by Irene Warner

Created on: December 04, 2009   Last Updated: December 07, 2009

DRUGS AND SHADOWS:

Poe's Opium

Poe's opium must have clung to the air of his small cottage. I can imagine it flavoring his senses and reminding him of sweeter moments. Poe had genius, unparalleled, yet he chose to dull his senses. He fled from his demons, as all men do, and he lost hope shortly after she passed. His hazel-gray eyes dulled, his slight build slumped, and a few years later, the world lost its scribe.

Poe's opium lived on.

This self-proclaimed writer has one thing in common with the legend Edgar Allen Poe; she too published her first novel by the age of nineteen. Yet, she refuses to see the other similarities. She is unwilling to admit that when her mood darkens her writing becomes almost merciless. Those are the moments when she is forced to remember the things she longs to forget.

A single image fills her head, a subtle glow in the still of the night. A crack pipe casts its shadow across an illuminated face; he is standing there completely unchanged. She opens her eyes and the image disappears; she picks up the pen and slowly starts to write. Her precision is calculated, bordering frantic; she needs to accept there are some things beyond understanding.

My experimentation with narcotics ended at the age of two. My toddler mind was captured by curiosity and lacking judgment I devoured the contents of my father's stash of weed. Since that time I have often been asked, Wouldn't you like a little something to help take the edge off? That tempting invitation is rooted in the assumption that I could dull the razors of my slicing diatribes. Do I want to sedate the beast lingering in my mind?

Isn't that what he did? Didn't he dull his senses? Didn't he hide from the echoes and shades rising up from his past? A forgotten past. How desperate was he in that moment when he decided to silenced his nerve-wracking screams?

Silence.

I never wanted that. I would never deny my mind or spirit pain. Pain alone maintains humanity. But somewhere along the path of his life he forgot to be afraid; he forgot to fear losing himself.

When I was six years old, I learned that love is not a real emotion. It is an illusion of power and abuse. Numb. Another illusion. He never realized that in those desperate moments, when he longed to numb his senses with a substance, he also alienated me. He left me alone in the wilderness, unprepared. But he went further, and he sedated his mind, and he extinguished our essence forever.

That essence can never be recovered. It cannot

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