Issue 1 - Summer Solstice 2015
Dosage: 42 MG
01
Leftovers - Blair Callahan Subtotals - Nicole Marie Tullo Diary of a Rosebud - Jeffrey Pena
10
You Said - Robert Godas Taylor - Paul Mauro Montage of Meth - S. Costner The Bay - Cy Palmer Fallen Angel - David Paul
20
Who Is God? - Trent Williams Dark Star Crashes on Art and Space - John Arthur Levering
30
The Hall - Melanie Wong Mind Explosion - Domenic Rizzotti Think Less, Do More - Jack White Drug Timeline/Effects of Drug Abuse - Philippa Richardson
s Leftovers r s e r v Leftovers e o v s t o ef er L v o t f
I can’t walk past the fruit in the grocery store without wondering what they’d look like sliced up, their insides exposed to the air, their bruised skins pulled back. The oranges are piled in a small triangle by themselves. Their outsides feel like flesh. I choose one. I’ve never liked oranges—too strong, too assertive on my tongue. I can feel a bruise on the orange in my hand; I press my thumb into the soft spot to see if it breaks. It doesn’t. I put it back. You left an untouched orange on my counter a week ago, a small token that reminds me you haven’t called. It has no blemishes. I slice it up. I peel off every bit of skin, tugging every remaining white strip until the orange is disemboweled. I wonder if you know that it’s been seven days now since you left. This orange has been waiting in my kitchen for seven days and you forgot about it, left it here, untouched and whole. It’s been here; you haven’t. I scrub my hands for ten minutes, wincing at the strong smell, and toss the remains in the bushes outside. Later, you remember us—me—and I find myself lying next to you on familiar sheets (you on the left, me on the right). You unclench my fists, bring them up to your face, and tell me how sweet I smell.
vanagh
Robyniou Ka
subtoTals By:nicole marie tullo Times born: 1. Times Reborn ½. Amount of hugs given: 346,650,078. Amount of hugs received: 3,470. Brothers: 2. Sisters: 1. Moms: 2. Dads: 0. Amount of times I’ve said, “I love you:” 597. Amount of times I got an “I love you” back: 590. Tears cried: 825,103,753; from sadness: 790,563,498; from getting poked in the eye: 34,540,231; from dust and other nothings: 24. Near death experiences: 4. Pets: 4. Pets that have died: 3. Amount of lies told: 45,621. Amount of times caught lying: 42,703. Amount of lies heard and believed: 19. Amount of times I told myself, “I’ll get it done early:” 20,873,999; But I still procrastinated it: 19,873,690. Amount of times I knew the answer when no one else did, and I still didn’t raise my hand: 668,234,003. Opportunities missed: 183,900,293. Times I’ve almost quit while writing this: 2. Mental breakdowns: 409; In the past week: 4; In the past month: 19. In the past year: 201. Times I’ve made fun of myself: 23,450,067. Times I’ve accepted myself: 126,703,066. Times I knew I would be okay: 23,465.
Painting By: Taylor Miller
diary of a rosebud by:JeffrEy Pena
It’s always got a lot of potential. Like, pepper lemon seasoned chicken that never hit the grill. Like my baseball swing. Like my baseball throw. Like anything that holds my interest. It can sense my sensitivity for abandonment, never allowing me it’s fruit in fruition, for I usually abandon nurturance, once I see it needs nurturing. A commitment issue that’s left my hands on my hips, air colliding off my temples like ice water on crew ships. I pivot left, pivot right, Mouth in position to gasp for air like the mit of a catcher in a 3-2 count, I’m never gonna hit it. I look around, usually to a deep left corner over my shoulderas you can see this happens often. Mouth still awaiting the pitch, it dawns on me like dawn, I’ve never accomplished anything in my life. Depression drapes it’s velvet curtains in from the left side of my brain and I remember it’s these very curtains that have made me put everything down. I still keep my baseball mits in the trunk of my car and I’m envious of every rose I pass, for each morning I confide in the mirror for my ripe youth and slowly stripping it from my fingertips is time who ceases to cease is unyielding, and I’ve engraved my purpose nowhere on it’s moving target. Time itself can ensure my bloom, I’m just afraid that I won’t feel beautiful when I do.
Cali to Chicago
At A Truck Stop By: Amanda Ibarra It wasn’t anything special, just a backwater town on a major highway where life moved quietly like the polite knocks of raindrops on morning windows. Where silence was as large a part as cigarettes and domestic beer. Where the woman behind the counter wore sky eyeshadow and rang up my cheerwine and half-smiled, half-grimaced when I said “Have a good day.” A place where my mom warned me about the “worker men.” But all I read was sadness in the cleaved lines of rough-hewn faces, a long life written into the grayscale of whiskers. As I sat in my car to hear the hiss of carbonation, I happened to look up as two cars converged from opposite roads meeting at 12:17 on a road in South Carolina that math problem I only ever saw on paper. My tires crunched the sad cracks in the physiognomy of the parking lot, and I wondered if I could bear the stillness of a life by baring my face to it.
you said by: robert godas I REMEMBER THE DAY WE FIRST MET, I WAS A WET MESS, AND YOU SMELLED OF PEPPERMINT. I HAD LOST MY WAY, YOU CAME TO SAVE THE DAY, WITH A METRO CARD, AND A MAP OF THE SUBWAY.
Painting By::: Taylor Miller
Painting By: Jennifer Powers
taylor by: paul Mauro Excitement screaming from her eyes Limb to limb she climbs Simple enjoyment in her laugh “Poppy higher I want to be” The challenge of a 5 year old Fearless conquistador is she Sky’s the limit please let me be Caution voiced from the ground Older ones be.... Frightened, fearful, gasping, why? Life does this all.... Many falls from trees Broken bones, dreams and hearts So grateful to see this Taylor Up in the tree.
Phot Savannah
tos By: h Costner
The Bay By:cy Palmer Looking out and over the railing The City doesn’t seem so indomitable to me anymore. When immersed, and haunted by the subdued stares of the businessmen and businesswomen, I find myself astray in the haze of the myth christened “America.” A suit is the shield of the soul. And apparently, it’s the subversion of a smile. God forbid I see somebody’s teeth around this ranging civilization of concrete. San Francisco, it’ll hurt and harden you like the cement sites and sidewalks that surround, or, it’ll break you down into the tiny rocks and strands of shore that crumble off into the sea. So now, as I sail across the bay, I feel empowered. The gentle draft from the Pacific provides me with a sense of unrelenting release. This abysmal ghost slowly peels off my skin, like a band aid over a half-healed cut. I am all right, but still wounded. I find that passion is the drifter’s currency. It holds an abundant value. And through the fog, enlightenment sweeps through me with the breeze: the second you bestow too much, the profit cannot be enough. Inadequacy will prevail. The heart is a shattered piggy bank, incapable of keeping all the change inside—the coins must be circulated with caution. But today I found some glue; let’s just hope it’ll hold.
David Paul
who is god?
I think there’s something about the believing in God enough that at a universal level, or a more grounded level, is really believing in yourself. If you believe that god will protect you, you’re putting out this energy into the universe that’s saying I believe that something will protect me, which in reality is a somewhat shamanistic, even satanistic ideal, that you can control your own universe and that really any restrictions that (were talking mind over matter type of stuff here) we are our own Gods. If we believe in a God hard enough, is there really a differ-
ence? What is it? What’s the difference between believing in a God enough that the universe creates the God and answers your prayer, and there being a God who answers your prayers? Is there a balance that we have to hit? Maybe we’re getting closer to the balance, the perfect balance between being our own Gods and having faith in the universe itself, and anyone that’s ever had a really, actual, awestruck experience, knows, that after you fade from the moment, there’s’ a lesson learned and that is that the universe is all that there is, all encompassing, and that it’s entirely based on a balance: of dark-light, good-evil, whatever the fuck you want to call it it’s all we have, it’s in every one of us, it’s this burning one way, this graceful floating the other way, it’s deciphering which ones the right one, which ones the just one, what justice even means, what honor even means, what love means, where does that even fall on the scale of this dark to light attraction, what happens when it’s applied. If the whole universe runs on a positive negative reaction what happens when we put things that are on a gray scale, are they gray scale positive and negative? Do we see these waves? If it’s not all back and white, do we see different kinds of grays? What emotions are the same as others, and in reality how differ-
ent are they, because a lot of them seem the same when I think about it. It’s all really just an…an angst, of wanting. To experience, to live, to anything, anger, love, hate, joy, awe, beauty, sadness, grief, humility; it all seems like the same thing when I really think about it, when I categorize, the feelings, those most intense feelings are all on the same plane, they all the mean the same thing to me, and any dull moments I’ve had, any vague moments I’ve had…not vague… Just dull, really dull emotions, any really neutral…neutrality… that’s not what I think about when I think of my life. What I lived through were the burning moments, the moments behind your eyes, when the world around you seems a little different than it did 10 minutes ago, when all of the sudden your life matters, the time matters, when things really start ticking by the second, oh its there, it’s in the moment, and it’s real hard to pull away from, but there you are… and if you’re not careful you wake up in one of those. You shouldn’t have to, it shouldn’t be such a surprise like that, but it can be, and a lot of the times it is. You wake up two months later and all of the sudden you’re awestruck. You’re looking at a fucking sunset; you’re looking at an animal in the wild, maybe right off the interstate exit, and all of the sudden BAM, it hits
you, what the fuck have I been doing for the past two months? I haven’t felt a god damn emotion in two months, and the eyes of this deer, looking at me for a whole nine seconds, really staring dead into my eyes, into the cones of the back of my skull, is showing me how to experience it. I just existed for those 9 seconds; I don’t know what the fuck I did for the last two months.
Drunken Rambling By: Trent Williams Architectural Design By: Annagrace Walton
Dark Star Crashes on Art and Space By:John Arthur Levering PAINTINGS BY:TIM NASMAN
I.
I love music more than I could ever love another person. It lacks the capacity to disappoint—if you don’t like it, you can always turn it off, but it can never hurt you, physically or emotionally. Perhaps that’s why I’m so drawn to it, why I spend so much time listening to music, why I travel across the country for shows whenever I can. Music is my sacred space in which I feel most alive, my mind awake and my body meaningless. I’m a twenty-four-year-old Deadhead, which either makes me a cliché or from the wrong generation, or some sadistic combination of the two. I also don’t like smoking pot, so, by some definitions, I’d be considered a bad Deadhead. It’s an unlikely combination, and I could offer any number of reasons for my obsession with a band that’s been around for fifty years, but the supreme reason is simple.
The music gets me high. That’s it. No other reason. The facet of the Grateful Dead by which I’m most intrigued is the long, shapeless jams that, to some people (the uninitiated), might sound like aimless noise. It sounds like bliss to me. Listening to music like this—the kind with an emphasis placed on live improvisation—requires an active participant. At any moment, a chord progression can morph into something new. Without warning, structure might be totally abandoned in favor of a leaderless journey through the unknowns of consciousness. If faced with the unfortunate circumstance of having to choose one song to listen to for the remainder of my life, I’d choose “Dark Star” without hesitating (as long as I’m allowed to bring as many recordings of it as I desire). The choice is simple because each version is a unique vessel, built for a journey to some place you’ve never been before. Right now, I’m big on the August 27, 1972, “Dark Star,” from Ventura, Oregon. (Deadheads have a freakish way at categorizing and recalling their favorite versions of a particular song, which is only insane if you know that the band played over twenty-three hundred shows,
over a course of thirty years.) Tomorrow it might change to a different “Dark Star,” but for now I listen to this one almost daily. It’s become a ritual almost, a thirty-minute meditation. It takes me on a trip through the unknown, making different stops along the way, and drops me off in a different spot from where I started. “Dark Star” is my sonic spaceship. II. Space and culture have an interesting, intersecting relationship that dates back to the end of the Civil War. French author, Jules Verne, wrote a pair of novels with space as its subject matter, From the Earth to the Moon (1865) and Around the Moon (1870). (Also of interest, Verne wrote Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, arguably his most well known novel, during this five-year stretch.) This is Sci-Fi, in its earliest existence. From there, culture and space intertwine with compounding frequency. Today, it seems as though every other blockbuster movie being released is Sci-Fi, in some way, or maybe I’m just selectively looking. The actual percentage doesn’t matter, though—what matters is why these films and books and visual art are using outer space as its subject mat-
ter. Space is such a complex topic, and I imagine anyone, like me, who decided not to pursue an advanced degree in astrophysics knows only a miniscule fraction of all there is to know about space. This, however, does not make space any less interesting; in fact, for me, it only makes it more interesting. It exists as an abstract thing that surrounds the planet on which I live. It is endless. It is scary. It is full of wonder. It is the great unknown. I’ve never been to space, and I can say with absolute certainty that I never will (barring, of course, some outlandish dystopian reality in which aliens abduct all the smart people who serve very little practical utility in the working force; in which case, I guess I’ll see you all in space). Yet I still find it fascinating, which creates an interesting paradox. I am interested intellectually in something I will never be able fully to understand and will never be able to know whether everything I know about it is right. I do not think I am special in this sense—far from it—in fact, I posit that this is an essential part of being human. The tension between wanting to know everything and not being able to reach it seems as if it’s a paradox
of the human brain, and within this tension, a void is created. A gap in understanding that begs to be filled. Sci-Fi has been getting at this paradox for a hundred and fifty years, and, I presume, will continue doing so until the end of time (or until people stop engaging with art, which might as well be considered the end of time). One reason why this is likely is the timeline of Sci-Fi. It started roughly a hundred years before humans had actually gone to outer space, which provided the first real images—concrete visuals of what is actually out there, albeit in a small percentage—of the previously abstract. In some ways, in the mid-twentieth century, space became more concrete, but it was draped in politics. I learned about the Space Race in the American education system. They taught us about Alan Shepard, the first American to orbit the Earth, and about the Apollo
missions. We learned about Neil Armstrong walking on the moon, and how his words—“one small step for [a] man; one giant leap for mankind”—were synonymous with “American beat the Soviets in the Space Race.” I remember all these tidbits years after learning about them—the Americanized, politicized version of space is ingrained in my DNA. What I don’t recall very well is the full picture. I have to look up the names of the Soviets who actually got there first, in every sense except for walking on the moon. On April 12, 1961, twenty-three days before Shepard orbited the Earth, Yuri Gagarin, a Soviet astronaut, became the first human to accomplish the feat. Nearly five years later, on March 18, 1965, four years before Armstrong made history, Alexei Leonov, another Soviet astronaut, became the first human to walk in space. I can’t recite these Soviet dates off the top of my head. Perhaps it’s
conditioning—being a good American citizen, as they say. The specific dates aren’t as important as the timeline with regard to the history of Sci-Fi. Both before and after humans visited outer space, Sci-Fi provided a conceptualized version of this abstract idea. This is what’s important: Most of our engagement visually with outer space has always been through an art form; we’ve turned to art to fill a void in our understanding. The politicized version of outer space has never been enough to satiate our curiosity. III. The original topic of this essay, when Meth Magazine asked me to write it, was supposed to be about Tim Nasman’s Space Art that appears in this inaugural issue. I didn’t hesitate in saying, “Yes, I’d love to write about that,” when I was asked. It took me no longer than a day to realize I had gotten in over my head. I hedged by telling Meth, “The essay might not exactly be what you had in mind, but you’ll have something.” This seemed to suffice. The problem with writing about art and space, particularly another artist’s specific work (which, by the
way, is a spectacular interpretation of space) is two-fold. One, I’m far from an expert on outer space, and time didn’t allow me to absorb a lifetime’s worth of knowledge in the hopes of sounding as though I know what I’m talking about. Second, I’m hesitant to write about and attribute a meaning to a specific work of art. In short, what I get out of Nasman’s Space Art is most likely different than what the next person might take away from it. My interpretation is no more “right” than anyone else’s, and I feared that it would come across that way, so I strayed away from the specific, intended topic and started thinking more about why it’s important in the general sense. I’ve spent the past five years or so inside a vacuum of academia, earning a college degree. My particular vacuum is the Fine Arts degree, specifically in creative writing. Hang around a writing program (or any art program) for long enough and you start to ask questions like, “What is art, really?” and “Why does art matter?” This, for me, is both a product of the environment and a product of insecurity about spending so much money on a degree that doesn’t lead directly to a job. Within these sorts of programs, the distinction between capital-A Art and lowercase a-art is explicitly
clear. They are teaching us how to create Art (highbrow, Literary works), and you cannot successfully finish the program by producing art (lowbrow, mass marketed stuff). Workshops begin with the instruction that genre fiction (e.g., Romance, Western, Fantasy, Magical Realism, and, of course, Sci-Fi) is not acceptable. It is a dividing line that is potentially catastrophic to the future. With this hard line comes a class and intellect division. It politicizes art, something that should never happen. From what I can tell, the desire to make a firm distinction, to place a blanketed value judgment on different types of art, comes from a deep-seated paranoia/insecurity
and emotions. It seems as if the success of a particular work hinges not upon whether it’s highbrow or lowbrow but rather how effectively it can create a reflection of something that’s unknown. With this definition, genres become meaningless—they are merely a way to categorize something, instead of a way to degrade its merit—and the line between highbrow and lowbrow is obliterated. This is a non-politicized way of thinking about art. about one’s talent. Anyone can make lowbrow, mass marketed stuff; only gifted, studied minds can create a highbrow masterpiece. Let’s forget about the distinction for a moment and focus on what art’s function really is. This is a question that’s been around since Ancient Greece, with Plato and Aristotle, and an entire branch of philosophy is dedicated to aesthetics, the study of beauty and art. A lot of complex, well-developed ideas have been written, but the answer, at a base level, is actually fairly simple. Art fills the void created by the gaps in our understanding of life. It is a channel through which we can conceptualize and visualize and feel a wide range of abstract ideas
This also prevents from applying sweeping generalizations to any one style—Sci-Fi, as a whole, is neither good nor bad; it is simply Sci-Fi, and within that category, there are both good works and bad works, as there are in any category. To dismiss anything without serious consideration is a detriment to art as a whole, and with the rise art programs (both writing and visual arts) within academia, it becomes imperative to avoid this easy dismissal. It creates the potential for a flattened view of art, which, by nature, is anti-creative. IV. The “Dark Star” from Oregon ’72
opens the third set of the show. The first two sets are smoking—both figuratively and literally. The band is tight, playing inspired music, listening to all the instruments and blending their sounds together seamlessly. The crowd looks spent by the time they take the stage for the third set. It’s hot. Real hot. And there’s a shortage of water. Most people are shirtless. Some people are completely naked, including a man dancing on a wooden post directly behind Jerry Garcia at the back of the stage. The sun has not set. The journey is about to begin. Five men on stage—Garcia (lead guitar), Bob Weir (rhythm guitar), Phil Lesh (bass), Bill Kreutzmann (drums), and Keith Godchaux (keys)—are about to embark on cosmic exploration. I watch the video from my computer, alone, with my studio-quality headphones on. It’s a solitary experience, one that’s best enjoyed with you and the band. Everything else is a distraction. In the waning Pacific sunlight, the band commences the trip. They play the main theme of “Dark Star” through once, before they play around it. This is normal. I close my eyes and listen. At a certain point, structure and time become irrelevant. It’s impossible to tell where one measure ends
and the next begins, but the band is locked in for this one, and I’m holding on for dear life as we dive further into the unknown. Sounds of psychedelic jazz pour through my headphones and dissipate into my brain. After a few minutes, the band stops playing around the main theme and starts playing a trance-like theme, dark and eerie sounding. Hints of outer space. I’m riding on the spaceship with them, destination unclear, for now. My mind goes blank during the trance-like segment. This is listening nirvana—the moment in which all outside problems cease to exist. They are there, sure, but awareness about them disappears, effectively rendering all the anxieties of life meaningless. It is a weightless feeling, a freedom I haven’t found anywhere else. Seven minutes in, roughly twenty-four minutes to go. Tempo and dynamics increase. The trance-like segment ends, but the weightless bliss carries over. Sounds become more primal, angrier and scarier. Only momentarily, though—turbulence on the ride. The band is careful to keep a steady incline—nothing ever becomes jarring. Everything always slides without friction into something else, as if it were composed, all along.
Ten and a half minutes in, the main theme comes back, slowly at first and then more deliberately. The framework for the song is incredibly simple. The chords are not complex—without regard for the progression, they are: A, G, Em, A7, D, and E. Anyone who’s taken one guitar lesson or who has access to YouTube knows these chords or could learn them in a matter of minutes. It’s the simplicity that balances against virtuosity, creating something magical. At once it is rudimentary and highly advanced. Eleven and a half minutes in, Jerry steps to the mike to sing the first of two verses. His voice sounds gentle and soft, as though it were floating a top a wave. “Daaarrrk star crashes, pouring it’s light into ashes,” he sings, drawing out the first word, as he does with every first word of every line of the song. “Reeeaaason tatters—it’s the forces tear loose from the axis. Seaaarrrchlight casting, for faults in the clouds of delusion.” The words are poetic images, an attempt at capturing the essence of the universe through lyrics. The band joins Jerry for the chorus. “Shall we go, you and I while we can—through the transitive night fall of diamonds?” Yes, we shall. This is the heart of the trip. I close my eyes and let it take me away. It takes me far out there, into the ethereal realm of consciousness, a place so beautiful it can’t be held for
very long. Twenty-two minutes in. An entirely new-sounding song emerges. We’re technically still in “Dark Star,” but we’re light years away from where we started. Phil leads with a heavy bass groove. The rest of the band picks up on it after a few passes. Jerry’s fingers rip across the fret board, blazing solos. The sun is sinking further now. Darkness is creeping across the Oregon sky. The music becomes scary. Shrill, chaotic sounds on stage. We’re sliding into the meltdown portion of the song. There’s no second verse tonight—that would require an abrupt crash landing. Twenty-eight minutes in, nearing the end of my solitary journey. The band is playing what can only be described as an interpretation of the Earth exploding. It sounds as though the world is coming to an end. Screeching feedback as the instruments slow to a grinding skid. The trip is almost over. Low, thunderous bass notes roar, a lament for the end of something. All that remain are ashes. Thirty-one minutes in. The ride ends. Jerry tries to take the song into “Morning Dew.” Bob Weir, instead, takes it to “El Paso,” a Marty Robbins country song that sits on the opposite end of the spectrum from a beast like
“Dark Star.” We have arrived at our destination—a new world entirely, the previous one no longer existing. Somewhere in the middle of “Dark Star,” in the weightless space, another paradox arises. I am listening alone, to a recording of something that happened forty-three years ago, yet I feel anything but alone. I feel the music comforting me from my insecurities and my faults. Perhaps my love of music is not because it lacks the ability to disappoint me or break my heart. Instead, it might be that it fills a void created by loneliness—a loneliness that is not dependent on circumstances, rather it’s something that’s always there, no matter how many friends I surround myself with, no matter how many people who love me. This is the void that only art can fill, even if it’s only a fleeting, temporary, patchwork fill.
This series was taken at a special events hall. Their services blur
“No matter how smooth the silk ribbons on the chairs were or how many elect behind the kitschy celebration. The perfectly organized, campy vibes are decon
r the lines between weddings, sweet sixteens, and funerals.
tric colors the center pieces could turn, nothing is ever as interesting as the life nstructed in their series to show how our memories are recycled and resolded.�
-Melaine Wong Featuring Lucy Reynolds
Painting By: Domenic Rizzotti
In modern society the mind is a box fastened by a lock with chains of judgment. Humans hold the key, but as long as negativity breathes, our imagination remains inside. Creativity is wild. It exists in colors. It’s life – levity – and longs to be liberated from the brain’s cage. Like an animal, it grows fierce and lashes out at the walls that surround it. Someday (sooner or later) it will swell and burst from your skull and release into the world. Someday (sooner or later) it will bleed, endlessly, ingenious blood. Sooner or later you will not exist, and that’s not quite what matters – it’s whether or not what lives inside of you does. - C.J. Pendergast
Photo By:
Jack White
2000
Drug experimentation began Marijuana- Tried it with a friend, through a pipe in a park Binge drinking - Vodka Began smoking cigarettes
2001--_=
2003
Given a taste of pure Speed on my 15th birthday
Speed habit began - cost hundreds of dollars Skipped school, took train to pick own magic mushrooms-first tried 10 "Blue Meanies,� nothing happened, ingested ten more and tripped on the way home Tried Ecstasy on a holiday at Tangalooma resort on Morton Island - we were camping in the sand dunes Tried LSD in the same weekToal mind distortion and hallucinations Drug fest roadtrip - speed, weed, ecstasy Unplanned pregnancy on a nude beach
2004
\Refocused o
of high scho drug use
Completed m Certificate an
Broke up wi friend
Started Univ of Science. B Conservation
Moved in wi and took up
October mo - stopped EV
Was attendin Tasmania an
2007 2008
on my final year ool - recreational
my High School nd scored 82.11
ith drugman boy-
2010
Diagnosed with schiophrenia dropped out of University
2011
2015
Moved to Melbourne
Started smoking weed again Returned to TAFE studies Tried Cocaine forthe first time Diagnosed with depression Tried pure MDMA Started smoking cigarettes again
versity Bachelor Biodiversity and n
ith my father p weed again
oved to Tasmania VERYTHING
ng University of nd failing
True Events By: Philippa Richardson from Sydney, Australia Paintings By: Ashleigh Steed
Effects of Drug Abuse Marijuana Problems with memory and learning; distorted perception (sights, sounds, time, touch); difficulty in thinking and problem solving. Ecstasy Psychological Effects: These can include confusion, depression, sleep problems, drug craving, and severe anxiety. LSD Extreme changes in mood, feel several different emotions at once, or swing rapidly from one emotion to another. Methamphetamines(Speed) Increased activity, wakefulness, talkativeness, increased concentration, decreased appetite, increased libido, and a sense of well-being. Phillippa is a past drug user and abuser. Her experiences and recollections are candid, and “Meth” is grateful for her to reach out to us. This is her submission form, verbatim: I’ve experienced speed, weed, ecstasy, LSD and shrooms, tried cocaine -- bit of an alcoholic and smoker too. I now live with schizophrenia and depression, possibly related to drug use. Quite likely. Would love to contribute and share my story of the good, the bad, and the ugly. I grew up in Western Sydney where drugs were abundant and freely available. I now have a successful career in the events industry and as a writer.
“Pills” - Dean Hochman