The Spirit of Pharmakeia

As I glide through the narrow cobblestone streets of Temple Bar, I occasionally slow to a gentle hover and survey the herds. Bustling crowds of scantily-clad females and greasy males fill the streets. Each one marching to the Pied Piper’s tunes emitting from the seemingly endless pubs and clubs. Alas eager as I may be, I must be patient, it is far too early in the evening to enter any of them, but, patience is the only virtue I possess and it is always well rewarded. After working all week to entice them out here, what are a few more hours? So I shall pass some time by conversing with you dear victim.
          My kind and I have been around since time immemorial, even before the physical world of matter exploded from heaven. We have borne witness to every ecological, geological and evolutionary movement of your world and its entire spectrum of species, particularly yours, in painstaking slow-motion. Collectively we witnessed the formation of every mountain range along with every inch of erosion. We are a cursed kind, forced to endure and observe every mundane occurrence in excruciating detail. However, some negatives can be converted to positives. One cannot spend eons watching the dust gather and solidify, only to crumble again in grueling repetition without learning lessons. Take erosion for example, if enough pressure is applied over enough time, solid matter; chips, cracks, breaks and finally crumbles. Well dear victim, we have made the mundane of nature into an art-form, and the present day is our renaissance.
          In an entire universe filled with spectacles that your feeble imaginations cannot even fathom, you my pets are the only objects of particular interest to us. Our unbearable jealousy of you is rivaled only by our deep-seated hatred towards you. Our sole purpose is the annihilation of your soul. We do not feel warmth, nor cool or comfort. We do not sleep and are forever restless. Our only pleasure is to feast on your sufferings. We are neither living nor dead, merely existing. You are the closest we can come to participating in life. You are the vehicles that populate the only reality we are permitted do dwell. We enter you in the meta-physical sense, much the same as you enter each other in the physical, all we need is a small opening. Most are easily seduced by speaking to their desire for pursuits of pleasure. Others may need a tad more, kindling the flames of their frustrations in life, fanning the flame until their angst and grievances become a raging bon-fire. We have a great many modes of operation available to us, from the very mundane like a bad day at work, a trivial argument over financial worries, to the truly disastrous, the sudden death of a loved one to the cousin of sleep. The breakdown of a treasured relationship is a pretty good bet, or, the romantic rejection by one whose affections are not returned. Granted the situations we can help to create are wide and varied, yet, our means to author the calamities of your life are, for the most part, limited to whispers that try to influence your thoughts and by consequence, your emotions, which is frustratingly difficult work I might add. Ah but we persevere and we whisper in diabolical hushed tones. We whisper in your ears, and those of your families’ and your friends’ to try and promote situations that are pregnant with the potential for pleasure and crisis. Pleasure or crisis, dear victim are our double edged sword and we have none preference, either is enough to stimulate you all into consuming any one or more substances from our catalogue of potions that paralyses your will.
          Our ways are so frequent and subtle, that like the oxygen that is ever-present around you, you cannot help but fail to notice. After working on you all week, you are ready to let rip on the weekend. It always begins harmless enough, that’s key! A couple of pints of the amber-nectar to begin with, it’s good, you feel a bit more loose and fun, after all, you have got to be comfortable in yourself if the opposite sex is going to feel comfortable around you also, am I right? Three pints later and the bonds of your consciousness have begun to unravel some-what, not open yet but that’s okay. We don’t need the doors of perception to be swung wide open, just a small window left ajar for us to pry open. A few more pints and the music begins to feel like it’s flowing through you, and becoming increasingly more relevant, as though it’s composition was solely to act as a soundtrack for you at just this very moment in time. The atmosphere in the bar feels amazing, as if it’s charged with electric current and anything can happen. You keep drinking because if some is good, more must be better, am I right? You feel less inhibited, we feel you as less inhabited. One of your friends’ brings back a tray of fun sized shots to the table; each challenges the other to see who can drink the fastest and most without vomiting. Wonderful, now you are doing the coercing for us! Down the hatch they go, feeling the acidic burn all the way down to your belly. Those gaps in your consciousness widening all the more, and our whispers are now getting through as boisterous voices, filled with joyful encouragement, nearly there now. On your approach to the bar to purchase more potent potions, you notice a sign reading: “ALL SPIRITS HALF-PRICE!” Don’t dare say we always lie, the truth of the matter is hidden in plain sight.
          A couple more shots and the cracks in your consciousness are now wide enough for my formless body to begin seeping in like mist under a door. You’re not entirely under my control yet, but, our wills have begun to merge and soon there will be no way of distinguishing where yours begins and mine ends. Just in time too it would seem, as across the bar your pal motions towards the toilets, and we all know what that means! In the cubicle you both vie for supremacy with exaggerated boasts as precise lines are chopped, diced and drawn. You both hoover the cistern clean again. The rush is instant and provides the final push needed to bring down the last of the dam’s defenses, allowing us to gush forth into you. You feel on top of the world, the biggest V.I.P this crummy city has seen, so important are you you’ve your own private entourage and our name is Legion. We feed your ego all the lies it loves to hear; how powerful and underestimated you really are, how sexy and appealing those qualities make you, people have not caught on yet but don’t worry, your worth cannot be denied forever, just snort some more and we will figure out a game-plan as to how we might bring everyone else up to speed. The truth is you love the lies and hold them dear. Who knew snorting the devil’s dandruff off a toilet, while people urinate and defecate all around can make you feel like the rock-star you really are deep down. The more shots and lines you consume, the more your private entourage grows and can twist and contort your will into continuing to consume our potions, what a perfect cycle, a marriage made in Hades. Once you’ve been conned into consuming enough, then we are really capable of committing all sorts of insanity through you, but, do not worry, we will ease you into it, we always do! Let’s start with some obnoxious behavior towards the opposite sex, some unsolicited groping should do. Maybe strike up and argument with life-long friends over some perceived wrong, on their part of course. Then perhaps a vicious and unprovoked assault on an innocent outside a chipper, escalate to a malicious wounding with a bottle? I knew you would like that last idea, who knows; maybe even go as far as murder! When your raped mind and sick body is finally burnt out from the potions and lack of sleep, our grip is loosened and we’re evicted back on the outside, watching you deal with all the gross consequences, until next weekend of course.
          The point, dear victim, is once you have succumbed to our temptations and inflated frustrations, forfeiting your sober sovereignty, all we have to do is keep you feeding on our elixirs while depriving your poor ravaged mind of sleep, and then we can commit all manner of ungodliness through you. Remember that house party where you and your pals kicked that guy to within an inch off his life for little reason? You‘re welcome. Remember how your father used to beat your mother when he was drunk? You’re welcome. Remember watching the news, you know the one that made you sick to your stomach about the woman who drowned her own children in the bath because of the voices? You’re all so very welcome!
          Technically, we are about as visible as the wind, but just as the effects of a storm force gale can be seen in the swaying, broken branches and flapping leaves of a tree, so it is with us, when you look back on the resulting carnage from your times on the potions. Although, we ourselves cannot be seen, our entrance most certainly can be. Just ask any abused wife what she sees in her husbands’ eyes just before the mauling. They become narrow and vacant before being replaced by a stranger. The eyes dear victim, are the windows to the soul.
          Believe it or not but you’ve actually heard us plenty of times, our true voices that is. Not the quiet subtle whispers of the camouflaged, full of the joys of life voices which you thankfully mistake as your own in the early stages of the party. No our real voices, y’know the real growls guttural ones. Luckily, you put this down to the potions and lack of sleep. You’re all very much people of reason these days and audible hallucinations makes perfect logical sense. You even have a name for these phenomena, “the horrors”. Cool name by the way, very apt indeed. In the beginning you are just a time share to us, a weekend gig if you will. However, the more we obsess over you, the more whispering we do, drawing your attention to anything that may strike lust or frustration in your heart, the more you willingly look for escape into the potions. You forfeit your sobriety, your sovereign claim of your mind and body. Why would you ever want to stay away when we’ve got a potion for every emotion? After all, you pick and choose the accessories of your life, the clothes you wear, the kind of car you drive, why shouldn’t you do the same with your emotions? The more you partake, the more of a primary residence you become to us.
          Think of it this way, you’ll never be truly alone ever again. Soon enough you’ll see the party never has to end, not for any relationship, occupation or vocation. Why would anybody consciously choose to burden themselves with such a hideous thing as responsibility anyway? When money for the potions dries up? Don’t worry, the problem contains the solution, sell potions to buy! Before you know it you’ll be down on the boardwalk selling pharmaceuticals to the other lost souls. I know you always swore you would never do heroin, ah now don’t be a party-pooper, c’mon have a toke and take a ride down our slippery slope. Erosion baby, that’s all it is.