Of the one or two hundred heroin addicts I have met, all but about ten were self medicating some form of mental illness. After all, who would endure such suffering if the alternative were not much worse. For many it is a kind of suicide. I believe many are suicidal but make do with suicide of the emotions. Of the ten or so I've known who weren't mentally ill it may well prove to be that, just as some are born diabetic, so some are born with insufficient endorphins. They are correcting an imbalance and trying to be normal, just like you guys.
For me it began more as experimentation. I have always had a deep interest in altered states of consciousness. Long before I first tried mushrooms and acid around age 14, I had been looking for them. Reading about them. Listening to music from the Beatles who's material from 66 to 68 is, if not heavily influenced by psychedelics then directly tried to express the psychedelic experience. Their influence meant my whole album collection, that covered a diverse spectrum of musical types, was basically the accompaniment to the drug experience. I mean what point would there be to listen to pink floyds interstellar overdrive or astromini dominai unless you were heavily stoned or on acid.
From 13 to 19 I must have done a good 500 mushroom trips and, I once worked out it was 72 acid trips. At 19 I had had enough and moved on to working. I have always been an artist, always made things, painted things but practicality and wanting more money than the dole provided, I turned my back on my hippy ways. I continued to smoke dope but I began to enjoy alcohol, pubs, clubs, socialising more.
Furniture seemed a good balance between creativity and practicality so I drifted from trade joinery to furniture. On a holiday in Ireland i met a lad who had been to Shrewsbury college and he told me of how they married fine craftsmanship to design at a college under john price who had created a kind of Parnham accessible to the poor. This was right up my street and I spent a great two years training there.
Back in leeds the drug scene had shifted from the consciousness expansion and the exploration of inner space to amphetamine injections and dark, heavy music. I dived straight in for a year or two while making my first attempt at creating a business. The governments enterprise allowance scheme was Thatcherite genius. You could still collect a subsistence wage but you were allowed to try out making money through your creative endeavour.
But I had neither the financial backing, the broad spread of skills nor the nose for business to make it work. I had it in my head that if I could teach two days a week then this could support an experimental furniture business. I knew of the main characters in the scene, Rupert Williamson, Fred Baier, richard la Trobe bateson, Ashley Cartwright, and they all to a man, taught part time.
I had no degree to qualify me for this, I had no o levels never mind a degree. I had left school early to go to Stonehenge festival. My mothers death and fathers resultant alcoholism meant I could do pretty much what I wanted so I had left school and home on the same day in a haze of acid.
Fortunately at Buckinghamshire college the course leader was a man of high intelligence who could see that given a chance I would excel. Grateful for his benevolence I did too. I gave up tobacco but took to smoking a brass hash pipe i made from when I woke till when I slept. This canna is barrier allowed me to keep a distance from the other students who were getting drunk for the first time and doing stuff I had ten years back. I was probably the best student of the year. Some were better craftsmen but none had the originality that got my a first with commendations in making and design. This was my highest point because I didn't have a clue what to do next.
No comments:
Post a Comment