Re: Joe's Quad Question

["Schrade, Scott" <sschrade@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> My question to the group is:  Can one be clean and sober,
> and popular and have grown up with the benefits of the 
> American dream, with a mum and dad that you love, and loved
> you and still relate to Quad?


That description above pretty much describes me when I first got 
hooked on QUAD.  I wasn't drinking, I wasn't smoking (anything),
home life/parents were treating me OK, plenty of friends in 
high school, etc.

As has been stated, QUAD taps into that deep-down isolation & 
confusion we all feel at times, no matter how good things may
seem to be going.

Jimmy, despite the occasional smack around by his dad, wasn't
exactly a sorrowful, unpopular, lazy, loner.  He had tons of 
friends, he had a job, pulled the occasional bird, had a social 
life, etc.

It wasn't what was happening on the outside that began bothering
Jimmy, it was what started happening on the inside, in his mind,
that fostered his doubt & uncertainty.

He reached the point that many people reach where established
roles & routines begin to look absurd & useless.  He wasn't going
crazy; his mind was expanding & opening while the minds of every-
one else in his life seemed to be remaining stagnant & stalled.

There's where the isolation & depression comes in.  Once you make 
that leap, that decision, that *your* mind isn't like the others,
& their minds aren't like yours, you isolate yourself & event-
ually nurture your exclusion & depression.

QUAD's more about self-realization, self-questioning, than it is
about teen angst, drugs, abuse, or generation gaps.  It's about
dealing with becoming aware, & having for the first time to summon
strength from within one's self.  And that doesn't only happen
once in life, when we're teenagers.  It can happen in other stages
of life, as well.  It's deeper than just a coming-of-age melodrama.


- SCHRADE in Akron