#54 "The Ones That Mother Gives You" April11, 2013

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When I was a teenager and everyone started experimenting with drugs, pills weren't part of the regiment. Of course there were pills circulating the subcultures since forever, but for some reason, pills weren't part of the cocktail. We were more interested in getting a couple of beers, some pot, and the occasional psychedelic. But pills didn't come until later. Prozac was brand new, Ritalin had just been introduced and Adderall wouldn't come out until 2002, the year I moved to New York. Of course there was other pills to take in the 90's, but they were a rarity until 1998; at least with my friends and I. Although, I feel like if you were doing some graphing of recreational pill use, 1998 would be a point where the graph spikes sharply. I remember my last couple years as a Phish head (yes, I am fully recovered, thankfully) the scene changed so much that it was hard to score marijuana in the lot. Even mushrooms were gone and it was all replaced by pills, predominantly Ecstasy and Molly. But there were stories of kids easting a ton of Molly at night and then chasing it with mood stabilizers in the wee hours and in the morning. That would help you with the crash. These days, the Molly culture is shadier, because the pills come in capsules filled with powder that may or may not be Molly. When two kids overdosed and died at Randall's Island last summer, they thought they had taken Molly, but probably more likely took a pill that had all sorts of crap in it including Bath Salts. I'm not saying that taking pills from strangers back in the day wasn't as sketchy, I am merely saying that these days, there are more sophisticated designer drugs out there for you to take, and a lot of them are not the highest of quality (pun intended?).
In fact, when the Silk Road was busted and shut down late last year, some people saw that as a bad, and dangerous thing. The Silk Road is an online drug store, literally. You can buy anything from Weed to Coke to Heroin to Molly. The DEA shut it down in October 2013 and arrested a couple people involved, mostly because there had been vague posts on the site about being able to buy "hits" on people from the site. That information will come out during the trial, no doubt, but in the meantime, the Silk Road was up and operational a month after it was shut down. Some people feel that buying drugs from that site is safer than buying from strangers or small-time dealers. The reason is that it is a meritocracy for drugs, meaning if you are selling some Heroin on the site and it is bad, or weak, people will complain about it and give you a bad review. It's like Amazon for the drug world. So, in this instance, the drugs you buy from it are more pure, and safer because they come with instructions, almost like a real prescription drugs. There are recommended doses, purity levels, and even a doctor available online to ask questions about the products. Of course, doing drugs is dangerous no matter what the internet says, but everyone knows that dealers on the street are cutting their drugs to get the most for the money. That goes back as far as time itself.
Kids have always experimented with drugs, whether it was booze, or drinking a bottle of cough medicine, there has always been the interest in altering one's mind state. This probably dates back to when we were still hunting and gathering and every once and a while someone would ingest something that wouldn't necessarily kill them, but make them sick and vomit and then see some crazy stuff in the form of hallucinations. From there, they would remember that plant or mushroom and it became a spiritual thing. Nowadays, it's more about having a wild night and less about getting closer to some sort of god. And now it's more about pills than ever before. You can tell just by the commercials that play during the Super Bowl. When I was a kid, the anti-drug commercials were about pot and cocaine and "Just Say No" and all that. Now, they are about knowing what's in your medicine cabinet and keeping your adult pills away from your teenagers.
Of course, not everyone wants to experiment with drugs, as the prospect of doing so is sometimes kind of scary. You see Uma Thurman overdose in "Pulp Fiction" and drugs are the last thing you want to try for the first time. But I feel like some people are inherently drawn to drugs and alcohol from some deep code hidden in the genes. That, plus an adventurous, rebellious streak. However, a lot of kids are on drugs from a young age these days because of medical conditions. Asthma, Attention Deficit Disorder, Depression, Anxiety, dietary problems, all of these are conditions where kids as young as 10 are starting to take pills on a daily basis. When you are taking pills that sometimes drastically change your bodies chemistry, every day from the time you are ten, taking a couple Molly pills when you're a teenager is going to be easy. 

#49 "Hare of the Dog" January 5, 2012

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The last post was about Thanksgiving, and not even at the restaurant. This piece was started on Easter Sunday 2011 while I was working the bar during Easter brunch behind the bar. However, this post is not about Easter; maybe next time. It started with the Easter Bunny in the suit on the left hand side of the drawing. The second bunny was the one on the far right who probably got hit by a bus, or grew up in the Proctor & Gamble factory. The former was colored in with red wine and the latter was colored in with blue ballpoint pen and bitters. Both would be eventually colored in Photoshop. Tim and I then decided that we would just do an entire piece of all different kinds of rabbits, bunnies, and hares. It took us a couple months to finish it though, so it sat around the restaurant collecting stains and going through a couple different incarnations.

The term "Hair of the Dog" is a colloquial expression in the English language predominantly used to refer to alcohol that is consumed with the aim of lessening the effects of a hangover. According to Wikipedia, the term dates back to the times of Billy Shakes and has also been recorded as being uttered in numerous countries. Of course, this method of boozing to kill a hangover seems to work for a while, although it really is just delaying the inevitable. I use this method during the weekend though, and will regularly have a Bloody Mary with brunch to help ease a particularly troublesome brain pain. When I was a kid, you couldn't pay me to eat or drink anything with tomato as it's base. But I still remember my first Bloody Mary. I was 21 years old and I was on Cape Cod visiting friends. We had gotten a room at a motel in Truro because my friends weren't allowed back in West Dennis after a rather insane summer the previous year. We went out in Provincetown the night before and had a crazy night full of booze and carrying on only to wake up groggy and hung out to dry the next morning/afternoon. We went to breakfast and my friends ordered some Bloody Marys. I expressed my disgust at the very thought of tomato-based concoctions, but when my friends' beverages appeared, they looked like the most refreshing things on the planet Earth. Salted rims, lemon wedges, supple ice cubes, and trunks of celery stalks reaching for the clear blue skies. I couldn't resist. I ordered one, and then one more, and then we were back. The rest of the day is inconsequential (although I'm sure it was pretty fun), but the thought of my first Bloody Mary will live on in my mind forever, or until I forget about it. I can't remember my first glass of milk, my first soda, my first gin and tonic. Some of these drinks have been memorable, and some hold special memories themselves, but remembering the first one is impossibly hard to place. I remember my first beer, and the first beer that actually got me intoxicated, but other than that, and the Bloody Mary, I really can't remember any of my "first drinks." Everyone has these stories about food and drink that made an impression on them at some point of their lives. I even remember the day that I actually appreciated tomatoes after an entire childhood of sticking my nose up at them. In fact, the discovery of tomatoes and Bloody Marys are only a couple summers apart. These revelations of culinary discovery are strange and interesting because they show you that even something as remedial as eating, which for so much of human history has been simply to survive, can be wondrous and exciting. I am talking about a breakfast beverage, and not even a particularly exciting one, and yet it had this profound effect on my memory. Sometimes, I guess, it's not about what you are eating or drinking, but when, where and why that really makes the event meaningful to your life. Think about the first guy that ate an oyster and didn't die. What a treat! And the gal who ate the first batch of non-poisonous mushrooms. Scary and life altering! I bet you those people remember the exact day that they discovered these culinary delights and they probably invited their friends back for seconds.