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Crack-Addled Lab Rat
Through all of this movement and change and even though I fancy myself a flexible man, I find myself clinging to too many things which kill me again and again. Like the crack-addled lab rat returning again and again to the charged vending chute, I can clearly see myself engaging in addictive and painful behaviors. Simply put, were I able to simply avoid the drug and the voltage all would be well. To blame either is not only fruitless, not only a lie, but a hunger to self-destruct. The story is always the same with these lab rats: they end up killing themselves. The crack and the charge, blameless. Is the situation a stacked deck? Of course! Were there neither crack nor charge, there would be no experiment. Shall I blame the sadistic scientists for their cruel imagination? What is the use? Shall I blame the coca and the cooking process for the crack? Or the machinist shop for milling and assembling this self-service electrical chair? Or even the graduate student who plugged in the contraption to the wall and fed the rats and kept them and finally, one-by-one placed them into the cage? Why blame them? The drug was not alone. There were other options besides. There was the dribble bottle of water, the dish of pellets, the rough cuts of carrot and cheese, even a soft place to sleep, were sleep or food ever compelling. Surely blameless is this scam, this set-up! I mean, come on! Surely the scientist, the graduate student, and the machinist have been able to make it through similar shenanigans. Here they are in their work smocks, healthy and happy, successful and true, exemplars of their places in society. Here I am, the simple rat, living high on the hog, kept well and watered. Fed. There will always be temptations and traps, there will always be the promise of treasure, the windfall. To choose the crack and to suffer not only the sting of the charge (a perfectly good warning sign if ever there was one) but also the association of the two as one, now that's my fault, now isn't it? The euphoria of the drug is the charge; the pain of the current grounded through me begins to feel heavenly. Soon, who even needs the crack? Soon, I am flying on the juice flowing from the wall. The mind can always conjure its own mood enhancers to bridge the gap. And the rest is history. The only thing to come out of any of this is whether or not I turned myself—I mean the rat—into an electrocuted masochistic crack ho or a well-fed, well rested white lab rat. We never hear about the white lab rat that said no. Not sexy. The University publicists never cotton to that data. Addiction is where it's at, man. The weakness of the flesh sells, gets picked up not only in the Journal Science but in the Times! I want to hear the story about the rat that just said no. I want to be that rat. I want to make Nancy Reagan proud with my own personal policy of “just say no†as opposed to just say when.