Category: music

Mike Patton: Maestro del Differente

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You want to get weird? I’m not talking about the weird music our aunts and uncles might chuckle at or say, “Hey, that’s kinda neat-o.” I’m talking about a strain so close to normal that they might be a little concerned about our mental health when they hear it. “If you think that’s quality music, then I’m probably going to have to edit my perception of you.” I’m talking about a definition of different carved out in a band called Mr. Bungle, then chiseled into with Fantômas, and ultimately destroyed and reconstructed in a project called Moonchild. If you don’t know who I’m talking about, let me introduce you to the outlandish innovations of a bizarre brainchild named Mike Patton.  “Isn’t he a one-hit wonder?” a friend of mine asked, decades after Mike Patton became Mike Patton. “Isn’t he the “It’s it what is it?” guy?” I was so stunned that I couldn’t think up an appropriate term for cluelessness. Then, VH1 went ahead and confirmed his uninformed characterization, by listing the band Patton fronted, Faith No More as one of their one-hit wonders of the 80s. I knew most didn’t follow the career of Mike Patton as much as I had, but I was stunned to learn how even those with purported knowledge in the industry could dismiss him in such a manner. I had to adjust my idealistic vision of the world to reconcile it with the reality that if Billboard is your primary resource, Mike Patton and Faith No More were one-hit wonders. To those of us who live in the outer layer, seeking the sometimes freakishly different, “It’s it what is it?” or the single Epic, was only the beginning.  Mike Patton discovered he had a talent at a young age, he could mimic bird calls. He found that he could also perform some odd vocal exercises on a flexi disc that his parents gave him. The idea that he could do that probably didn’t separate him much from the four-to-five billion on the planet at the time, and I only include that note to suggest that Mike Patton probably didn’t even know how talented he was at the time either.  Yet, the young Mike Patton knew he loved music. He loved it so much that he and his buddies in school, including Trey Spruance and Trevor Dunn, decided to form a band they called Mr. Bungle. They were all around fifteen at the time, and anyone who listens to their early self-produced demos, Bowel of Chiley (1987) and The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny(1986) can hear how young and inexperienced they were. These demos were a chaotic blend of metal, funk, and juvenile humor. It’s so chaotic that it’s as difficult to categorize as it is to listen to, but suffice it to say whatever general definition we might have of traditional music, the music found on those demos is likely the opposite.   While devoting himself to Mr. Bungle, and studying English literature at Humboldt State University, Patton worked at a local record store, immersing himself in everything from punk to classical. He obviously kept himself busy during this period, and we can only guess that he was probably as surprised as anyone else when, in 1988, a man named Jim Martin invited Patton to audition for the role of lead singer in Martin’s band Faith No More, after seeing Patton perform in a local gig as the lead singer of Mr. Bungle. Patton won the job after displaying his raw energy and his vocal range for the band.  If this were one of those always disappointing biodocs, the moviemakers would depict Martin and the other members of Faith No More as being blown away by Patton’s audition, and they would say something like, “This is obviously the man to lead us into the 90s.” I understand that these movies are often constrained by formulas and time constraints, and they often take shortcuts just to get a point across. I was all prepared to dispel that movie trope by writing that while the members of the band, their management, and the execs thought his audition was great, they heard the demos, and they didn’t think his talent would translate to Faith No More’s furthered success. It turns out, they were so blown away by the talent he displayed in that audition that they did consider him the man to lead them into the 90s. After hearing Mr. Bungle’s early demos, firsthand, all I can say is that must’ve been one hell of an audition. 
Mike Patton and Jim Martin
When he first “discovered” Patton, I imagine Martin returned to his FNM bandmates and said, “I found the guy!” and he handed them the demos. As musicians themselves, I imagine they heard Patton’s talent, but they couldn’t reconcile it with Faith No More’s sound and image, until he auditioned for them. Again, that must’ve been one hell of an audition to blow them away like that.   When Patton joined FNM, the music for The Real Thing (1989) was 80-90% written, primarily by keyboardist Roddy Bottum, guitarist Jim Martin, bassist Billy Gould, and drummer Mike Bordin, but Patton wrote all of the lyrics for the original tracks on what happened to be Faith No More’s third album, often crafting those lyrics quickly to fit pre-existing music. Patton contributed vocal melodies and arrangements, that ended up shaping the songs’ final sound. Patton’s contributions transformed the album, and some suggest his input proved instrumental in this album’s eventual success.  As popular as FNM’s The Real Thing proved, there’s evidence to suggest that at least some of Patton’s motivations for joining this Epic band was to expand and amplify his beloved Bungle’s reach. If we stop right here, we all have to thank Jim Martin for taking a chance on this nineteen-to-twenty-year-old singer, because at the time, Mr. Bungle was nothing more than a local act in Eureka, California. They had a couple of almost unlistenable self-produced demos to their name, but how many starving artists had that in late-80s California? How many of those same starving artists dreamed of Billboard Top 100 hits, stardom, and vast amounts of money to follow? Anyone who says this is what motivated Mike Patton doesn’t know his ethos or his outlook, yet he was quite proud of what he and his Bungle bros created, and he wanted us all to hear it. In a 1992 Kerrang! interview, Patton admitted he initially viewed Faith No More as a “means to an end,” hoping their success would open doors for Mr. Bungle. As evidence of that, Patton wore a Mr. Bungle T-shirt in the video for Epic, and he handed a Bungle demo to Faith No More’s label, which led to Warner Bros signing Mr. Bungle to a deal in 1989. Again, those of us who heard those demos, in their raw form, would have a tough time believing Warner Brothers would’ve signed Mr. Bungle if Patton didn’t have some standing as the frontman for Faith No More.  This isn’t to suggest that Mike Patton didn’t devote himself to Faith No More, as he devoted an overwhelming amount of his time and energy to the band during their recording and touring of The Real Thing and Angel Dust (1992). He wrote the lyrics and melodies for both albums, toured extensively (over 200 shows for The Real Thing alone), and handled media duties. Mr. Bungle, meanwhile, was more of a side project during this period. Their self-titled debut (1991) was recorded in gaps between Faith No More’s schedule, with Patton contributing vocals, lyrics, and some production alongside bandmates Trey Spruance and Trevor Dunn.  In 1995, Mike Patton basically proved that a man could toggle between two bands and produce two great albums for each outfit. He played a pivotal role in both Faith No More’s King for a Day and Mr. Bungle’s Disco Volante. Patton wasn’t the first to play in two bands at once, by any means, but it wasn’t commonly done in this era. He stated that his daily routine consisted of recording King for a Day at Bearsville Studios, during the day, then driving down to record Disco Volante late into the night and repeating the same process the next day. “It was insane,” he told the Alternative Press in a 1996 interview. He admitted he barely slept while juggling both bands’ demands.  Patton never claimed to be a trailblazer in this regard, but he’s acknowledged the strain. In a 2001 Kerrang! interview, he called 1995 “a blur,” saying Mr. Bungle was his “heart” while Faith No More paid the bills. If you haven’t heard him interviewed, this is Mike Patton. He is a humble man who often downplays moments the rest of us consider groundbreaking. King for a Day was another great FNM album, not as good as Angel Dust, but better than The Real Thing, in my humble estimation. Disco Volante was, and is, an incredible album that any serious artist would consider a career achievement, better than the self-titled disc but not as great as California. Most Bungle fans disagree on the latter. After spreading himself so thin in 1995, Patton went and got bored after Faith No More’s 1998 breakup, which the band “officially” stated was due to the fact that Faith No More had run its course creatively. Anyone who thinks that Patton would devote himself entirely to Mr. Bungle at this point just isn’t following along. He gets so bored that he ventures out and creates other artistic enterprises that take that definition of weird out to “Here, there be Dragons” locations on the map. He takes it to the ‘if you think Faith No More was outlandish in places, you should check out Mr. Bungle, and if you think Mr. Bungle stretches the boundaries of genre, you should check out a band he created called Fantômas.’ Fantômas became Patton’s new passion project while devoting an overwhelming amount of his time to what I consider the Mr. Bungle masterpiece 1999’s California. We write all of this, and we don’t even get to Patton’s role as the lead vocalist in the five albums of Tomahawk, and then there’s his varying roles in the bands Peeping Tom, Dead Cross, Lovage, and the killer role he played in one of The Dillinger Escape Plan’s albums. He has two proper solo albums, two works with Kaada, various film scores, and over 60 collaborative efforts, various ensembles, and guest appearances on other artists’ albums, including John Zorn and Björk. The overall brilliant catalog this “one-hit wonder” has amassed can be so overwhelming to the uninitiated that they may not even know where to start. 1989’s The Real Thing might, in fact, be the place to start, but I am so far past that starting point that I can’t even see it any more. That’s the problem with true fans of artists, they’ve listened to the artist for so long that they don’t know where to tell you where to start.  Those who like Mike Patton, but don’t have an unusual, almost concerning adoration of him, tell me that Faith No More’s Angel Dust is probably the best starting point, as they say it’s probably the best, most mainstream album he took part in. If that’s the case, I would add Mr. Bungle’s California, Tomahawk Mit Gas, and Patton’s work with the X-Ecutioners as the second class of the Mike Patton beginner’s course. If you make it past that point, and you might not, I would submit Tomahawk’s Anonymous, Fantômas’s Suspended Animation, and Disco Volante as great second-level albums. A trend in Patton’s music I’ve noted, is the 2nd album trend. The first albums are great, but they seem to set a template from which to explore the dynamic further, and Patton and his various crews seem to peak with the ideas germinating around in their heads concerning what more can be done with this band. He helps build on the base idea of that first album, and they usually create something of a creative peak with those second albums. Don’t get me wrong, I love the third albums, as in King for a Day, Suspended Animation and Anonymous, and as I wrote I think California is better than Disco Volante, but the second album peak seems to be a standard for most of Patton’s ventures. (Most true Bungle fans would say Disco Volante is superior to California.)  I imagine those with some authority in the conventional music world might begrudgingly admit that they once considered Mike Patton one of the most talented singers in rock music. They probably all acknowledged that he possessed one of the most versatile and dynamic voices in modern music, characterized by an extraordinary vocal range, stylistic adaptability, and emotive depth. His voice spans six octaves, reportedly from E1 to E7, though some sources conservatively estimate around five octaves (approximately C2 to C7). This range allows him to seamlessly shift from guttural growls and primal screams to operatic falsettos and silky crooning, often within a single song. The experts who admitted all that might also add, “At some point, it didn’t matter how talented he was, because he wasted that incredible voice on music so abrasive that he basically alienated so many of us. In 1995, we all loved the underappreciated King for a Day, but when he hit us with Disco Volante, we shook our heads trying to figure out what he was doing. Most of us dismissed the initial Bungle album a one-off side project, then he doubled down with an even weirder album, and he topped it all off with an album we considered career suicide with the vocal experiments on Adult Themes for Voice (1996). That led us to dismiss him, because we realized he had no interest in becoming a marketable talent.”  If you’ve read the writings of mainstream rock critics for as long as I have, you know that they have a difficult time understanding why someone would pick up a pencil and musical instrument and not try to do everything they could to sound like Springsteen, Dylan, or Joey Ramone. They don’t understand why someone would use vocal effects, as opposed to writing meaningful and important social commentary to help us reshape our world. We could excuse this with the idea that musical tastes are relative, but their blanket dismissal of anything different led me to start reading periodicals like Alternative Press and Decibel, who recognized what artists like Patton were trying to do. They praised Patton for his risk-taking, and they hailed his fearless innovation. As for the “marketable talent” comments we’ve heard, some fans and critics note that while he abandoned whatever mainstream potential awaited him, Mike Patton did develop a substantial cult following with each progression into the weird, strange, and just plain different.    The next question any gifted artist must ask themselves soon after they discover they have a talent for something is what do I do with this? Patton, and Faith No More, could’ve followed up 1989’s The Real Thing with some version of The Real Thing Part Deux, and they could’ve gone onto develop a template, or a formula, in the ZZ Top, AC/DC vein. The mainstream music critics often eat up commodification of a brand as a cash grab. Mike Patton, and all of the musicians he chose to surround himself with in his numerous ventures, could’ve made a whole lot of money, enjoyed all the trappings of fame as rock stars. We can saw all we want about artistic integrity and all that, but it can’t be easy to turn away from the prospect of making truckloads of money. Contrary to what detractors say, money and fame can bring a us whole lot of happiness … if we love what we’re doing. If Mike Patton, and all of the musicians he chose to surround himself with in his numerous ventures, followed the formula of “building trust” with listeners, they would’ve been so bored and unsatisfied artistically. Patton obviously chose to use whatever gifts and talent he had to confound us and obliterate our boundaries in his pursuit of his version of artistic purity, and he chose projects and players who shared his philosophy. If the young Patton had a career path, or a place he “wanted to be in twenty years,” he obviously grew so bored with the “current” direction of his career so many times that he needed to do something decidedly different and out of his comfort zone so often that I don’t think he has any comfort zones left to destroy.

KISS: Keep it Simple, and Silly!

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“If you listen to KISS, you’re stupid!” said an anonymous poster on a message board.

I’ve been through my Michael Jackson phases, KISS phases, Radiohead phases, King Crimson, Frank Zappa, Beatles, and too many others to list here. “Did you say you went through a KISS phase? You like KISS?” Sure, back when I was young, and all I wanted to hear were fun, silly, and artists who kept it simple. I grew out of them, to some degree, but I still listen to them every once in a while. And what’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with keeping it simple and silly, anyway? It’s fun.  

There are no reported connections between the band members choosing the name, KISS, and the acronym, the latter of which many state stands for Keep It Simple, Stupid, but has any rock band ever embodied that acronym better than KISS? 

The brief history of the acronym KISS is that it was developed by a lead naval engineer who instructed his team of engineers to design aircraft to keep the designs so simple that they could be repaired quickly on the battlefield. 

A Brief History of KISS 

Wicked Lester was the band Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley belonged in shortly before they decided to form their own band. Wicked Lester, according to Stanley and Simmons, was all over the map. I’ve never heard the music on Wicked Lester’s lone album, but those songs apparently involved keyboards and a flute. The two of them confessed that they didn’t know who they were back then, and they didn’t know what they wanted to do. They didn’t say that the music of Wicked Lester was too complicated and complex, but that was my takeaway. My takeaway is that they wanted to create a masterpiece in the manner all young artists want to create the next Dark Side of the Moon, Zoso, Sgt. Peppers, Exile on Main Street, or Aqualung. Whatever they were trying to do, they realized that it wasn’t them. They decided to tear it all down and create KISS (the acronym) tunes that young kids could enjoy and their grandparents wouldn’t find too offensive. They decided to play big songs that could be played in arenas.  

KISS ended up being the perfect band for “stupid” young, pre-teen boys who didn’t care about sophisticated complications of deep, moving music that could be defined and redefined with repeated listens. The KISS demographic, for most of my youth, was almost exclusively young and male. Some girls liked the song Beth, but they couldn’t believe the song came from KISS. (When I was young, I considered Beth a betrayal, as I considered KISS the only band that I could trust to avoid going soft. I never heard of AC/DC at that point.) KISS was fun, theatrical, arena rock that lifted you up on your feet, with a fist held high while you sang the lyrics with them. 

My neighborhood friends and I used to pretend that we were KISS-in-concert. I was The Spaceman, my best friend was The Demon, and his little brother was Catman. (Nobody wanted to be Starchild.) We would play air guitar and air drums in an area they called the basement. I would arch back like Ace did when he played his solos, because I thought that was one of the coolest things ever, and my friend waggled his tongue, spat blood, and pretended to blow fire with Gene. So, while the rest of you were listening to the important and vital music, we were having fun. 

KISS didn’t invent the terms arena rock, pomp rock, corporate rock, or anthemic songs, and the terms weren’t invented to describe them, but KISS is now one of the first bands that come to mind when we hear such terms. 

Who you Is?

KISS albums were chock full of silly, simple songs that won’t move you spiritually or cause anyone to think of the philosophy of Epicurus, but as the aphorism that some attribute to Leonardo da Vinci says, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” If you consider it a stretch to attach anything KISS did to the term sophistication, I feel you, but how much effort goes into achieving complex sophistication, and how much restraint does it require to keep it as simple as possible?

Who is the better writer William Faulkner or Ernest Hemingway? Those who love Faulkner often talk about the beautiful language he used to paint an images in the mind. “It was powerful and provocative,” they say. Few would argue that Faulkner doesn’t deserve to be considered one of our greatest writers, but there was a feeling of “could we get to the point here” when reading him. Hemingway sought to paint with an economy of words, seeking picture perfect sentences to describe and characterize in the most succinct manner possible. One, it could be said, could not wait to show us what a great writer he was, and the other restrained such impulses to make his stories more readable to a wider audience. Both might suggest the other insults his audience in relative ways, and both might say theirs is the finer artform. Both audiences would claim sophistication in their own right and the sophistry of the other.  

The point is we all know who KISS were. All we have to do is look at them to know that subtlety and sophistication were not their driving force. The point is not to denigrate KISS, but to say they put together a package far different from the one employed by a Bob Dylan or a Radiohead. The point is we know who KISS are, yet message board contributors continue to take time out of their day to remind us how awful they were. “…But I like them.” “That’s because you have such poor taste in music.”   

Why does anyone feel the need to go to a message board to inform the world how awful YOU thought KISS were? “I can’t help it, I’m just so durn sophisticated.” That’s fantastic Papa Smurf 124, but you do realize that your precious anonymity means that no one really cares what you think?  

I used to denigrate people who listened to Whitney Houston and Celine Dion, in the manner people now denigrate the average KISS fan, but I realized the market is wide enough and divergent enough to welcome all. You can be a KISS fan, a Radiohead fan, or a Mariah Carey fan and know that no one is superior or inferior. They just enjoy listening to different types of music, and why do you care so much that they do? I choose Radiohead as an example of the complete opposite of KISS, on the musical spectrum, among mainstream acts. Radiohead writes complicated structures, with deep, provocative lyrics, and I am a huge fan. The question is do they write sophisticated material for the purpose of being sophisticated, so all their fans can prove their sophistication by saying that they enjoy listening to more sophisticated music? They get it, you don’t, because you’re a KISS fan, and they’ll spit the latter in the most condescending tone possible. KISS wrote simple, party music. Everyone knows who they are. Everyone knows they were a toe-tapping, foot stomping band who rarely tried to be something they weren’t (The Elder and Carnival of Souls excepted). 

Music is the tie that binds. It can be the only thing that you and your brothers share, the reason you fall in love, and the thing that helps you make friends from such divergent backgrounds. It, more than any other artistic medium, brings us all together. There’s a little something out there for everyone. For others, and they are in the minority, it can be the great divide. 

Yesterday I Learned … VIII

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Yesterday I learned that the makers of South Park predicted that with the advent of AI a college degree in Geology might prove pointless sooner than we think. Being a paid Geologist, as with many studies in informational pursuits, will be relegated to the ash heap of history if AI proves a greater information resource than men and women pursuing answers to geological questions. “It might damage the human element of the profession as a catalog of facts,” supporters say, “but what about new discoveries and new information?” How does AI uncover new information in the field of Geology? Mathematics.

Today I learned that we discovered a planet called Neptune almost solely using mathematics. The planet Neptune is so dim that it cannot be viewed with the naked eye, so based almost solely on mathematical principles, some French guy predicted that a planet had to be acting on Uranus with a perturbing, or unsettling, force in a manner Saturn and the Sun were not. Using Isaac Newton’s laws of gravity and motion as a guide, this French guy theorized that Uranus’ orbits and movements were so irregular that there had to be a planet right … there, causing it. The ellipses in that sentence was filled with mathematical calculations and theories. That French guy was a fraction of a degree off.

I also learned that Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) has recently progressed to something called Artificial General Intelligence (A.G.I.). The difference between the two is math. Most of the research to this point has led to progressions in A.I.’s ability to solve and resolve linguistic problems. The progression into math, or more general intelligence, has excited some and put the fears in a whole lot more.

Tomorrow we’ll learn that no matter what incarnation A.I. takes, it will always require some sort of human input. We fear the extent of A.I.’s capabilities now, but we feared the extent of the internet, yesterday, and the capabilities and unforeseen consequences of fire yesteryear. The gods punished Prometheus for introducing humans to fire. Some suggest the gods feared the progression of the human, others say that that the gods feared for the human race. They didn’t think the humans were capable of understanding the consequences of playing with fire.  

Yesterday I learned that nothing is original, particularly in the arts. “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the Sun.” Ecclesiastes 1:9. So, give up on the ‘O’ word, original, they say, and strive for the ‘U’ word, unique. Today I learned that Kilmister, AKA Lemmy Kilmister, AKA Lemmy, the lead singer of Hawkwind and Motorhead passed away. Listen to his music, watch an interview with him, or read about the man. If he’s not one of the most original artists you’ve ever heard, then you know this genre far better than me. If we don’t view Lemmy as an original tomorrow, I think we’ll at least acknowledge that he definitely gave new meaning to the Oscar Wilde quote, “Be yourself, everyone else is taken.”

Yesterday I learned that “The death of a language occurs when young people, progressively refuse to speak it.” That’s so obvious that it’s hardly worth writing, but why would young people stop speaking their native tongue?” Steven Pinker writes about this as if it’s a bad thing, which it kind of is, when one puts it in the frame of a death of a language basically killing all links to a culture and the subsequent death of traditions and folklore of said culture. Today I learned that even though the Russian language is not even close to a fear of extinction, Russian parents prefer that their children learn English. They try to teach it in their home and they want it taught in their kids’ schools. These parents pursue this, according to the report, because they want more for their children. They want their children to speak a more universal language to hopefully open up more economic opportunities for them. This could include their children working in the service industry, the tourist industry, or some other industry that they hope will lead to their children an easier life than the one they had to endure. We can’t help but guess that their greatest hope/dream is that their children might find an opportunity that helps them escape Russia. Whatever the case is, they believe that their children continuing to speak something nothing but the “mother tongue” might limit their opportunities in life the way it did theirs. Tomorrow, we will see that most young people are self-serving. They might love their culture as it pertains to their love of family and the essence of their being, and they might want to continue the history and traditions of their culture, but if it does nothing more than romanticize the past, most young people will not carry the torch if it comes at the expense of what they perceive to be a path to personal gains, their personal happiness, or the intra-or-inter-personal connections they develop in life.

Yesterday I learned that one of the last individuals I’d ever expect became a drug addict. If we all sat in a room, with all those we all know and love, and someone asked who’s the least likely to become a drug addict, he probably would’ve been the last one everyone selected. When I found out he became a drug addict, I had so many questions that I couldn’t think of one. To say I was disappointed doesn’t even crack that shell. He was the apex of stability, and all that, until he hurt his back, bad, and he didn’t want to undergo surgery. He preferred to treat his near-crippling pain with painkillers. If you’ve ever been ground-bound with back pain, and it hurts to breathe, you probably have an idea what he was going through. The meds made him feel better, temporarily, and he wanted more of those “temporary” moments, until he got addicted to them. Did it alter his brain chemistry, or did he fear the return of the backpain? Regardless, he became an addict. 

Today I learned that some consider that addiction a disease. Even though the least likely I would expect became one, I cannot grasp that concept. I do not suggest those who state that are lying, excusing the behavior, or have any other ulterior motives. I also leave ample space for the idea that I don’t know what I’m talking about, because prior to this moment, I never knew anyone who suffered from any form of a drug addictions. I just don’t understand how the decision and resultant decisions to continue to take drugs can be classified a disease. Before we try a hard drug, for the first time, we know most of the stories about the harm we could do to our body, and every time thereafter, we know we’re doing greater damage. We also know that we fall prey to various addictions easily, and we know (or I know) that we could become personally, psychologically, and physiologically addicted. As John Lennon once said, “Cocaine was the first drug I ever tried where the moment after I tried it, I wondered how much more of it I could get.” 

Tomorrow, I think we’ll reread Psychology Today’s article that suggests, “There is significant evidence that addiction is a complex, cultural, social, and psychological phenomenon, as much as it is a biological phenomenon … that baffles physicians and philosophers.” Some recreational drugs provide a shot of dopamine that can lead to a restructuring of the brain. Among the many things various deleterious recreational drugs do to the brain, one thing they provide is short-term, artificial fun. They can make a trip to the grocery store fun. They, along with alcohol, can make a good time great. I have little in the way of personal experience with recreational drugs. I was never an addict, but I was a binge-drinker. As a binge drinker, I never understood responsible drinking. “You want to go out, after such a rough week at work, and drink one or two drinks and go home? That’s the exact opposite of what I want to do.” Most addictions, in my opinion, are an addiction to something else, something different than what I’m experiencing in my otherwise uninteresting and unfulfilling life. They’re an escape from the hum drum of life. Very few addicts of anything say, “I do it, because it’s fun, and I like having fun. I know sobriety, and I know it well. It’s boring.” If we had the self-control to do it just once, and no one was affected by it, we could claim no harm, no foul, but how many people have such self-control? Have you ever heard the term chasing the dragon, chasing that first high. It’s way above my pay grade to try to understand if addiction is a disease, but after seeing what happened to a friend I deemed far more capable than me, I walk away with the notion that we’re all susceptible to various forms of addiction, because, as another friend of mine once said:

“We’re all chemical.” I had no idea when she said that, but my friend was a Neurology student who specialized in Neurochemistry. *She also said it so long ago that her assessments may have aged, my remembrances of what she said could be faulty and incomplete, and I might exaggerate certain points that she hit, but this is what I remember about what she said. “We can debate the particulars of this very complex subject, and we do, and I can go into those particulars if you want, but it all boils down to that simple statement, we’re all chemical.” The two of us had a long shift before us, and I could’ve asked her for the details, but I asked her to give it to me in a nutshell. “You’ve heard the term brain chemistry, right? Those chemicals in our brain dictate mood. If your brain is not, naturally, producing enough green, you might be suffering from a chemical imbalance that affects your mood in a variety of ways both mild and severe. To relieve that malady, you seek a specialist who prescribes you a dose of green,” she said that trying hard to find colors we don’t associate with mood. “If, however, you’re not suffering from an imbalance, and you have plenty of green, and you then take a green pill, it can provide an excess of green that results in feelings of temporary euphoria. We’re all chemical. The problem with taking certain prescription and recreational drugs is that they introduce these colors, moods, and stimulants artificially. If you don’t need green, and you artificially introduce more green, you have an excess of green, and your brain stops producing green organically. The brain adjusts and sees that we’re all stocked up on green, red, yellow, or whatever color we’re talking about, so it stops producing it. As a result, the next time we take a green pill, the brain has already adjusted its production of the color, so we don’t experience an excess, and that excess produced the euphoria the first time. So, our inclination is to take more than we did the first time if we want that sense of euphoria. This is why they call it chasing the dragon, because you’re continually trying to up the dose to return to that initial feeling of euphoria. Every case is different, of course, and the amount of damage is different too, but when we stop taking the green pill, it can take a while for the brain to start producing green organically again, and that can lead to feelings of withdrawals.” 

*For anyone who is seeking a more comprehensive discussion on this topic, please visit: Psychology Today.