An Addictive Drug

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• December 2, 2018

I’d be quick to defend marijuana over alcohol.  Alcohol is a much more toxic drug, responsible for an alarming amount of deaths while pot is more responsible of people not leaving their houses to watch Netflix and eat ice cream and while the latter is lazy, it’s certainly better than delirium tremens.

The government is currently studying the medical benefits of psilocybin for PTSD and anxiety.  Psilocybin mushrooms are of course your psychedelic mushrooms.  While I’d give anyone a warning when fucking with hallucinogens, mushrooms, LSD, and if not especially DMT, I’d still recommend them.  They also have not killed anyone.  In fact, your biggest risk is having a bad trip.  It seems to me people are more afraid of themselves than the drug itself.  I’m not saying that’s not a legitimate reason to avoid the psychedelics section, because chances are they are going to reach into places of your mind that you both wanted and didn’t want to see or feel, but either way, it may surprise you what’s there.

But this is not about digestible drugs.  And it’s not about love.  Though I’d hardly consider love a drug as much as it’s some form of totally insanity.  It’s not a word you’ll hear me use frequently, as I respect the sanctity of the notion.  Because while my romances didn’t end in companionship, I still regard falling in love like the time I saw humpback whales breaching at Gilgo Beach on Long Island— I knew for a fact they were out there and existed, but I didn’t think I would see it!  I can’t believe it’s happening to me!

It’s Hope that’s an addictive and dangerous drug.  Love can be an ingredient of hope, but hope is what keeps you onward.  Keeps you coming back.  Back to that lover.  Back to that stage.  Back to the start.

This blog exists because of hope.  I open a notebook to write because I love to write— writing brings me happiness.  It’s hope, however, that is the driver when it comes to heading to a comedy club.  Hope that returns me to stage— hope that I’ll get better, not stay the same, and hope that the next step is one I am able to climb— hope that the feeling, the feeling that I love this doesn’t go away.  The hope that the feeling will sustain, or least return, even when it feels it’s going away.

I am not afraid of being poor.  Not afraid of being alone.  Not afraid of dying, in the definite state, though I do fear suffering.  It’s these qualities that makes me a peculiar if not dangerous person.  I’m not so easily impressed.  I feel bad for people without a passion.  Without a pure love for something, an idea, a dream, a person.  Adding hope to love is like watching a plant bloom in a time lapse.  The feeling is amplified.  Love exists just as well without hope but hope magnifies it to a feeling that makes life itself worth it.

Hope gets me through depressions.

Hope is a damned if you do, damned if you don’t motivator.

Hope comes with a side of fear. Like the force between an electron and proton, they fuse together naturally.  And that’s what makes hope so addictive.  Because it eases the fear.  Because it turns the fear into something that radiates deep inside.  Because it makes the fear not matter, which renders the fear powerless.  Though this, this, is a mere illusion.  The fear always exists.  Once the fear is there, it doesn’t go away.  Now you have the gift of euphoria and dread: a toxic relationship.

No one would credit me an optimist, and yet, I am a hopeful person.  I wouldn’t still be comedian if I was not.  Being a hopeful person is recipe that has a byproduct of sadness and disappointment.

We’ll cling to hope, reaching for that needle to inject that feeling into our veins— that tremendous feeling that Hope exposes.  Even if Fear is at the other end of the chess board, constantly cornering Hope into a stalemate.

A friend of mine, and someone I would consider somewhat of an advisor said something to me that always kind of lingered, if not bothered me; he said, “your problem is you don’t recognize miracles.”  Hope and hard work can be a winning combination, there is evidence all around and he would say that I am evidence of this myself but I don’t I don’t acknowledge the wins I’ve earned.  Because the fear that I’m sinking spiritually, that when hope runs dry love will not be able to battle the fear on it’s own is all too real.

We chase it anyway.  Cling to it.  Crave it.  Desire it.  Need it.  It’s a most addicting drug, hope.  It’s almost as though we’d be better off without it— but what sort of life would that be?