For me, and the existential angst of my teenage years, I was really getting hooked on the aesthetic appeal of just so many of these heroes. This mass of characters that just seem like I’m walking in line with, like they’re my friends. That’s part of what’s tricky. It’s hard to listen to music when you get clean because it just brings up all of that stuff. Like, I want to be the fucking cool guy. You romanticize it. And a series of platitudes certainly don’t feel very romantic by comparison. If you have the sort of makeup that leads you to want to shoot up while listening to Lou Reed in the first place, “one day at a time” feels like the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard in my life as a solution to my fucking problem.
I think it was the hard drugs that really took it to another level. The full-blown addiction. I remember making a very clear decision when I threw in the towel on life. I made an active choice to walk away and be like, listen this is the fucking truth, it’s the belly of the beast. It’s not about dancing on tables, this is about hanging out with one-legged Tony who has a colostomy bag in his fucking project apartment with the little tiny roaches crawling down the wall. You know, passing the pipe and going in the bathroom to shoot heroin with the girls who are turning tricks and luckily I have residuals.
I think I was sort of like, “What is this about? Fame? Why is that the big end in life?” To be like, “Let me borrow your dress so I can go to your big movie premiere so you can take my picture and then maybe you’ll give me a job if I’m skinny enough.” Fuck you. I didn’t want to do it. There’s no there there.
So once that happened is when it really got bad. I made the decision that the best way to get rid of my heroin problem was through crack.
I spent so many years being like, I hate myself and I want to die, that like, I’m going to fucking die, I might as well live a little. I just did so much of that thinking that I’m just relieved now.
The first bunch of years are so just really brutal. I hated myself a lot. My first few years of being clean and functioning, I was just so angry. Like, what the fuck do you mean I have to make my own bed? These basic things that nobody taught me. What do you mean I’ve got to get there on time?
You have to constantly monitor yourself. “All right, you’re doing a good job. You’re doing all right. Listen, you brushed your teeth at night too, this is a fucking epic day.”
Marc
People who don’t have the bug, who don’t have the hungry animal inside of them that is never sated, never fed, that demands that you feed it, with the idea that you’re going to feel whole and better, there’s just no end to that. If you’ve never had the feeling where your brain locks in on something so hard, whether it’s drugs or food or gambling or sex, there is a trigger within people that have addiction where it’s like, before you get it, all you can think about is getting it and your brain then locks in on the obsession. Once you get a taste of whatever it is, that fucking animal will not stop eating. It’s baffling. You can’t explain it to somebody who doesn’t have it.
But a lot of people have it.
ROB DELANEY
I can name a few works of art that do effectively communicate it kind of well. I think, honest to God and it’s going to sound cheesy, but the film Trainspotting has elements of it that show the horror of it. That movie Requiem for a Dream, I think when it gets really dark, addresses it.
One of the best ones, and I feel like such a dork for saying this, is in the Lord of the Rings movie when the Gollum thing splits into two pieces and argues with himself and one of them is trying to rip it apart. That struck home for me because I felt like I had a physical, alive monster with a voice and feelings and all that shit that lived inside. My rib cage was like a jail cell and it was shaking, rattling at the bars, just saying, “Give me, give me, give me,” and it’s maddening. That is what it feels like.
I don’t feel guilty now if I feel like, “Oh, I’d like to be really high right now,” or whatever. I don’t feel bad about that, I just kind of let that thought go.
It feels like a chemical equation is being completed. I’m a percentage of what I could be, but add drugs or alcohol, now I’m 100 percent and let’s fucking roll. Introduce it and then I’m like, “Here I am.” I’m not myself until you put drugs or alcohol into me.
Marc
I think a lot of what I felt when I used drugs is that it made me excited. It turned off the “I’m an idiot,” or “I’m fucked,” or “I don’t want to go out,” or “I don’t want to do this.” It was actually relaxing. I did a lot of coke and it would actually have a calming effect on me to some degree. I’m already intense.
What I started to realize, and this is with depression as well, is that at some point you’re going to have to figure out that addiction is a disease and it has a lot of effects. If you feel like you have that, I found it’s best to just look at that as its own sickness and some of the symptoms are depression, self-centeredness, complete lack of empathy, or too much empathy. Basically anything in your personality that drives you to say, “I got to get high. I got to eat. I got to go lose all my money. I got to fuck everything.”
Anything where the voice inside of you says, “The only way I can feel better is by doing that,” introduce yourself to your sickness because that’s your guy.
MENTAL HEALTH
“The Wound Is Still There”
It seems there are people who talk about mental health and there are people who really don’t talk about it at all. I’m a talker. Or at least I was. I’m not as much as I used to be, which I can see only as an indication that I am getting better. My mental health when I started the podcast was probably the worst it’s been my entire life. Some of my feelings were justified; deeper issues exacerbated some of them. There was no doubt I was in psychological and emotional trouble. It was a dark time. I was at the edge of who I thought I was. Nothing was working out and I couldn’t see a way out of it.
I’ve been to therapy for long periods of time at different points in my life, different cities, and different therapists. My experiences have been pretty good. I can look back and say I learned something from all of my therapists and some of them got me through bad times. You pay them to listen, to be there for you. Generally, at the very least, they do that. They hold your feet to your own fire if they are worth their salt.
I became aware that I had anger issues, food issues, substance abuse issues, intimacy issues, self-esteem issues, and an anxiety problem. I was selfish, self-involved, narcissistic at times, emotionally abusive, and full of dread.
I was also smart, funny, and charming. When those are loaded up with issues, it’s a pretty good package. It’s a living. It was who I was and who I still am.