I still remember brilliant kaleidoscopic light and the low thrum it made as it permeated my body, carrying me higher and higher, and deeper within the unlimited inner-space in my head. The music would open doors to emotions I’d not felt in years -or at all- and amplify the more familiar ones as it painted vivid sonic landscapes in my mind’s eye, rising and declining, ebbing and flowing like a stormy ocean. Always, I yearned for those distant places inside of me, locked behind doors that could only be opened by chemical keys.
This pristine introspective state would fade and return fuller and more vivid with each increased dose, and I would remain there for hours, sometimes days -until the money would run out: then came the rage, the frantic, desperate lust to return to that world of euphoric calm. If I had no money, I would get a front: if I couldn’t get a front, I’d sulk home and sink into a deep pit of despair and self-loathing, like being tied up and cast into the bottom of a well, looking up at the opening and seeing it sealed before my eyes as the light at the opening gradually closed to a pinprick-aperture, closing into solid black.
It didn’t take long for me to realize that the ethereal inner world I longed for was a cruel bait and switch. I saw an image of a perfect life, a life that could never exist; saw it corrupted, violated, and ripped away revealing only sickly grey and brown motes of living cancer swarming in a tar-black crypt. From then on, the euphoric state I craved was never achievable again. I’d do more, and more, and more to get close to the gilded gates, only to fumble with the key as those gates inevitably faded once more and the reality I was trying to escape darkened. There was no music here, no choirs or bells: there still isn’t, but in my head, I can still hear them singing, calling to me: almost two years later, they never stop calling.
And that’s the worst nightmare of all, because I know they’ll never stop haunting me, and that perhaps even in death I may never escape.
Towers of Rust 