In sixth grade they told us marijuana led to other drugs and to never smoke the stuff. So I never did smoke the stuff. I figured I’d jump straight to the top. Had my first drink not long after and not long after that started in on speed. Never saw much point to alcohol without speed unless you want a nap. 

I peaked around college but as an adult usually only had a taste every so often to blow off steam. Humanity would be in a better place if more people blew off steam.

I convinced myself I was using less by choice until I was forced to face the harsh reality that my social circle had shrunk and I’d just had fewer opportunities as the years passed, especially once COVID hit. You know I burned that stimmi check on some a that good stimmi, but I wouldn’t wish the sinus pain of catching COVID from a speed party on the bastardiest bastard in Bastardville, and speed parties on Zoom hit different; there’s something unnerving about hearing the birds chirp and realizing the party’s over but you’re already home and alone. I never thought I’d miss a walk of shame.

Summer 2021, COVID started drifting to the background like that thing from It Follows and we all were crankin’ again, and I minted my first POAP. It was at a mansion party in the “Hollywood Hills” (more like the Valley with a view of the Hills but that doesn’t sound as sexy–I grew up in the Valley). An old coworker at UPS, now in grad school at UCLA, shared the event on Twitter. They were charging $75 for a ticket but I needed to get out. The blizzard was on at that one. You needed a snowblower to get around vroom vroom vroom vroom vroom vring vring vring!

The same group threw another party the next week and if you had the POAP from the first party your ticket was half off. I’m not one to pass up a deal. I got a POAP at the second party too, and soon there were more parties with more POAP discounts, and parties where you had to have the POAP to even get in, and groups formed for people who had x number of these POAPs and these groups started throwing POAP-gated parties themselves–and, of course, giving out more POAPs. It was dead-ass beat-ass hot outside but the polar vortexes at these blowouts could have grounded planes for weeks. But who needs planes when you’re already flying!

I was King of Toluca Lake, Van Nuys, Magnolia Park, Northridge, over to Brentwood, the Palisades, Mar Vista, down to Torrance and Long Beach, back up to Koreatown, Glassell Park, Pasadena, Altadena, San Gabriel, Boyle Heights. Even Skid Row, supposedly (I don’t remember that one but I have a POAP that says I was there). The POAPs spread and my network exploded and soon I had a free party any night I wanted and I wanted one every night. 

Rock bottom wasn’t some dramatic moment. I don’t think it usually works like that. I didn’t watch someone OD, or get off a dirty stranger in the bushes for a fix, or try and rob a pharmacy, or whatever. Sure, sometimes I’d come to after an unknown number of days and wonder where the hell I was and what the hell I was doing with my life and my insides would feel like a gaping black void of fear and sadness. But show me a man who hasn’t, from time to time, been struck by intense guilt and existential dread that they have let down all who loved them, that nobody loves them anymore and never will again, that they are, certainly, going to die forgotten and with no one by their side, that we all are, and I’ll show you a psychopath, or at least someone too stupid to ever consider that life cannot always be taken at face value and that existence is so vast and many-layered that our simple human minds cannot begin to perceive even the tiniest fraction of what is happening to us. Emotions are emotions; they don’t just disappear and we’re all gonna be corpses in 100 years anyway. I’m not gonna kick speed to the curb for the hope that dark thoughts won’t continue to lurk in the deepest recesses of our psyche. 

What rock bottom was, was having to ask my sister for money two months in a row to keep a roof over my head. Thanks to the POAPs, the parties were cheap, but the speed wasn’t, at least not at the rate I was ingesting it. I would have been all for getting some free speed with my POAPs, but people safeguard their shit like a seed phrase and I doubt the POAP Curation Body would be happy to hear POAPs were used to discount drug deals (what an unenlightened world we live in). 

Sis asked what the hell was going on, why I didn’t have money again. I told her I found all these parties. She said she thought I outgrew that and how was I finding so many parties. I said it’s the POAPs and she said what the fuck is a POAPs and you should get rid of it.

So I did. I went to uNFT Wallet and sent all my POAPs to a burn address. Poof. I deleted Discord, Telegram, Twitter too so nobody could contact me and I couldn’t be tempted to contact them. 

None of these people had my phone number. Our relationship existed in the surreal, where digital and IRL identities blended with enough speed heaped on top that nobody really knew anyone’s name or what they did for a living, where they’d grown up, how they’d gotten to this place. I was OxOCotton, DBags, Canned_eMan, Dave1000, Rob1000, Mary James, Sweet Mary Baby James, Sweet Baby Jane, and a bunch of others I forget. The party was all that mattered and as long as there was a group it was good enough excuse to keep lining up the white girls and hitting the slopes. I suppose I could have checked people’s POAP collections to learn more about them, but I never bothered. Anyway, I suspect most of them, like me, were new to this Web3 thing and all their POAPs were from other speed parties and their collections wouldn’t tell me much else. And I suspect for most of them, like me, that might also have been accurate. Speed is their identity. 

For the lucky ones that move on, in 20, 30, 40 years, their grandkids will see their POAP collections and be amazed that grammie is such an OG to have POAPs from so long ago. Yes, those were some fun times back in my Los Angeles days, grammie will chuckle. Those parties always had great food. The fanciest and tallest cakes you could ever imagine! And the little cherub faces will beam with joy at the thought of grammie enjoying her youth.

For me, I dried out and I’ve stayed dry for a while. I got a new job that pays decent and even has benefits. I haven’t needed to ask Sis for money for some time. Our parents are having us over this weekend, none the wiser about my vacation into the abyss. Everything is settling into a routine again, everything is starting to feel dreadfully dull again. Walking down Sunset the other day, a poster with a QR code caught my eye. I wondered if scanning it might mint me some POAP. I reached into my pocket but did not pull out my phone, not this time, not yet.