43,000,000,000,000,000,000 Emotions

When things go sideways in my life, I have several escapes before I’m forced into triage. Music always works, but it’s a particular brand—something throaty and raw, like Roadhouse Blues by The Doors or Can’t You Hear Me Knocking by the Stones. Something that resembles a gut punch to the eardrums. Something so encompassing that the brain has no choice but to get absorbed in it. After all, isn’t that the point?

Other times, it’s sugar, salt, and fat—an immediate shot of dopamine—something to shake up my neurochemistry. Anything with Reese’s in the name is a surefire means of setting off a dynamite’s worth of epinephrine through the nervous system, but it requires at least a thousand calories worth.

Tobacco works too. Be it a cigar, a pipe, or a mouthful of Red Man. In the old days, booze was a guaranteed winner, but I don’t imbibe anymore.

A game of squash is probably the best means of dealing with bullshit, but if you’re not at the club, it ain’t happening. Besides, the technology that delivers all the bullshit in my life is my cell phone, and they’re strictly forbidden in private clubs.

So that leaves my brother in arms—Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Yeah, that guy. When life throws curveballs, I go to the doctor, though his title came from a mail-order thingamajig.

I love to get lost in his Gonzo Papers. They’re an escape like no other. This isn’t a dissertation on his writing or his style; it’s just one man’s appreciation for the freedom and fearlessness in his prose.

When I’m down and out, Thompson rearranges my emotions faster than a world champion Rubik's Cube “athlete.” Out of a possible forty-three quintillion emotional combinations on my Cube (see below for reference), with fear, hopelessness, resentment, greed, and confusion splitting top bill, the doctor flips me back into shape in the span of two pages.

The written word… thank God for the written word. It’s oxygen to a fellow like me.

Billion: 43,000,000,000
Trillion: 43,000,000,000,000
Quadrillion: 43,000,000,000,000,000
Quintillion: 43,000,000,000,000,000,000 - how many emotions I deal with simultaneously when the shit hits the fan