I've opined before that if I'd taken more drugs when I was younger, I'd be much better off today in terms of balance and personal comfort level.

I've also wished I could take some drug to make me definitively depressed so I could legitimately take antidepressants. I think drugs may be that drug. If so, then maybe not better off.

Yesterday was an unexpected bender. The band had already unofficially played its last gig in this configuration. No one has made any final decisions, but I feel my role in the band is done. We have no more gigs planned and the singer is taking off for several months on business starting March.

When the question comes up for the rest of us, I think I'll probably tell them to count me out. For most part I've just bitched about the band, and with this opportunity to bow out, I don't think I want to revisit last year's experience.

Yesterday, there was an "open jam" at the bar we play at, and it being the guitarist's birthday, it was also a get-together, so I went. The band leader/bar owner personally called me about it, and I think he did so to make sure there was a backup drummer for the "open jam" in case no other drummers came.

It was a joke of an "open jam", just as it has always been a joke of a "band". I don't think our band leader has any idea of what a jam is or how to jam. I don't think we have ever once just jammed. He has to have things structured and he has to be in control. When he tried to tell me the format of one song we were going to do and what he wanted me to do in each section, I said a diplomatic version of "buzz off!" and he backed off. That role I played in the band was done.

Not to dis him, he is a professional musician and I respect that for what it is. It's just completely different from what making music is to me, and from my point of view, he excels at the aspects he concentrates on, but he's myopically limited.

Anyway, last night was most likely a last hurrah (or whimper) for this version of the band. Afterwards, I got talked into going to karaoke with the singer and guitarist and associated people, despite just wanting to tell them I needed to go home and deal with my rage. I'm a porcupine, but it doesn't take too much prodding for me to engage with people, since it doesn't happen very often.

So karaoke was fun. Three drunken hours took us to 3:30 in the morning. Then they decided to go to the singer's house and I got convinced to hang out a little more. But hanging out with the singer and guitarist's crowd always entails chemical stimulation. This was my second time, a repeat of an incident last July during my insomnia.

My relationship with this sort of recreational activity is pretty tentative. In my recollection from last July, I don't remember feeling any different than if I were just drinking. But that might have been muted by the insomnia. This time I felt it and could directly connect the feeling with whatever we were doing.

I did have my set limits, though, and once the sun came up, I was done and refused any more and stuck to alcohol. It's not my bag, and I only did it because why not. I kept my concentration through it, not succumbing to any effect; examining the effect, focusing on the effect, keeping control of the effect.

I didn't leave until after 6 in the evening. The stuff kind of suspends time, I actually didn't get enough sleep the night before, and yet I was up for over 36 hours no problem. No appetite, either.

Before I left, the last two hours I was engaged in a pretty intense philosophical discussion with the singer. I want to attribute it to the drugs, but by that time I'd think it would have worn off. Maybe by then it was sleep deprivation and alcohol.

Our mouths were just motoring on, serving and volleying and sharing ideas and insights, but it didn't mean anything to me. And I thought of that while it was happening, I was wondering why I was having this kind of discussion with him.

In high school and college, maybe that sort of discussion would have been a trip, but I'm not friends with the singer. We've been in the band together a year, I like him well enough and more than the other members, but we never really connected. We're both intelligent and thoughtful, but we have no connection, so we were just throwing ideas at each other.

Maybe that's it. I've already long peaked intellectually with other people. Now it's just empty, vain. Stupid even. Closing the doors of my life. I don't necessarily want to kill myself, but that's the only thing that makes sense anymore, that's the only direction my life points at.

And it's been a pattern lately, identifying elements in my current and past life, and the only thing that makes sense is a path leading to suicide. But those are just intellectual exercises. Now it's starting to become experiential indication. Or interpretation.

I don't believe that people should take their own lives without deep and thoughtful reflection over a considerable period of time. I do believe strongly, however, that the right to do so is one of the most fundamental rights that anyone in a free society should have. For me much of the world makes no sense, but my feelings about what I am doing ring loud and clear to an inner ear and a place where there is no self, only calm. - Wendy O. Williams