Before we get into it, have you ever listened to Candy Says?1 It might be my favorite Velvet Underground song. Lou wrote it not only to address the actress Candy Darling’s feelings of being trapped inside the wrong body, he wanted to touch on “something more profound and universal.”2 It’s a human experience we all share to some degree. They had me at the opening line.
Candy says, I’ve come to hate my body and all that it requires in this world.
Sobriety is often critiqued as mundane. That’s fair. Since getting clean, I have yet to walk seven miles around an industrial district, with a homeless stranger I just met, looking to score. Hell, it’s one of the reasons why I did drugs in the first place; I didn’t just need them to fill the void, I needed them so I could get more out of life. Normalcy failed to enchant me. It required too much.
However, there is a problem with that. The humdrum maintenance of life still needs to get done. It’s really annoying that, after writing this, I have to go wash the dishes if I want to be able to eat tomorrow. It’s even more annoying that I have to also brush my teeth every day if I want to be able to eat in fifty years. The payoff isn’t immediate. It isn’t even guaranteed. I need constant satisfaction.
Did you ever participate in one of those delayed gratification “games” as a kid? When I was in elementary school, everyone in my class was given a Tootsie Roll to hold onto. We were promised that if we could go the whole lesson without eating it, we’d be rewarded with a second piece. My sweaty childhood hands crinkled and stained that wrapper. I didn’t hear a word of the actual lesson—the candy captivated all of my attention. But I didn’t eat it. Somehow, I passed the test. It was only after my teacher gave me my reward that I burst into tears.
Self-discipline is exhausting.
If that experience foretold anything, it wasn’t that I have a gift for self-control. It was that I have the curse of self-control. I don’t have much choice in the matter. It seems to be my default mode of operation. Unfortunately, the form of self-control I exercised in my youth was mentally draining and unsustainable. I could white-knuckle my way through life for a good long while, but eventually I would always implode. There’s plenty of evidence for that.
The first time was back in high school. After spending the majority of my life brushing my teeth and not eating Tootsie Rolls, I had enough. It’s not that my life was bad—I couldn’t have asked for a better childhood—I was just…depressed. Nothing mattered. Nothing captured my interest. The world was a uniform shade of gray, and it was too much work to color it in myself each day.
Then I discovered drugs. Specifically, I discovered that one tab of acid, two pills of ecstasy, and two and half packs of cigarettes really lights up your nervous system.
During the time I grew up in Utah, the rave scene was a popular response to the constricting grip of religion and a welcoming outlet for outcasts. Each month, hundreds of people amassed on the shores of the Great Salt Lake for these shows. I met plenty of them. Most were kind and genuine. These were people who embraced a lifestyle prioritizing equality and respect in a way they thought was real. Frankly, I didn’t care about any of that. I just needed a place to escape.
But talk about coloring in the gray! When I’d go to these shows, dozens of technicolor strobe lights waved and flickered off the lake. It was captivating. I’d get lost in the neon red hula-hoopers and the pulsating green yo-yoers. But that stimulation didn’t compare to the shift that happened once I got high.
My friend handed me the MDMA. I didn’t know what to expect. I had never been high before. The pills clinked together in my hands as I carried them around the show. It’s like I could hear them over the thumping bass and squealing synths enveloping me—they captivated all of my attention. So I took them. No more waiting. But that wasn't enough. If I was going to throw caution to the wind, I had to go big. Later that night, I supplemented the pills with a tab of LSD.
They call it candy-flipping. I don’t know why, but I found it appropriate. That evening my entire world flipped on its head. The floodgates opened. Instead of feeling like I was wringing at the rag of life to only receive a few drops of joy, I was suddenly drowning in it. Joy was everywhere—within everything. I could’ve been content, alone, in a black box; but all the sights and sounds and people that were around me only heightened my euphoria. A single puff of a cigarette was enough to tickle each one of my nerve endings. A conversation with a complete stranger could break down from small talk into a shared exploration of the meaning of life. Here I was, a part of the greater whole, existing within it instead of outside it.
It was clear that this was what I needed. How had I lived so long otherwise? I felt like a stick figure that had suddenly been thrown into the three-dimensional world. The possibilities were endless. In this new found plane of existence, I made an explicit choice. I was going to chase this feeling as long as I could.
The rest was history.
The never ending hunt for pleasure eroded every other aspect of my life. Not all at once. I let the small things go first: studying for class, doing the dishes, socializing with friends, writing. When there were no more small things to get rid of, I had to start throwing away the big things: going to school, brushing my teeth, leaving my room. Eventually, everything was gone. I had devolved back into a literal stick figure—emaciated and one note. All I had were the drugs, and even those weren’t cutting it anymore.
It’s disheartening. Life was painful and mundane without the drugs, but now it was impossible to live with them. What other options were there? None that I wanted to try. Unfortunately, I didn’t have much of a choice. It was either that or death.
Asking anybody (let alone an addict) to get excited about the humdrum maintenance of life is ridiculous. But I don’t think that has ever been the goal. (If it is, I’m doing a terrible job.) A more palatable one might be to enjoy the fulfillment that those tasks afford. Prior to ever getting high, my life was devoid of meaning. I didn’t do any of the hard work required to bestow my life with it. Drugs helped. They helped a lot. And if I didn’t let them completely upend my life, they could’ve been a great solution. But they aren’t, so I’m left with no shortcuts. I wake up each day and do the monotonous work we all must do. Except now, I know what it gets me. Even more, I want what it gets me.
Al Zolynas does a better job of describing it than I can. In his poem, The Zen of Housework, he portrays the simple scene of washing a wine glass. He had me with these three lines.
I can see thousands of droplets
of steam—each a tiny spectrum—rising
from my goblet of grey wine.
There are thousands of life-changing opportunities that we may be holding in our hands right now. There are new ways to live and experiences worth waiting a lifetime to have. They are born from the mundane—impossible without it. We may not know when they’ll come, and we especially don’t know how they'll come, but they’ll come.
I married the love of my life just over a year and a half ago. It shouldn’t have been possible, but once I got sober and started brushing my teeth,3 it didn’t just become possible, it became reality. Now with her, joy is everywhere. It rises like steam, holding the promises of entire new worlds to explore. And there’s no more fulfillment I need than from being with her at the end of the day.
For those who want a deeper cut, check out Maria’s Little Elbows by Sparklehorse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candy_Says
Just to be clear, I may brush my teeth everyday, but after six years sober I eat all the sweets I damn well want.
I love the velvet underground, Candy says is in my top 10.
Was interesting, thanks
I love the stick figure analogy.