D.L.A.T.Y.Y.C.K.Y.Y.T.C.

June 4, 2026

D.L.A.T.Y.Y.C.K.Y.Y.T.C. | 5-24-2026 | acrylics and pigment ink on canvas | 24 x 30 in

I thought I’d be living at Tranquil Shores for at least another two months but when I went into the clinical office that morning, I found out I only had ten days before my discharge.

I felt shattered. Caught completely off-guard. I walked back to the residential property alone and remembered a conversation I’d had with my sister 18 months earlier.

I’d just been released from the hospital, following an attempted overdose. “You can’t kill yourself, Sam. That’s so selfish,” she told me.

Fuck you, I thought. “You know what’s really selfish, Racey? Expecting me to endure this kind of pain every day – to keep on with this shitty, empty life – devoid of any happiness whatsoever – so that you can call me on the phone two or three times a year.”

You wouldn’t be reading this right now if my life hadn’t EVENTUALLY IMPROVED, but – back then – my life hurt. Every day was painful. I felt isolated, hopelessly addicted to heroin, and lost. I could see no way out. It didn’t have to be that way, but I didn’t yet have the emotional tools I needed to do anything about it. 

While I managed to turn my life around, some people suffer for decades on end. And as bitter and angry as I was when Racey said that to me, I’m still not sure we owe it to anyone else to stay stuck in a life like that.

That said – unless you’re in chronic pain or suffering from debilitating, UNABATING mental illness, you probably shouldn’t kill yourself. Not unless you’ve exhausted ALL other options. Because – as dark and miserable as life can be (and BELIEVE ME, I KNOW), it can also be pretty great.

If you’re truly ready to die, truly ready to give up on everything, then you’ve got nothing left to lose. So – before you kill yourself – lose it. Blow up your life before ending it. Choose uncertainty over unhappiness. Suicide is usually the consequence of feeling trapped. But you’re not trapped.

End the relationship. Quit your job. Break the lease. Disconnect your phone. Move across the country. Do whatever it takes to get out of your rut.

In my admittedly limited experience, when I make choices that demonstrate love (for myself and for others), things have a way of working out.

If all of this sounds impossible, I assure you: it’s easier than you think. If it sounds terrifying, do it anyway.

Worst case scenario: you were right, nothing gets better, and suicide is still an option.

DON’T LET ANYONE TELL YOU OTHERWISE.

But it’s not a very good option.

Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

This painting is what I call an UPCYCLE. I took the concept from one of my very early paintings and used it for this new one. The one I’m working on now is gonna be another one.

ON A RELATED NOTE, I’ve got three fairly recent paintings that I decided weren’t quite good enough. They were CLOSE but not quite. In the past, I believed in leaving each painting as a snapshot of where I was at right when I made it. Fuck that. I don’t wanna hang or sell something I’m not 100% proud of and happy with. So I went back to work on those three paintings and now I’m even more excited about them than I was when they were brand new.

DLATYYCKYYTC is so titled as a nod to IYDKMRNIGE. I can rattle off either acronym LIKE IT’S NOTHIN’. (Yes, I’ve practiced).

Calvin’s Alprazolam

October 3, 2013

"Calvin's Alprazolam." 7/3/13. Graphic design. 4x2".
“Calvin’s Alprazolam.” 7/3/13. Graphic design. 4×2″.

I played Calvin Mather in the short film “No Real Than You Are.” During the four weeks I was in town to work on the movie, I tried to pitch in with whatever I could to be helpful. This is some of my “prop work”: a perfect replica of a Walgreens prescription label. Every detail is exactly as it would be if Calvin were… you know… not a character in a movie. That’s the address and phone number for the Walgreens closest to the address I chose for him (my last address before going to rehab in December 2011). It was a shitty little box of a studio apartment that had mushrooms growing out of the carpet. I pulled ’em out, sprayed fungicide and other assorted chemicals, but they’d always grow back. Eventually I relented and just accepted them as part of my home. I kinda liked ’em.

So while this isn’t anything like my usual “art,” I think it counts. I didn’t have a scanner so I had to create it from scratch – and everything is 100% dead on. (Go ahead! Pull out a prescription bottle from Walgreens and see how it measures up!)

Another project I did for the movie… The night before the filming of the first scene in which a character would be sniffing oxycodone, I found out that the powder the crew had been planning to use (instead of real drugs) wasn’t going to work. So Chris Spillane and I went to Walmart at 2am and bought vitamins, food dye, hose clamps, bowls, a lamp, and a lightbulb and cooked up a pile of “oxycodone” that looked extraordinarily like the real thing. Walmart probably gets its share of sketchy characters during the third shift, but I think Chris and I won the contest that night. We both had a pretty good time with the whole thing. I remember laughing a lot that night, especially while we were still in the store. Back at the apartment, I was reminded of being a seventeen year old drug dealer, cutting cocaine with vitamins and acetone.

A couple days later, when we ran out of the stuff and needed more, I had Chris – plus Tola and Alex (the production designer and leadman) – sitting on the floor in my apartment, grinding away at vitamins as I mixed, colored, and cooked them. It felt like I was actually running a fake drug manufacture scam!

I would have loved to have been the cashier that rang us up that night.
I would have loved to have been the cashier that rang us up.

I had to sleep with this light on all night so that it'd be ready to go in time for the shoot in the morning.
I had to sleep with the light on so our “drugs” would be ready for the shoot in the morning.

In case you’re wondering… while this is what went up the noses of the actors that sniffed “drugs,” it is not what my character was injecting whenever he did a shot. For that, I used blue Gatorade. While there were some concerns that injecting Gatorade might be dangerous… Back when I was shooting heroin everyday, I was pretty shiftless; if there was no water within reach but a bottle of Gatorade sitting next to me, I’d just put that in my spoon instead. Electrolytes are good for you, you guys.

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  • “No Real Than You Are” is currently raising money to help with the costs of post-production. If you’d like to contribute (or just watch the trailer), check out their Kickstarter page.

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Bent Outta Shape fans will probably enjoy that the RX# on Calvin’s prescription is telephone spelling for “IYDKMRNIGE.”

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