HEROIN

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Acrylic on Canvas. Size 36" x 36" Completed in San Francisco, September 1994

"Heroin is an insidious destroyer of souls. The first experience brings you pleasant dreams and euphoria. There's nothing like the soft warm waves of comfort and well being that surge through your body. Like long lost secret memories from a cool heavenly death. This world's worries are over ... solved in an instant! All your dreams and aspirations are suddenly attainable!

But beware! If you visit this place to often it robs you of ALL your dreams. All the pleasures that life has fated to you will be burned up like a pile of dried leaves. It takes your life and leaves you with only the desire to have IT again, and again… and again. That, and the agony that envelopes you when you can't get it. Heroin will take from you everything that makes you a person. You will no longer be human. Heroin will make you into a monster. You end up existing only for it. You will become its slave. You will become sick, foolish, ugly and sexless.

Perhaps you think, as I once did, that you can take it with impunity. However, I tell you this; Take it just once and it will change you. It is a devil that is older than man and is more evil than any man can comprehend. Yes, it is only a chemical ... as are we all.

This painting is a diary of what was going on in my life while I painted it. I went from prescription pain medication to a full blown Heroin addiction in the course of 2 years. This painting foresaw what was to come. I painted a self-fulfilling prophecy. After this painting, I accidentally burned down my studio and did not paint again for over 10 years."