Hooked on Meth

It occurred to me at lunch the other day, that Austin is considered a hippie town for two reasons. One is pretty obvious: all the hippies. For example, they put on a birthday party for Eeyore as an excuse to get high in public and bang on bongos and Austin has America’s second largest vegetarian population.

The second reason is something that Austin is pretty famous for too. Sure it proclaims itself as the Live Music Capital of the World, in the same way that Realtors are prone to declaring themselves Number One Realtor in Mueller, but that’s really missing the point.

It’s plant spunk hell is what Austin is. The Live Allergy Capital of the World. Which means that you either wander around chomping down benadryl and siphoning sea water through your breathing passages (see neti potting), or you ingest decongestants, which as far as I can tell means pseudoephedrine.

Pseudo is the pharmacist word for pretend or fake. Ephedrine is the pharmacist name for meth, uppers, bennies, blues, whizz, amphetamines or trucker speed.

Pseudoephedrine is probably addictive. I can’t be sure, but I find myself in psychotic rages grinding my teeth with blurred vision and an inability to sleep on the same days that I can breathe freely during the allergy season that runs roughly from January to December in this stinking hell hole. And the rages et al. are symptoms that seem to be consistent with other things I’m addicted to, such as iPhone video games and dark chocolate.

I can’t say that it’s the decongestants that make Austin a hippie retreat – it’s probably the benadryl. I’m sorry I went off on the pseudoephedrine tangent, I think that’s one of the side effects. Incidentally, I did dream (in my scant hours of tortured slumber last night) that I had 2 ounces of cocaine and a bunch of handguns, and that I was on my way to party with Michael Jackson. There you go. Delusions. Tangents. But back to the hippies.

Yes, hippies can blend in well with the fabric of society in Austin when said fabric is always half stoned on benadryl. This little anti-allergy drug is mostly diphenylhydramine. If you check out the wikipedia link, the side effects are pretty much being stoned. It doesn’t mention anything about donkey festivals, free love or bongos, but I’m sure there’s a link. And yes, I know that correlation isn’t causation, but look at it this way:

Hippies grow plants.

Plants make pollen.

Pollen gives people allergies and forces them into a life of amphetamine and diphenylhydramine cocktails.

Which makes people act like hippies.

I ask you, is this camouflage for the hippie, or is this just the plants exerting their will? I mean, the corn is winning. It’s making us eat it, plant it, fertilize it. After the nuclear holocaust, it’ll be cockroaches and corn in the final battle I tell you.