By Patrick La Roque
I took numerous drugs when I was younger. I’m not bragging. Times were different, the risks were known but more foolishly dismissed. Plus, I was in a band (s), I’d read Huxley and Baudelaire, and various books on tribal rituals typically involving vast amounts of peyote or mushrooms. Both were eventually on the menu. I naively considered myself an explorer, buying into the myth of artist as wildling, forced to the dark, and necessary, outskirts of humanity. I was a dumb kid. I was invincible.
Most of us made it through unscathed—but most isn’t all. We saw one friend sink into addiction, step by fateful step. We heard the empty promises, and the pleas for cash, just this once, I swear, last time… until nothing was left but a shadow.
Two months ago, I started taking medication to help with long-standing sleep issues. It worked. I even wrote about this glowingly on my blog, waxing poetic about “finding myself” again. But recently, its effects changed. Something was off. So I stopped.
I’d never experienced withdrawal. Despite all the junk I’d pumped into myself for years, my body had never needed any substance to the point of becoming sick once deprived. This week, it did. The medication doesn’t cause addiction, it’s not an opioid, and you don’t find yourself craving it. But clearly, the body reacts when it no longer gets its daily dose. This happens with coffee, so I wasn’t all that surprised. But it took two days for these symptoms to subside, and for me to feel quasi-normal again. Two days of chills and weird headaches and fog and jitters and heart palpitations. Enough to cause concern and start questioning where you’re headed.
Never again.
So this was an odd week to start a new project, but I’m grateful. Because photography is, I think, a form of mind-wandering for me. It’s a physical release valve, very close to the act of daydreaming.
Here’s to small (but essential) moments of wanderlust.
P.S The grid doesn’t allow a 4:5 ratio: click on the images for their actual frame.
