[00:16] Meg: Welcome to Desperately Seeking the 80s. I am Meg.

[00:18] Jessica: And I'm Jessica. Meg and I have been friends since 1982. We got through middle school and high school together here in New York City,

[00:26] Meg: where we still live and where we podcast about New York city in the 80s. I do ripped from the headlines as

[00:32] Jessica: I do pop culture.

[00:34] Meg: Are you watching Carrie?

[00:37] Jessica: No.

[00:38] Meg: Oh, you are so decisive about that.

[00:41] Jessica: Yeah. I mean, yes, I am.

[00:43] Meg: Was that a decision you made, or you haven't gotten to it yet, or you don't even know anything about it and you're not even sure if you want to?

[00:49] Jessica: I'm just not interested. Like, I know this story.

[00:51] Meg: I get that from your story.

[00:53] Jessica: I know you don't know the story. I know the movie. Hold your horses there, missy. I know the movie very well.

[01:02] Meg: Yes. Do you know the book?

[01:05] Jessica: The Stephen King book? No.

[01:06] Meg: Yes, I do know. And that.

[01:08] Jessica: Tell me this. Who's the producer?

[01:10] Meg: I don't know.

[01:11] Jessica: Is it a Ryan Murphy thing?

[01:12] Meg: I don't think so, no.

[01:13] Jessica: Well, that's a point in its favor as far as I'm concerned.

[01:17] Meg: I know you're, like, a little fixated on Mr. Murphy.

[01:20] Jessica: Absolutely fixated. No, I just. There's so many other things to watch. It just doesn't do it for me.

[01:27] Meg: Well, this is what I will say about it. First of all, about Stephen King books and movies and TV shows in general, frequently. I think we know this because there have been so many movies from Stephen King stories. It's what that director decides to glean from the book. Because I wouldn't say that Stephen King is a big editor of himself. So there's lots and lots to take from. And if you want to make a really great movie, then you're probably just going to have to, like, pick one theme that you're going to go for. As in the Shining. Wouldn't Stanley Kubrick just sort of wins?

[02:07] Jessica: Yes, which is why I think that the short story adaptations are better. Like Stand By Me.

[02:13] Meg: Right. And also the Stand. They never made a really. Did they even try and make a movie of the Stand? The Stand, which I think is just one of the best books I've ever read in my life. Full disclosure, I'm a huge Stephen King book fan. There was a limited series of the stand in the 90s.

[02:37] Jessica: It rings a distant bell.

[02:38] Meg: Oh, my God. And it practically went page for page from the book, and I loved it.

[02:45] Jessica: Well, that's. That's a recommendation. I am. Now see, you've piqued my interest. So what is it about Carrie that Has you so excited.

[02:53] Meg: Well, it's much more loyal to the book than the movie that you are very familiar with. First of all, also, it's 2026. Right. Current day. And all those issues that Stephen King, as a grown man was talking about as far as young girl feeling out of place and not being able to understand what was happening to her body or her mind or her power in the world, one might say.

[03:25] Jessica: Ooh, yeah.

[03:26] Meg: Right.

[03:26] Jessica: Yes.

[03:27] Meg: There's a really interesting perspective on that, that these writers and director and actors are doing.

[03:37] Jessica: You know what? Really?

[03:39] Meg: It's great.

[03:40] Jessica: Well, here's what really pisses me off.

[03:42] Meg: Oh, also, one more thing.

[03:44] Jessica: Really?

[03:44] Meg: Yeah, one more thing. Sorry, I mean, I'm just go. You know, the whole blame the mother thing. This show doesn't do that.

[03:52] Jessica: Interesting. Yeah.

[03:55] Meg: This mother character, Carrie's mother, who in the movie is pretty iconic. It's a whole different perspective on this mother, and I'm there for it.

[04:06] Jessica: The thing that pisses me off, back to my.

[04:09] Meg: You being pissed off.

[04:10] Jessica: Is that now I'm gonna watch it.

[04:12] Meg: Yay.

[04:13] Jessica: And I know the joy that brings you. So I am. I am definitely going to at least watch the first episode. Watch the first episode and come back and tell you what. I Dip a toe.

[04:26] Meg: Dip a toe.

[04:27] Jessica: So I am with you. By the way, I really loved the Stephen King novels when I was a teenager. And I was so scared shitless by the Shining, which I had not seen the movie. It was just the book that I read it when I was at camp. And I couldn't sleep the whole night

[04:52] Meg: reading scary books at camp.

[04:54] Jessica: What are you thinking? And then at, like, five in the morning, I hear this sound. And my bestie at camp, Suzanne, was, as always every year at camp, sleeping in the bed next to me. And I woke her up, and I'm like, sue, there's something on the roof. Sue, there's something on the roof. We're gonna die. And she's like, what? And I'm like, you've gotta come outside the bunk with me. You've gotta come outside the bunk and see what's on there. And I am absolutely, like, coming apart. And she's like, what the shit is going to. Finally, we go out, and all of the bunks are in a circle around a huge field. We're standing in the middle. We look up. There's nothing on the roof. The camp dog is making some noise on the porch. And she was like, it's pup. It's pup on the porch, you moron. It's like, oh, Never mind. So that is the power of Stephen King, and I respect it deeply. I read all of the. I didn't read Carrie. I read Christine.

[05:56] Meg: Christine. I was just thinking. Christine is good.

[05:59] Jessica: Is good. I read Christine. I read all of the short stories. Apt pupil. That's something that'll give you the shakes.

[06:07] Meg: I've never heard of. It's a short story.

[06:10] Jessica: It's a short story.

[06:12] Meg: All right. Love it.

[06:15] Jessica: Oh, it's kind of. I knew you'd remember it.

[06:19] Meg: Yes, I have read it. And it creeps up on you, and you're like, oh, no. But again, probably very timely right now, don't you think?

[06:32] Jessica: Indeed I do.

[06:44] Meg: One of the many things that you do for a living, correct me if I'm wrong, is assist people who are writing memoirs.

[06:55] Jessica: Yes. I am both a ghostwriter and a writing coach.

[06:59] Meg: Great. Can you talk a little bit about what it takes to. When you're talking to a client about how to write a memoir? Like, what's your. What's your first interview with them? Like, when you're trying to put them on the right track?

[07:14] Jessica: I ask them a bunch of questions. I ask them what they read. I ask them why they want to do this. No judgment, like, but there's always a why, you know, I should hope so. Well, and it's not. Most people come in, say, like, it's very interesting. Men want to write about their achievements, and women want to write about their trauma. Oh, and the women fist. This is a gross generalization.

[07:42] Meg: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[07:44] Jessica: And the women. The why is always, I want to help other people who are going through what I went through, but generally there's something even deeper. And so I spent a lot of time with people saying, okay, understood. What else? And then I asked them, what do they think a memoir is? Like, what is the structure? Like, what do you. And then I find out how much they really read, you know, and how much.

[08:13] Meg: Like, whether they read memoirs for fun or if they even read memoirs at all.

[08:19] Jessica: Yes. And there are some people who are not readers who want to get their story out. So I have to go through a lot of introductory questions to even understand what their level of, you know, literary life is. And I've had some really fascinating experiences where I find out that, you know, people have very limited vocabularies to discuss their feelings. So I had one client who I asked, well, give me some words for emotions. And she came up with five. And two of them were not emotions. They were physical sensations. And I was like, okay, this is the work we need to Do. Okay. But if I'm helping someone to actually write, I just ask them, show me what you've done. And if they haven't, I give them assignments. I'll even say, speaking to our opening of this podcast, give me the plot of a movie that you really enjoyed. And then I can understand, like, what their command of language is, what their command of storytelling is, what their understanding of writing is. Also, I have to ask them, how long do you think this is going to take? People think that they. You can put a book, like have a book, a manuscript, start to finish, six months. And I'm like, try two years. So is that a thorough.

[09:53] Meg: Yeah, that's wonderful. So I'm going to do something a little different today because I read a memoir by one of our BFFs, and it is called New York City Junky Days. And the BFF is Michael Cline. And he's been writing into the Instagram for a few months, maybe going on a year, sharing a lot of his 80s New York City stories because he was in the thick of it. And then I ordered his book and I read his book. And I don't want to do like a review of the book or an overview of the book. I'm not interested in that. I want to give kind of my version of a trailer to it.

[10:44] Jessica: Okay.

[10:44] Meg: I think people would be interested in buying it, and I will let people know how they can get it. And so what I decided to do is just tell one story that he told in the book. This is not in his words. This is my retelling of his story. But it's just one part of his saga. I will call it a saga.

[11:11] Jessica: Okay.

[11:11] Meg: All right. In 1988, Michael Cline and his then wife moved into a fifth floor walk up on St. Mark's between first and Avenue A. They'd been living in Jersey City, but Michael had been plotting a way to move to the city for a while. Getting the apartment on St. Mark's was the result of determination and luck. Right.

[11:39] Jessica: And usually at that time, bribing a super.

[11:42] Meg: Oh, how did you know that?

[11:45] Jessica: I'm a New Yorker. I know, sir. That's a spoiler.

[11:48] Meg: He'd seen and lost a bunch of places before he greased the right palm. And after paying a homeless guy to get their couch up five flights, Michael and his wife were all settled in. Heroin use was ubiquitous in the east village in the 80s, and there was a hint of romance to it. Billie Holiday and William Burroughs and Jean Michel Basquiat and Sid Vicious and Edie Sedgwick we're still a few years away from the marketing of heroin. Chic like that wasn't a term yet. But the aesthetic, I will say was in full force.

[12:31] Jessica: Yes.

[12:32] Meg: Now, Michael had no interest in heroin, but his wife was intrigued. Their favorite watering hole was the Holiday cocktail lounge on St. Mark's between first and Second avenues.

[12:45] Jessica: We love the holiday.

[12:46] Meg: We love the Holiday. And it's interesting, in his memoir, he talks about the holiday in the past tense as though, I don't know if he knows that it's still there. I'm like, it is absolutely still there. We interviewed the wonderful guy Richard Smith there.

[13:02] Jessica: Yes, we did. I think that this is going to be my contribution today. Yes, that happened.

[13:07] Meg: No, I think you're about to have some input and opinions. At least I'm going to urge you to now. Okay, so that's where they hang out. They hang out at the Holiday. And there's like a group of people and exactly the same as it is now. It's an old school bar. It's got tons of charm to it. When you walk in and you're not a regular, just follow the rules because there are definitely regulars there who will not appreciate it if you don't, if you know what I mean. Many places like that, especially in the east village in the 80s and 90s, as I can attest to. And Michael had no clue that a bunch of their friends who hung out there were already using heroin. One night, while their regular group was hanging out at Holiday, someone said they were going for a run and offered to pick up something if anyone needed her to. Now Michael's wife took her up on it kind of on the sly. Michael didn't know she was doing this and slipped her $10.

[14:11] Jessica: Can I ask you a question?

[14:12] Meg: Sure.

[14:13] Jessica: How old are they?

[14:14] Meg: 20s. Okay. After showing Michael the bag of dope, their friend snagged for her later that night. Because they, you know, they get home and she's like, look what I did. They both plan to wait for a special occasion to test it out.

[14:31] Jessica: Okay. So she wants to do it, and now she's convinced him to join her.

[14:35] Meg: Yeah. I mean, the way he talks about it, like he didn't have an urge to do it, but it's like, okay, sure, why not? We can do it once. And he also talks a lot about,

[14:46] Jessica: you can do it once. Har har. Okay.

[14:49] Meg: He talks a lot about sort of the cockiness of youth, certainly.

[14:54] Jessica: Yes.

[14:55] Meg: Now she had a different perspective on it. I think she really was like, ugh, those Romantic figures who do heroin in the East Village. I mean, come on, how can we not do it? So there's a little bit more like, you know, intrigue coming from her. He never uses her name. So she will for now and always be Michael's then wife. Okay.

[15:21] Jessica: Mtw.

[15:22] Meg: Yeah. Neither was concerned about getting addicted. It would be a one time adventure. Scary and exciting, but totally manageable again.

[15:34] Jessica: Ugh. Like I just, like, you know, your heart sinks as these stories, these kinds of stories unfold.

[15:43] Meg: And this is actually what this whole story is.

[15:47] Jessica: I'm very interested to see what happens

[15:49] Meg: next rather at the beginning of the memoir. So, you know, now the crux of the memoir.

[15:55] Jessica: Well, I think the title might have also been a tip off. I don't know. Call, call me crazy, but Junkie Days is, you know, I don't expect this is going to be about upholstery. I got it.

[16:10] Meg: So a week later, on a Friday, they decided to dive in. One of the things, speaking about, you know, memoirs, one of the things I really appreciated especially, especially, especially this part of his book is every step that he took, he remembers if this were a movie, like just this one night would be, I'm gonna say a two hour movie. Every gesture, every step, he just, it's all burned in his memory because it was momentous. Michael used his driver's license to make 2 thin half inch lines. And they snorted it.

[16:55] Jessica: All right.

[16:56] Meg: And his wife rolled up a ten dollar bill and they snorted their very first heroin. Michael describes how it burned on the way down. He lay back on the couch and after two or three minutes, a wonderfully pleasant, relaxing, dreamlike feeling overcame him. All concerns vanished. All was right with the world. For hours. Michael and his wife blissed out. And he said it felt like a few minutes and it was hours.

[17:35] Jessica: What did blissing out mean? What, what constituted blissing out?

[17:40] Meg: I think just lying on the couch.

[17:42] Jessica: Okay, that was pretty much on target. Got it. Okay.

[17:45] Meg: It felt like pure uncorrupted happiness. What's not to like? The next morning, they were both debilitated by the worst hangovers they'd ever had. Michael's hands were shaking and he could barely eat and his stomach felt really off. He couldn't focus on anything. It was pure hell. So he and his wife decided they would only do heroin on the weekends.

[18:17] Jessica: Aw, kids.

[18:19] Meg: He remembered the bliss of the previous night and it was worth the hangover. So already he's got this sense memory and he's like. Even though he was in just such crushing pain, I mean, we've had hangovers before and you're like, I will never drink again. And then like a couple days later, eh, whatever. But what struck me was the fact that you could be in this debilitating hangover that he compared to, like, alcohol hangovers. And he was like this times 10, times 10. To be in the midst of that and still looking forward to the sense memory of the night before, I thought was very telling and distinctive from perhaps alcohol addiction. Now, remember, they're only going to do

[19:09] Jessica: it on weekends because heroin is so controllable.

[19:14] Meg: They're only going to do it on weekends. But what day was it? What day is it? That? Yeah, well, it's. It's Saturday.

[19:22] Jessica: Oh, it's weekends. It's a weekend.

[19:24] Meg: It's still the weekend.

[19:25] Jessica: Great.

[19:26] Meg: So they still have some heroin left over from that $10 bag. So they finished it up. The bliss returned, along with a whole bunch of vomiting. But the vomiting wasn't exactly unpleasant. It kind of felt good to purge. So they're both, like, different.

[19:48] Jessica: This is the best vomiting I've ever done, Kind of.

[19:52] Meg: Yeah. And they'd both been having, like, sour stomachs all day too. So it was also getting rid of all of that. And then the next day's hangovers were just as bad. But what day is it?

[20:04] Jessica: It's only Sunday. Still technically a weekend day.

[20:10] Meg: Still technically a weekend. But they didn't have any heroin left. Uh oh. So Michael went on a run where the girl from the bar had scored. He's a complete novice. He has no idea what he's doing. And I also thought this was interesting. They didn't go back to their friend at the bar. He just decided he was going to figure it out. So that Sunday, the power of heroin. That Sunday, he had an address, laundromat on 7th street and Avenue B, which

[20:43] Jessica: we know is right near where you live.

[20:45] Meg: Yes. I mean, this is the thing. He was there through, I think, 96 or 98. I was there like in 93, 94. So, like, we were walking the same streets.

[20:58] Jessica: I had no idea there were so

[21:02] Meg: many people not only using heroin. I mean, I kind of figured. I mean, I did sort of pick up on that because by then there was the whole heroin chic thing, like, so you could. It was a thing. And the whole nodding off thing, you. You do go like, what's going on?

[21:18] Jessica: It's pretty hard to miss.

[21:20] Meg: But the fact that, like, I know the landmarks he's talking about and I'm like, oh, that's what they were doing over there.

[21:27] Jessica: Like that. Laundromat did a brisk business, but everyone's clothing was dirty all the time. What is it?

[21:34] Meg: He just lived a couple blocks from me, so every place that he's talking about are places that I walked by on the regular and this is all happening like under my nose. And I don't know, I mean, I did have. I know it is a good thing. I did have a few very promising friends from college. Dabble and then sink low and then come out of it. I'm happy to say I think everybody who went down that road came out of it. But yeah, when he got to Laundromat on 7th street and Avenue Bay, there was a line of people in front of an apartment building at the top of the stoop. Inside the door frame, a 40 year old guy was wearing an apron with two pockets. One of his hands took the money, the other handed over the bags of dope. People of all walks of life were in the line leading up to the stoop. Sounds like it was like jury duty, right? Michael joined the end of the line and so he could see how. Because he still didn't even know how to do this. All he had was an address. So he's just watching and learning. Suddenly a voice down the block shouted, agua, Agua. And the guy on the stoop disappeared inside the building. And everyone in the line scattered around the block trying to make it look like, oh yeah, we are just strolling down this block. No big deal. We're not in line for anything. A couple seconds later, a police car drove slowly down the street, but it didn't stop after it passed. Somebody shouted, gato, Gato. And the line swiftly formed again. Michael learned all the rules that night, at least of that one place. He learned all of their rules, including that you had to pay in big bills. No singles or fives accepted, and exact change. So if you were going to buy five bags, you could give him a 50, right? But if you were going to get two bags, you gave him two tens or a 20, you know what I mean? Like twenties were acceptable.

[23:46] Jessica: He didn't want to have his pockets stuffed with visible cash.

[23:50] Meg: Also, it must take time to make change. Michael successfully bought a ten dollar bag and it felt great, felt like an outlaw. And he and his wife were hooked. Thursday now counted as a weekend day too, right? Soon, Michael found places with better quality product than Laundromat. Every place made its own rules. At Bag in a Bag, which was a little further east, you could get better product if you went further into Alphabet City. You would pay one guy who would shove the cash in a bag and place that bag on the ground a few feet away from him. Another guy would run over to a balled up McDonald's bag already lying near a stoop or a curb, grab it and deliver it to you.

[24:44] Jessica: Oh, that's clever.

[24:46] Meg: So I guess for them there's no connection. Yeah, there's no connection. Money to drug. Also, there's not a lot of like, handling of either. At the place on 7th and Avenue C, you'd hand over all your money just on spec. You don't even like you're not seeing anything. You just hand it all over. And then a guy would put the drugs in the coin slot of a corner pay phone.

[25:15] Jessica: That's very clever.

[25:16] Meg: I like that. And there was Scorpio, which branded its bags with the image of a scorpion. And that was good because then you knew it was high quality, so it was good branded.

[25:30] Jessica: Did their hangovers diminish as they got better and better dope?

[25:35] Meg: That I don't recall. He did say that the few times that he OD'd and he did, it was all because it had been cut with something else. So I would assume. Yeah, I think you might be right on that.

[25:54] Jessica: Yeah, don't trust. Don't trust. Street drugs generally a bad idea, but

[26:01] Meg: that the higher quality, the less of a hangover. I honestly, I don't know the answer to that. Also, you maybe with your addiction too, and your tolerance, does that affect your hangovers?

[26:12] Jessica: I'm not a heroin user, so I can't comment on how.

[26:17] Meg: Yeah, I don't either. Well, I hope Michael is listening to this, and I hope he will write in and fill in some of these questions that we have. On First Avenue between 15th and 16th, you would stand a few doors away until you spotted the guy, peek out and wave. Then you'd enter the building and line up against the lobby wall like a firing squad. After the sales, after you gave your money and got the drugs, each customer would leave 30 seconds apart so as not to be too obvious. So for this particular distributor, they were mostly worried about what the view was from the street. At most places you had to be referred to. It was a seller's market and they could turn away whoever they wanted. He talked about how in some cases, if the guy was like, you know, who, who sent you guys? Like, ah, just please, please give me. I'm just, I. I really need it. And it's like, show me your track marks before I'm gonna give you anything to see Whether you're actually.

[27:26] Jessica: Although do you remember the film Rush with Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jason Patrick and they're undercover cops due to heroin.

[27:35] Meg: So what did they do?

[27:35] Jessica: They go in too deep and they wind up having track marks and they're junkies and blah blah, blah. So, you know, an undercover cop could have gone under.

[27:44] Meg: Yeah, that truly, it's a scary business.

[27:47] Jessica: Just, just saying. Good film.

[27:50] Meg: Michael quickly learned the ropes and he fit right in. Now the rules that Michael and his wife put in place to stave off addiction kept shifting. Every day was a weekend day. Once they tried to stop for one day and they got flu symptoms and they thought, well, maybe we do have the flu. And they tested that theory by taking heroin and instantly felt better. And then they knew, oh shit, we're in big trouble. Michael's wife wanted to slow down at one point. This was her. This is what she did. She insisted they start shooting up because she knew that Michael was scared of needles and she assumed that he would balk. Considering that, that's so adorable that she

[28:36] Jessica: thought that would be a deterrent.

[28:38] Meg: Well, it did not work. He got his hands on some clean needles or fresh works. After all his other junkie friends thought he was an amateur for just snorting. So if he's going to go in hard, he's going to go in hard. He watched Drugstore Cowboy to learn the steps of shooting up, and he was off to the races. And shooting up was much more euphoric than snorting from that moment until he left the East Village in 1996. I misspoke earlier. I think I said 98 when he left the East Village in 1996 and then he quit for good in 1999. Michael proudly identified as a junkie. He lost his job and had to scramble to afford his habit. His wife eventually divorced him, but wasn't able to crawl out of her own addiction for many years. This is a quote from the book. Most of my non junkie friends and acquaintances began to shun me. Oddly, I wasn't offended, nor did I care. They didn't understand and I much preferred to to associate with those who did. I felt as if I had found the miracle cure, the thing that made me whole, the answer to all my problems. Close quote. Movies like Drugstore Cowboy and Sid and Nancy and Lady Sings the Blues and Liquid sky and Trainspotting. I kept thinking of those movies while I was reading this book. They sweep you up into the highs and the really dark consequences of heroin use. I mean, I don't think any of Those movies sugarcoat it, but there's something about reading a daily detailed accounting of what is necessary to maintain this addiction and a reckoning of why he did it was just a much grittier experience for me. So that is my recommendation for this book. That's my trailer. It goes from there, friends. It goes from there.

[30:47] Jessica: And that was a thorough accounting. So. Wow.

[30:50] Meg: Well, that was just. That's how it started. That's how it started. It's the prelude to all that followed. It is available on Lulu.com, which is a website that I wasn't aware of. If you want to avoid Amazon and all of that Bezos stuff. Lulu.com, good to know. And there's also a sequel called New York Recovery Days.

[31:14] Jessica: Well, that is uplifting. It made me think, unsurprisingly, of people I know who were junkies, not always heroin, but major drug addicts nonetheless. And a story that a friend of mine who was a drug user but not an addict. Are you familiar with the term psychonaut?

[31:41] Meg: No.

[31:41] Jessica: William Blake, interestingly, was a psychonaut. So people who would take mind altering drugs and then experience it and write about it.

[31:52] Meg: Okay.

[31:52] Jessica: And so this friend of mine was so psychedelics. Psychedelics, you know, the definition can get loose with mind altering, but psychedelics for sure. And he told me about the one time that he did crack. What you were just describing with Michael's book is how easy it is to slip down that road. And what my friend said to me was in that moment, because a crack high is very short. Someone he didn't really know, like he knew tangentially, a guy invited him. I can't remember if it was a hotel room or an apartment to try it. And he said in that moment when he smoked that crack, he was aware that he would do absolutely anything to get more of it, including murdering the guy who had brought him there. And then it passed. He was so shaken by the intensity and the absolute, you know, instant losing of his mind and understanding of. Of his own humanity that he was like and seen, no, thank you. Never again.

[33:17] Meg: It's like you see your future in front of you for a split second.

[33:21] Jessica: Well, I don't think that there was. Well, yes, yes, there you go. Your future in. In the clink. So that. That's one of the many things that it made me think of and also of how difficult rehab is and how lucky Michael is that when he finally did decide to get clean, that it

[33:45] Meg: took because he just got married.

[33:47] Jessica: Oh, that's sweet. I saw his.

[33:49] Meg: His wedding pictures that's very sweet.

[33:51] Jessica: And the other thing that I will share with you, it's a personal experience. There are certain things that I, even in my most experimental days, knew I will never do this. Like, I'm way too neurotic to take psychedelics. I was like, lsd, no, thank you.

[34:06] Meg: What if you don't come back?

[34:08] Jessica: Well, I. You know, I was like, I'm the one who will have the scariest trip of all time and possibly jump out the window. Like, not for me.

[34:17] Meg: Look, when I am cold sober, I think thoughts that I would rather not. So what? What's gonna happen when I lose control of that and it just goes wild?

[34:28] Jessica: No, precisely, no. And I think what you're talking about with Michael's book is interesting because it was so much in his culture that he had immersed himself in that the strangeness of it, the unacceptableness of it, the terror of it was not front and center.

[34:48] Meg: Exactly. And I want to underscore that. I'm so glad you said that, because it was the time and the place. It was, like, unusual to not be doing it, at least among this particular group of people. Obviously, not everybody would. But there's a line that he has in it. I'm going to misquote it, so I'm not even going to try it. Something like, not everyone was doing heroin, but everyone kind of looked like they were. Something like that. It was just in the air.

[35:19] Jessica: Yeah. Like the guardrails were down. Yeah. The other thing it reminded me of is so in my clubbing days, which started in the 80s, when ecstasy was not illegal yet I did a lot of ecstasy and continued having a really good time partying. It was not a constant, but it was definitely something that I did. And I remember because this is also when I had people around me who were doing harder drugs. Harder. I mean, what am I even saying? But you'd party all weekend. And I was thinking about this with how they were, like, only on the weekends. And by the time Tuesday came around, everything was out of your system. And the crash was so bad, people would call it Suicide Tuesday. And I remember having that happen once. And it was really towards the end of this was where I was like, I think I'm too old to be partying and going to clubs and doing this. Now I'm done. I had this moment that was a comedown where I got very sad because I realized that euphoria, that pure joy that all is right with the world. And, you know, all of the stuff that ecstasy was about. I was like, I Can never have that again because it's sympathetic, that will, I will never feel this way again. And that's shutting a door. And of course it wasn't enough for me to say, no, I'm going to do this again. But I understand that that's part of the heroin addict mentality, which is once you go there, leaving that vacation, that mental vacation is very unappealing. So, yeah, I'm just really glad that I was. I've always been such a neurotic that I had my own guardrails in place and never had a genuine problem.

[37:28] Meg: I have a question for Michael that is, I'm sure answered in his sequel, New York Recovery Days, but I'm hoping he'll just write in and tell us. After he left the East Village and recovered, did he ever come back and walk on those streets again past Veselka and through Tompkins Square park and his old apartment building, his five floor walk up, did he ever go back there? That is my question to Michael and I hope he will write in and tell me.

[38:05] Jessica: I have so many thoughts about that question. Should I share one of them?

[38:09] Meg: Sure.

[38:10] Jessica: I think that whatever the incident is that makes you decide to go to rehab is so bad that wherever you were when that happened is not a place that you can look at fondly.

[38:29] Meg: And yet he wrote a book about it.

[38:31] Jessica: Well, that's not necessarily. Again, back to. You asked me, why do people write memoirs? And you know, I have not read this yet, so I can't and I've not spoken to Michael, so this is pure conjecture. I'm quite sure I'm wrong. But the. One of the things that people want to do is particularly when they say, I want to tell other people like, you know, in this case, don't do drugs or you know, whatever the don't worry about it, you can get out of it. You know, my experience is going to help you shift you, guide you, whatever. But part of it is also the catharsis. Like people write memoirs particularly about bad moments or bad periods in their lives. Because having an exercise where you can show yourself that you have perspective on what happened and you have a command now of your own story is a very big deal. And it can be very life changing for people that you don't feel like you, even if you were the one doing it, that you've been acted upon, you are now the actor. So my feeling is I'd love to know what made him decide to get straight and where was it, because that might be part of the answer to your question.

[39:56] Meg: So again, New York City Junky Days by Michael Cline. And that's Cline with a C, C, L, I, N, E.

[40:15] Jessica: I'm so happy that we've talked about Stephen King and in such great detail about Michael's book, because, like, you. And here's gonna be the tie in. I'm telling you, the tie in now. Oh, no, we're both doing teasers.

[40:30] Meg: We're both doing teasers. What's your teaser?

[40:33] Jessica: When I do my research for my segment, I start by asking a question of myself about New York. And I'm like, what's this stuff like? I once saw this on a corner. What's that? I asked myself the question. I was wondering what the biggest feuds in New York City were in the 80s.

[40:55] Meg: That's a great question.

[40:57] Jessica: Thank you.

[40:58] Meg: And of course, like Ed Koch and Larry Kramer.

[41:01] Jessica: Yes. So I just started looking up New York City feud, 1980s. Love it. I think it's pretty clear that my taste in music from the 80s is very punk and new wave. That's. That's my thing. And yet I found myself falling down a rabbit hole into the hardcore music culture of New York City.

[41:25] Meg: So, cbgb?

[41:26] Jessica: No, no, no. Hardcore.

[41:28] Meg: What does that mean? Where are they?

[41:30] Jessica: This is. They thought the punks were soft.

[41:34] Meg: Okay. Where are they hanging out?

[41:36] Jessica: They're in the East Village. There was a big hardcore scene in Philadelphia in the early 80s. And in New York, bands like Bad Brains, Agnostic Front, Black Flag.

[41:46] Meg: Yeah, I think they were cbgb, weren't they?

[41:50] Jessica: But they weren't that seen. And I will explain why. But they were a very different thing. Their precursors to thrash metal, like, it was so much faster. What the Vermones were doing was thought of as, you know, really fast driving, aggressive beat. This left that in the dust. And this is where mosh pits began. I was like, hardcore. I don't know anything about hardcore. And then I saw something that I do know something about, because I know that I've talked about this on the podcast, but there was a coming together of hardcore and the Hare Krishnas, and it created a sub scene called Krishna Core. Wow. And I have strong feelings about the Hare Krishna community, as you well know.

[42:39] Meg: Yes. And you brushed up against it.

[42:42] Jessica: Yes, indeed. There was a guy who was kind of on the forefront of the New York City hardcore scene. His name was John Joseph. I think his last name was like o' Hara or something like that, but he dropped it. And a lot of these kids were, you know, really down and out, you know, like street kids. And it's one of the reasons that Hare Krishna and the Hare Krishna temples wound up being very appealing. But their whole thing was not to be anti social. It was worse anti anti social. Literally. And.

[43:18] Meg: Which means you all come together.

[43:21] Jessica: You'd think, okay. And the infighting, because they were. They were taking a page from skinheads in England. There were overtones of Nazi sympathy. There's a huge amount of violence and anger. And that bumping up against Hare Krishna to me was like, what is this?

[43:47] Meg: Oh my God. This is so exciting as well.

[43:49] Jessica: This is what I will be discussing next week when I can really get into the details. Cause the details are bananas.

[43:59] Meg: I can't wait. I actually have a book I'm going to bring and I'm going to show you. I don't think it would help you with your story, but it's a bunch of photographs of a bunch of those hardcore kids.

[44:12] Jessica: It's. And by the way, the Hare Krishna thing wound up leading to in the 90s. Straightedge. Ah. So that's another little teaser. It was one of the ultimate outcomes. Cool. So that's what's coming.

[44:39] Meg: You have a fresh tie in.

[44:41] Jessica: Yes. In addition to us both doing teasers, I think that the community that you're talking about and the community I will be talking about are people who are extraordinarily fringe. They are really fringe of society and partly by choice and literally living next

[44:59] Meg: door to each other. We are talking about the Tompkins Square.

[45:03] Jessica: Yes.

[45:04] Meg: Community.

[45:05] Jessica: Yeah, they are. And same time. And. And very different.

[45:09] Meg: Very different. Awesome. Nice.