Live fast...die young

[Woebot]

reading something recently (actually george melly's "revolt into style") and it struck me that i'd kinda half forgotten that one of the primal drives of rock'n'roll (see swears's thread) is about that acceleration of life.

for years (a whole decade?) i'd sort of shunted that into the back of my mind, the logic of that. but recently i've been spending lots of time with ailing and quite occasionally very senile relatives. very old age really isnt such a nice thing. perhaps drugs and hedonistic self-abandon, providing they lead to an early death , aren't such a bad idea?

 

[Lichen]

Medium pace

I think a medium-paced existence is called for, hopefully leading to death before complete decrepitude sets in, but after the point at which your departure is considered tragic.

 

[swears]

I dunno...there's something really infantile about complete hedonism, like a spoiled kid stuffing his face with pick 'n' mix. I suppose you can have some great experiences on drugs, but why would you want to be out of it all the time? I've known a coke-head and an alcoholic and they were both bright young people with a lot of potential that eventually became completely insufferable to be around.

 

[zhao]

sure, sounds great. fill your body with poisons, confuse your mind, and destroy yourself physically and spiritually, go out in a "blaze of glory" which in reality is probably tubes sticking out of you on a hospital bed after a car-crash or overdose, last thing you see the indifferent look in a nurses eyes, leaving the people around you to pick up the pieces left by your reckless, stupid life.

fuck yeah! rock'n'roll!

or...

we can strive for a healthy, peaceful, and beautiful death. sure it is an act usually acompanied by misery, suffering, and ugliness, but I not only refuse to believe that it is necessary, but think that it is the wrong way to die -- the result of a wrong way of life.

death is an art. just like life. most are very, very bad at both.

the ideal is a disease free, guilt free, and elegant passing... one merely goes to sleep when he/she is ready, and does not wake up.

of course this is the ideal... I constantly battle with straying and staying on the path... but at least I know that there is a path.

recommended reading:

Amazon product ASIN 0062508342

 

[DJ PIMP]

Being old needn't be entirely miserable. A recent brush with the elderly was the grandfather of an ex-partner. He was largely immobile but an altogether lovely man - always ready with a joke or story and a laugh.

"I've seen a great many seasons" he said poignantly, "...rugby and cricket that is".

I live downstairs from a woman of 80 and she is simply great. So vital and fresh. Aquarobics, gardening, lunching with friends. She says that age is a state of mind. I really cherish her company.

The "here for a good time, not a long time" notion can become self-fulfilling.

 

[swears]

Kurt Cobain would be 40 next year.
The weird thing is, as I get older pictures of him look younger and younger. When I was a 12 year old, he looked like some gnarly, beardy grown up MAN, at 23, he looks like some mosher kid down the pub. Bit of a Dorian Gray thing going on for people my age I think.

 

[noel emits]

Reckless self-abandon eventually leads to displeasure, discomfort and general suffering and is therefore not really hedonistic at all, in the proper sense. The road of excess...

Anyway, surely old age is a great time to get right into drugs?

 

[mms]

sure, sounds great. fill your body with poisons, confuse your mind, and destroy yourself physically and spiritually, go out in a "blaze of glory" which in reality is probably tubes sticking out of you on a hospital bed after a car-crash or overdose, last thing you see the indifferent look in a nurses eyes, leaving the people around you to pick up the pieces left by your reckless, stupid life.

fuck yeah! rock'n'roll!

or...

we can strive for a healthy, peaceful, and beautiful death. sure it is an act usually acompanied by misery, suffering, and ugliness, but I not only refuse to believe that it is necessary, but think that it is the wrong way to die -- the result of a wrong way of life.

death is an art. just like life. most are very, very bad at both.

the ideal is a disease free, guilt free, and elegant passing... one merely goes to sleep when he/she is ready, and does not wake up.

of course this is the ideal... I constantly battle with straying and staying on the path... but at least I know that there is a path.

recommended reading:

Amazon product ASIN 0062508342

i sure hope you don't get hit by a car or fall over down the stairs zhao.

people should live and die the way they choose really, ideally.
this of course shouldn't involve cruelty to others .

the thing i've almost always found about full abandoned hedonism is of course, it hurts after a while, it's an offering (of yourself ) rather than an engagement with anything, it flashes before you, and can only be made sense of afterwards as an emotion, or something more like just hedonisim. It's often rather selfish, as we know.

 

[Guybrush]

It seems to me like you are assuming that elderly people are having it rough just because their lives seem unappealing to you from where you currently stand. Is this not a very self-centric way of approaching reality? Maybe they find their joys in things we can faintly comprehend until we reach their age? That is not to say there are not hapless elders, though; learning about such humans always breaks my heart.

 

[Woebot]

It seems to me like you are assuming that elderly people are having it rough just because their lives seem unappealing to you from where you currently stand. Is this not a very self-centric way of approaching reality? Maybe they find their joys in things we can faintly comprehend until we reach their age? That is not to say there are not hapless elders, though; learning about such humans always breaks my heart.

well not really. the 3 very old people i've been around alot recently genuinely find their condition thoroughly depressing and vexing.

i do have this fantasy image of myself as an eighty-year old jogging along the beach, but ageing (cancer and alzheimers in particular either one being the manifestation of DEATH, one for the body, t'other for the mind) are i'm sure tricky bullets to dodge.

more stories about happy old people please.

 

[throughsilver]

My great, great auntie doesn't know who I am anymore.

It's horrible, and I'm not sure certain patronising straight edgers decrying rock and roll really understand the potential negativity of senescence. It can be peaceful and dignified. Conversely, it can also be a living hell. It seems to me that one or two people are hung up on the fact that drugs/hedonism/whatever have made friends annoying (not wanting to trivialise that, but I'm sure most of us have known people whose lives have been ruined by drugs. Doesnt make it blanket bad).

In terms of the hedonistic/decadent subtext, I'm all for it. If I had the money, I'd be all about it. Few things in art are as awesome as Wilde/Pater/Swinburne. And that's without getting into the age-old Hicks quotation about 'all the artists' being 'real fucking high on drugs'.

I'm in favour of living fast and dying young, as long as the end has been justified by the means.

 

[the undisputed truth]

i think the rationale is...

...live fast, die young...leave a good looking corpse

or conversely...

....live slow, die old...leave a good looking corpse

whats funny about that is the narcissistic western tradition continuing even in death...

...we must at all times keep up appearances !!!

 

[zhao]

'm not sure certain patronising straight edgers decrying rock and roll really understand the potential negativity of senescence. It can be peaceful and dignified. Conversely, it can also be a living hell.

that is why I became vegetarian (99% of the time). and really should go toward raw-vegan --- not only for the environment, not only for kindness to animals, but mainly BECAUSE THIS IS HOW TO AVOID DISEASE AND SUFFERING LATER IN LIFE. (one of, obviously. but the main one)

'all the artists' being 'real fucking high on drugs'.

how cliche and boring can you get?

but just so you know, I'm far from "straight edge". my first "summer job" in highschool was selling heroin - and not the tar bullshit by the way, top of the line China-White FYI. and also acid and weed on the side.

I have had many experiences with heroin, opium, cocaine, crack cocaine, chystal methane, ecstasy, marijuana, mescaline, LSD, mushrooms, GHB, quaaludes, etc., etc. and still occasionally smoke weed or eat some mushrooms. also am looking forward to trying DMT.

mind expanding is good to try when growing up. and I strongly believe in experiencing all that life has to offer. but this is precisely my point: getting hung up on drugs is a very, very narrow sphere of experience -- and the druggie is living a fraction of what life can be.

I feel sorry for people who discover drugs after age 25. that is just bad news. anyone over 35 still hardcore into drugs is just fucked up.

 

[tht]

not sure about that, i can't imagine a more congenial way of being narcotised than being old, with plenty of money and no need to work, and a continuous supply of diamorphine/opium/valium etc.....again hallucinogenics are usually fairly clean too

the only drugs that will almost invariably cause at least a little bit of damage are coke/amphet and their deriatives ie the accelerants, and high levels of alcohol

very hard to talk definiitevly of senilesence when the risk factors vary genetically and environmentally, some will be near full senility at 65, then there are cases like elliot carter who is almost 100 now i think, and still writing some very difficult music, claude levi-strauss is about the same age too

the young person's fondness for the death insinct as seen in all those 27yr old rocks stars suicides, same old shit really, there has always been an appeal for taking agency in one's own death (classical antiquity, seppuku, martyrdom operations etc), then it was the 40ish liver failure, now even the stupidest canadian nu grunge lumpens would wait for presenile euthanasia in discreet swiss clinics rather than have their vomit flecked corpses in blurry flash video for all to see

 

[zhao]

this kid at work, who is 25, says that when the subject of chain-smoking or something comes up: "I don't want to live long anyway". and I'm always like "umm... do you think that there is a slight chance that at some point in the next 25 years of your life you might change your mind about that?"

 

[nomadologist]

Reckless self-abandon eventually leads to displeasure, discomfort and general suffering and is therefore not really hedonistic at all, in the proper sense. The road of excess...

Anyway, surely old age is a great time to get right into drugs?

ok there's a lot to respond to. anyone who is doing drugs to "expand" their mind IS wasting their time. anyone who does drugs to die younger might not get what they bargain for. Look at Iggy Pop and Burroughs.

The bigger problem with getting old in my mind is less the literal physical problems (which are bad and I plan to avoid them at all costs) than the fact that in our cultures you may as well be a leper if you're older than 60. If you're a woman, you might as well be a leper if you're older than 35 and have had the nerve to bear children and don't look good in a bikini anymore. Then after 60 if you dare to continue living you're like a stomach-turningly gross harpie monster who exists only to be fodder for gross-out jokes in PG-13 films. So you have not only the physical and mental decay to look forward to, but also total ostracisization and the feeling one gets from knowing how repulsive your presence is wherever you go.

So I'd love to shave off the nursing home years. The best way to do that without drugs (which might not work, I can think of really really really old lifelong drug users) is probably by dying of a heart attack at an early age. Or going to tanning salons and getting irradiated so you die in your 40s of terminal cancer. Unfortunately when cancer is bad enough the morphine drip doesn't even mitigate the pain.

I'm going to euthanize myself with opiates when the time comes. Unless they reinstate social security or something in the intervening 40 years or I make enough to retire to Lake Como or something.

 

[nomadologist]

the only drugs that will almost invariably cause at least a little bit of damage are coke/amphet and their deriatives ie the accelerants, and high levels of alcohol

Actually, in terms of long-term, irreversible damage, the worst drugs are ecstasy and methamphetamine. Both kill really key dopamine channels, fry seratonin reuptake and release mechanisms, and in general reconfigure things about your brain chemistry that can't be reversed. Ecstasy at any dose is a neurotoxin, which means even a tenth of a "dose" is poisonous. Because it isn't usually a "drug of abuse" with a high risk of psychological dependency most people don't use it enough to incapacitate themselves. They still haven't figured out how bad its very long-term effects are. Meth permanently damages long-term memory and is seriously addictive. I'm sure its memory-obliterating effects are the reason why some people like it, though. I think withdrawal symptoms from meth are the most potentially lethal of all physically addictive drugs and include stroke seizure. In the U.S., cleaner and more efficient amphetamines are prescribed in pill form for ADD/ADHD maintenance treatment.

Coke is a stimulant--it will change your brain chemistry and definitely affect mood for longer than its high lasts, but its effects are temporary. Some people experience "cocaine psychosis" under its influence which can get pretty extreme (Naomi Campbell). The physical dependency is nowhere near as hard to overcome as the psychological addiction, but its physically damaging effects are not nearly as bad or as long term as amphetamines. Does dry out your skin and will make you look old if you insist on losing enough sleep. In the U.S., doctors also use cocaine-like stimulants (Ritalin) for ADHD/ADD in teens and preteens.

There are lots of pharmaceuticals that are insanely damaging, not to mention over the counter drugs that are bad for you in ways that would make people sue the manufacturers for if they were only told. They just don't tell you about them because the good guys (mostly white men) make money from those drugs instead of Columbians and other non-whites.

In terms of drug use being a sure-fire way to shave off those last terrible years--you could wear down your systems and organs and die younger, or you might just make your nursing home stay much much more torturous and expensive. Marijuana use has been linked to a decreased risk in Alzheimer's, which is another reason why it's stupid THC isn't used medicinally in the West as a general practice.

Drug use is worth incurred damage in my opinion if your experiences seem worthwhile or add something interesting and productive to your life. If they don't, or if they're a destructive force, you're wasting time and it wouldn't be worth future damage just to live out some rock and roll ideal (cliche). Sadly, I think drug use is the closest thing people have under capitalism to forging experiences outside of the "entertainment" modes clean and sober people use. Which is not to say that it absolves you from capitalism, but it's the only way I can think of to intellectually resist, say, the things TV tells me to want and like and do in any literal experiential way. It's a distraction, too, but at least its content is directed by me rather than advertisers who want to appeal to Texans who like Fox News.

Before drug use was pathologized barely a century ago, drugs (especially hallucinogens) were openly used across most cultures to perform rituals (to spiritual ends) and rites (to social ends) and addiction was unheard of. Science took these drugs and created exponentially stronger forms that are still essential to basic medical practices like surgery (benzocaine, lidocaine, topical anaesthesias) and post-operative pain management (opioids). Then people discovered they could medicate themselves and the rest was history...

 

[Guybrush]

I wonder if ageism is going to decrease as the baby-boomers get older? Here in Europe the importance of elderly people delaying their retirement is constantly stressed, mostly because birth-rates are too low for the working population to sustain a reasonable welfare for an ever aging population.

Ageism, to me, is merely the most obvious manifestation of our society's contempt for weakness and, more poignantly, our society's dread of weakness; the weak remind us of what we are ferociously working to avoid—being helplessly at the mercy of an unconcerning society.

This 1994 report is pretty illuminating.

 

[Guybrush]

Nomadologist: I think your leper analogy is on the money, but does that not mean that the rock-'til-they-drop dinosaurs (Jagger et al.) are actually doing our society a huge favour by defying the prejudices against elders?

 

[mms]

Before drugs were pathologized, drugs (especially hallucinogens) were openly used across most cultures to perform rituals (to spiritual ends) and rites (to social ends) and addiction was unheard of. Science took these drugs and created exponentially stronger forms that are still essential to basic medical practices like surgery (benzocaine, lidocaine, topical anaesthesias) and post-operative pain management (opoids).

well in europe anyway the drug most discussed or found in bodies etc as part of rituals and rites etc was the opium poppy, course it's still used used over europe and the middle east etc but up until the yellow peril public outcry in the late 1800's it was widely used as a very popular pain killer too, heroin was actually first synthesised in the uk.

i'm not sure if i'd like to die with yet more drugs in my system, my grandpa stayed healthy as he could by going on the slightly younger age group saga holidays and popped off with a heart attack in his 90's. he walked and cycled, and was as tough as old boots, basically he just got on with the things he wanted to as much as he could.

On the other hand my grandma who was pious and incredibly moany pretty much moaned herself to death, lost her head and looking for misery in everything as she did, everyone was quite relieved when she went.