Todd Lowell



I have a pretty good idea about how you kids see your old man. Sure, I know you love me and all that, but don’t think I don’t notice how you look at me—you think I haven’t got a cool bone in my body! You think I’m just your boring dad who doesn’t ever do anything interesting or fun, and who’s in bed by ten o’clock every night, even on the weekends—I’m right, aren’t I? Well, it might surprise you to find out that your lame old dad used to be quite the meth head back in the day.


Yep, it’s true! Believe it or not, before you kids came along, I was a full-on tweaker!

Bet you thought you had your dad all figured out, didn’t ya? Ha! Truth be told, I actually used to smoke meth all the time. Hard to imagine the same stickler who won’t let you borrow the car past 8 p.m. was once completely covered in burn marks and lost tooth after tooth from smoking meth out of a lightbulb.

Yep, your mom and I used to really get out there and mix it up—sometimes for 80 or 90 hours straight.


Don’t believe me? Have a look at my teeth. Most of them are fake! And I bet you thought all these scars were from the chicken pox or acne or something like that, but nope—they’re from compulsively picking at scabs on my face when I was completely gacked out of my brain on bathtub speed!

Your old man doesn’t seem so lame now, does he?

And guess what else? I didn’t always used to live out here in the suburbs. No sir, I used to have a great little place right downtown in the city! It was more of a basement in a burned-out building, actually, and I split it with these 17 other spun-out meth heads. Sure, it wasn’t much to look at, with all the rebar sticking out everywhere and human waste piling up here and there, and in the winter the only heat we had was from piles of rags we’d set on fire, but man, we used to have a lot of fun.


Speaking of which, my friends back in those days were some pretty wild guys. If me, Tony, Rips, Shitmouth, and the rest of the gang weren’t tearing up the walls of abandoned buildings looking for copper wire, you could pretty much guarantee one of us was trying to stab all the others with a pair of scissors because he thought they were covered in spiders. And I couldn’t even begin to guess how many dudes we sucked off just to get a hit of crank. Man, sometimes it seems like we almost didn’t do anything else.

I tell you, back then, your square old pops was out on the town nearly every night, hanging around outside drugstores until I could get enough people to buy me a bunch of Benadryl. Then I’d head back to the squat and we’d cook up. I remember this one time, me and Rips were cooking a big batch of shabu, and Shitmouth was in a real bad way. So he decides he’s gonna rob us, but the big idiot tried to grab all the whizz before the off-gassing was purged and the whole rig exploded! He got third-degree burns all over his face and chest! Ha, ha!


Man, I got a million stories like that.

Of course, all of this was years ago—ancient history. Still, strange as it may seem, there really was a time when me and your mother didn’t spend every Saturday night watching the same old TV shows in the den and nodding off on the couch. Actually, don’t tell your mom I told you this, but she was a complete crystal freak herself! You kids wouldn’t have even recognized the two of us if you saw us. We were so skinny back then, and just screaming and screaming all the time. Yep, your mom and I used to really get out there and mix it up—sometimes for 80 or 90 hours straight.


Obviously, we couldn’t live that kind of crazy, carefree lifestyle forever, though. At some point, you’ve got to settle down, get treated for Hep C, and…well, I guess life just sort of happens, right? But the next time you think I’m embarrassing you in front of your friends, just remember that way back when you were babies and your boring old pops was sweating and vomiting through such bad withdrawals, he actually tried to sell you for a baggie of shake-and-bake ice!

And by the way, if you think your dad was cool, just ask Grandma about when she was a heroin mule for the cartels.