abluvion
“No one forgets the truth, they just get better at lying.”
2007
The Apex Project is the biggest outdoor rave in Western Canada. Hosted on the Popkum Indian Reserve outside Chilliwack, B.C., with fifteen stages and 7,000 people each year. No booze on site. Popping pills were preferred.
I tried cocaine for the first time at Apex. Off the back of a CD in someone's tent that my boyfriend knew. There were four of us sitting in a circle. Red and blue lights lit the canvas. We popped ecstasy on the drive and carried a water bottle with pure MDMA mixed in. That was my flavour in my twenties. Powdered M that came in small packets the size of my pinky finger. I didn't like the taste of alcohol and would mix a little fairy dust in my water each weekend. I had a rhythm. I like routine.
Malibou coconut flavoured liquor with a splash of orange juice was a close second. I still can't stand the smell of that rum. It reminds me of summers with Frank. It takes me back to a place within myself I no longer recognize. The photos from that period of my life are gone. I deleted them all.
Dancing jolted the drugs rippling through my body, so I was soaring by the time we hit the tent. I was wearing a cropped white tee and jeans. My hair was really blond back then, nearly white. I cropped it above the shoulders when it turned orange from too much swimming and added dark purple streaks. I deleted all those photos too.
Erasing the image is easy; removing the impression from my body is less linear.
Who passed me the CD covered with powder—who cares? I rolled up a bill and mimed what everyone else did before me. It was my boyfriend's first time doing blow out of the apartment. He would do lines and read physics papers. He was doing his Masters in Math. A nightly ritual evolved between us later. We'd spent the evenings passing the bill back and forth. While he revised formulas, I wrote philosophy essays.
My papers came back covered in red, "This makes no sense; what are you arguing for, here? Quit Stephanizing. Explain."
I was eventually required to withdraw from Simon Fraser University. The following spring, I would move to the U.K. to study through a Study Abroad Program facilitated by a local college. The obvious reason was to get my grades up to reapply for SFU. I didn't talk about it to get away from the person I became behind closed doors, snorting powder from small packets.
By that time, MDMA or cocaine, I didn't care. The high was all that mattered. Before swimming, school, and studying; partying was tertiary. The tedium sucked up the lightness I felt when moving; I hated sitting and theorizing. I'd dance till my feet were numb all weekend and soothe the pain with more drugs all week.
I desired action. I wanted to talk to the authors we idealized. I wanted to write my own theories of Love, Truth and Justice. I wanted to create memorabilia from my experiences—dancing in the dark, being in love, tasting the divine.
I was twenty, too young to give a damn. I desired to devour everything.
The prefrontal cortex, the rational brain, has not fully developed until roughly twenty-five years. This region is responsible for cognitive control, planning, and problem-solving. Teenagers and adolescents are driven by the amygdala, the brain's emotional processing center. The connections between the emotional and rational brains have not fully developed.
Sniffing lines off the back of a CD, in a stranger's tent, in the middle of a campground rocking with thousands of stoned strangers, one could say that I wasn't thinking. I was living. I felt good and wanted more. Case closed.
This cycle continued for half a decade. I returned from my U.K. education in Whales, returned to SFU with gallivanting grades, yet succumbed to the same routine. Wake, sniff, work, write, sniff, study. I felt good and wanted more.
2022
I haven't thought about cocaine since my early twenties. It's been almost a decade. Last night, I dreamt so vividly—I woke thinking my nose was covered in white. Dustings from a decadent night of dancing in tight clothes and high heels with my trusty water bottle of nectar in my satchel. If only.
Doing drugs in a dream expresses a desire to have fun, being addicted to something, or a nod to examine your behaviour.
Dreaming about cocaine indicates purity and focus. — Source.
I'm thirty-four, living in Flagstaff, surrounded by ponderosa pines and desert. Mid-cleanse, I've eliminated dairy, fermented foods, sugars (including fruit) and processed foods (which I rarely eat, anyway).
I rise before the sun and write for four hours before yoga and work. I go for a long walk in Thorpe Park in the evening to rinse the residue of my day and hang out on Zoom to see my friends.
My routine today doesn't differ greatly from my twenty-something self. Aside from clubbing at raves and party-hopping, Stephanie, at twenty, craved the same rituals as Stephanie presently. Only fifteen years ago, I needed the emotional prop of powder to propel me through my days.
Why did white snuff appear in my dreams—so intensely—I felt the numbness at my lips and teeth?
Consciously, I tell myself that the dream analysis is correct. I'm focused on my craft and pure in my diet; thus, I dream of doing coke.
The subconscious sends a different story….
I haven't changed. The essence of who I am is constant. There is something alive that is distinct and pure to my person. The twenty-year-old with purple hair that enjoyed waking before sunrise to write is the same as the person who sits here, writing.
The external indicators don't matter. The coke was a coping mechanism I've replaced with reiki; I light myself up with white all day.
What's changed: I've learned to love myself. I get high doing yoga; I dance wildly with the trees. I fill my body with white light over chalky synthetic drugs.
Photo, source.
