He attended my writing masterclass in 2016. He had just started university; young, bright, and shy. Thin as a reed. He was talented as well, anyone could tell. He wrote beautifully with his cheek and thought himself funny, which is always a great thing for any writer. Thankfully, he was funny. After the class, Bett -Masterclass admin – took him under her arm as a writer on her website, Craft It.
A few years later, a friend who worked in an advertising agency was looking for ‘young talented writers’, so I threw his hat in that ring. Unbeknownst to me he had quit university because he was “bored of it,” and there were too many “cool kids” in his university and he was struggling to “fit in.” Anyway, he got the job because he writes well and he has got the personality of a great book left open on a table. We talked sporadically. He liked his job, he was becoming a cool kid now. I got updates from my contact at the Agency. They liked him, he wrote great copy and was much liked in the office.
A few years later he has a new job and all. Better job. He’s now an adman. He calls me and says, “I have never quite thanked you for giving me a head start. I would like to buy you a whisky. Any whisky of your choice. I have money.” I chuckle at the chutzpah; I have money.
I met him in a club, one of those ostentatious lounges with a disco ball hanging over the dance floor. We sat against a window overlooking the glittering Nairobi vista. He was in very high spirits, excited, smiling a lot. “What whisky do you want?” He said as we sat down. I told him I’d have a double of Lagavulin because you know, a celebration. He said, “No, no doubles tonight. I’m getting you a bottle.” I said a bottle would be a waste because I planned to have my usual three doubles – maybe four if someone decided to dance topless on a tabletop. (Someone who isn’t a bouncer). He said, “Don’t be shy, I have money! Get a bottle.” I said, “No, just doubles.” He rolled his eyes and sighed. He drinks gin, the official drink of youth. He was already high because he had come straight from an office thing. I ordered and we started drinking.
Anyway, at some point in the night, he disappeared and I went looking for him. I found him and some cat cutting up lines in the bathroom. He grinned and said, “OK, you caught me.” I was taken aback but I pretended they were just a bunch of people photocopying a report. I walked to piss in the urinal against the walls which also had a view of the cityscape to the airport. (It was a rooftop club). I was standing there watching a blinking plane land and thinking, Someone in that plane has had a tough flight with legroom, his leg must feel wooden. Glad it ain’t me.
I watched his friend roll a crisp bill as I stood at the sink washing my hands. “Have you tried this before?” He asked. I told him, Yeah, I tried it once before when I was about his age. [He’s 28]. “And?” He asked, that crooked excited grin.
“It wasn’t for me,” I said.
“Nonsense.” He said. “Try it again.”
“Nah, I’m good,” I said over the roar of the hand drier. (Why the hell do they make them so loud? Does drying a hand have to be so dramatic?).
He started pleading, saying, Come on, man, how often do we hang out? Do it with me, celebrate me. Come on, be proud of me. I’ve done okay. Here, this small line, come on, it’s my night. It’s a celebration, don’t piss on it. Please.
Drugs aren’t my thing not because I’m a Puritan but because they don’t do much to me; weed just makes me so sleepy I could sleep in the middle of the road. I’m not intrigued by recreational drugs. I’m happy with my whisky and I love it neat like I love my life. But he was standing before me pleading and cajoling, talking about celebrating him. So I said, oh sod it, I’ll have a line.
He looks at me proudly, grinning. Atta boy. His friend is grinning. I know what they’re thinking, that I’m like them now. That we have joined ranks. That there is a brotherhood going on there, in that bathroom. I went back to the table and I wish I could report that something monumental happened. That I was yanked into the galaxy and I soared through the Milky Way. That I went home with a burst of creativity and wrote for three hours straight. Nah. I might have felt a great calmness, an intoxicating calmness, maybe a deep quiet, but I was always aware that all this was a mirage, it was smoke and mirrors and nothing was real. That I had worn someone else’s skin. I had a good time with him, I found him amusing, unpredictable, and wild. But also unhinged and out of control. It wasn’t courage I initially thought he had, I realised, it was fear. He was hiding from his shadow. When I called it a night and we were embracing with an exaggerated act of brotherly love, I told him, “This life you are leading is unsustainable. It can’t end well. Get back a handle on things.”
OK, dad, he slurred.
A few months later I was in Elementaita finishing my third book when he called. He sounded distressed. He said he was in trouble.“ I can’t write.” He said. “And I’m an addict. I want to stop. My life is a mess. I think I’m also addicted to masturbation. All these things, man, I want to stop. I don’t know how. I hate working in an Agency, it’s taking me away from writing. I hate writing copy, I want to write stories, like you. How can I write stories like you? Oh, I also have money problems.”
“Of course you do,” I told him, “you are doing drugs.” Told him to look for me the following week to see how he would get out of this funk. Always tell people to look for you if they need help. That initiative is very important, and it should be theirs, not yours. Allow them to commit. I once interviewed a CEO who said something about having a closed-door policy, that to see him you have to take the initiative on your part to knock on his door.
Of course, we never met until last week.
I ran into him at a bar I had gone to review. It was raining and I was looking for the bathrooms when, suddenly, he was standing in my way: “It’s me again!” He had a glassy-eyed look, bouncing off the walls. Happy. “How long have you been here? Where are you seated? I didn’t see you.” I told him I was seated out on the balcony, at the edge of the rain. He introduced me to his friends, some two chaps, you know, cool kids in white sneakers. He said he had been at the bar since 2 pm. It was now knocking 11.
“Have you taken your things?” I asked him.
“Yes, would you like some? I can hook you up.”
I laughed and said, “Oh no, thank you. I’m good.”
“Come on.”
“No. I’m good. Where the hell are the bathrooms here, anyway?”
“Through there,” he pointed. “Look, don’t leave before you see me, sawa?”
Of course, I didn’t tell him I was leaving. I did an Irish Exit. You never say when you are leaving the bar, you only say when you are home safe.
I had told him to write something, anything about his life if he wanted to get into writing prose. He wrote this piece below at the beginning of this year.
***
By Him.
If there is indeed a heaven –and I somehow make it there—and there’s truly a sentry at the gate who demands to know what I have done with my brief and tragic life, I would not even put up a fight. I would bow my head (hopefully still full of hair) and show myself out. Down the stairs and into the corridors of hell. I don’t suppose heaven is for quitters and lazy bums. Least of all addicts and people in advertising. I’m certain Lucifer has a special grill for Ad guys. They don’t burn them with the same fire as druggies and masturbators. As for Kenyan politicians, well, I’d be livid if they don’t get anything less than an endless spray of bullets through their fat bellies. But I digress.
Hi.
I’m Joseph.
And I’m an addict.
Five years ago this March, I landed my first Ad agency gig. I didn’t know jack shit about advertising. My knowledge of the digital space went as far as Instagram and my little kiosk on WordPress. On the day of the interview, I turned up in my old man’s hand-me-down shirt, a one-page CV, and a runny mouth.
Throughout my time in the agency, I’ve been lucky enough to cross paths with guys who believed in my craft and handed me some rope when I didn’t know what a KPI was. I’m eternally grateful for the friends I made at my first posting. I quickly fell in love with the rush and craziness of the day-to-day. Submitting a copy at the last minute? That was the stuff that got me all warm and fuzzy inside.
I loved the war stories traded by the water dispenser and the Friday nights we danced with gin-soaked lips. Each morning as I took the elevator up the building, I always looked forward to banter with my office girlfriends.
Gradually, I found my footing. Before long I was making boardroom presentations to clients. I got a kick from walking around the room and breaking down my ideas, playing with words, and hitting them with a tagline that simply slaps. I showed up to the mill every day like a loyal footsoldier. Then in the evenings, I’d swing by Milan for a beer before heading home to smoke weed and (re)watch House MD. I got to write for reputable brands and rub shoulders with giants in marketing and tech.
Ultimately I let the work consume me, as if some slight Ad copy was going to end world hunger. I put off other facets of my life, everything tossed to the back-burner –family time, friends. I didn’t even notice it, but I had become that guy for saying, “I’m in a meeting. Let me call you back.” On paper, it seemed I was moving up in the world but kwa ground there was barely any progress in my personal life. The rope they gave me to climb with – I tied a knot and put it around my neck. Five years ago, I might as well have been led to the altar and slaughtered for a paycheck. A piece of paper that has brought me much happiness, and much more trouble.
My mentor, Florence Bett (finance doctor/author of “Should I?” and “How Much?”), would probably recoil at the sight of my financial statements. She would somehow find a connection between my day job, my sense of purpose, and my relationship with money. She would diagnose my money personality as (reckless) ‘spender’. She would also say that my lack of planning and smart goals, coupled with my toxic habits, has thrown me into a vicious cycle that consumes me in darkness and hinders my growth. She would say that my mind, body, and soul are in misalignment.
I’ve only been to two agencies so far. And it’s not surprising that I already want to quit. I lack the patience to see things through. I come across a challenging brief and I immediately start planning for early retirement. Except, this time, I am considering quitting because I don’t think an agency is where my art will serve its higher purpose. I don’t see how I’m adding on to humanity by writing about chicken and chips. It also doesn’t help that more than half of my pay goes to paying off debts.
Plus this industry is a tiny revolving door of familiar names and faces. It’s full of boardroom warriors, paper pushers, bullshitters, unclear job roles and alignment meetings. (And that’s just the Account Managers) Don’t get me started on the fake sense of urgency. Honestly, Clients, the country is burning and you want to be pressed about a content calendar?
Which has now brought me to a damning conclusion. Agency is like cocaine – the intense burst of energy and ideas is nice at the beginning, but inevitably you will crash. And you’ll start to feel like you’re chained to the cold hands of death in the dark.
I can’t quite remember when I first got fascinated by coke. Could be after watching Narcos or Wolf of Wall Street. Or was it Pulp Fiction? Maybe it was when I read “The Goldfinch” by Donna Tartt back in 2016.
In the book, Theo Decker is the ill-fated protagonist who loses his mom in an explosion at an art museum. He then gets shipped off to Vegas to live with his dead-beat, gambling, drug-fuelled father. In Vegas Theo meets Boris in school, and they go on all sorts of adventures -meeting girls, snorting coke, popping pills, drinking vodka, stealing, and losing things.
Unlike Theo, though, I’m blessed to have a mother whose prayers continue to hold me at the seams. Yet I still see some parts of myself in him. For I have also held and lost beautiful things. Like time. The way Donna writes –her sheer description of the human psyche, the intricate placing of words – my little writer’s heart was set ablaze from the very first page. Heck, I even fancied I could write a proper review on my WordPress. But, incidentally, I never got past the first sentence, which goes: “Donna Tartt makes me want to try cocaine.”
Haha. Go figure.
Anyway, the movies and the books don’t show you all the dark sides of coke. They might show you the nirvana-esque steamy sex scenes or pics of decapitated traffickers in Sinaloa, but they rarely display the bleeding gums, brown piss, or stomach decay. Seriously. You don’t want to be in the vicinity when a coke-head farts.
Cocaine will also make you lie and steal. Friends will not want to hang around you, especially after a few drinks. “I hope hujafanya hio mambo yako,” they will say.
Because of the shame, you’ll start hiding in bathroom stalls. You become adept at cutting and making lines. You go from an occasional weekend user to a regular-degular anti-social junkie. You lose weight. You squander your salo and forget to send something back home. You borrow money to fund your habit. In fact, when it’s time to apply for your monthly Tala loan, you always check the ‘For Personal Expense’ box with a chuckle. Surely. What could be more personal than your license to get high?
But every Monday –like clockwork– you swear never again. You apologise to anyone you might have offended over the weekend. You promise to delete the plug’s number. The next Friday, the same song plays on and on.
Paycheck to paycheck. Weekend to weekend. You become a juggler with too many balls in the air. Tiny white lies. Drunk promises. Damaged nostrils. Beer. Poor appetite. Powerpoint presentations.
Suddenly, you’re 28 years old –still living in your parent’s house– and your life has morphed into one big gooey ball of unfinished undertakings. You’re yet to complete Uni, which immediately makes employers raise the offside flag. You’re yet to replace your erroneous National ID card, never mind that it was issued 10 years ago. You’re yet to renew your expired driving license, pay the campus library fines, repay an Mshwari loan, finish your therapist-issued fluoxetine meds, begin budgeting for adulthood, or call back the old friends you lost in the rat race of agency life.
Now add drug addiction into the pot and stir. Then cue some J Cole: “The good news is you came a long way. The bad news is you went the wrong way.”
Of course, I imagine that one day I’ll simply up and fix this miserable trajectory. I’m starkly aware that if I continue digging myself into this hole, it’ll be a million times harder to get out. I can try, sure. But sooner or later I will quit, or leave that laborious self-improvement hogwash for tomorrow. After all, you can always count on an addict to leave. Or lose.
Plus how can I be certain that it’s the drugs that’ll be my undoing? What if it’s the Tala loans? What if I struggle to get sober and then end up dying by gunfire or gas explosion? What if I get taxed to death by the Republic?
Is there a soothsayer among us who can hold my hand and assure me that my efforts to get clean will bear fruit? Maybe there’s a willing surgeon who will open up my skull and search for some faulty wiring. Or is there a therapist here who can prod around my childhood to discover the source of my self-destructive habits? Is there a doctor in the house? And if there is: How Much will it cost to take this cup of suffering from my lips?
***
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