At 17, all I wanted was to be a famous junky. Like all my heroes.
I never actually thought I’d make it. (Look at me, I’m blushing like Miss America!) But, damn it, I’m not going to lie, I turned 56 last Monday. That’s right, my birthday is on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, and I’m now older than your Dad. Go ahead and make carnival at my angst. Mortality aside, I am busting my buttons at having made the roster of big name dope fiends compiled by the brains at NNDB, a list of giants who lent the whole damn business such heinous allure in the first place. I mean, Johnny Thunders, Iceberg Slim, Jimi Hendrix, Lenny Bruce, Fats Navarro… Corey Feldman. Okay, maybe not Corey Feldman. But you get my drift.
I may be staring down the barrel of Deep Fifties. I may never have gotten a Guggenheim, never written a book that ended up in a supermarket. And my liver may get its mail at a dog track in Granada. But — there I said it! — the struggle wasn’t all in vain. Thanks to a frenzied career track that included “dope fiend” (after “failed novelist” “pornographer” and “TV Writer,” but before “McDonalds Fry Jockey” on the resume ), I have carved out my own hard-earned, embarrassingly thrilling niche in the annals of Celebrity Addict.
Do I sound like I’m bragging?
Forgive me. I do have humility, and I’m not knocking the kids in my third grade class who never got to be astronauts, firemen, or Moe Howard. We can’t all hitch our wagon to a star. But thanks to a long-gone yen for God’s Medicine, your humble author has taken a seat in Narco-Posterity. Sure, there may have been a marriage that tanked, a friend or five who still wonder what happened to their VCRs, some inappropriate public napping and a couple of novels that sold worse than Iranian pocket Torahs. I’m not saying I’m Albert Schweitzer. Not at all. It’s just, at the end of the proverbial day, what, really, do we have but our reputation? That’s why I included the fridge door-ready compilation below.
After I pick up my Golden Syringe at the Hard Rock, Las Vegas ceremony, I’m going to put it in on my mantel beside the… well, actually, it’s going to be up there by itself. Like an Irving Thalberg Lifetime Achievement award for IV Professionals. Not to suggest that I ever did anything particularly impressive with my life. But, call me sentimental, to celebrate the peculiar, squirm-inducing miracle of Not Being Dead. I didn’t have a plan B — but I didn’t have a Plan A, either, so what the hell…
Jerry Stahl has written six books, including the memoir, Permanent Midnight (made into a movie with Ben Stiller), and the novels Pain Killers and I, Fatty (optioned by Johnny Depp). Formerly Culture Columnist for Details, Stahl's widely anthologized fiction and journalism have appeared in Esquire, The New York Times, Playboy, and The Believer, among other places. Stahl edited the Akashic Books anthology, The Heroin Chronicles, published in January, 2013. Bad Sex On Speed, his new novel, was released in February by Barnacle Books. An upcoming novel, Happy Mutant Baby Pills, comes out in September 2013, from Harper Collins. Stahl has written extensively for film and television, including, most recently, the HBO film "Hemingway & Gellhorn."
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3 Responses to “POST-YOUNG #5: The Junky List (or the Incredible Weirdness of Not Being Dead)”
Wowzers! This is one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a while. Great idea. I found a few names in there I couldn’t find. A work in progress but an amazing idea. I like that mapping gizmo. It’s like Facebook and Myspace without all of the pageantry! Thanks.
it’s 3:33am, eastern standard time. i’m 5 hours and 27 minutes away from a full week w/o… i left me room this morning. then, at noon, i left my apartment. saw my therapist. she said i looked terrific. i’ve never felt worse. no, really, never once. the first thing i saw when i got home was the cd case for “kind of blue” i looked at it miles for a moment, then i grabbed the case from the table–sans cd–and ripped it to pieces. i would have devoured it if my stomach hadn’t been so raw. what is this? was it this awful before i started…? i might get used to this over time, but the truth is, sobriety is far more harmful than…
At 17, all I wanted was to be a famous junky. Like all my heroes.
October 7th, 2009 at 9:48 am
Wowzers! This is one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a while. Great idea. I found a few names in there I couldn’t find. A work in progress but an amazing idea. I like that mapping gizmo. It’s like Facebook and Myspace without all of the pageantry! Thanks.
October 7th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Narco-Posterity is a great phrase I like it.
October 9th, 2009 at 12:58 am
it’s 3:33am, eastern standard time. i’m 5 hours and 27 minutes away from a full week w/o… i left me room this morning. then, at noon, i left my apartment. saw my therapist. she said i looked terrific. i’ve never felt worse. no, really, never once. the first thing i saw when i got home was the cd case for “kind of blue” i looked at it miles for a moment, then i grabbed the case from the table–sans cd–and ripped it to pieces. i would have devoured it if my stomach hadn’t been so raw. what is this? was it this awful before i started…? i might get used to this over time, but the truth is, sobriety is far more harmful than…