Mackenzie Andrews

Stories of Knowledge; Knowledge of Stories

The Story Written by Addiction

Told by Mackenzie Andrews

Background

From a young age, the disease of addiction has had a major influence on my life and the
people closest to me. When I was 9 years old, I was first informed that my daddy was going to
rehab because he had a drug abuse problem. In the years following, an overuse of prescription
pain pills lead to alcoholism which spiraled rapidly into heroin addiction. By the age of 13, my
father was in San Quintin, a California state prison. As the years have passed, I have learned
more about the true course of events that took place leading to his ultimate downfall. As the
pieces fall into place, they tell a tragic story, a story written by the disease of addiction.

The Story

The story is a modern day tragedy revealing the distressing underbelly of addiction and
the utter despair caused by it. ​To convey this story, I took my third person depiction of drug
addiction and translated it into a first person perspective. I combined my personal experiences
and observations of the disease with first hand descriptions written by my father about the
internal battle faced while battling the disease of addiction. I chose to focus on the internal battle
of not wanting to succumb to the darkness of the drug while being constantly taunted by the
brightness it promises to bring. In depicting this battle, I aimed to highlight aspects of the raw
reality of drug addiction while also alluding to the idea of family in the context of the disease.

The Poems

The first format I use to tell the story is poetry. I wrote a series of three poems (Appendix
A) that focus on the progression of the disease that I observed and experienced while I was
growing up. The first poem, ​Santa Rosa Fairies ​depicts the internal battle between craving the
temporary emotional relief the drug offers while not wanting to succumb to the darkness it
inevitably brings. The poem abstractly depicts the act of using the drugs and ends with a one
sided dialog of an addict to a loved one as they slip into their high. The second poem, ​Santa Rosa
Sunset​ starts with the image of cooking and injecting heroin. As the drug enters the body, the
poem shifts to a manic interpretation of a high in which the addict is with his daughter, dancing
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Stories of Knowledge; Knowledge of Stories

and playing. The poem quickly shifts back to a harsh reality that causes the addict to crave the
drug again. The poem ends with the addict being arrested and put in jail. The third poem,
Metamorphosis ​transitions to a perspective of an outsider looking in on addiction and depicts a
specific scene in my life where my father was detoxing in my home. The poem ends with the
realization that from the downfall of my father, I have risen; forever changed, but stronger as a
result.

I use the technique of repetition mixed with metaphor, as discussed in class, to highlight
key ideas in the poem. The primary example of a metaphor I repeated was the idea of sunset. In
the first poem, the third stanza uses abstract imagery that can be interpreted as the act of cooking
drugs or as a sunset. “The sky burst to flames” depicts lighting up the spoon or the vibrant colors
in a sunset. “As hands reach for the number eight” depicts the addict reaching for the heroin (#8
is a street name for heroin) or clock hands pointing towards 8 o’clock, the time a sun would be
setting. “The charcoal rain has begun” depicts the blackness of the heroin being liquified and
injected or the sky becoming dark as the sun finally sets. The final line of that stanza is an
allusion to Neil Young’s song about heroin addiction “Needle and the Damage Done.” In the
next stanza I allude to this song again with the line “We all are like a setting sun.” In the second
poem, the final line reads, “Blind to what has fallen away, the sun sets on another day.” In all of
these references, the setting of the sun depicts the ultimate downfall of the addict.

I chose to only perform the first two poems for the class because the last poem is a much
more specific and personal account of addiction and I wanted to highlight the story of addiction
on a broader scale.

The Dance and Film

The second format I used to tell the story was a combination of dance and film. I retold
the story in the first two poems through dance and film editing. The film begins by depicting the
internal battle associated with drug use, resulting in the addict succumbing to the drug. I then
graphically depict the usage of the drug. Right as the drug is injected, the addict wakes up in a
dream like setting where he plays with a little girl. After hugging her in his vision, he wakes back
up in reality where he’s still in the alley and the girl is gone. The harshness of this reality urges
him to do more drugs but before he has the chance, he is arrested and thrown in jail.

I originally filmed and edited the dance to be read in conjunction with the poems so each
scene of the dance actually connects to a line in the poems and is the same length that it takes me
to read the poem. However, I decided the two formats would be more powerful if conveyed
separately so the viewer's attention isn’t split between two things.
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Stories of Knowledge; Knowledge of Stories

I focused on the concept of rasas taught by the Odissi dance guest performers. I used
mostly small movements in the dance with many close up scenes that focus on the emotion in my
face. I tried to convey the rasas of love (flirting with the drug), horror (being scared of the
thoughts in my head in the context of the drug), wonder (waking up in the dream), disgust
(coming back to reality), and tragedy (being locked up).

I also used repetition and metaphor in the film in an attempt to extend metaphor beyond
language as discussed by Lakoff and Johnson in ​Metaphors We Live By.​ In order to do this I
“broke the fourth wall” (a technique in film making and other forms of media in which the actor
interacts with the audience) (Bell, 2008). At two points in the film I look straight at the camera.
In both instances I am looking through bars at the camera. The first instance occurs right before I
succumb to the drug and correlates to the line in the first poem “we all are like a setting sun”
which foreshadows the ultimate downfall of the addict. The second instance is at the very end
while I’m in jail and correlates to the final line in the second poem “blind to what has fallen
away, the sun sets on another day. By looking through bars and correlating the act of looking at
the camera with the metaphor of the setting sun, I was both portraying the downfall of the addict
while conveying a sense of helplessness and need for help from the audience.

The Message

The story aims to convey the tragedy of addiction from the perspective of the addict, a
perspective that many people neglect to consider. There is an overwhelming notion in our society
that addicts are lazy, weak criminals who created their own demise. I attempted to challenge this
notion by conveying addiction from the addict’s perspective. I tried to depict the everyday
struggle that addicts go through while expressing the emotional tragedy they experience every
time they are sober.

However, this is simply my third person depiction of an addict’s struggle as I have

witnessed it. I never actually experienced that struggle first hand and every addict’s struggle is
different so my attempt to make a generalized depiction of addiction is perhaps flawed as their is
no such thing. Instead, I believe that I have portrayed a very specific story of addiction (the one
experienced in my family) through a generalized, abstract approach.

That being said, I believe many people who have experienced addiction or its effects can
relate in some respect to the story I told. I hope the knowledge conveyed in the story can help to
challenge people’s preconceived notions about addiction, offer an alternate perspective on the
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Stories of Knowledge; Knowledge of Stories

disease, tell my personal experiences with the disease, and offer comfort to those who feel they
are battling with the impacts of the disease alone.

References

Bell, Elizabeth S. (2008). ​Theories of Performance.​ Sage. p. 203. ​ISBN​ 978-1-4129-2637-9

Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson​. "Metaphors We Live By." ​Philosophical Books 23.2 (1982):
111-16. Web.

Odissi Dance​. Chor. Janelle Bel Isle. 24 Oct. 2016. Performance.

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Stories of Knowledge; Knowledge of Stories

Appendix A - Poems

Santa Rosa Fairies

The needle is a heaven

Piercing a damp cardboard reality
Penetrating the tulip heart of a rebel
A hill of sprouting fairies
Singing lullabies to the Devil

The needle is a hell

A volcano spewing black tar
He knows the feathers let him fly
Escape the clawing disease of thought
As china white snow turns dry

The sky bursts to flame

As hands reach for the number 8
The charcoal rain has begun
Young sees the needle
And the damage done

Tears fall behind rolling eyes

Tunneling under pale cheek skin
Raining on a cracked tongue
Who spits “we all are
like a setting sun”

"Don't worry though my dear"

Whisper brown eyes turning grey
"Take this rag and polish up the spoon
And I will be singing
With the fairies soon"

Santa Rosa Sunset

The flame cauterizes the pain

the guilt, the shame
Setting fire to the spoon
a ladle for the joyous stew
Melting; tar from vows,
cotton from clouds
A heavenly vacancy
drawing up, up impatiently
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Stories of Knowledge; Knowledge of Stories

Pierce the freckled leather

pushing down, down into the nether

Tomorrow’s effluent flows through veins

warming, soft, smile again
He sings the song from wrinkled jowls
“I love you baby” the dry voice howls
A pelvic swing starts the dance
a 12 step tango, fairies prance
The bunny hop turns to Easter eggs
all about run little legs
A gentle embrace from his giggling girl
assure him this is a better world

But fairies turn to skunks

children become drunks
Rosey cheeks and illuminating smiles
now missing teeth and yellow bile
Chew through tongues and cracking lips
“some more, more” desperation spits
Men in black load up cars
phobic hands cling to metal bars
Weary knees drop to the floor
wheel flanges screech, locking doors

Blind to what has fallen away

The sun sets on another day

Metamorphosis

In the room of a poisoned man, trapped

within lavender walls
dusty stuffed animals shoved to a corner
under sparkling bottles reeking of wasted spirits. Below,
a shell of sun hardened leather and soggy lips
grey with empty promises, shivers

within a cocoon of butterfly blankets--

drowning in a toxic rain, he never
grew his wings

Tracks of purplish blackish veins, thirsty

tunneling under his skin, searching
for a way out of this pulsing carcase
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Stories of Knowledge; Knowledge of Stories

Two helpless grey eyes roll

towards me within blackened holes--
I watch my reflection, dancing
on those glossy frozen lakes

Four smiles emerge--one

breaking through cracking skin
broken teeth, yellowed tongue
spitting and choking, two and three
on the little girls gliding
across iris fields, staring
back at me, four
wings uncurling from the corners of my mouth
soft, pink--I am

the butterfly.