My high

Occasionally I have a conversation with someone that goes a little something like this:

Them (noticing I have multiple tattoos): I hear those can be quite addicting.

Me: Yeah, just over a year ago I had none at all.

That's the answer I give, but really, they have no idea just how right they are.  For almost 5 hours today I lay on my back as my Dad's friend finished the tattoo I had started back in November, and realized that I have a rather addictive personality.  My high just happens to not be a drug.

Heroin users can keep their needles, I have a variety of my own.  I'm currently reading Russel Brand's memoir My Booky Wook, and he describes what heroin meant to him: "Heroin gets the job done."  (You'll need to read the excerpt linked in the previous sentence so that I'm not taking him entirely out of context.)  Well today I felt as if I was in the same state of nirvana; feeling the scrape of the needles across my arm put me into an entirely content, peaceful state of mind.

These are my rigs.

Everything else was simply peripheral; the loud techno music reduced to a whisper; the conversation between my Dad and Rickie just perceivable, but somehow unimportant.  The only noise that I was hearing at a normal volume was the buzz of the tattoo gun singing to me.  It's really a wonderful sound, I've loved it ever since my first tattoo.  I remember going with my ex-girlfriend to have her first tattoo done; my job was moral support (a.k.a. let her crush my hand).  Between the pain in my hand - which I maintain was worse pain than the process of being tattooed - and the incessant monotone hum of the gun, I began to feel woozy.  I had to leave the room briefly.  But now that I know the feeling that accompanies that hum, I adore the sound.

As for the feeling on my arm, don't get me started.  I have few words for how alive it makes me feel.  There are generally two feelings I experience during the process.  The first is when I can sense that a line or some shading is being done, but I can't feel it, which causes a giddy sense of "Wow, I'm impervious to pain!"  Then the second feeling happens; the needle hits a nerve, sending a pang from my shoulder, right through to my finger tips.  But while you may think this is a bad thing, I find it to be the opposite.  I've never cut, but several people I know who have have told me that at that period of their lives, it was the only time they ever felt actually alive.  My feelings don't have the same disparity, but I can certainly empathize with the enhanced sensation of life in that instant.

I retreated into myself during that tattoo session, not for protection, but because it was just so peaceful.  I know for a fact that I ignored questions directed at me, but I couldn't have said what exactly they were.  In those moments, they just didn't matter.

I'm fortunate that I'm too idealistic to be an addict.  I suppose that it's a bit arrogant to claim that as a blanket statement, but I'm not changing it.  That 5 hour session was my 'fix' for the next little while.  But I have the tendency to make a habit of things, I do consider myself to have a somewhat addictive personality, but I am free from super harmful vices.  Cigarettes aren't an option; I remember in Grade 4, Mrs. Derby was teaching us about the effects of smoking, and when the whole class professed to never take it up as a habit, she told us that while we said that now, there was a large chance that a significant portion of the class would, at some point, be cigarette smokers.  I've taken that as a challenge for the past decade, and for now, I'm winning it.  Besides, cigarettes taste gross.

Alcohol has never created any sense of relief or euphoria.  Weed did for awhile back when I smoked, but that too faded, which was the large reason as for why I stopped.  I have absolutely no interest in the hard stuff; I've read too many accounts of the horrors of crack and heroin addictions to ever even consider that path myself.

Read this.

I'll stick to my intermittent tattoo sessions for my fixes.  It's practical in that the expense keeps me away for a substantial period of time between sessions.  And now, my body has decided this post is done.  My adrenaline storages have been entirely depleted after dealing with what is effectively putting road rash on your arm, and wants to just lie in bed.  And I feel that my body deserves that right now.