WHEN WE’RE BORED, WE GET HIGH
By Justyn Olivarez
This essay contains material of a highly sensitive nature including drug abuse, drug violence, and death that may be triggering for some individuals.
“Quasi-American-Lifestyle” by Scout Bach
In an environment that continually changes, we find new ways to distract ourselves from the emotions and existential thoughts that fill each of our deteriorating minds. We as a society have never been able to confront ourselves in ways that would challenge our notion of what our “self” is. We are in constant search of something but never ask what that something is. Instead, we gorge our personalities, sense of success, and self worth with a media buffet of asmr torture porn. We are too afraid to accept that we might have a list of problems and are worried that the others will find out.
So when those voices and feelings start seeping into your subconscious - when you're sitting alone and they're begging you to converse and sort them out - you reach for the plug from a media driven world and dock it back into your head.
These become frequent experiences throughout our lives as we try to navigate an environment with people full of suppressed emotions and boredom, sludging around trying to find any excuse to disconnect from reality. With mass media consumption, a drug fueled epidemic, and nihilism at an all time high, the recipe for any child or teen is to trade in action figures and pink dresses for heroin and OnlyFans.
As a young teen, I was an avid writer and reader. I had an appetite for philosophy, psychology, and spiritual literature. Anything that could broaden my understanding of the world or myself. When I wasn't digesting the dystopian understandings of No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai, I was consuming a three course meal of weed, promethazine, and percocet. I was no different than the rest of my peers living in a broken city; cities with no outlets for kids to express themselves, nothing to relieve them of their youthful rage + confusion.
When we were bored we got high, we had sex, we drank, we broke into abandoned buildings, we rode our bikes across town. We fought, and some of us died.
Picked off one by one.
Star basketball players turned into alcoholics and addicts.
The kids at school – you know, the ones that took all the chances – they wouldn't last much longer.
I was stuck working at this rundown hotel off a highway exit. The easiest job I've ever had in my life. The pay was shit, but the solitude and quiet allowed me to read and write. My first day on the job, the general manager showed me a room where a couple had committed suicide. The blood covered the room like a Jackson Pollock. What I saw in the blood splattered brush strokes was a love only a generation raised on Nirvana and Hole could infatuate over. That same day, twenty minutes into training, the other office clerk was found nodding off until she passed out. I’d later discover she was fired for doing heroin in the bathroom. Anybody in their right mind would've left.
I stayed.
For 2 years, I watched person after person walk in and out of that motel. It was a hostel of addiction and domestic abuse. If I was a businessman I would have hung a sign saying ” Haunted House Here.”
Out of these horror attractions, the most impactful was when a young woman, 23, overdosed and died in the room behind my office. I stood in there watching as her boyfriend cried and puked in the hallway while her body laid cold on the bed. Despair is the outcome.
I used to not reflect about the repercussions. Drugs were being used as a way to pass time, something to help shut down the mind, even for ten minutes. We sold our rare vintage clothing to consignment shops in return to get money for a gram of cocaine. Many of us have stories like this, some better, some worse. Drugs became its own member, a part of the crew, huddled in baseball dugouts or traversing along railroad tracks like a scene out of ‘Stand By Me’. We, myself and whoever was in, would collectively drain and exhaust all of our problems in a powwow circle of clouded smoke like the many tribes before us. Some of us started as young as 13, veteran chiefs of self deprecation. Others bloomed later. Much like a military rank system, the earlier you started, the more stripes on your jacket. The variety of different substances you digested, the more stripes you had. Collecting badges of substance abuse like boy scouts.
We glorify addiction in culture. Let’s get high before we go. We want our favorite artists who spent the last decade getting clean to relapse for our self-amusement. The album will be better. Weighing whether it'd be better to overdose in the middle of a restaurant or head to the bathroom stall. Better not ruin anyone’s dinner. We read in tabloids or entertain the latest hearsay about “someone you know” that is strung out just so we can point the finger at them in shame. It absolves ourselves from our own addictions and abuse. At least I’m not that bad.
Society needs addicts. Addiction is a pillar of The American Experience. Hordes of junkies laid out among our streets, a scene of lined up tents and forgotten names, the fruits of a failed system with no intention of solving it. Humans looked at as if nothing more than a financial gain for police arrests, prison cells, rehab centers, pharmaceutical companies, doctors, and hospitals across America. We’re a billion dollar industry.
Today, consumerism sweeps us off our feet and then gaslights us to stay.
For me, I was lucky enough to have my son. I was lucky enough to have the friends I have. A reason to keep living, a sense of self. It was the faintest light in the distance that allowed me to take control of my impulses. I remember what my first overdose was like: the ambulance rushing me to the hospital, the feeling of life fleeting away. The only thing an addict truly loves about drugs is the numbness. The feeling of nothing. The act of not existing for 20 minutes. Once all the tubes and IV start getting hooked up, you'd be surprised how fast you wake up. I spent a week on the 7th floor. Screams of the psych patients echoing through the halls. The older gentleman beside me passed away in the middle of the night. Still, the worst part was not knowing how to flip through the channels on the bedside tv. For six days, I was forced to learn everything about every serial killer that walked the earth. After all that, it still took me one more overdose. One more stomach surgery. And five more years to get clean.
When I reflect on the last 10 years, I think to myself, “what would my son think seeing me like this?” For some, it’s a harsh experience that drives them to make a change. For others, it could be finally following through with your New Year's resolution. I believe we all suffer from a form of addiction and while all of them may not be as life threatening, they can consume our lives. Whether you’re binging Netflix, fighting over Stanley Cup mugs, doom scrolling through the superficial lives of strangers, or whatever the case may be, everytime you're bored you'll find something to get you high.
Justyn Olivarez is a rapper based in Northeast Ohio. Keep up with the artist here.
