Posts by tag
drugs
A Better Type of Buzz
Frank Sonderborg receives a phone call from an old work colleague who is currently in jail for robbing a string of post offices alongside a group of French thieves. Drink, drugs, and Euro-hijinks galore. Some buzz…
Time Your Blackouts Better
After a blackout leads to a serious car accident. Gary Hartley opens up on depression, Middle England, and perception in this introspective piece.
Retail Tales with Brian Brehmer: #9 The Employee Handbook
The employee handbook. Time to knuckle down and get ready to give everything, even your life, for the multi-national corporation in which you work. This is the nature of retail. This is Retail Tales with Brian Brehmer.
Please Let Me Cry
I have given up so many times, thought I had hit absolute rock bottom, but after this morning I want only to cry, just cry, Lord please let me just cry. I want that great, cleansing, belly-shaking rain of tears that I had wished would come for depressed Cassie, but I can’t. I can’t cry. I try to bring something up from deep in my chest but nothing comes. I realize now that ghosts have no bodily fluids. Tears, blood, semen, sweat; these are the province of the living.
All I Can Say is Goodbye
Jonah stares over my shoulder, suddenly quiet. He holds his coffee close to his mouth but doesn’t drink. He looks troubled by something, like he’s made the worst decision of his life. I don’t know what to say so I just stare at the girls’ table, at Lindsey stealing glances at us and laughing with the others like we’re in the high school lunchroom instead of being locked in a mental hospital, in some story we don’t fully understand but know will define and direct the course of the rest of our lives.
Role Reversal
You didn’t want to make her uncomfortable by smoking in front of her, or subject her to secondhand fumes. You huddled in your bedroom with your stash, emerging when the coast was clear. Still, the smell should have been a tip-off. Not to mention your red eyes and dilated pupils.
The Soothsayer’s Gift
In an hour, I will go across the street to Subway for a six-inch vegetarian sandwich. I’ve heard the buns are made from the same chemicals as yoga mats. However, this could be an urban legend. I’m hungry and inclined to take chances with my health. Also, I’m an optimist. There is no way a pessimist could be out on this highway.
Testing, Testing
I knew I was an excellent candidate, as they cheerfully say in medical circles, for sudden death. Most everyone on both sides of the generation before mine had suddenly dropped dead before the age of 60. Some had lingered due to repetitive strokes. Fortunately, I had passed the age threshold, but I wondered how much longer I could defy the odds.
Burden
I have killed her in my head more times than I can count. I have attended her funeral. I have wept on her grave. I have cried alone in a room littered with pill bottles and years of filth because I wasn’t there to save her. Every unknown number from Connecticut is her final plea for forgiveness before she swallows the pills or slices the blade across pale blue-veined wrists. I am a bad son. I let her do this. It is all my fault.
Having sex in a swimming pool
Unprotected sex, booze, a swimming pool and and forthright businesswomen all face Laurence in a down-at-the-heel Mexican hotel.
Tiki’s Surf Station
Laurence ends up in a surf town on the Pacific coast of Mexico where he quickly realises that he is not very cool. That, plus surfers are full of shit.
Nursing: It’s not a vocation if you hate it
The endless cycle of work and hate and the world of nursing is revealed by a desperately exhausted Caitriona Murphy.
Sluggies: Hostel to the stars
Frank Sonderborg reflects on his son’s tricky ascent into the world of I.T. Featuring tramps, drugs, a low-cost hostel and a disgruntled Dane.
12 fragments of a first job
Adventure, excitement and drugs. All the things that don’t appear on a resumé.
The Business End of the Music Business
A larger-than-life character provides a constant source of frustration for our music industry insider.
Too High Too Far Too Soon
An excerpt from Simon Mason’s “Too High Too Far Too Soon”, a revelatory rock ‘n’ roll memoir of a life of drugs, Britpop and spiralling drug addiction.
A Renaissance of Atonement and Music
Acclaimed writer, Mitchell Grabois, explores life, work and women in “A Renaissance of Atonement and Music”.
Unemployment for dummies
Unemployment for dummies, the day adulthood becomes a reality. Short story by Aj Binash.