White Lighters and Lucky Strikes on a Terrace in Positano

 

We can’t use that, one of my druggy friends in highschool said to me when I pulled out a white lighter with a Lucky Strike between my lips. It’s bad luck, she said before throwing it in the trash in the park we always went to for a ciggy after school. She pulled out one she deemed safe and as we smoked we talked about her dog that just died, the only brush with death we were familiar with at the time. The only death that can be processed with a few cigarettes and some laughs with a friend. It is what it is, she said while crying. We’ll get another dog soon I’m sure. And that was that. We smoked a few more and chatted about whatever was on our minds before heading back to the dorms. We said our usual goodbyes to our cancer sticks before stomping them into the pavement. It would be a while before we saw cancer and the destruction it leaves in its wake, so it was easy at the time to be cavalier about it. But the sudden death of a human with real hopes, dreams, ambition and passion was something we would have to face far sooner than is normal. Our friend got hooked on heroin and commit suicide not even a year after my friend grieved the loss of her pet. I’m not sure whether or not he thought white lighters were bad luck. 

The fear of these uncolored lighters is coupled with a fear of living too fast and dying in your 27th year on this cruel and beautiful planet. Kurt, Amy, Janis, Jimi. Some say they were all found with a white lighter. I hope they’re getting the rest fame could never give them. As for me and my friends, some of them were superstitious but none of us were as cautious as we should have been. The only year that was heavy on our minds was the one where we could legally buy weed. In the meantime we drank cough syrup at dusk and waited for one of us to get surgery so we could split up the oxy. 

I never really got to know my drug friends in a meaningful capacity, as is often the case with the people you use with, but I knew that I was terribly sad and tortured by my childhood trauma. Even living to 27 seemed to be way too long. I didn’t take the threat of a white lighter seriously. It seemed to me that our luck was bad enough if we were already the type of users who got high off duster in the middle of the day on a Tuesday at 18. Something has gone wrong along the way if you’re doing that. I certainly wasn’t going to let something as benign as the color of my lighter get in the way of me smoking. The only thing that frightened me was living too long. I took my chances. 

I deleted Facebook a long time ago, but last I checked some of the people I used to do drugs with in highschool didn’t make it to 27. Either an OD or suicide. Tragic, really. Not even a life lived. The opioid crisis has been raging for a while now, but people have been cutting illicit drugs with fentanyl since the late 70’s, and for reasons beyond my understanding it’s become far more widespread in recent years, leading to the kind of deaths I still can’t wrap my head around. Young kids are dying. It’s a terrible time to be a drug addict. Xylazine is the latest threat, turning people into zombies.

All me and my old friends ever wanted from drugs was for them to take the pain away. Now that I’m sober I still grieve the loss of drugs not because I miss getting high, but because I’m constantly reminded of how you can’t trust them anymore. I was a careless drug addict, I would buy drugs on the street out of desperation no matter how many people told me it wasn’t safe. I got a bad bag of coke once and I still think about that experience sometimes, alone in my Brooklyn apartment on a dirty mattress with blood pouring out of my nose after one little sniff and my vision blurred and my whole body shaking. Even if I did miss the extreme euphoria and chaotic energy pulsing through my veins when I used good coke I couldn’t bring myself to go back to that lifestyle. I’m not afraid of life anymore, so I’m not going to risk it. I am sad about that, though. I lost the closest friend I ever had when fentanyl hit the streets. I was too young when I started using hard drugs, we all were. Now that I’m 27 I’m still too young. One bad bag and you’re done. I don’t wanna hang out with Amy Winehouse in heaven, not yet. 

In my 27th year, after three years of trying to get clean, my sobriety finally seems to be sticking. My head has been clear long enough for me to come to the realization that I actually never liked the way alcohol made me feel, it was just easy to get. Painkillers always made me sick. Cocaine gave me psychosis. Weed made me paranoid and apathetic. I replaced drugs with writing and reading and drinking lattes I make with my espresso machine and chatting it up with friends. It’s quite nice, actually. I’m in the land of the living. I feel confident in where I am and where I’m going. Even so, being sober can be a little boring, so it’s best to shake things up by dating men who are no good for you, which is what I did. And then he broke my heart. And then I quit my job and traveled the world. You can say a lot of things about me, but being lame is not one of them. 

I don’t like writing about the amount of therapy it took for me to get sober and stable and genuinely excited about getting out of bed in the morning, but it was very intense and time consuming. It took a really long time for me to get healthy enough to live the life that I want. I still get turned around sometimes. I get lonely and exhausted for no reason. Things were not going so well when my boyfriend broke up with me. I was so devastated by the things he said to me. I had a couple drinks and bounced back when I realized it wasn’t really doing anything for me. I quit my job when I realized the same, it wasn’t giving me the satisfaction that I need to get from working since I don’t need a job for the money. Off I went to travel the world. Somewhere along the way I landed in Positano. 

The Amalfi Coast is a gorgeous place filled with rich Americans and delicious food and cute stores and incredible gelato. It was a little too crowded for my taste, so I spent most of my time on the massive terrace I had in my hotel room, smoking cigarettes and reading Colette and drinking cappuccinos and sipping Pelegrino. While sitting out in the Italian sun I contemplated my past and what it took to get me where I was. I shed some tears in honor of the person I used to be. I shed some tears for the ones who didn’t make it to 27. At some point I wound up with a pack of Lucky Strikes. They can be somewhat difficult to find in the states, so when I saw them in one of the tobacco stores in town I wanted to buy them because they reminded me of highschool. When I got back to my hotel room I suddenly realized the only lighter was a white one I must have bought when I was in Ibiza and was too tired to think straight. I threw the lighter in the trash, put one of those Lucky’s between my lips, and smoked one, stopping myself before I smoked another. I took my time. I was careful with my choices. I’m not living too fast. I’m a little superstitious, if only because I want to make it past 27. I wish me and all my old friends could have realized that sooner, but it is what it is. We won’t get another life, but we all get second chances. That I’m sure of.