since i've been home all these friends i forgot i had have been calling me. i usually feel pretty friendless because i'm such a recluse, but about 9 different people have called to see how i was doing. it made me feel good.

i talked to c., he tried to quit but apparently he "slipped" last night. i was a little disappointed but mostly just insanely jealous. he's back in my old life with my old ritual. and i miss him a lot too. just what i need is a dirty old man with a cowboy accent and a needle full of dope for my arm. oh my fucking god, what am i talking about. i'm completely insane. also, i was listening to this american life today with my parents. it was a show i've heard before, about these two sisters who ran away when they were 14 and lived on the streets. one of them was talking about san francisco, and said, "that's when we started doing dope" and this violent chill went through my entire body. that word will never sound the same again. just as it leaves my lips it will never quite escape...

i was thinking about my former obsession with heroin. i'm kind of obsessed now cause i went and got addicted to it. but before i got addicted, i was obsessed in a different way. it had something to do with the concept of pure pleasure. heroin addicts, to me, were people who had dedicated their lives to the search for pure pleasure. that fascinated me. i always liked acid more, drugs that made you think about interesting things, enrich your life, etc. heroin was fun but it was more the idea of it, the idea of other people who did it...

i never felt that i was someone who was really into pure pleasure, i like complexity more, complicated thoughts and patterns. not just this boring pleasure that's the same every time and doesn't do anything interesting. i liked constructing ideas about heroin more than i liked it for itself.

but i do have a thing for rituals, and once it became a ritual i was in love with everything about it. ritual. reward. repetition. release. but still... pleasure... what could be more honest and true than saying, to hell with everything, why not just do what feels the best. people who dedicate their lives to a feeling. so strange. i still don't think i'm one of those people, but i'm starting to doubt myself. i've always liked things that were really fucking strong, things that take you over and you surrender. heavy things. heroin is a heavy feeling, it's kind of like being hit by a train or an ocean.

�One reason people become junkies is to find some compelling way of arranging their lives on an hour-to-hour basis.�

�addiction is essentially nostalgic, which ought to tarnish the luster of nostalgia as much as that of addiction.�

�Addiction can show us what is deeply suspect about nostalgia. That drive to return to the past isn�t an innocent one. It�s about stopping your passage to the future, it�s a symptom of fear of death, and the love of predictable experience. And the love of predictable experience, not the drug itself, is the major damage done to heroin users.�

-ann marlowe