Even the best drugs are bad for you.

Running away had always been my favorite escape. It is simple enough. Grab a change of clothes and your computer and get out of dodge.

Break your mother's heart if she bothers to notice and make sure your sisters have just enough spaghetti in the fridge that they won't care either way for at least a week. And don't do the laundry before hand.

Just get in the car and go. Start going south because the I-15 goes father that way but don't stop in St. George or Vegas because those are both too close to home.

 Follow the interstate divider for as long as it takes to decide if it is there as a temptress or as a compassionate friend, if you should run into it's embrace at full speed or go along next to it as long as you can.

Keep going until you are sure if those lines are really just a reminder of where to go or if they look like those pills for a reason.

Continue through the desert until you can decide if it is empty because you are the only one who understands it and it is saving itself for you or if it is just a wasteland like your father said.

Keep going until you run out of road. Then and only then is it safe to stop.

Drive to the very edge of the land, where the water is there reaching out to wash everything away, and park there.

Breath in the salt and rest assured that this is the one case where breathing something in and getting high off the feel of it in your lungs is good for you. Drink the sea until you are drunk and use that buzz to get you home safely.

You won't know what is up or down but it will all feel good. The ocean is your drug and it will keep you on top of the world.

At least until you've followed a path of pills back home, through the cold desert and past that long sturdy wall, and you remember that real life doesn't go away when you do and you can never remember what being high feels like once you come down.