Dharma Punx

HarperSanFrancisco

Waking up in a padded cell, my head bruised and bloody, I scream with rage at an unknown assailant. My wrists are raw and tender from the previous evening's suicide attempt. The padded walls and cushioned floor are trapping me in here with my worst enemy, myself. Death seems to be the only solution; kill the one who has created so much suffering for so long. Destroy the body that has done nothing but crave more of the substances that make me lie, steal, and fight every moment of my existence. There is no shelter, no refuge, no hope for redemption. The only thing I have to look forward to is more of the same and it's just getting worse and worse. I have no strength to continue this battle and no will to live. I must annihilate this evil mind and worthless body to ever find peace.

The years of violence and street life have finally caught up with me. There is nowhere to hide from the life of addiction and crime that I have created. I have failed at being human. I have even failed at taking my own life. Thrown in a cage to protect the world from my evil actions, the walls are padded with a hard rubber to prevent me from punishing myself. The dim fluorescent lighting gives me no clue as to whether it is day or night. I am lost in the Bardo, between worlds, unable to die yet no longer alive.

This is it, the bottim, the final depths of a teenage junkie. I have lost all touch with reality, with love, even with the hatred that once fueled my punk rock rebellion. I have nothing left to live for. I once had the fury of the anti-authority, anti-establishment, anti-everything ethic -- punks versus the world -- running through my veins. But all that was pushed out by the dope, crack, and cheap booze that have consumed me, which have become my only friend and my traitorous enemy. I traded in my mohawk, Doc Martens, and leather jacket for a fucking crack pipe. I traded in my belief in anarchy and the revolution for a ride on the Night Train express, head rush after head rush, nod after nod, heading nowhere, doing nothing and being no one. Pain and the fleeting rushes or comforting numbness that breaks up the monotony of the suffering is all I know.

I lie here tortured by the memories of a life only half lived yet almost over. Seventeen years old and dying. Institutionalized, locked in a rubber room crying and screaming. Deluded by the haze of forced withdrawal, poison oozing out of each cell in my being. In and out of consciousness, the walls are breathing through my broken spirit. I'm too tired to breathe, too broken to continue, too weak to fight.

Curling up into the fetal position, holding on to what's left of the once innocent child who took birth all those years ago, now as before, ready to do it all over again. Just let me die.

Sleep is as close to death as I can come, but the drug dreams are worse than the cell. The toxic horrors torment my slumber, no rest for the wicked, no escape from the hungry ghost and demonic guardians of the underworld that fill my dreams.

Rousted by Tim, the guard I know all too well, I'm told that my father is on the phone. He looks at me with suspicion and concern, says I can take the call but he will have to go with me.

My father listens to my rants and cries for help for a while and then speaks of his own youth of crime and time in prison. He speaks of his own search for meaning and offers me some simple meditation instructions, saying that it is the only thing that has ever worked for him. I listen as well as I can and thank him for not giving up on me.

Tim says I can move into a normal cell if I want to. Big fucking deal, one cage to the next. In my cell I think about what my father said about meditation. How is that hippy shit going to help me now? Suicide still seems like the only solution. I need to shut up my head; I can't deal with the torture any longer.

With no means of destruction I lie on the hard plastic bed and stare at the graffiti-covered walls. With nothing else to do and nowhere else to turn, I try to pay attention to my breath.

A week or so later some young guys come into the Hall, offering a meeting about how to stop taking drugs and drinking. I used to smoke crack with one of them so I go check it out, knowing that I have to stop, wanting to stop, but not knowing how to stop. One of them tells my life story, a hopeless junkie who used to be a punk, now he's clean and sober and says that he just wanted to die, until he found out that it was actually his addiction that was trying to kill him, and that now his life was pretty good. He doesn't want to die anymore, now he really wants to live and he is trying to use his life to help us live too. They gave me some kind of sober bible, I told them I was not interested in any religious shit but took the book anyway.

In my cell that night I read their stupid book and try to do my dad's dumb breathing meditations. I might as well be dead if I have to do all this fucking bullshit in order to become human again. But I am locked up and there is nothing else to do, so what the fuck, might as well check this shit out. Nothing I have been doing has worked, and there is nowhere else to turn, so I guess this is my best bet. The meditations do seem to help a little, at least a few seconds here and there; when I am able to focus on my breath I feel better and forget that I'm locked up. The book is confusing and talks a lot about all that God shit but I like the stories at the end. People talking about drinking and taking drugs the way that I do, out of control. There is one part that I like where it talks about getting to the point of "pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization." I don't know what that means but it sounds like the way I feel every time I use drugs, drink, steal, or fight.

---

Excerpted from Dharma Punx by Levine, Noah Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---