how does it feel … to be without a home … a complete unknown … like a rolling stone ???

“… but every junkie’s like a settin’ sun”

they are so easy to despise … the abominable addicted … cocaine, crack, crystal meth, heroin …

walk down the right street and they are impossible to avoid … accumulating like garbage in the gutters of the city … walking skeletons, dead eyes … desperate, degenerate and depraved … one after another after another …

we look at them as we would look at pigs in a pen … strange, separate, different …

avoid eye-contact … noses held high … pretend you don’t notice … careful not to touch …

’such a shame’ … ‘wasted lives’ … ‘weak and pathetic’ …

what a joke …

am i any less addicted ??? … are any of us ??? …

coffee shops are the easy example … blenz, waves, timothy’s, second cup, starbucks … timmy ho’s … how many canadian street corners spew legal speed to the desperate masses … i can’t work until i have had my morning coffee … can you ???

‘i’m not addicted’ you say … oh yeah ??? … if you are not addicted, i challenge you to give up television for a month … no ??? … ‘Why would i?’ … you say … ‘i like tv’ … hmmmmm …

one step further … i challenge you to go as long as you can buying nothing except what is absolutely required to survive … how long could you, could i, last before we indulge a desire … before we walk past something in a store and just HAVE to have it … how long ??? … a week ??? … a month ??? … what a pitiful joke we are … weak and pathetic …

coffee, television, consumption … what about food ??? … sex ??? … celebrity culture ??? … vanity ??? … we are all addicts …

you say ‘oh, that’s different’ …

but is it ??? …

how is it different ??? …

we feel a ‘need’ … by fulfilling it we feel a temporary, pleasurable physical and emotional sensation … that’s all it is, isn’t it, when you have a cheap orgasm with somebody you barely know, when you tune into grey’s anatomy, when you buy those jeans … temporary physical thrills caused by a sudden release of certain chemicals into certain pleasure centers in the brain … cold, hard cash for temporary highs … hmmmmmm …

you say ‘but they are destroying their bodies’ … and that fast food run you make every other day isn’t ??? … you who sit in front of the television for hours every night, passively entertained while your brain … your ambition … your imagination … slowly rots and dies … do you know how overweight our culture is ??? … best not to mention the emotional toll taken on insecure teenagers and adults alike by celebrity culture … and the desire to be beautiful … wasted lives …

‘oh, but what they are doing is just morally wrong, drugs are illegal after all’ … laws set by the powerful in their best interests … have you ever heard of coltan ??? … coltan is a wondrous mineral that makes things like YOUR cellphone possible … most of the world’s coltan comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo … remember the Congo ??? … one of the poorest nations on earth … the bloodiest war since WWII … still raging on behalf of our lust for technology and gold and diamonds … war funded by wealthy foreigners, fought by cocaine addicted 12 year olds with ak47’s … morally wrong ??? … such a shame …

‘but i NEED my cellphone’ … need ??? … need ??? … hmmmmmm

there is one difference i will acknowledge … the man strung out on crack cocaine … the woman desperate to sell her body for her next meth hit … they harbor no illusions as to what they are …

can we say the same ???

we pretend to be clean while indulging our every ache and desire and ‘need’ with sugar, caffeine and prescription narcotics …

we pretend to be good while our greed and desire and apathy permits and supports unimaginable atrocities all over the world …

we pretend to be kind while pretending we don’t notice the stinking, suffering humanity crying out for help on the sidewalk under our feet … talking about meaningless rubbish on our $500 mobile phone …

yes … when it comes to hypocrisy, the ‘addicts’ and us normal people really are not the same … i am not sure, however, that this justifies our misguided moral superiority or self-righteous indignation however …

the reality is … we are all addicts …

we are addicted to ‘want’ … or rather … getting what we want …

we don’t know how lucky we are that our lives have never dropped us so low as to send us looking to relieve this want in the dark places of the world … places where the psychological imperatives we all feel; to have friends, to be accepted, to be loved … are speedily and silently perverted into overwhelming and irresistible physical needs …

because really, that is all that makes ‘them’ different … you are just as helpless in the face of your desires as they are … when they cave into their desire, at least they have the excuse that every cell of their body is screaming in agony for their addiction to be fulfilled …

what’s your excuse ???

what’s mine ???

peace and love …