Decades ago, in the degenerate 1970s, in the suburban hills of Western Pennsylvania, I was a lonely youth. I finally realized one day that my loneliness was due to drugs; specifically me not doing them. I remained defiant and did not join the rest of the student body in intoxication. I found two like-minded sober nerd souls and a repressed middle-aged woman to spend my time with. Not using drugs, more than anything, propelled me to drop out of school, go to work early, and begin a family at age 18. I could not imagine navigating the intoxicating haze of college that all of the middleclass suburban stoners fantasized about graduating to. I wanted to reach adulthood, and find that world where people thought clearly, where women would lay down with you without first having to get drunk or stoned.

Ten years later I found myself in Baltimore City, up to my neck in society-mandated debt, surrounded by drunken, drug-addicted and brain-damaged coworkers, criminals and bums. Twenty years after that I found myself in the same slum, with the ranks of the intoxicated swelled by my employers, the lowly employees I oversaw on their behalf, and police officers. Convinced now, that I had been more right than I could have imagined as a teenager; when I had viewed this nation as nothing but a human farming operation producing addicts to consume the drugs pushed by its masters; I decided to drop out, to find a small corner of sobriety in this stoned world and write.

My Harm City writing project is largely a study of a deeply intoxicated society. I relieve myself from this subject by reading and writing history and science-fiction, and by combat, where friends and I meet in a brutal attempt to carve a temporary niche of sanity, to escape from the chemically escaped addicts that surround us. A friend of mine is a doctor who confided that there is a type of doctor who he hates—and I think would like to execute en-masse—called a ‘pain-management specialist’…just another pusher.

In light of all this one might excuse me for escaping America’s twin unrealities of drugged oblivion and commercial delusion to the internet in search of news on something more sobering and brutally wide-eyed, like a good old-fashioned genocidal war in some mud-pit nation. ‘Afghanistan’ I thought, ‘graveyard of empires, I’ll read up on the slaughter and forget for many moments to come the zombie hordes of Baltimore…’

“Ten bucks for a ride man—ten bucks will get you anywhere ‘cause it ‘ill get me well…Shit brother, I miss being in prison. On the inside I can buy my shit with cigarettes. Out here I need cash ta get what I need…”

-Semaj

Drugs and drug money in Baltimore are famously transported via trash bag. When the CIA sends money to Afghan drug lords how are these tens of millions of dollars delivered? Apparently suitcases, backpacks and plastic shopping bags are preferred.

Increase in Afghan heroin export under U. S. military occupation from 2001-2013: X40

Percentage of world heroin exported from U. S. occupied Afghanistan in 2013: 70-90%

Annual income of Afghan drug lords: 700 million dollars

Heroin production as portion of Afghan GNP: 15%

Worldwide narcotics seizures at national borders: .02%

Internal narcotics seizures in U. S. and Europe: 10%

Legal penalty for possession of personal quantities of illegal drugs in Russia: 21 dollars

Drug profits laundered by leading world banks in the year 2008-2009: 352 billion dollars

Gross National Product of Afghanistan: 6.96 billion dollars

I think those Afghan drug lords need to import some economic advisers from the West Baltimore housing projects and tweak that dreadful profit margin geometrically! I wonder if I’d get a cut of the consulting fee if I found Semaj and sent him over to Kandahar.