When I first heard "Heroin" I found it literally scary, largely because I could vividly imagine signing (the fuck) up, as you say, and I didn't want to let that side of my personality loose. I've never had the [insert abstraction or metaphor here] to try. So I rely on vicarious experience, especially if it can be made amusing (not to say fun). In other words, I second the good Dr. B.
I don't know what the rules for AA meetings are; if they're Chatham House Rules, it would be okay to change identifying details. If it's "everything said in this room stays in this room," you shouldn't tell.
If I didn't know that heroin makes a person vomit, I probably would have tried it at some point. I will go to great lengths to avoid vomiting, even if I means I feel sick longer.
I wonder if there are any former Catholic priests out there making a living as stand-up comics, based on the material they acquired in the confessional.
Also: I don't remember what I thought when I first heard "Heroin," but all the other heroin songs I listened to as a teenager made it seem unpleasant -- "Sister Morphine," "Tonight" (the Iggy Pop one). Though I guess "Comfortably Numb" has that line about "you'll feel no more aaaaaarrrrrrrrghaaaaaaaa..." Yes, I could do with less aaaaaarrrrrrrrghaaaaaaaa in my life.
I remember as a teenager reading some interview with Keith Richards in which he went on about how it was really bad manners to turn blue in someone else's bathroom.
How did I feel about the Velvet's "Heroin" or "Sister Morphine" IIRC, I read Burroughs first. Two levels:a chic sophisticated vice for the functional; and sloppy desperation on the streets. Very much like alchohol in excess. The junkies and drunks never looked like they were having fun. I never even drank much.
Heroin (dilaudid,demerol) was around the edges of my 70s life; I never asked and it was never offered.
They aren't big sharers; and I think some thought me vulnerable.
So what's left for a drug abuser? I spent a lot of the 70s putting any kind of speed I could find in my arm.
Stories that turn on whether a priest should reveal something he heard in confession have always been a pet peeve of mine. I'm way lapsed, but it bothers me aesthetically or logically. The whole system falls apart if you violate the sanctity of it even once.
Many of them apparently lack one or both of the enzymes that let them process alcohol and get so drunk even when the drink a small amount that they never really have a chance to get hooked.
[...]
I think it speaks to the devastation alcohol has caused Native Americans that one has managed to wash up on these shores; there really can't be that many in the world to be one of 20 in an AA meeting in Singapore most days.
'Siberians'. Same shitty liver/enzymes. I got my genetic inheritance in those areas exactly backwards. I got the Norsk/Irish skin and the fucking Injun liver. I can get drunk really fast. Then I want to get into fist fights! Which is why I don't drink. (No AA needed for me, I just stop and remember the fucking hangovers!)
Irish people are straight up crazy, I can tell you that much.
Nooooooooo shiiiiiitttttttttttt. If I'm ever stupid enough to date anyone ever again, the two questions are going to be: 'Do you hate your Daddy? Are you Irish?' A yes to either one and I'm runnin' for the hills.
"fuck, that sounds great! Sign me the fuck up for some of that not-caring-about-dead-bodies-piled-up-in-mounds, because I could use some industrial strength not-caring about now! Plus, it'll be the death of me, so it's win-win!"
This would be why the membership of a given NA group tends to 100% turnover every three months.
The best songs are towards the end- the dance-inflected Gyrate (easily up there with Mickey Way, Fools Gold & Hallelujah in the indie-dance scheme of things) & the closing Mr & Mrs Smack, originally from the 'Plastic Bag'-ep. This sounds more like Jane's Addiction than The Mighty Lemon Drops- detailing an unpleasant state of addiction (that hadn't lapsed into pantomime imagery- unlike The Mary Chain's Automatic album of the same year). A mutant blues infiltrates the downbeat lyrics: "That malnutrition look is no longer in (goodbye Twiggy)...got distant eyes never coming back (hello doctor)...we walk like crabs...mr & mrs smack"-
And that's all the lyrics I can find, as I guess I was listening to really fucking obscure shit in the late 80's. Anyways, I'm pretty sure that song would cure anyone of any curiosity about heroin unless they were truly ready to get dead.
Which brings up the question of why someone wouldn't skip the addiction and just jump out the window. Don't answer that, I won't understand.
If it wasn't for this whole anonymous thing I'd have some fucking hilarious stories to tell you. I've never heard people laugh so much about such incredibly depressing stuff, but it really is funny.
"A high tolerance for inappropriate behaviour." Or overloaded/blow-out sensitivities. I have often suffered from that problem.
Good old Transactional Analysis would say it was a pure gallows laugh: "I'm going to die. Ha ha ha ha ha." Gallows laughs are audibly distinct from regular laughter, if you know what to listen for.
Anyways, don't listen to 'em. You have plenty of the talent neccessary to take a story full of gallows humour, knock off the corners, smooth over the uglier bits and make it actually funny. This is a bad idea for you, because that subconscious sittin' back there will go: 'Hey, they like this stuff! Maybe I should go get drunk some more so I have some more stories to tell. Ha ha ha.'
Update: I'm a chicken shit and pretty conservative by nature, so the only drug I've ever tried is pot, twice, the first time in college. Plus codeine makes me barf, so I wouldn't see myself trying opiates even if I were so inclined.
That said, I've always liked the heroin/booze songs way better than the speed/cocaine ones.
The stories I'm thinking of are a specific genre, usually murder mysteries in which the murderer confesses and the priest has this big dilemma of whether he should go to the cops. And I'm always thinking: no dilemma. Sanctity absolute and whatnot.
Different from changing details and telling stories elsewhere.
I'm with ac. I think confessionals and stories that are supposed to "not leave this room" should remain as such. Not that there's necessarily any harm done, especially with identifying details removed, but there's something I think pretty sacred (and this is coming from an atheist) about the secret-keeping promise.
Of course, my obsession with the sanctity of secret-keeping is the reason that I have been burdened with far more secrets than I care to be keeping. And it also means that I usually don't tell anyone anything that I wouldn't mind answering about if asked, because I know that most other people don't have the same ethos about secret-keeping that I do. So it's kind of a pain in the ass.
15: The traditional answer ... because you can never be sure that you've trimmed off enough identifying details. Somebody who knows too much may somehow piece it together. The only safe solution is silence. [Insert horror story example here.]
When I first heard "Waiting for my man", I just wanted to get to New York. "Heroin" not so much. Somehow I had taken on board so much anti-smack propaganda that it just sounded, erm, realistic. And I would like to believe that even at that age I could see it was a load of sentimental hokum. For some reason that is much harder to grasp when a song has actual place names in it.
It also causes professional problems. I spent last summer interviewing kids at the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center on condition of confidentiality. Then I was sent off by the ACLU to be interviewed on NPR, where I basically told these kids' stories with identifying details removed. That made me fucking uncomfortable, but it seemed to have the desired result, so.
Shouldn't get into this, I was taught to avoid the "war stories" in rehab. But hey, getting on 25 years now, with only my liver to reprove me.
I think cokeheads are real close to drunks. The ritual itself, the constant need to refresh the high is part of the addiction. Would a drunk be interested in a pill that would make him sloppy for 8 hours?Besides the expense, I hated the idea of sitting in front of a mirror or pipe for days on end.
Acid-heads and tweakers see the drug as a means. Just a shot every eight hours, and I could more usefully spend my time arranging my record albums, or completing the 1000 piece plain red jigsaw puzzle.
I read "Naked Lunch" and "Junky" before I ever heard "Heroin" but I had a similar reaction to them as what you're talking about. Never ended up doing it though, knock on wood.
Tell stories, change a few details. You owe it to us. ... I don't see why you couldn't tell a few fictionalized tales that were "inspired by a true story." ... why would people care about their stories they told in confessional if all the identify8ng details are removed?
Now I see why James Frey is still a going concern.
So what's left for a drug abuser?
Nostalgia, by the looks of things. Sweet, sweet nostalgia.
As for Singapore AA, ... depressed alcoholic expats in South-East Asia are a venerable literary trope. Time for a Tiger, etc. So there's plenty to work with.
And I'm always thinking: no dilemma. Sanctity absolute and whatnot.
Yeah, totally. I always got mad at Jack McCoy when he leaned hard on a priest to spill the beans.
As for telling stories, you have to be a little heartless to mine your experience, no matter what story you're telling. Tough call; on the one hand, if you don't tell, there are no stories, but if you do, you're beng a dick.
I had an hour-long bus ride to school in junior high, and I played "Heroin" (oddly, never the original; sometimes in the '69 live version, sometimes the wank-rock Rock N' Roll Animal version) and I remember rewinding and re-playing the "jim-jams" verse more than once. My alienation was far too shallow for it to lead to actual smack use, though...
That said, time is a buffer. I'm reminded of Robertson Davies, who reportedly said, when asked why he waited until so late in his life to publish a novel he had written much earlier: "Well, you see, certain people had to die..."
(Searching that anecdote turned up this intriguing post on falsehoods and storytelling.)
Alice Munro has a couple of very good stories on the subject of the heartlessness of mining your experience (though these are not stories from the confessional, which raise a different set of issues); "Material" in Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You and "Family Furnishings" in Hateship, Friendship, Loveship, Courtship, Marriage.
The title story of which Julianne Moore is making into a movie! So awesome!
The guy who lived across the street from me when I was a teenager was a heroin dealer and I've never met a junkie who wasn't a total fucking wanker, so I can't say I ever felt the urge to try it.
The direction of causation was always a bit interesting with junkies -- from heroin to wanker, or from wanker to heroin. While I'm certain it's not true for everyone, the couple of people who became junkies that I knew, vaguely, before they started using were wankers in the first place.
Oh, and the "I'm no.." for "I'm not..." is standard in Scots vernacular. As is substituing 'the' for the prefix 'to' in words. So "the morra" for 'tomorrow' and "the day" for 'today'... there are loads of other similar substitutions.
I have only ever hear the Rock and Roll Animal version. And the first time I heard it I got chills. I was in high school and I thought I was seeing way to deeply into Reed's soul in a way that made me deeply uncomforable, and that I could easily end up having that happen to me if I wasn't careful. And at that point the only drug I'd taken was beer. Rock and Roll Animal is an amazing record. I listen to the intro to Sweet Jane all the time. I don't have Heroin on the I-Pod, not really cheery.
But the whole idea that when you're rushing on your run and you feel just like Jesus' son (or is it Jesus, son) is pretty powerful.
My own thought is that the people in AA are putting their faith in you to be wise about the information you get from them in meetings. My first question is whether writing about the stuff is a way of copping attitude about that trust or putting yourself in a position above or outside the people around you. I'm betting the answer is no, but these things are complex and its a question to look at.
If that isn't the case then I can see a lot of benefits to writing about them. Life is a carnival, and understanding it matters a lot. And the people I know in AA are pretty hardcore veterans of life usually. But you're left with whether or not you're violating these people's trust.
26 - Wow, how'd you know about VU in junior high? Cool older sibling or parents?
As for "Heroin", I had already gotten somewhat into noise rock when I heard it for the first time, so I was drooling over the early builds and falls of the song along with the electric viola freak-out at the end, all over a great steady, insistant drumbeat. Plus something in Lou Reed's voice seems to be aching for emotion over his natural deadpan, which works so beautifully with the lyrics. No way was I touching heroin itself, I'd read Burroughs and seen Trainspotting and A Long Day's Journey Into Night. The right movies and books really are the best ways to keep kids off drugs.
For a couple of months I was listening to "Heroin" before I went out on a majority of the nights I went out. But I was listening to it basically (at least consciously) ignoring the story of the lyrics, and just enjoying the building excitement of the "When I put a spike into my vein" part in the chorus.
NB: I've never used or considered using heroin, and am not otherwise comfortable discussing my drug use vel non in this forum.
I remember this well, and it could probably be accurately dated. I bought Yes "Close to the Edge" almost the day it came out, and not far in the alphabetical racks were the Velvets. VU with Nico had the phony banana on the front, and somehow the Warhol association was a turnoff. But the pure black of WHWL was tres cool.
So went home got stoned, and my first intro to the Velvets I remember was "The Gift" and "Sister Ray." Now "Heroin" and "Venus in Furs" are one thing, but 20 minutes of "sucking on my ding-dong" was pretty radical for a midwest college kid.
I don't remember what I thought the first time I heard "Heroin", but the last time I listened to it I thought, "man, John Cale is so much cooler than Lou Reed".
It's increasingly obvious with the benefit of hindsight that Lou Reed is a collosal wanker. This may not have been obvious to listeners when '...and Nico' came out.
Moments in Lou Wankery: seeing him on some TV show wittering on about being a perfectionist about guitar tone; standing in front of a huge rack of guitar effects that would look more in keeping with the worst excesses of 80s instrumental metal and ... producing a guitar tone that was orders of magnitude worse than the sort of strangled-wasp-in-jam-jar tones the average 12 year-old ekes out of his first guitar.
carmelita is a great, great song. but as for reading the right books etc., I thought it was a college cliche that grungy boys in the 90's read burroughs and watched trainspotting and then wanted to give dope a try? plenty of them made me cop for them on this basis, I can tell you, and it was certainly my reaction to burroughs. well, not "made", more like "asked" me to cop for them. which is a pussy move, frankly, as etiquette demands that guys go out and buy drugs while the womenfolk keep the home fires burning, safe from getting arrested or beaten up and ripped off. maybe more honored in the breach...
46:When I read Burroughs I was vaguely attracted to that lifestyle(yecch) bad word, huh. And the final rap in "Trainspotting" is a spiritual revelation that redefines the entire movie.
It is all hard to explain, but renunciation and honest nihilism is not pretty. Sitting under the bodhi tree or doing the bodhisattva thing seems an ego trip, piling up spiritual brownie points. I am straing at my 5000 books and 10000 records and bloglinks and part of me, maybe a small part, says WTF? WTF? Three times I have dumped everything, including family and friends, and left town with a backpack and moved a thousand miles. Not that it was a good thing.
I was in a bar today having lunch (Yay holiday!) and the MTV Viewer's Choice Awards were on the tube, effectively bursting my MTV Viewer's Choice Awards cherry. Lou Reed was presenting, and huh. I had no idea he was such a drip. Also: I was really surprised at how little production seemed to have gone into the awards -- usually awards shows are over-produced. Al Gore was on, he was drippy too so maybe it was just the setting. Queen Latifah (I think it was she, not totally sure) introduced him.
Also: when Reed came out on stage, they played some bars from his big hit, "Candy came from out on the island/ In the back room she was everybody's darlin'/ But she never..." and that's where they faded it out, which seemed like a curious choice to me. (That's where I came in, I momentarily thought WOTWS was playing on the jukebox and Hey, why'd they turn it off? Then I looked up at the TV screen and saw Lou saying to his co-presenter "You know, I love rock 'n' roll, and..."
Thinking this morning: "produced" and "production" are probably not what I meant in 52. Is production what happens after taping? I think so. What I meant was (a) the sets were pretty scant and (b) transitions between award presentations etcetera were not scripted.
55 -- it would have made more sense to fade after "darlin'" during the pause between lines. "But she never" hanging out there doesn't do anything useful, and it meant the fade had to be really quick.
Tell stories, change a few details. You owe it to us.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 10:11 AM
When I first heard "Heroin" I found it literally scary, largely because I could vividly imagine signing (the fuck) up, as you say, and I didn't want to let that side of my personality loose. I've never had the [insert abstraction or metaphor here] to try. So I rely on vicarious experience, especially if it can be made amusing (not to say fun). In other words, I second the good Dr. B.
Posted by Vance Maverick | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 10:57 AM
I don't see why you couldn't tell a few fictionalized tales that were "inspired by a true story."
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 11:15 AM
Don't psychiatrists and others who have a duty not to dislcose do this all of the time?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 11:22 AM
I don't know what the rules for AA meetings are; if they're Chatham House Rules, it would be okay to change identifying details. If it's "everything said in this room stays in this room," you shouldn't tell.
If I didn't know that heroin makes a person vomit, I probably would have tried it at some point. I will go to great lengths to avoid vomiting, even if I means I feel sick longer.
Posted by dagger aleph | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 11:35 AM
"I" s/b "it"
Posted by dagger aleph | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 11:36 AM
Me too.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 11:37 AM
I wonder if there are any former Catholic priests out there making a living as stand-up comics, based on the material they acquired in the confessional.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 11:44 AM
Also: I don't remember what I thought when I first heard "Heroin," but all the other heroin songs I listened to as a teenager made it seem unpleasant -- "Sister Morphine," "Tonight" (the Iggy Pop one). Though I guess "Comfortably Numb" has that line about "you'll feel no more aaaaaarrrrrrrrghaaaaaaaa..." Yes, I could do with less aaaaaarrrrrrrrghaaaaaaaa in my life.
I remember as a teenager reading some interview with Keith Richards in which he went on about how it was really bad manners to turn blue in someone else's bathroom.
Posted by dagger aleph | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 11:46 AM
How did I feel about the Velvet's "Heroin" or "Sister Morphine" IIRC, I read Burroughs first. Two levels:a chic sophisticated vice for the functional; and sloppy desperation on the streets. Very much like alchohol in excess. The junkies and drunks never looked like they were having fun. I never even drank much.
Heroin (dilaudid,demerol) was around the edges of my 70s life; I never asked and it was never offered.
They aren't big sharers; and I think some thought me vulnerable.
So what's left for a drug abuser? I spent a lot of the 70s putting any kind of speed I could find in my arm.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 12:08 PM
Stories that turn on whether a priest should reveal something he heard in confession have always been a pet peeve of mine. I'm way lapsed, but it bothers me aesthetically or logically. The whole system falls apart if you violate the sanctity of it even once.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 12:09 PM
Hmm... First time I head "Heroin" I was in college, so I was probably stoned, or tripping.
I guess I'm just lucky that the hard stuff wasn't available in my social circle, 'cause I'm sure I would have tried it, and I might have liked it.
I did try coke a few times, and I completely failed to see the appeal of it.
Posted by Zadfrack | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 12:11 PM
Best to just do away with the Church altogether, really.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 12:15 PM
Many of them apparently lack one or both of the enzymes that let them process alcohol and get so drunk even when the drink a small amount that they never really have a chance to get hooked.
[...]
I think it speaks to the devastation alcohol has caused Native Americans that one has managed to wash up on these shores; there really can't be that many in the world to be one of 20 in an AA meeting in Singapore most days.
'Siberians'. Same shitty liver/enzymes. I got my genetic inheritance in those areas exactly backwards. I got the Norsk/Irish skin and the fucking Injun liver. I can get drunk really fast. Then I want to get into fist fights! Which is why I don't drink. (No AA needed for me, I just stop and remember the fucking hangovers!)
Irish people are straight up crazy, I can tell you that much.
Nooooooooo shiiiiiitttttttttttt. If I'm ever stupid enough to date anyone ever again, the two questions are going to be: 'Do you hate your Daddy? Are you Irish?' A yes to either one and I'm runnin' for the hills.
"fuck, that sounds great! Sign me the fuck up for some of that not-caring-about-dead-bodies-piled-up-in-mounds, because I could use some industrial strength not-caring about now! Plus, it'll be the death of me, so it's win-win!"
This would be why the membership of a given NA group tends to 100% turnover every three months.
What did you guys think when you first heard it?
That I wasn't big on Velvet Underground? On the other hand, I had the wrong band as creators the creepiest song ever:
The best songs are towards the end- the dance-inflected Gyrate (easily up there with Mickey Way, Fools Gold & Hallelujah in the indie-dance scheme of things) & the closing Mr & Mrs Smack, originally from the 'Plastic Bag'-ep. This sounds more like Jane's Addiction than The Mighty Lemon Drops- detailing an unpleasant state of addiction (that hadn't lapsed into pantomime imagery- unlike The Mary Chain's Automatic album of the same year). A mutant blues infiltrates the downbeat lyrics: "That malnutrition look is no longer in (goodbye Twiggy)...got distant eyes never coming back (hello doctor)...we walk like crabs...mr & mrs smack"-
And that's all the lyrics I can find, as I guess I was listening to really fucking obscure shit in the late 80's. Anyways, I'm pretty sure that song would cure anyone of any curiosity about heroin unless they were truly ready to get dead.
Which brings up the question of why someone wouldn't skip the addiction and just jump out the window. Don't answer that, I won't understand.
If it wasn't for this whole anonymous thing I'd have some fucking hilarious stories to tell you. I've never heard people laugh so much about such incredibly depressing stuff, but it really is funny.
"A high tolerance for inappropriate behaviour." Or overloaded/blow-out sensitivities. I have often suffered from that problem.
Good old Transactional Analysis would say it was a pure gallows laugh: "I'm going to die. Ha ha ha ha ha." Gallows laughs are audibly distinct from regular laughter, if you know what to listen for.
Anyways, don't listen to 'em. You have plenty of the talent neccessary to take a story full of gallows humour, knock off the corners, smooth over the uglier bits and make it actually funny. This is a bad idea for you, because that subconscious sittin' back there will go: 'Hey, they like this stuff! Maybe I should go get drunk some more so I have some more stories to tell. Ha ha ha.'
max
['What a dreary sunday afternoon.']
Posted by max | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 12:31 PM
why would people care about their stories they told in confessional if all the identify8ng details are removed? (asking seriously)
Posted by yoyo | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 12:31 PM
Update: I'm a chicken shit and pretty conservative by nature, so the only drug I've ever tried is pot, twice, the first time in college. Plus codeine makes me barf, so I wouldn't see myself trying opiates even if I were so inclined.
That said, I've always liked the heroin/booze songs way better than the speed/cocaine ones.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 12:48 PM
The stories I'm thinking of are a specific genre, usually murder mysteries in which the murderer confesses and the priest has this big dilemma of whether he should go to the cops. And I'm always thinking: no dilemma. Sanctity absolute and whatnot.
Different from changing details and telling stories elsewhere.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 12:52 PM
I'm with ac. I think confessionals and stories that are supposed to "not leave this room" should remain as such. Not that there's necessarily any harm done, especially with identifying details removed, but there's something I think pretty sacred (and this is coming from an atheist) about the secret-keeping promise.
Of course, my obsession with the sanctity of secret-keeping is the reason that I have been burdened with far more secrets than I care to be keeping. And it also means that I usually don't tell anyone anything that I wouldn't mind answering about if asked, because I know that most other people don't have the same ethos about secret-keeping that I do. So it's kind of a pain in the ass.
Posted by m. leblanc | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 1:05 PM
15: The traditional answer ... because you can never be sure that you've trimmed off enough identifying details. Somebody who knows too much may somehow piece it together. The only safe solution is silence. [Insert horror story example here.]
Posted by pireader | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 1:05 PM
When I first heard "Waiting for my man", I just wanted to get to New York. "Heroin" not so much. Somehow I had taken on board so much anti-smack propaganda that it just sounded, erm, realistic. And I would like to believe that even at that age I could see it was a load of sentimental hokum. For some reason that is much harder to grasp when a song has actual place names in it.
Posted by Andrew Brown | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 1:06 PM
It also causes professional problems. I spent last summer interviewing kids at the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center on condition of confidentiality. Then I was sent off by the ACLU to be interviewed on NPR, where I basically told these kids' stories with identifying details removed. That made me fucking uncomfortable, but it seemed to have the desired result, so.
Confidentiality is a touchy, touchy subject.
Posted by m. leblanc | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 1:08 PM
Shouldn't get into this, I was taught to avoid the "war stories" in rehab. But hey, getting on 25 years now, with only my liver to reprove me.
I think cokeheads are real close to drunks. The ritual itself, the constant need to refresh the high is part of the addiction. Would a drunk be interested in a pill that would make him sloppy for 8 hours?Besides the expense, I hated the idea of sitting in front of a mirror or pipe for days on end.
Acid-heads and tweakers see the drug as a means. Just a shot every eight hours, and I could more usefully spend my time arranging my record albums, or completing the 1000 piece plain red jigsaw puzzle.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 1:13 PM
I read "Naked Lunch" and "Junky" before I ever heard "Heroin" but I had a similar reaction to them as what you're talking about. Never ended up doing it though, knock on wood.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 1:43 PM
Tell stories, change a few details. You owe it to us. ... I don't see why you couldn't tell a few fictionalized tales that were "inspired by a true story." ... why would people care about their stories they told in confessional if all the identify8ng details are removed?
Now I see why James Frey is still a going concern.
So what's left for a drug abuser?
Nostalgia, by the looks of things. Sweet, sweet nostalgia.
As for Singapore AA, ... depressed alcoholic expats in South-East Asia are a venerable literary trope. Time for a Tiger, etc. So there's plenty to work with.
Posted by gonerill | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 1:53 PM
And I'm always thinking: no dilemma. Sanctity absolute and whatnot.
Yeah, totally. I always got mad at Jack McCoy when he leaned hard on a priest to spill the beans.
As for telling stories, you have to be a little heartless to mine your experience, no matter what story you're telling. Tough call; on the one hand, if you don't tell, there are no stories, but if you do, you're beng a dick.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 3:13 PM
I had an hour-long bus ride to school in junior high, and I played "Heroin" (oddly, never the original; sometimes in the '69 live version, sometimes the wank-rock Rock N' Roll Animal version) and I remember rewinding and re-playing the "jim-jams" verse more than once. My alienation was far too shallow for it to lead to actual smack use, though...
Posted by Scott Lemieux | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 3:40 PM
I'm with m. leblanc.
That said, time is a buffer. I'm reminded of Robertson Davies, who reportedly said, when asked why he waited until so late in his life to publish a novel he had written much earlier: "Well, you see, certain people had to die..."
(Searching that anecdote turned up this intriguing post on falsehoods and storytelling.)
Posted by Witt | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 3:40 PM
Alice Munro has a couple of very good stories on the subject of the heartlessness of mining your experience (though these are not stories from the confessional, which raise a different set of issues); "Material" in Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You and "Family Furnishings" in Hateship, Friendship, Loveship, Courtship, Marriage.
The title story of which Julianne Moore is making into a movie! So awesome!
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 3:50 PM
The guy who lived across the street from me when I was a teenager was a heroin dealer and I've never met a junkie who wasn't a total fucking wanker, so I can't say I ever felt the urge to try it.
The direction of causation was always a bit interesting with junkies -- from heroin to wanker, or from wanker to heroin. While I'm certain it's not true for everyone, the couple of people who became junkies that I knew, vaguely, before they started using were wankers in the first place.
Oh, and the "I'm no.." for "I'm not..." is standard in Scots vernacular. As is substituing 'the' for the prefix 'to' in words. So "the morra" for 'tomorrow' and "the day" for 'today'... there are loads of other similar substitutions.
Posted by nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 4:13 PM
I have only ever hear the Rock and Roll Animal version. And the first time I heard it I got chills. I was in high school and I thought I was seeing way to deeply into Reed's soul in a way that made me deeply uncomforable, and that I could easily end up having that happen to me if I wasn't careful. And at that point the only drug I'd taken was beer. Rock and Roll Animal is an amazing record. I listen to the intro to Sweet Jane all the time. I don't have Heroin on the I-Pod, not really cheery.
But the whole idea that when you're rushing on your run and you feel just like Jesus' son (or is it Jesus, son) is pretty powerful.
My own thought is that the people in AA are putting their faith in you to be wise about the information you get from them in meetings. My first question is whether writing about the stuff is a way of copping attitude about that trust or putting yourself in a position above or outside the people around you. I'm betting the answer is no, but these things are complex and its a question to look at.
If that isn't the case then I can see a lot of benefits to writing about them. Life is a carnival, and understanding it matters a lot. And the people I know in AA are pretty hardcore veterans of life usually. But you're left with whether or not you're violating these people's trust.
Posted by benton | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 6:23 PM
I'd say that many people my age--especially we provincials--first heard "Heroin" in the Doors movie.
Posted by Jonathan | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 7:11 PM
I'm sure it will surprise no one to hear that I've never heard this song.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 8:28 PM
26 - Wow, how'd you know about VU in junior high? Cool older sibling or parents?
As for "Heroin", I had already gotten somewhat into noise rock when I heard it for the first time, so I was drooling over the early builds and falls of the song along with the electric viola freak-out at the end, all over a great steady, insistant drumbeat. Plus something in Lou Reed's voice seems to be aching for emotion over his natural deadpan, which works so beautifully with the lyrics. No way was I touching heroin itself, I'd read Burroughs and seen Trainspotting and A Long Day's Journey Into Night. The right movies and books really are the best ways to keep kids off drugs.
Posted by JAC | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 9:27 PM
For a couple of months I was listening to "Heroin" before I went out on a majority of the nights I went out. But I was listening to it basically (at least consciously) ignoring the story of the lyrics, and just enjoying the building excitement of the "When I put a spike into my vein" part in the chorus.
NB: I've never used or considered using heroin, and am not otherwise comfortable discussing my drug use vel non in this forum.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 11:17 PM
I remember this well, and it could probably be accurately dated. I bought Yes "Close to the Edge" almost the day it came out, and not far in the alphabetical racks were the Velvets. VU with Nico had the phony banana on the front, and somehow the Warhol association was a turnoff. But the pure black of WHWL was tres cool.
So went home got stoned, and my first intro to the Velvets I remember was "The Gift" and "Sister Ray." Now "Heroin" and "Venus in Furs" are one thing, but 20 minutes of "sucking on my ding-dong" was pretty radical for a midwest college kid.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 11:53 PM
Now "Heroin" and "Venus in Furs" are one thing, but 20 minutes of "sucking on my ding-dong" was pretty radical for a midwest college kid.
That's weird, I wouldn't have thought stamina was a regional thing.
Posted by JAC | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 12:01 AM
if they're Chatham House Rules
There is only one Chatham House Rule.
Posted by reuben | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 12:45 AM
I don't remember what I thought the first time I heard "Heroin", but the last time I listened to it I thought, "man, John Cale is so much cooler than Lou Reed".
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 12:58 AM
I thought, "man, John Cale is so much cooler than Lou Reed".
You sir, are not all bad.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 1:11 AM
39 is true even in the unlikely event that Wolfson meant JJ Cale.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 1:15 AM
re: 38
It's increasingly obvious with the benefit of hindsight that Lou Reed is a collosal wanker. This may not have been obvious to listeners when '...and Nico' came out.
Posted by nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 2:22 AM
Colossal ... fucksake
Posted by nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 2:28 AM
#38 : of course he is, he's Welsh.
Posted by dsquared | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 2:31 AM
Another good heroin-related song: Warren Zevon's "Carmelita".
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 3:21 AM
Moments in Lou Wankery: seeing him on some TV show wittering on about being a perfectionist about guitar tone; standing in front of a huge rack of guitar effects that would look more in keeping with the worst excesses of 80s instrumental metal and ... producing a guitar tone that was orders of magnitude worse than the sort of strangled-wasp-in-jam-jar tones the average 12 year-old ekes out of his first guitar.
Posted by nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 4:10 AM
carmelita is a great, great song. but as for reading the right books etc., I thought it was a college cliche that grungy boys in the 90's read burroughs and watched trainspotting and then wanted to give dope a try? plenty of them made me cop for them on this basis, I can tell you, and it was certainly my reaction to burroughs. well, not "made", more like "asked" me to cop for them. which is a pussy move, frankly, as etiquette demands that guys go out and buy drugs while the womenfolk keep the home fires burning, safe from getting arrested or beaten up and ripped off. maybe more honored in the breach...
Posted by alameida | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 7:33 AM
Definitive statement of Lou wankery: "Magic and Loss"
Posted by Andrew Brown | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 8:16 AM
38-41: Kaus would be proud of y'all.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 8:45 AM
46:When I read Burroughs I was vaguely attracted to that lifestyle(yecch) bad word, huh. And the final rap in "Trainspotting" is a spiritual revelation that redefines the entire movie.
It is all hard to explain, but renunciation and honest nihilism is not pretty. Sitting under the bodhi tree or doing the bodhisattva thing seems an ego trip, piling up spiritual brownie points. I am straing at my 5000 books and 10000 records and bloglinks and part of me, maybe a small part, says WTF? WTF? Three times I have dumped everything, including family and friends, and left town with a backpack and moved a thousand miles. Not that it was a good thing.
Hard to explain.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 10:49 AM
Surely you don't disagree, Weiner.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 10:52 AM
39 should tip you off as to the deep, deep error of your ways.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 11:31 AM
I was in a bar today having lunch (Yay holiday!) and the MTV Viewer's Choice Awards were on the tube, effectively bursting my MTV Viewer's Choice Awards cherry. Lou Reed was presenting, and huh. I had no idea he was such a drip. Also: I was really surprised at how little production seemed to have gone into the awards -- usually awards shows are over-produced. Al Gore was on, he was drippy too so maybe it was just the setting. Queen Latifah (I think it was she, not totally sure) introduced him.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 5:12 PM
Also: when Reed came out on stage, they played some bars from his big hit, "Candy came from out on the island/ In the back room she was everybody's darlin'/ But she never..." and that's where they faded it out, which seemed like a curious choice to me. (That's where I came in, I momentarily thought WOTWS was playing on the jukebox and Hey, why'd they turn it off? Then I looked up at the TV screen and saw Lou saying to his co-presenter "You know, I love rock 'n' roll, and..."
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09- 4-06 6:28 PM
Thinking this morning: "produced" and "production" are probably not what I meant in 52. Is production what happens after taping? I think so. What I meant was (a) the sets were pretty scant and (b) transitions between award presentations etcetera were not scripted.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09- 5-06 5:37 AM
that's where they faded it out, which seemed like a curious choice to me
They didn't want to say "lost her head, even when she was giving head"? I dunno, makes sense on its own terms.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 09- 5-06 6:21 AM
By the time I heard "Heroin," the druggie song genre had acquired kitsch value.
Posted by strasmangular me | Link to this comment | 09- 5-06 7:03 AM
55 -- it would have made more sense to fade after "darlin'" during the pause between lines. "But she never" hanging out there doesn't do anything useful, and it meant the fade had to be really quick.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09- 5-06 7:31 AM