Meditation for February 10th, 2016
Fat Tuesday
Fat Tuesday is in February, where you go out one more night and act out in debauchery before giving something up for Lent. Many spiritual practices teach fasting and temperance, but little time teaching about overindulgence. One must know sin to know salvation. One must know addiction to know abstinence. One must know Taco Time to know Michelin star restaurants. This spiritual term is called Via Negativa; one must know what God isn’t to know what God is.
Before going on a vision quest to live a godly and clean life, celebrating Lent, or quitting an addiction, you must hole up in a motel with hourly rates and fill your body with whatever terrible vice you are meaning to give up, and go on a cleansing fast. Hit up an all-you-can-eat buffet with a chocolate fondue fountain and eat till you projectile vomit chocolate-coated buffalo wings and pizza. Finally giving up crack? Get that motel room, a carton of menthols, a couple of hundred dollars’ worth of crack-cocaine, a smattering of different kinds of hookers, and a tank of nitrous oxide, and get really weird before heading into Betty Ford wearing a grass skirt and a lamp shade. Remember when kids from the mid 20th century would get caught smoking cigarettes? Their parents would make them smoke a whole pack to get them so sick they never want to do it again. You aren’t going to quit something before hitting rock bottom.
Don’t give up something you already do moderately. Having a cookie now and then doesn’t make you a sugar junkie. It’s not worth even trying to quit smoking if you bum your friends’ yellow American Spirits while sipping on chocolate cosmos twice a year. If something isn’t turning your life into shit soup, then it’s something you can still do. No one will care if you can snort heroin recreationally if you aren’t selling their children into the Brazilian slave trade. (You can get up to $50,000 for a healthy blonde infant.) There are things that can be done moderatly and then there are those of us that don’t know how to do things moderatly, but we need to be full of it before we can imagine a life without it.
Enjoy things until they actually ruin your life. Get a little chubby, be drunk once in a while, have a temper tantrum when you want, go camping and eat some magic mushrooms, or whatever else you can do to enjoy things that aren’t destroying your life. You will die no matter what you do, so why live vice free? Before quitting something, one must binge to get it out of one’s system. If you can’t stop, then you didn’t do enough to get it out of your system. Just keep doing it till you are literally on the eve of death before quitting – and if you die, then you don’t have to worry about it anymore.
Prayer
South American Catholic God,
let me have this one night,
let me sit down and eat as many White Castle Sliders and Swisher Sweet cigars,
before quitting tomorrow.
God.
Oh fucking dear God. I can’t do this anymore. I have nothing anymore, and I feel like a steaming piece of shit. I can’t ask for help anymore because I’ve burnt all my bridges with family, friends, acquaintances,s and coworkers. I can’t stop. I won’t stop. No matter how many people tell me they love me and would do anything to help me stop, I keep doing it. I know I just look like an idiot relapsing over and over and over again, but fuck, why quit? It hurts so much. So God, please let me stop playing Candy Crush.
Jesus Milquetoast “Cinnabunz” Christ,
let me go and finally enjoy white wine and Marlboro ultra-lights,
and not feel guilty.
Let me eat a quart of ice cream and binge all the seasons of Cheers,
without feeling shame.
Let me play nineteen hours of Call of Duty and drink wine coolers,
without feeling regret.
Amen.
Craft
Make a chart of things you want to quit or moderate. On days you don’t do those things, put a nice, shiny gold star next to the day you didn’t do the thing. If you do the thing, get in the shower and scrub your entire body with a large lava rock, screaming, “I’m so dirty!”
Goal
To have as many addictions as the ones you have quit. You can’t quit an addiction without replacing it with something else.
Tell other people what they shouldn’t do and that they need help. Be persistent.