Reverse Engineering Stream of Consciousness

I was driving to the Saturn dealership this morning and found myself thinking about drug use and why we should or should not care if someone decides to use them, and all of the implications that go along with it, abuse, addiction, how to support the habit, and so on. At some point venturing down this path I realized I was thinking about it, and I wanted to know how I wound up at that point. This would be the reverse engineering part, and it is sometimes something I do when I catch myself thinking about seemingly random things.

I figured out that I had been thinking about Traffic (the movie) and the girl who got addicted to cocaine, which her boyfriend introduced her to, and how she lost control of her habit, but her boyfriend did not. She eventually ran away from home, penniless, and started whoring herself out for drugs.

I then worked backwards again, and realized a song or two ago on the CD I was playing (Indigo Girls self titled album) there was a line in the song “Prince of Darkness” — “someone’s on the bathroom floor doing her cocaine.” And so I figured out how I got there.

Most of the time I am successful, and it sometimes takes a bit of effort to work through it all. I find it intriguing how our minds unconsciously make all of these associations, at one point I’m listening to a song, a bit later I’m debating the socio-economical effects of drug use/abuse.

Anyway, I thought it was interesting (the idea not necessarily the particular instance), and felt like sharing.