As the world burns...
Arson or Incompetence? Is there even a Difference...
Well, you know, it turns out meth heads love to start fires. You know there's just—every drug has its, kind of, weird element to them, and meth heads love starting fires, they love destroying things, meth is like the drug of nihilism. So, it's like perfect drug for LA and California right now…..
I mean, I think homeless people are going to, often, start fires, for a lot of different reasons, I mean. Drugs can start fires, but the meth heads are like, into fire! Like, it's a big part of meth culture, is just starting things on fire… \
—Michael Shellenberger
Nobodies thought about this in theological terms?
So, as LA burns to the ground, the speculation of arson is hot on the grapevine. Michael Shellenberger, a hero of mine, and founder of
, of which I am a daily reader, seems to think burning things is in the culture of meth use. Some burning hot memories rush to the front of my mind, I’d like to share these stories and maybe they will confirm his bias or mine. I don’t believe they are caused by the addict’s admiration for fire but, due to a lack of caution, and an abundance of incompetence, and maybe a little bit of super heroism of themselves. Meaning, meth makes you think you can do anything and avoid actual caution. These are, of course, anecdotes, I don’t fancy myself as a scientist, anecdotes are all I really have, and they shape my view of most things.“We Had it Under Control”
After my first experience taking pills, from someone who knew the deal with them, I wanted more so, began a habit of going through medicine cabinets everywhere I visited. And because I knew so little, I would take basically anything with the warning, “may cause drowsiness”, or “dizziness” because I thought that was how you did it. I later learned better when I found out my father’s heart pills had that same label. I found a bottle of Skelaxin, a non-narcotic muscle relaxer, and thought I had something good. I took those all day, eighteen of them I believe, then when Randy, my cousin, came by and picked me up on a 4-wheeler, we drank two beers a piece, did a line of crank (meth) and the rest is a BIG BLUR! Apparently Skelaxin only has narcotic effects when mixed with alcohol, according to drugs.com you shouldn’t even take medicine that contains traces of alcohol with this due to deadly/dangerous interactions.
What I do remember clearly is taking the four-wheelers to the back field and catching the field on fire, in the middle of summer, a dry, dry summer.
Where I grew up was farms on top of farms on top of farms. Every year or so, the farmers would burn their fields, something about restoring the topsoil or getting rid of weeds that are bad for your crops, I don’t know which one. The property we lived on had the biggest river in the region bordering it, Nolin River. It was 200 acres of open field, and ninety acres of woods along the river. The river bordered our property.
After seeing some of the neighboring farms burn their fields in recent days, and heavy intoxication, Randy, who was also the property “maintenance man”, says, “let’s do the same with Mom’s—his mother, my Aunt Gerri—fields.”
“It’ll be okay. We can keep it under control.” He said, when I protested a bit, “Jordan, trust me. It’ll be alright.” He always loved to say that, trust me, and I was naive enough that I did, for a very long time.
We had a sled that we hooked to the 4-wheelers for some good dangerous fun from time to time. This sled was a car hood, turned upside-down, with the back seat from a Plymouth minivan welded to it. No one ever got hurt, but we should of.
While crossing the field we—well, he, I watched—took pieces of paper and lit the Goldenrod, or wheat, or whatever the tall stuff is that grows in the fields of Central Kentucky, and it starts to catch quickly. His idea was as long as we didn’t let the fire move toward the trailers where we lived everything would be alright because the field dead ends into the river, and water puts out fires. After all, the wind is only blowing a little.
It wasn’t like we had Santa Ana winds out there but, things turned ugly regardless.
Very soon the flames were over our heads, and we were using the sled, chained to the ATV, going up and down the field, trying to keep it under control, we thought we could use the sled to stamp out the fire, thus keeping it under control…Right? Wrong!
What we didn’t know that anyone with a fucking brain would know is that the fire, can and would, jump the river.
The field burned, the woods on both sides of the river, burned, the fire department showed up and was able to get it under control. It didn’t make it to any homes, but damn, it could have. This surely wouldn’t have happened without drugs, but I’m not sure if it was an admiration for them that caused it. Aunt Gerri had to pay a hefty fine for an intentional fire on her property. Before anyone attacks me, however, I was only 13, please, lol. For this next one, however, I was not.
House in the Hood
I was on my way to work. I had a fool proof plan as I peddled my 10-speed down the bike lane in Portland Louisville. My first mistake was being in Portland. See, I was halfway between sober, and a mess and this night turned out to be a mess.
I could never visit Portland without relapsing. It was a guarantee. Every time I visited my old friends there, the drugs would come out immediately, and this time was no different. I spent all night doing meth and taking Valium's until 5:00AM rolled around, and it was time to go to work.
I stashed my drugs in a scrap a/c unit until I got off work. Surely, I just wanted an excuse to come back over and continue my binge.
They were hoarders and trash pickers, and their studio apartment where they resided was stacked with things from the ceiling to the floor. I stashed my drugs, would stop at the local store Boones Market, to grab a biscuit, a cup of coffee, and a pack of cigarettes. That was the plan, but I made an error when I arrived at the store, pulled my bike up by the air pumps to chain it up while I was inside.
A couple was standing in the shadows and one of them said to me, “Nice bike.” I thought he was asking for change or something of the sort, and I was as broke as anyone so normally I wouldn’t engage, but he caught me off guard. It wasn’t a nice bike, unless you have nothing then any bike is nice.
Maybe it was the Valium, but I started talking and joking with the two, and out of nowhere 30 minutes had passed and I’d completely forgotten about the store, work, any of that. I had started this conversation thinking the guy and girl hanging out at a corner store at five in the morning, wanted something, was panhandling, but they weren’t, at least not from me, as they had tried a couple different people walking by. They could obviously see that I was one of them, down on our luck, trying to get by. We all three started drifting up the street, just talking and walking, then we were at their spot, which was a rundown abandoned house, no electricity, boarded up, but they had pulled one of the boards loose to get inside.
After squeezing in between the boards into a pitch-black room, I get out my phone to use the flashlight to see what is around me, it’s pretty rough, there’s an old grimy mattress where they are now sitting and a couple old chairs where I grab a seat, you can’t move around much more than that because there's is old rotted furniture and shit everywhere. I tell them I had some ice on me and some more down the street. I split what I had with them, then decide to run down on my bike to grab the rest.
For the first time it crosses my mind, I’m not making it to work today…
It was really quite silly, hanging out and getting high with a homeless couple in an abandoned house. I had a home and a full-time job, but here I was hanging out with two homeless people in a rundown abandoned house, where black mold was the safest thing, I might get exposed to. Twenty-four hours ago, I’d had six months of clean time, now here I am. I tell them, “I’ve got some more ice and some Valium's. I’m gonna run and get it.” They were skeptical of this, surely because many of others had lied to them before, so I finish my cigarette and throw it down, and squeeze out from between the boards that kept the entrance.
On my bike, peddling back, it’s about a ten-minute bike ride from there to there. When I get there, they don’t answer the door right away, they must’ve fallen asleep. It takes about fifteen minutes of knocking and calling to get them to answer, and finally they do. They’re trying to rest so I’m in and out, and headed back, I see the couple walking hurriedly with their eyes down, stern looks on their faces, a couple blocks before I turn on the street with the house.
I say, “Hey what’s going on? Y’all wanna go back to the house to do a line?”
They both look shocked, and I get the feeling I’m missing something, and the lady says, “Look up!” And points to the sky behind her, and it’s first time I look past them, there’s a cloud of black smoke on the horizon about a block away from us, right about where I was headed to.
I then started to hear the sirens wailing, and realized they were really close.
He said, “I don’t know what happened, one second everything was okay, the next second the place was on fire.”
It hit me almost immediately, the cigarette I threw down… Damn.
We circled around the block and seen that the neighbors on both sides were on the sidewalks because the fire was so big it was reaching the neighboring homes. It was awful! What it was is careless stupidity.
In the days after this incident there was unintended consequences that followed. No one was hurt, but the rumors going around was that spice heads had caused another fire, nodding out and shit, so the Metro Police started cracking down on anyone seen trespassing in any abandoned structures and a lot of homeless people were back to the sidewalks, arrested, and I’m sure some of them got off the streets over that.
The Indoor Campfire
Rewind a couple years further I had a friend named Travis, he was homeless at the same time that I was, difference was he had been on the streets a lot longer than me, and in turn already wore out his welcome with practically everyone. I wonder if he made it out….
So, on cold nights when I could find someone's floor, or garage to crash on, he would find an abandoned house.
One, very cold night, I found Travis, asleep on an empty living room floor of an abandoned house, curled up dangerously close to a fire he had built in the middle of the floor. I had never seen anyone do something like this, and he was so sound asleep. The two of us knew each other from meth and meth culture, we bought from the same dealer, had used together, even at one point had the same girlfriend, but I had no clue how I came to be homeless at the same time that he was, and even less do I know of how I had come to find him in that living room. But it scared the shit out of me. It went against everything that I knew of fire, everything!
You can’t build a fire in a living room, without a fireplace! The smoke can’t escape, the oxygen gets replaced with Carbon Monoxide, it seemed crazy!
I immediately thought, this is a suicide attempt, with fire! Dear God! You sad, sad, soul! I start shaking him! He won’t wake up, shake him again, the fucker’s snoring, he’s alive, he’s just been on a bender, probably hasn’t slept in two weeks! I finally get him to answer me, he says, “Whaaaaaat! W-what do you want!?”
I say, “Travis, the fire!?” He opens his eyes, he’s awake enough now to get why I’m tripping, he sits up and says, “Shit, it’s going out!”
“I poured water on it; you can’t build a fire in a band-o.”
“Ah man, that was the only water I had! Did you dump it all?” I hadn’t.
“No, just half of it, but that fire would’ve killed you, right?”
“Killed me? I build fires in here all the fucking time. As long as it’s an open room like this one, otherwise I’d freeze to death! Do you got a cigarette?” I did.
I sat there with him for a couple hours; we did some meth I had tucked away. A couple days later, probably the last time I seen him, there was an abandoned house fire, that burned down completely and caught two other houses. Travis barely made it out safely. I seen him later that day and asked him about it. He said, “I don’t know how it started!” But I did.
Once again, meth was absolutely involved but I’m not sure if you could say, he liked the fire. He was simply cold, and wasn’t sufficiently afraid of fire as he should have been.
This final story, happened to my darling Susan and I, many years into me being clean, and has hints of both things, meth addicts who cause fires and tear things up. To which, I’d argue, they don’t like tearing things up, they like fixing things that should instead be thrown away.
The Apartment Fire
I’ve become a morning person as an adult. I have to remember sometimes, that not everyone is, in fact, most people are not. My preferred schedule is getting up at 4:15 in the morning, if I have to be at work at 7. 7 am on a day off. It gives me time to drink coffee, and read, and check out videos on YouTube. Nowadays, I do a lot of my writing and research early in the morning. Sometimes I wake up to a subject rolling around in my head.
Anyways, I wake up and slide out of bed as gently as possible as to not wake Susan before her time, it’s 4:15 in the morning and my alarm has just gone off, I clicked it off as fast as I could, to not wake her. I slide on my house shoes, walk up the hall to the kitchen, turn on the Keurig, to let it warm, pull on my flannel jacket, feel for the lighter and cigarettes, and creek out the door to smoke the days first cigarette.
When I open the door, there is quite a sight to behold. My eyes are pulled upward to something abnormal right out of view, when I look up, I see, the darkest, angriest, storm cloud in one long bellow, rising toward the sky. We’re in a downstairs apartment, so looking up, it was hard to see where the smoke was coming from. I thought maybe there was a fire behind the building, a house burning back there. I see a guy walking kind of in circles in the parking lot, hands on his head, and I recognize him as an upstairs neighbor. I approach him to find out what is going on. I notice his nervousness as I approach, he says, “Don’t worry, it’s okay! The fire department is on their way.” As he says that, I do start to hear the sirens. He says, “See, ya hear ‘em? They’re coming here.”
“Okay, what happened?” I’m realizing now that it’s the upstairs of our apartments burning. I can’t remember the guy’s name, but he was known as a drug addict, and in this part of town, drug addicts use meth.
“I plugged my phone in to charge it, and I laid down on the couch, I woke up and the mattress was on fire, so I grabbed my backup phone, ran out here and called 9-1-1. Now here we are.”
What struck me the first time as odd, is, he doesn’t ever mention trying to put the fire out. I heard the story like fifty times, between him saying it over and over to us, to him telling it to every official that showed up, ne never tried once to put it out, he panicked and ran. Then assumed that the fire department would come and put it out, no big deal.
I finished my cigarette, taking in, this is really bad.
I go in, and say to my girl, trying my best not to startle, “Baby, I’m so sorry to wake you so early, but there’s a fire upstairs, we need to get Pepper and come out here and see this.”
She says, “Okay baby, I just got to pee.” While she’s peeing it must have dawned on her what I was saying, because she comes out with Pepper—our sweet little angel of a dog—and says, “I can smell it.” As she says that, I start to realize that smoke is now pouring into our apartment from all the cracks and crevasses.
We went out to the car to sit out of harm’s way; the Fire Department are now here, and they are going door to door making sure no one is inside any of these apartments. There’s chaos in the apartment directly under the fire. Where the ladder is, in the picture above. They weren’t answering the door, then you hear a big crash, that we later learned was the heat from the fire shattering the lady’s bedroom window, then two adults and five children come pouring out of there, scared to death! Thankfully, no one was hurt, but what exactly happened?! Was the meth head performing a séance, sacrificing a mattress, or does he just admire the flames. Turns out it was much simpler than that, turns out he doesn’t understand electricity, that’s all.
His phone charger stopped working so he tried to splice it directly to an extension cord and plug it in. Problem with this is the current coming out of the wall is either 220 or 110 Volts, when it passes through the little box that your charger cord plugs into, that box, only allows 5 to 12 Volts, depending on the plug, to come through at a time, but if you bypass that box, you’re pushing 220 volts into a little phone battery, and if that much power doesn’t blow the battery, it causes extreme heat at the splices, all around bad way to fix your phone. He did this, then laid down to get some shut eye, not a fear in the world.
Anyways, that’s it for that story. The landlord put us up in a hotel for a week, only because of smoke damage and damage to electricity caused by the fire. Outside of that our apartment wasn’t touched.
It’s almost like a satanic panic talking point to say that these people simply like fire. I’ve been one of them, shit just kinda happens. I’d concede that I’ve seen people on meth do some pretty evil things, but starting fire because they like it? Nah. Meth heads are very busy people.
Incompetence causes more problems than anything in the world! The damage in the world, that all Seven Deadly Sins combined has done, could never match up to the damage done, in all sectors of the world, and all points of our lives by incompetence. Incompetence is the great ruin-er of all things! That’s all I’m trying to say. Thank you for reading!
Editor-in-Chief