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Considering that the greatest and freest country in the world is also the most slavishly addicted country in the known world, one thing is as certain as is the cut. There’s no coming back from it. “Our past is like an ancient sea wall once strewn across a far away shore memory has abandoned. Incessant waves forever crashed violently into it none less unscathed, yet crumbled one vernal morn whilst at the fault of such the gentle soft wind that gusts. Our present state is like the detritus that finds itself stranded on the lonely beach whose silent screams come back echoing to us on an autumnal afternoon, as if t’were haunted by remembrances of days long lost. Our future is like the unsteady pebbles that beyond their control unintentionally stroll past the sand, leaving behind the shore of certainty, unbeknownst, into a sapphirine sea whose aphotic depth is yet to reveal itself.”
Albeit, conjecture perhaps on my part aside, up until the early 1970’s steak and potatoes had long been the quintessential staple and symbol of the American diet. From George Washington, to John Wayne, to me and you, it’s what was for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It was the staple that had forever fed a hungry and rapaciously growing Superpower and all her progeny. Progeny bearing such names as Industry, War, and Big Business…self-righteous were their convictions, truculent their ambitions, impassible their constitutions, and inexhaustible still is their fortitude and determination today. Aspiring to thence, though now fully realized, we have grown up into to a strong and healthy nation. Hardened and callused are her citizens. Inured to heartache, hardship, and loss is their will. And ferruginous is their fealty to the stripes and stars that hang high above everyone’s head like a halo made of jewels and thorns. However, included with the unimaginable wealth and bent we have accumulated, comes an inheritance of prodigious dysfunction simply beyond our belief. And in accordance, comes with it the new American diet and all its accompanying and appetizing anxieties, gluttonous addictions, and social transgressions the world has never seen the likes of. I like to think of it more as an unfortunate side effect of victory rather than the spoils of war as some would have you believe. Literally beyond our dreams would better describe the outcome altogether of what this nascence nobody saw coming represents. And guess what? You’re the benefactor, the propositus, the inheritor if you will, of which I speak. Oh yeah! And it’s all yours! All yours! Whatever do I mean? Don’t you know!!!
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To be quite honest with you, research not being my strong point, I’m not sure whether to credit the C.I.A. or our own guilt ridden hypocrisy, and ennui laden spirit of history’s time. In fact, I’m not sure who to attribute for what inspired or created this acquired taste and ensuing demand, vice a versa makes no distinction here, to anybody other than to me, myself, oh yeah! And you! Who could have known that the prodromata would have led us to this? It sounds like all the doctors chiming in on your favorite talk show doesn’t it. Where could its idiopathy have come from? Who cares! It’s too late for concern I tell you! Oh Doctor be quiet!!! We’re tired of you wanting to hear the sound of your own voice all the time! Let someone else speak for a change. Where was I? Yes. Shall we keep asking ourselves? Okay! Could it be the correlation to the celebrity and glamour that this new diet has attached itself to. I don’t even want to go into this, I’m much too upset already and any more nauseating talk of celebrity might send me into a tiring harangue that can only be sustained by a few bumps. No, better not go there. Could it be the desire for us to cure, or at the very least palliate, the neurosis we’ve always suffered from. The need for escape from the toil and drudgery that’s brought on daily by the demand that living in such a fast place and time loads us with? Maybe it’s the feelings of inadequacy or feelings of impotence brought on by our interminable anxiety and demanding psyche that causally craved this? One never can tell. Oh, wait! I know! Perhaps it was the result of another nations punishing poverty? A nation who’s only resource and limited intelligences replaced the aforementioned American staple henceforth changing the American ideal forever. I’m thinking that just perhaps it may have been just as much the fault of our own ambition, greed, and insatiable appetence for world domination as it was a little of all of theirs included with it that we enabled the homicidal entrepreneurialism and religiously 
devout discipline of Columbia’s greatest son, Pablo Escobar, to ply his trade. Right time, right place! What ever the reason was, it has changed America and the world over. Its ramifications, which we never saw coming, have set in motion the redemption of this country’s original idea. Considering that the greatest and freest country in the world is also the most slavishly addicted country in the known world, one thing is as certain as is the cut. There’s no coming back from it. Nope! Whether by admission of our own volition or arbitrary reasons never wished assigned, we’ve all had some dealing with it whether directly or in one form or another. And what’s more is we’ve all been affected by it personally or by osmosis in some shape or form. It’s like a stain on your favorite shirt you can’t remove so you put a jacket on in hopes of hiding it. Temporarily at first, then permanently as you learn to live with it and ignore it. See, you like the shirt too much to throw it out. Maybe that’s a poor simile but you get my meaning. Since you’re in such a gracious mood, humor me for a minute if you will while I describe the feelings and sensations I alone felt the first time I took a bite out of this ineffable morsel of true Americana.
Into the void, the vacuum sucked me where for the first time in my young life I realized that I could be anything I wanted to be in this world as long as I knew I could be it. As long as I knew I could do it would better describe this feeling of invincibility! Thus the revelation revealed to me. To understand this lucidly one must also understand that the high for some of us is much more than the result of peer pressure, stress induced factor’s, or teenage angst, although I know many times this is a direct consequence of it. For some of us, it’s a simple courtship of death that lacks any sound or methodical reason and lays blame on everything and everybody external of themselves and outside what they imagine or feel to be their own control whether at the fault of society, themselves, compeers, convention, etc., etc., therefore justifying it with whatever limited form of understanding or knowledge the user possesses. On the contrary, for me it was a total abnegation of everything I had been brought up to believe in that was supposed good, righteous, moral, and of value. I wanted an instant replacement that I felt would come with its use. Such are the fancies of the whimsically uninformed and lackadaisical naivety of youth. Its stigma alone was reason enough to explain its use for me. Of course what I didn’t know at the time was that it was a short cut to a level of consciousness or being that only a lifetime journey would grant me. And of this we’re never sure! What about everyone else though I often wonder. What’s their reason? But with no intention of sparking a philosophical or physiological discussion, let me resume where I suddenly deviated from lest that big mouthed doctor interject once again in the hopes of correcting me. Asshole! I have no doubts you will disregard my thoughts and blame it on my myopic cognizance and distorted faculties anyway. Good! We understand each other! Continuing on, in regards all ties to family and friends, those who did not share my fanatical devotion and phrenetic enthusiasm quickly fell victim to my friendship as well. As if I was the one to make this decision! Regardless of consequence in this life or the next and with not the slightest compunction whatsoever, I soon decided to murder my SuperEgo and with it the memories of what once was. Harrowing was this to say the least you ask? Hold on, you’re getting ahead of yourself. After this successful assassination was accomplished I soon found myself trapped in a needleless compass wandering from drug to drug, woman to woman, and city to city. You know how that is, you think you can run and leave those problems behind in each city you were just in, only to find that they’ve moved with you yet again to your new destination. Though deliciously liberating at the time, I soon began to chase my nightmares as my ounce a day habit later turned into extreme paranoiac schizophrenia. I came to realize this only after almost being shot to death for attempting to go into what at that time I thought was my apartment to escape the whole Las Vegas Police Department I imagined were chasing me to steal my stash. The fiends! It was soon after, ten years later in fact, wherefore I chose to abandon this method of travel all together for a more grounded alternative. I’ll never forget arriving back home the first day and placing my first order of shakes and cold turkey. Painfully, I’ve ordered this on many more than one occasion. But at the time it was a cock-strong liberation I felt and so foolishly welcomed as if to test my mettle. I can not simply relay what I mean to those of you who have never felt the agony of sheer hopelessness in the pursuit of nothingness while detoxing. Hum, maybe the Existentialists were all really just junkies and not profound thinkers? Oh relax! I’m just kidding. Why am I boring you with all this you ask? Well, I’ll tell you. That’s where my generation, The Transcendental Generation, lost itself and for whatever reason plunged head first into undaunted drug use and uncharted addiction. That’s right, here somewhere between the Vietnam War Era and The New Frontier, the world was forever altered by a host of change that surreptitiously found itself forever embedded into the psyche of man. Most change, however, pales in comparison to what would soon prove to be the biggest and most significant change since the discovery of fire and its subsequent result that allowed the survival, inception, and furtherance of modern society and culture. One provided by Bill Gates whose invention leaves me no recourse to any titles other than to term what I refer all existence to previous of his Atrocity, simply as The Lost Ages. But aside from that, there was another factor that forever changed American consciousness, reason, culture, and identity as I was saying. The fact that its use, with all its apparent panacean qualities, ostensibly numbed the sufferings, even if only momentarily, of human existence and proximately furthered mans incessant quest for meaning and purpose, was enough for us to jump on the band wagon and flog our drives till they bled. And how they still bleed! Oh, that it’s correlation to glamour and celebrity seemingly gave one instant status on the social hierarchy didn’t help either. But let’s not get into that here. I did mention that I had a weak stomach didn’t I? I’m not here to justify myself, ourselves, condone, rebuke, or blame. No! I’m simply here to laugh at the hypocritical taboo of it all. And the contagion and destruction it has left in its wake is all that remains of it today alongside our outdated laws, ethics, moralities, values, and ridiculousness. Having said that, I’m not sure I’m here to explain anything other than having nowhere else to be or go for the time being. Come to think of it, it wasn’t that long ago that Cocaine and every other kind of drug out there were going somewhere! And now…they’re everywhere!!!
So who’s doing it? Let’s look at something quickly with unbiased and veracious eyes for a second. Depending on whom you ask, 60% to 95% of all the illicit drugs made in the world including those made in our own backyard are purchased and consumed by Americans. Okay, now according to media, research, and statistical data form every law enforcement agency or otherwise, only the fringes of society presumably use illicit drugs right. Wrong!!! You mean to tell me that out of the 306 million (Documented) Americans in this country, only 5% to 7% of the population use, and they’re on the fringes of society at that. Come on now. That’s absurd! You can’t really believe that!! Let me tell you what it really means!!! What it means is, it’s in your house, it’s in your workplace, at the supermarket where you shop, and it’s in the schools where your kids go to learn. It’s also in the coats of the waiters who wait on you, in the pockets of the retail salesmen of your hardware store who sells you tools, in the lockers of the cops whom you pay to protect you, and there’s a big chance it’s even in your pocket right now as we speak. It means that doctors, lawyers, mayors, government agents, maids, garbage collectors and nannies are also using. It means you’re probably using. Why do you think this is? In this fast paced, apathetic, celebrity addicted, vain and misbegotten indolent society of ours where many of us today arguably lack substance, loyalty, and honor to name a few characteristics, drugs have replaced such things as religion, family values, honesty, and an ethic of responsibility that is undermining the very core of our inner selves and society at large. I’m one to talk! A society whose citizens walk around with a gaping whole inside them they can’t fill fast enough. A chasm they can’t shovel the drugs in fast enough to fill up, or overspend trying to cover their lies, nor live fast enough to take advantage of the airiness its emptiness allows. Americans whose parents had to work 14 to 16 hour days, 
as single parent’s, to live in a house they couldn’t afford to begin with. So they could drive a car they can barely afford to purchase gas for, let alone to buy fashion purses and shit they don’t need in order to clothe their kids in fashions The Jones’s could care less about. They’ve got their own problems! Is it any wonder then why Cocaine, Prescription Pills, Meth, Hydroponic Bud, Heroin, and every other kind of drug out there you’ve probably tried at least once in your life, has replaced food. Whether as a lenitive, nepenthe, panacea, appetite suppressor, or a stimulant to stay awake a few hours more matters little. It matters less if we even use it for such purposes as a sexual tool to uninhibitedly bang our wives like farm animals. The truth is, we’ve come a long way from it’s invention as an alimentary pain reliever, it’s prohibition and classification as a Schedule 2 narcotic, the glamorous 70’s, the panic stricken 80’s, and the addicted 90’s. Now it’s just another medication we us to get along so we can go along. To self medicate and to forget. It drives our ambition furiously like a wagon master whipping his white equine consortium. You know it too! “A bump and a shot of whiskey to just keep me from shaking,” I used to say. Hell, even I myself have come a long way with this poison. I wonder sometimes if other people traveled that same road I did as a kid. As a kid I found Cocaine and Scotch the sexiest thing alive on this earth, feeding my sociopathy and acedia fuelled appetite for total self destruction. I didn’t know another way much less the fact that I was dying inside just a little more and more each and every day. Its declivity and waning would come with age I repeatedly told myself, unwilling to kick as opposed to unable, but all it had really done was metamorphosed into self medicating oxygen that I breathed instead of air. I wasted a lifetime on it, and I lost my zest for life each and every time I used it to band-aid my life together so I thought. There’s no sound like the sound of a razor cutting and scraping against a piece of glass or the sound of a man losing his soul every time he takes a hit off the pipe. It’s a sound you never forget! Like a sea wall that’s stood for a hundred years that one day collapses, the erosion being the only vestige, the broken rocks strewn in time that pave an unseen road never traveled is none the less still there if you were to look for it. Just another item in our medicine cabinet to chase way the neurasthenia and cataleptic exhaustion that plagues us, as our body can’t make it any more. That household item we turn to just to get through another day. Oh, I’m talking about the whiskey too, make no mistake. You don’t think I don’t know how absurd I sound talking like this, oh I do, but in as much as you do agreeing with me as I know you’ve been there. Or worse! Are there!
And what about that lore of the Old West or cinematically inspired Wise Guy craze that we associate hard core drinking or whiskey with. Affix it to being tough as nails. Of being able to take anything you can dish out and more because were 100 times the man you are! Sound familiar? Maybe not to you, but ask your psyche or deepest repressed anxieties, your cowardly unconscious. Whether we want to face it or not, we’re not as tough as our forefathers were. The conditions now are five star compared to them having to hunt their own food each night. That was fast food for them! We’re weak and we know it. We’re a nation of weaklings and we know it too. To cope with this dejection and these despondent feelings of helplessness for our generation never having created anything or for never having to endure anything worth being remembered for we have our whiskey too. Whiskey has long soothed what all these sedatives and anti depressants on the market today were design to do for Mom. There’s no difference between you and Mommy anymore. You both take them to kill your pain of living. I say this not in the least bit derisively with all its underlying negations and implications but as an affirmation of life as sad as this may sound. Be that as it may, it’s true. It’s just a small price to pay though to live and be an American in the greatest country ever misshaped. Don’t feel guilty, or bad, and don’t let the double standard sententious moralizers tell you different. It is what it is! Besides, what do they know besides hiding their whole lives in a closet full of pederasty!!! Yeah, I’m talking to you Father Fudgepack and Senator Slap-a-ho! Bitch!!! Don’t get me started.
Hence, was our previous Whiskey affinity and the 60’s Hippy generation not the vehicle that got us here faster? Our grandfathers with their Bourbon and them with their flowers and lice in they’re hair. They make me laugh! Or do they make me sick? Just like quitters, they try something for a few years, become afraid of their own pathetic reflections in the mirror and then decide to make their little world safer by living a life of denial behind their gated communities with Sentimentality as a pet. Spare me will you! If they had any heart they’d be out robbing and selling dope for a living. 
I mean, listen to their songs and their rhetoric so you can hear it for yourself. “Turn on, Tune in, Drop out.” While tuning in they spawned a generation of lazy, weak, liberal, unmotivated, self gratifying seeking, drug addicted, pacifistic mama’s boy-z, and offspring who are unwilling to take accountability and responsibility for their own lives or for what they started. Not only do they in no way resemble or propagate the heritage of the men of action of yore, and refuse to further or even engage their own free will, they have retarded the development and future of man as individuals and as pathetic bricks of society that insist the government and the rest of us answer to all their needs. How selfish! They’re the termites that have eaten away at the system and are now bringing down the framework of our society. I believe they call it Entropy, but what do I know. Try this one on for size. “Tune up, Find You, Drop Kick you!!!” So Professor Haight Ashbury, is Whiskey and Cocaine the new American diet? Tell us! Is it a priori, the cause of our self medicating usage or a posteriori? Huh, tell me, is it the effect? Jerk offs! Go count your millions and leave the living to us, the ones who aren’t afraid to live. Beatniks!! I find it funny that the Hippies and their Babybooming brats are screaming about the moral decay in this country when it was them who were preaching that people take acid, not shower for a month, and preach an agenda of sedition throughout the war. They all should have been charged and hung for Treason if you ask me! But, that’s just if you ask!
In closing I don’t have much to add except this one thing. Sadly, this change in diet has allowed the unchecked and facilitated importation of Cocaine and other illicit drugs into this country, so that the government and all the powers that be, real or imagined, can fund their hidden agendas, as well as allow them to totally and exactingly perpetuate our tabescent torpor we all suffer from so as to govern and shamelessly pillage America at their own convenience and leisure fully devoid of any blame or compunction. But that’s neither here nor there when you take into account that the demand for the product, albeit, if only once to temporarily fund agendas, grossly outweighs the responsibility the nation has to it’s citizens and to each other when the profits involved are reason alone to further it’s production and trafficking and homicide. Just ask the Bushes. Formally the head of the C.I.A., The War on Drugs, and the Freeworld. Let me ask one more question before I run along. Who do you think paid for their mansions, estates, and 10 whores-a-week habit? Barbara? Surely not their measly presidential incomes while in office! Please! So who do we blame? Surely we won’t blame ourselves that would be Un-American. I wonder if the solution is to just take another shot and do another bump until the situation changes. Yeah!! That sounds about right. What can you do right? It’s out of our control! Ahh fuck it! Pass me the bottle, chop me up a line, and let’s all read Kerouac’s On the Road while we wait and see. It’s too late now right! Or is it? I wonder! How pathetic!!!