling me I’m going to die. The app surprises me at random times, always with the same blunt message: “Don’t forget, you’re going to die.” These grim reminders are accompanied by a quote meant to encourage “contemplation, conscious breathing or meditation.” The app was inspired by a “famous Bhutanese folk saying” which suggests that “to be a truly happy person, one must contemplate death five times daily.” I downloaded it as a joke, mostly to get a reaction out of my mom.

Normally, when I open the notification, instead of reflecting on the quote, I imagine how I’m going to die. When I do this, I picture a range of ridiculous scenarios that remove any tinge of sadness from the reality: Stabbed by a swordfish. Quicksand, Mario-style. Hit with an arrow at Yonge and Dundas.

This morning, at 7:37 AM, with 25 days sober, the app once again reminded me of my mortality. I opened the app to read the following quote: “The dream he needed most was the dream that frightened him more” (Sherman Alexie).

For the past few months, I’ve frequently been woken up by relapse dreams. They differ in severity but always end in overdose. I think these serve as useful reminders of the severity of my situation. I could’ve died in active addiction, whether by accident or through conscious effort. Either way, I am lucky to be alive. These dreams, in conduction with the app, keep me from forgetting this stark fact and remind me to enjoy life, sober.

#addiction #recovery #reminder #sobriety

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Pink Cloud

“In addiction recovery, the “pink cloud” is a term used to describe a high-on-life feeling in one’s journey to recovery. The Pink Cloud Syndrome is a curious but often short-lived phenomenon. Many people, after detoxing, feel too good about their recovery, as they’re finally able to see the real world behind a curtain of pills, drinks, and needles.” (Addiction Resource).

When I first got into recovery, I kept hearing about this ‘pink cloud’ and thinking “Wow, that sound’s gorgeous. When do I get to see it?” The truth is I’d been living it. That lasted for a total of 19 days. The past two days I’ve had the opportunity to pick up cocaine and haven’t. I don’t know what it is. Divine intervention. Self-control. Hope that someday I might ride this pink cloud like a pony. But I didn’t do it.

I wake up every morning and remember that I am lost. My brain tells me to believe a lie that will cause my life to deteriorate before my very eyes. And yet I’ll still pick up. I think I’ve realized that being lost isn’t such a bad thing. Although it’s not obvious at times, it’s better than being in active addiction. In fact, it’s a lot better. Being lost, I think, is a good place to start.

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December 10th, 2017

I went to the Sunday Morning Men’s Meeting at Edward’s Gardens with David. I didn’t realize A.A was so close to home. It gives me a good feeling about recovery.

#recovery #addiction #blog

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#SoundCloud #music #☆LiL PEEP☆

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Left / Right

Gina, my psychotherapist, recently gave me an assignment that I’ve been having trouble with. It’s called Left Hand - Right Hand dialogue, and the instructions are as follows:

Use your dominant hand to be your “adult/mature” self. Your non-dominant hand will be the part of yourself that you are looking to get in touch with. It could be your, inner child, your anger, sadness, shame etc…

When I think of this assignment, I think of Liz. Liz was a counsellor at Freedom From Addiction. She had short silver hair and a plump face. She was in her 70s and had the stride of a familiar grandmother. She was the first counsellor I met upon my intake and by far the sweetest.

I think of her because she had given the same assignment to Lindsey, only she had to draw herself with her left hand. She had extreme difficulty with this in the perfectionist, people-pleasing way of a recovering alcoholic. It took her a month. In that I time I would routinely ask her how it was coming and she would just roll her eyes and give a self-defeated look.

Fast forward to when Mel, my primary counsellor and spiritual guide, took a leave of absence. Liz had become my counsellor. A licensed therapist, she didn’t give me the left - right assignment, but she did try to dig deep into my psyche. We talked about my relationships with family members and most importantly with myself. I was o.k. with myself at the time. But just when we were getting somewhere, Brandon overdosed. Selfish, I know. I’m an addict. I made his death, my first real death, all about me. I tried to harm myself and succeeded.

Liz was there to talk as my counsellor but I refused. I showed up for counselling sessions as a bleak sign of willingness to recover but wouldn’t say much. The reason I didn’t say much was because she kept implying that I needed to feel my feelings. I had been numb ever since I heard the news, and when I did try to feel my feelings, I became overwhelmed by sadness. I eventually snapped at her over her insistence that I follow her instructions. Had it ever occurred to her that I didn’t want to feel my feelings? That they were to awful to confront on a day to day basis. I didn’t get to find out. I self-discharged a few days later.

My failure to follow these simple instructions is likely what led to my multiple relapses (that and leaving rehab early). Now, I am attending an outpatient rehab centre and am confronted with the same dilemma. Only this time I have no hostility or suicidal ideation. I am open to it simply because I want to be sober. But, I will say that it is exhausting and confusing to confront your emotions. When I do think of them, they appear as abstract blurs in the periphery of my subconscious. It did not occur to me that anger, sadness, etc. were informing my every decision. Now, with this knowledge, it’s like I’m a Pokemon trainer trying to catch them all. Learning about them and, in the process, more about myself so that I may live a happier, more conscious life. 

#recovery #addiction #therapy #relapse #long reads

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Smile

Living in the shadow Can you imagine what kind of life it is to live? In the shadows people see you as happy and free Because that's what you want them to see Living two lives, happy, but not free You live in the shadows for fear of someone hurting your family or the person you love The world is changing and they say it's time to be free But you live with the fear of just being me Living in the shadow feels like the safe place to be No harm for them, no harm for me But life is short, and it's time to be free Love who you love, because life isn't guaranteed Smile.

—Gloria Carter

#jay z #gloria carter #quote #smile

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Popular Culture Analysis: War in the City

By Kezia Yu

“While my love ones were fighting a continuous war in the city, I was entering a new one, war that was based on apartheid and discrimination.”

-- Kendrick Lamar, “Alright”

The commodification of crime in the entertainment industry has further exacerbated political issues such as racism and state violence and should no longer be neglected. In Dowler, Fleming and Muzzatti’s discussion on the ‘Construction of crime: media, crime and popular culture’, it is understood that the portrayal of crime and justice is blurred within news content largely due to the fact that “crime as entertainment has cemented a place in popular culture” (2006:838). According to Dowler, “ in both Canadian and American newscasts, racial images saturated media portrayals of criminality and victimization; minority crime victims receive less attention and less sympathy than white victims, while crime stories involving minority offenders are rife with racial stereotypes” (Dowler, Fleming & Muzzatti, 2006:840). Evidently, crime in the media continues to be misrepresented and has led to many negative implications as well as reproduced many political and racial issues over time and space. The increase of public fear and outcries for greater policing “reflects a significant knowledge gap in the public’s ideas about crime and its control” (Dowler, Fleming & Muzzatti, 2006:842). Therefore, a call for a critical perspective on crime in popular culture is required in order to give a voice to the misrepresented and the ‘other’ who is often left out of the story. Hip-hop as a counter culture has become a means to reclaim the truth on crime. In this study, I will draw on the music video of ‘Alright’ by rapper artist Kendrick Lamar as an example of reclaiming space, specifically the city. Kendrick Lamar uses the transformative power in his music to counter the glorification of crime in popular culture and challenges our attitude and awareness to political issues. This analysis seeks to draw connections between the city and Hip-Hop in particular the role of the city in the music video for the song ‘Alright’ using Pieterse’s theorizing of the Hip-Hop culture. I will begin with a description of the artist and his link to the urban life. Through the dissecting of the lyrics and the video, the importance of the city and its role to the song will be understood. Furthermore, I will comment on the effects of the song in becoming an anthem for the movement and empowerment of the marginalized group in naming the city as a determinant. 

Hip-Hop 

Hip-hop is “first and foremost an African American musical genre, embedded in a larger cultural matrix that has emerged as the latest musical invention of black America following the blues, jazz, soul and funk” (Pieterse, 2010:433) but also a culture created as a result of social conditions. According to Pieterse, hip-hop is “categorized into five core elements: Emceeing/rapping, DJing, graffiti art, break dancing and what is termed ‘knowledge of self’” (Pieterse, 201:433). Rapping, break dancing and knowledge of self are practiced and displayed in the lyrics and throughout the music video of Alright within the cityscape of both high-rises and the streets. Kendrick Lamar is a rapper that exhibits an immense amount of critical and political consciousness in his compositions, including his musical piece from his third studio album released in 2015, Alright in To Pimp a Butterfly. This album featured an intermix of genres which includes: funk, jazz rap, blues, spoken-word and political hip-hop. Pieterse states that “Almost all American hip-hop artists would pay tribute to their soul, blues, jazz and especially gospel lineages” (Pieterse,2010:437), and Kendrick Lamar is no exception. Hip-hop is critical to the urban life because it “offers not only insights and perspectives on the working of the world, but also how to ‘hold’ oneself-politically, stylistically, ideologically, socially, psychologically-in the world” (Pieterse,2010:439). 

Hip-hop cultures becomes a powerful movement for those who are systematically subjected to the exploitative urban forces and it is “opportune to turn to the role of popular music, particularly hip-hop, in challenging the predominant urban conditions of increasing marginalization of poor black youth though offering an alternative sense of place, a means of interpreting the world and a capacity to aspire” (Pieterse, 2010: 432). One’s use of space begins to play a large role in the music such as the city from which the artist is based, where a need to represent one’s pride in their community is found within the rap song. The intended audience of this form of music is largely for youth in reshaping their thoughts and perspectives and viewing the urban spaces that they occupy with a different lens, indicatively a politically conscious one.

City

Originating from Compton, California, Lamar uses his platform of hip-hop to create a political movement that “complicates the contemporary everyday narratives and realities of urban youth who endure the social, economic, physiological, and psychological trauma of coping with the racial injustices of “post-racial” America by indicting the system” (Love,2016:320). His lyrics not only reclaims urban spaces, but also remakes them in prompting the youth to partake in the war against discrimination in the public and urban setting of the city. Alright becomes an anthem for the youth of the city in creating a community and asserting their identity as members of society that stand together. “We gon’ be alright” is repeated in the chorus of the piece and symbolizes that in the battle against social injustice that many young black lives face in the city, there is hope in solidarity. A unified identity is created in the knowledge of the self which “refers to a critical consciousness about black history and the roots of racial oppression and violence (Pieterse, 2010:433). Lamar’s piece is indeed controversial in considering the line“Nigga, and we hate po-po, wanna kill us in the streets fo-sho”, which was later removed when performed at the 2016 Grammy Award show that honour highly distinguished artists in the North American music industry (Genius, 2015). The lyric is significant in drawing on the issue of police brutality and the “hatred towards the police [that] has been a long standing theme in hip-hop music” (Genius, 2015). Evidently, the message was far too explicit for the privileged audience of a music award show that it was removed from Lamar's performance.

“Kendrick Lamar’s rich narratives take his listeners on a complex journey, entrenched with conflict and social pressure, describing what life is like growing up as an inner city youth” (Sule & Inkster, 2015: 497) and uses environmental determinism as a reason for these unfortunate situations that many others including himself had to face. Environmental determinism is understood as actions being determined by geographical or environmental conditions. The city and the colour of his skin, together they determined the pain and suffering that were imposed onto his upbringing and ultimately his life. Thus the social injustice that is experienced is deeply tied to his locale and the history of cruelty imposed on him and the rest of the young, black citizens. Ultimately, Hip-Hop and the city are linked together when we look at how the city continually shapes the subculture that is resisting the oppressive setting towards the marginalized group of African American youths. Kendrick Lamar uses a wide array of music genres to communicate his experiences in the city and furthermore, his music connects and builds a common identity in reclaiming space and remaking one’s place in the city. It empowers the youth, the main audience of hip-hop to unify and resist the on-going systemic racism and social injustice that perpetuate fear and violence in the urban landscape. Alright is a music piece that has revealed the role in which a city plays in shaping one’s actions and experiences and thus, can be used to resist the war against hatred and partiality and counter the artificial depiction of crime in entertainment that has become so vital to popular culture today.

#Kendrick Lamar #alright #long reads #essay #war #city

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Gratitude

Last night, I attended the second annual Gratitude Meeting at Freedom From Addiction. David, my sponsor, picked me up at the corner of Yonge and Finch, along with another guy named Ricky. Ricky is a 24-year-old recovering addict who is currently on house arrest. He is also a music producer, so we hit it off.

The first person I saw was Lindsey, who ran towards me for a great big hug. I told her she looked beautiful and we caught up. She told me how she’s nearly 5 months sober, got a job at an office instead of at a bar, and broke up with Jordan because he went back out (meaning he started drinking again). In fact, everyone besides the two of us and Bethany and Andrew went back out. This was hard to hear, but statistically accurate. I told her I came out as bisexual (as I’m telling you now). She was really happy for me but asked why I didn’t come out while I was here. I told her I was scared. “That’s probably why you relapsed. I bet you have a huge wait lifted off your shoulders. I agreed. “I’m really happy,” I told her.

“Mr. Tiny Houses,” someone said from behind me. I turned to see Vincent smiling. I gave him a hug hello and he said we needed to talk. He took me to the front desk to talk. “The essay was truly very good. I showed it to my wife, but I didn’t say it was a from a former client, yet alone one who’s only 21.” I smiled and gave him another hug. “Normally, this place discourages clients and counsellors having relationships, but here I’d like to make an exception.”

By the time I had returned to the big room, the place was packed. The lights had been turned off and small candles lit the tables, which had been covered with festive table clothes. The main table that we used to gather around for lessons was covered with desserts. Recovering addicts of all different sizes and their families took their seats. David, the chairman, began by welcoming all of us and saying what he was grateful for. Then, on by one, everyone said what they were grateful for. For many it was A.A., itself. Others included health, fellowship, fellowship, and God. Many family members of current clients were grateful that their child was safe within these walls. When it came my turn, I said I was grateful for my family, who never gave up on me, and who are at a dinner party right now, laughing and celebrating, and not worrying about where I am or whether or not I’m alive.

#recovery #addiction #identity #sexuality #long reads

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We're constantly educated around drug use as being highly addictive and destructive. What's the common thread among users that puts them in situations where they discover these drugs or start using?

Youth generally begin using for one of two reasons, 1) underlying emotional pain/trauma, 2) peer group. Those reasons were the same 50 years ago. The problem we’re faced with today is that the use is no longer primarily confined to alcohol and marijuana (slightly addictive,) but it’s now evolved to opiates and methamphetamine (highly addictive.) The reasons for using haven’t shifted but the accessibility, acceptability, and toxicity of the substances being used have drastically worsened the outcomes.

Often, we find TRAUMA to be at the core.  Google information regarding (ACES- Adverse Childhood Experiences) You will find that research to be intensely enlightening! But trauma is not all and not necessarily the reason folks embrace substances to “deal”.  There can be a lot of contributing factors to an individual’s slide into addiction.  Genetics plays a role.  Environment. Generational modeling.  Stress. Availability.  And yet sometimes something as simple as an injury can send someone down a path of opiate/painkiller addiction they never bargained for. Yet it is safe to say at the core of most addictive challenges is BROKENNESS of some sort or another and the drugs do a wonderful job of “reducing the noise” associated with that or do a bang-up job of masking the pain.  GOOGLE PBS NEWS HOUR OPIATE and you will see a very informative little 3-minute video that sheds some further light on “how folks get” addicted.

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Rise

The schedule at Freedom began with “Rise.” at 7:30 AM. “Rise” is a generous word for what I did. I would suddenly find myself awake in a groggy stupor several times throughout the night, always needing to pee. I would climb out from the bottom of my bed, so as to avoid the “extra-creeky” flooring and not wake Berry, and open the door, which was right next to my bed. I’d turn the doorknob, which was broken and therefore loud and tip toe to the washroom in my underwear. I would pass Papa John’s room, with CP24 blaring throughout the night.

I’d be up again at 5:30 AM to hear Berry’s alarm go off. One thing you have to understand about Berry, the punk-rocker, is that he did everything with fervour, by which I mean loudly. Getting dressed in his black workout apparel. Opening drawers to put on his finger rings. Smashing the alarm off with his fist. Slamming the door behind him. At first, I would just go back to bed, but not before a cigarette.

At this time of night, I would have to go down to the front desk and ask the night counsellor if I could go out for a smoke. They always said yes. Then I’d walk through the main hallway, careful not to wake up the girls, and pull open the back door to step out into the cold morning air.

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Do you have a suit? Get one. It will either be for your funeral or your one year medallion.

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I’ve been using a meditation app called Headspace. It’s a fun and helpful tool for beginners of meditation. They have different “packs” suited to your needs. Personally, I use Rehab, Creative Writing, Sleep, and the Basics. Here are some of my favorite quotes: 

—“If we can get comfortable being present with the mind, even in difficult situations, we can see strong emotions and know they’ll pass us”

—“What is important is how we relate to our thoughts and how we acknowledge becoming distracted by them”

—“Try not to overthink the process, enjoy the feeling of pausing to balance and catch your breath”

—”As you go through your day, notice which experiences leave you with a genuine feeling of contentment

#meditation #recovery

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