As the double period of my AP English Language class began after lunch, I felt as though I had been swept under by a wave of dizziness. If that is what the “junky” life is like, then no thank you. If I ever had even an ounce of desire to try some illicit substance, those ten pages cured me for good. I don’t know how well worked for Erdedy – he is in rehab later in the book, so maybe it worked – but it certainly worked for me. At one point, the narrator tells us that Erdedy’s plan is to make himself so sick from the pot that he will never want to touch the stuff again (22). Ten anxiety-filled pages of waiting for the woman to show up with enough marijuana to have one last binge weekend. Then, to seal the deal, a few years ago I read for the first time the Ken Erdedy section at the beginning of Infinite Jest (chapter 2 pages 17-26). Hell, I don’t know that I would have been able to find any drugs even if I wanted to try them. None of my friends did drugs (at least not to my knowledge). The closest I ever got as a kid to any sort of drug was in middle school when the kid who lived a few houses down the street showed me an unsmoked joint someone had given him. These public service announcements were a regular fixture in my after-school television viewing. Any questions?” Or the one where the dad is grilling his son about the drugs he found in the boy’s bedroom, asking him where he got the drugs and who taught him how to use them, to which the boy dramatically responds, “I learned it by watching you!” And then the one where some little girl says, “I want to be a dancer when I grow up.” A graceful dancer on the screen twirls around, then crumbles to the floor as the voice over says, “No one ever says, ‘I want to be a junky when I grow up.’” You know, that one with the guy and the frying pan: “This is your brain. I’m sure you remember them, those “Partnership for a Drug-Free America” commercials.
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