Met Mad Men

The interstate spread out before us as we sped past swamp land and tree line. I attempted to share my irrational nervousness at the sight of a particularly bushy tree line with my companion of just a few hours. No response, tough crowd. Unnerved, I sighed and pulled another swig from the cheapest, largest volume vodka I could afford. My battle against withdrawal symptoms was a desperate one at this point. My body's ability to tolerate alcohol intoxication was becoming a problem of large magnitude and I often found myself barely fighting off withdrawals. I just couldn't drink the shit fast enough. “So far so good though” I thought, “as long as I keep sipping, I'm going to be fine”.

We were both indulging in the drugs we had left, taking intermittent scalp tingling hits from the pipe interchangeably. I offered him a cup of my vodka. He passed me the pipe with one hand, grabbed the cup with the other and chugged. He held one hand on the steering wheel again, speeding down the interstate. I turned the music up and leaned a little further back in my seat, relieved.

“Now he'll talk”, I thought – as I offered him his third refilled cup of vodka.

Silence was something I feared, something that made me nervous in the characters I met. I wasn't able to read someone who refused to engage with me. It didn't often bode well, and I did my best to continue the engagement that I had fostered between us with continued offerings of cheap vodka.

I was doing my best to keep my rate of consumption up, tilting the unwieldy and large half gallon bottle to my lips. Up and down it went. From nestled between my feet on the floor mat of the passenger seat, to the lips that could barely move without quivering, and arm that shook with each exertion.

I felt fucking terrible. A constant feeling of a burning, acidic hole in my stomach, nausea lying dormant in my throat. Thirst, and the knowledge that I had no time to drink anything less than pure vodka – lest I become a quivering, sweaty shitting mess of incapacitation. There was no escape. No matter how much I drank. Only the promise of still worse symptoms if I drank too slowly.

“Bro, you smell like shit”

“I do?”

“Yeah man, I think it's coming from you”

“What does it smell like?”

“Piss, or shit. I don't know but it's awful – smell your pants”

I grabbed a bit of the fabric of the crotch of my pants so I didn't look like I was blowing myself. I brought it towards my face and dropped my head a little bit while trying not to fucking puke all over myself. I was two hundred and sixty-five pounds of fat body and my gut jabbed into my organs nauseatingly, and painfully as I did so.

I was greeted by a smell that I could not process. To this day, I don't know why. Whatever he smelled that day, I could not. Somehow, this was more terrifying than the alternative.

I apologized, feeling a combustible mixture of outraged indignation and utter humiliation. I told him that I would change clothes and shower once we arrived. I had been very strung out many times before this point, but I always made a gargantuan effort to maintain appearances. This time, I had failed.

My facade of functionality, my romanticized strung-out-addict chic hadn't kept up. In a fit of vanity, I pulled the sun visor down and looked into my reflection. A metric ton of pomade in my sweat congealed hair caused dripping sweat to stain white against my forehead. My cheeks were red and puffy, dark circles lined my eyes. Consoling my shattered pride was pointless. With the desperation of a drowning man I realized there was nothing left to hold on to.

I could not help myself. I continued to make repeated attempts to smell my pants. Desperate to share in the sensory experience that had upended my last molecule of dignity. Either my senses were in a state of disarray due to withdrawal, or the circulating air made it difficult for me to smell anything. I took his word for it, and then contemplated that he could be lying. During the ruminative internal live fire thought exercise that ensued – I pondered – and then quickly discarded the thought, remembering how little I had taken care of myself in the preceding weeks.

I could not lean my head down to smell again. I was going to hurl. Swallowing as vigorously as I could, the sweat poured down my face now in earnest as I narrowly avoided my stomach's attempt to refuse the alcohol I needed to survive. I wiped the latest deposit of off-white sweat from my brow, wiping it on my pants.

“Fuck it”.

Reaching between my legs I mustered what was left of my forearm strength, opened my shaking lips, and took another long pull of the bottle.