A time ago I used to be in a lot of bands. I haven't done a show in a good six or seven yearsthough. I'm trying out the stable life, but at the time things were very chaotic. It was touring and going from place to place. A lot of drinking and a lot of drugs.Now that things are fairly constant for me I have found it very relaxing. I was never the adventuroustype, just the one trying to play my music but a lot of people would be drawn to that scene. Many were drawn to that chaos and the way they drank or took those drugs were a reflection of that.I'm very clean nowadays other than drinking a copious amount, but even then I was sporadic in my use. I may have done acid for a while or a little speed or had a crazy night on peyote or whatever, however I didn't adopt it as solidly as many of my friends. When they started smoking weed or taking ecstasy, for instance, they began taking it in huge amounts every single day. At the time I didn't associate any of the melodrama with it. I just saw band life all 'part and parcel' with a crazy time.

I suppose it is the same for anyone that was involved in drug culture in whatever way. Now, though, it is rather disconcerting. I have run into many old friends and acquaintances that have thoroughly  lost their minds. Some are friends that joke about their stays in psychiatric wings of hospitals, some I find murmuring unintelligibly to themselves and the others? I have no idea what they're saying. Not all my music friends have ended this way but a great deal have.

I wondered this yesterday as an old friend chased me maniacally through a supermarket shouting nonsensical sounds at me. There was a time when I would have tried to understand his purpose yet, now, years after my music has wound up and a number of these experiences I tend to want to just turn back to my life and contentedly exhale. Now, I play seldom and only acoustically at local cafes and bars and such. I enjoy my presently meek existence of late but I also know that this will happen again and again. Sometimes it feels as if I am the only sane, well -ish one left.