The crack dreams are getting worse. In the past couple days (with post-company naps, and all), I’ve had three or four of those puppies. In the first one, I dreamt that I was at some conglomeration of a university, wading into crack territory, went to the Trails store (an Arizona head shop chain) across the street to get a stem, and somewhere in there realized I had one to scrape. In the worse one, I was on my way to cop some crack and suddenly I was back in New York and back at my old job, dealing not only with the shame of coming back to work but also seeing close friends again. I was preparing to start work but was thinking about/planning on finishing the score for one last time before shaping up and shipping out the habit. (This is typical logic for me and a lot of other addicts. A very seductive one.) The one today has already faded. It was fairly generic from what I remember.

Though intuitively, you’d expect it to get easier the more entrenched the habit becomes, but in a way this worsening makes sense to me. Time and time again I’ve been able to resolve to drop something just like that and hold it for any number of hours, days, and weeks, even years, but, as evidenced that I’ve done it “time and time again,” those first steps have been easier than the keeping it going because at the point of my resolve, I’ve grown tired of the thing I’m quitting, seen too much of the downside, and exhausted its productive and social value and fun. I get health, energy, perspective, productivity and happiness back again and then I start to miss the good old times before I got sick of it all and began to suffer the consequences. I start to forget what it actually felt like, smelled like. I begin to think I’ve learned my lesson, that I’ve innured myself, that I can control it, and deserve it, and that, in fact, the novelty of normal living has now, too, lost its luster in turn. I’m the pendulum over the pit.