Robotripping Towards Bethlehem

Darkly humorous ramblings about my addiction to cough syrup.

There’s an unspoken agreement in Narcotics Anonymous that you just don’t go into detail about your past, a safeguard against perverse dick-waving contests over who could shoot the most dope, who stayed up the most nights smoking crack, who answered the sketchiest craigslist post just because it had the word “party” in it, etc . Instead, there are regular dick-waving contests over who “works the best program.” This is certainly healthier, but, like most healthy things, it’s also boring as s**t.  While I’d really love to be able to talk about myself more, I’m simultaneously grateful, because my using was, shall we say, less than glamorous. And, to be quite honest, if I can’t be the most glamorous, I don’t even want to participate. But how, you ask, exactly does one get any less glamorous than heroin addiction? Well, for one, OTC cough medicine addiction. There is still a certain mystique to heroin. Not so with Robitussin DM.

If you’re unfamiliar with DXM, allow me a little time to preach its gospel. Robitussin DM, Mucinex DM, Delsym, whatever�"it goes by many names. In any form, it’s cheap, it’s legal, it’s ubiquitous, and it makes one trip one’s f*****g balls off.  No ID? No problem! Outside of a few responsible retailers, DXM can be purchased and enjoyed by children of all ages. No money? Just steal it! It’s a helluva lot easier to fit down your pants than a sixer of 211, and nobody’s even watching! I mean come on, it’s too f*****g perfect. really. DXM is the great equalizer, wresting psychadelia from the hands of those dreadlocked elite you  met at the last Bonnarroo, and returning it to the common man. It is the coelacanth of home remedies, somehow still thriving a hundred years since the banning of laudanum and medicinal cocaine. Perhaps what’s kept it under the DEA’s radar is the fact the majority of people have some sort of standards concerning what they put into their bodies, and at the end of the day, no matter how one dresses it up,  taking massive overdoses of OTC medications to get high seems imprudent, at best . To most upstanding citizens, the concept will elicit an almost instinctive “What the f**k is wrong with you?”

I didn’t really “get” this last part for a long time. I started drinking cough syrup when I was eighteen, and honest to God could not see how this was in the least bit pathetic, or even out of the ordinary. The summer after my freshman year, it got totally out of control, cause I had no friends in town, and come on what the f**k else am I supposed to do? Read books? Go outside? F**k that, this is 21st goddam century. I remember trying to explain it to my long-suffering ex-girlfriend over the phone,  totally oblivious as to why she thought obliterating my consciousness with cough pills every other f*****g day was such a weird thing to do. Specifically, I remember telling her to go to Erowid, which of course would explain that this was perfectly normal behavior. In hindsight, I realize this request was akin to telling her to go to Infowars to explain why I’m constantly screaming about the reptilian Illuminati.

As soon as I got home to Virginia Beach, I put my full energies into acquiring DXM, consuming DXM undetected, and recovering from using DXM. I had it down to a science by mid-June. I don’t remember much of anything, aside from  that I was way more punk rock  than you. Let’s just clarify that right now. My hair was green, and my clothes unwashed. My clothes are still unwashed, but at least now I don’t pretend it’s some f*****g statement about society instead of general laziness.  Yep, living at my parents’ house, leeching off of my parents’ money,  disdaining all human interaction, eating 30 Mucinex DMs a night and dicking around on the Internet: if that’s not punk rock, I don’t know what is. Frankly, I’m surprised Henry Rollins never had a song about it.

Hilariously enough, my parents knew exactly what I was doing, thanks to a Very Special Episode of Dr. Phil. For the same reason, my father thinks my brain is severely and permanently damaged from the drugs, thus explaining my myriad and diverse difficulties functioning. I’ve tried to explain that these difficulties are more due to the fact that I’m like the Platonic ideal of a f**k-up, but he’s not hearing it. In any case, and in my family’s proud and storied tradition of avoiding confrontation no matter what the cost, they never said anything about it. As they told me later, they were so embarrassed for me that they decided to just ignore it till it went away. At least now I know where I got that from now.

And it did go away,  it just took the better part of a decade. Even after I became social enough to make reliable drug connects, and even after I could buy alcohol, I was still taking DXM. Because, hey, why not? It’s not like I’m too good for it now. Not the f*****g prom queen over here, guys. The speed and vodka may have gotten me to my daily maintenance level, but if I actually wanted to get high, I had to top it off with my highly viscous old friend. Just as in that gay cowboy movie that everyone thought was a huge f*****g deal, the words  “I just can’t quit you” express well my attitude towards Robitussin over the last five years. I finally did, somehow, and now, whenever I f**k something up, I can console myself with “At least I’m not drinking cough syrup.” I think I’ve finally set the bar low enough.

A few years after it first came into my life, Robitussin added a label on the side that warns parents of “Teen Medicine Abuse.” I’d like to think that my enormous habit had at least a little bit to do with that. Now no one can claim I’ve never changed the world.