Sunny Side Up

I'm trying to have a more positive attitude lately. This can be tough when you've made a big part of your personality being critical and judgy on a fairly petty level. I've been through what some people have described as a dark place, that's accurate. I can see it, feeling that I'm beginning to leave it behind, taking up a lot of my time over the last few years.
I'm working my first full time job in some time. I'm taking my medication, which helps break up the mundanity, and I think I'd have a difficult time with the work without it.
Regardless, I've got oppurtunities lying ahead if I stick with it. I could be trained as a Machinist in a years time if I work hard.
A very close friend, whose identity could be easily guessed, has been dabbling in hard drugs. I've smoked pot, eaten mushrooms, even tripped on cough syrup a couple of times. I don't personally advocate these things to anyone, it's very subjective how you respond to certain kinds of stimulation. I was smoking heaps of pot for a long time and that seemed to be at the root of a lot of my troubles, just not letting myself feel sober for good, long stretches of time, smoking before work. Hell, I had a pretty serious problem.

For long enough for it to feel like it matters, I've been consuming drugs as little as possible. Just my prescription ADHD medicine and a joint or two in the evening, with frequent, albeit brief, respites. Over the last week I've consumed some psilocybin mushrooms in varying doses. Took a little too many last monday and tripped pretty hard! I'm okay though. I've been reflecting that tripping on mushrooms, which means eating anything from 3-7 grams of the things, have treated me to a Total Perspective Vortex, in the Douglas Adams sense. Seeing where I stand, across time and space, and how in the wrong light it could be considered brief, or inconspicuous.
I'd like to be on this earth as long as I consciously can, and avoid things that might impinge on my ability to live a long, happy life. The first time I had a real mushroom trip, which was two or three years ago mind you, I reflected to my gathered friends 'Let's never smoke crack.' I also had a very vivid and wonderful dream where I got married in Las Vegas, but that's all I remember about it.
I meant it, and the significance of that decision in my mind has been especially valuable lately.
Jordan has been clean of Heroin for a week or two now. He had been regularly using opiates, crack and god knows what else with an individual he met online named Liam.

Have you seen the Jake Gyllenhall film Nightcrawler? His portrayal of sociopathy in that role captures the behaviour of this character my friend met pretty accurately. If you ever meet a person like this, get the fuck away from them and do not allow them into your life.

So,
Jordan has been hurting himself. I've felt preoccupied with this, hoping for the best but aware of the worst possibly waiting on the horizon. He's been trying to get me to try these things, and I have refused. Sometimes disguising them as jokes, but I feel like he's trying to get something out of me for himself, possibly whatever was taken from him.
For personal accounting, and external to alcohol consumption, I've only ever done Cannabis, Mushrooms, a prescription dose of Methylphenidate (Ritalin), a pair of dissociative experiences on Robitussin (don't do this, seriously. I might even do it again, but it's really stupid. Really. Kinda fun, but mostly stupid. Stupid.), not enough coke to feel anything the two times I tried it and N-Bomes.

You probably haven't heard of N-Bomes. It's a lab grown attempt at something similar to LSD. It was quite awful, and I might have died. I didn't though, and I disposed of what I had left. They were free from Liam! He was very interested in how I might've felt after taking them.

I think you can see where I'm going with this. I took a lesson from it not to indulge myself without more serious precaution (god knows if the N-Bomes did something to my brain that won't resurface for another 30-40 years) and just to steer clear of that sort of thing. Maybe some people can functionally live their lives on hard drugs, but I've seen enough to know it would be a poor choice for me to make, and it consistently seems to damage or destroy people. No needles, nothing grown in a lab, just light sprinklings of things that have always grown. Cocaine, put your hand down. Ritalin, you get an A+.

I'm trying to make some new old friends, considering that I've had a distant, rough patch with a group of guys that I hung out with regularly a few years ago, and I have a hard time connecting with people the way I did when I was younger, I'd like to see if I can be a part of that circle again. What I need to know is if those bridges are burnt and always will be, or if they simply need some maintenance that's been neglected for a few years, on both sides. I've done some crappy stuff, some crappy stuff has been done to me, it's time to see if I'm able to put things behind me and grow up.

It's almost like I've been living a life similar to how I did when I was 16-19. Just hangin with Jordan and ignoring the world. But it requires this negative outlook that I think I recycle to let bad shit happen in my life. 'He got his, but I'll get mine'. A very back and forth, cyclical existence that refuses to plan or acknowledge potential adversity, just a hope that the power in the basement won't go out and mom paid for the internet connection. I swear I'm speaking figuratively, I only ever used the basement to hide my Wii.

Having written this, I feel a bit better. I'm still concerned for Jordan, but I think I've given myself a short leash to know other people while essentially taking care of him for awhile, and I'm tired of it. It's damaged my relationships. I care about my friend, and I don't want to see him get hurt, but he's old enough that I can't be obligated to protect him. When I was a teenager, Jordan saved me from being that much nastier, that much more dangerous. I could have made a better friend, but he helped me through a really tough time in my life so I've felt like I owe him something intangible, and in offering me the experiences of crack cocaine and heroin I believe he was hoping I'd feel like I could pay him back, by entering the vortex his life had turned into like the dumb things we used to do as teens. That might be a false equivalency, but he's always been pushy about trying stupid things. Ironically, my years of experience knowing how to resist his pull possibly saved me from doing something that could have caved in my life.

I'm going to pursue talking to a professional, like a therapist or whatever, not a whore. Belleville whores are brittle, and rugged. Not that I'd know. I wouldn't, but they have that really Jeep-like look to them. Just like a frightened machine. I think I'm a bit stressed, and though I have faith I can deal in the lonesome way I have for the last couple of years, I'd rather delegate my problems and achieve some balance.

I want to keep this job that I miraculously like and seem to be well suited to, lose some weight and just have a great summer. And I want to buy myself a nice hat.