Drugs & Fiction

There’s a moment that every thinking person will eventually come to. It’s a turning point, a time when you realize the way things are, and thereafter, there’s no turning back. It’s the glimpse of clarity that hits you in the gut when you’re staring at the ceiling, too depressed to turn over, too drunk to care.

But from there on out, you’re on your own. Every thinking person comes to terms with this, but most people fail to think. It’s simply not hard-wired into their fundamental being. Some would go as far as to call it a coping strategy-- keep the brain switched off so that they can go on living a normal existence. Eyes closed, nose turned up in the air.
You could set a bomb off behind them and they wouldn’t notice if they didn’t think it suited them.

Thinkers are the ones that end up with all the dysfunction: the troubles, the sleepless nights, the agonizing moments of reflection and self-hatred. If we could switch off the same way all the others could, that would be the end of that. A brief lapse of sanity, to allow the brain to clear itself out, shower, and take a good long nap. The responsibility complex doesn’t allow for that. “If I don’t think, who will?” And so the gears start turning.

It’s an arrogant title to give to yourself, “thinker”, but so many of us inevitably will. The resounding feeling that you’re not like the others comes first. Then the suspicion, the attempts at self-explanation, and the rejection from conventional interaction… The pattern repeats like the chorus in a catchy little song.

From rejection comes sadness, anger and disappointment, which all builds to the overwhelming sense of superiority. You’re above them, a higher form, a higher being. You can see through the false happiness, and that’s why you’re sad. You can tell when people are acting, and that’s why you’re alone.

Thinkers cannot possibly exist amongst the brainless masses, so they create their own sanctuaries. There are those of us that build our worlds from ink and graphite, and hide amongst the semi-colons. We’re cowards, living in one world while craving another. Cowards of the highest degree.

The braver ones create a world within our world, where they live out most of their days. One puff, one sip, one pill and they’re off again, gone to a place that only they could seek to understand. Their spirits drift aimlessly, out of this perilous existence, while their brain takes a nice long rest. Some die. It’s part of the experience.

Drugs and fiction are very much the same, you see. They both exist for the same reason, and are used by the same sorts of people. Thinkers come in many different shapes and sizes, but we’re all fundamentally the same. Middle-class kids, old homeless men, children, the musician busking on the street corner: we’re all the same.

Regardless of whether you bury yourself in cocaine or sheets of notebook paper, you’re seeking to achieve the same thing. The fort that a child builds from the sofa cushions is no different from the canvas on which an artist paints their magnum opus. A pen, a violin, and a dirty, broken needle are all tools to the same goal.

Reality is dissatisfying, so we create fantasy.