Do you want to live forever?

Immortality for dummies.

“No fim, tudo dá certo. Se não deu, ainda não chegou ao fim.”
In the end, everything works out. If it hasn’t worked out, it’s not the end.
—Fernando Sabino

“I have a sore neck,” I told Lacey once, between puffs of a crack pipe.

Lacey, who had watched people die on the streets in every imaginable way, leapt to her feet as if I’d announced a terminal diagnosis.

“Oh no!” she wailed. “You poor thing! What do you need?”

“Maybe just some aspirin?”

She held out her hand. I gave her some money. She vanished in a wisp of crack smoke and wasn’t seen again for several days.

The neck pain was probably innocent enough. I had recently awakened from a two‑day sleep coma, and you wouldn’t believe the positions crack people pass out in. Sometimes crouched mid‑sentence. Sometimes upside down. Sometimes folded like a marionette someone dropped.

What troubled me was that you’re not supposed to feel anything when you’re high. If something managed to break through the veil of crack, it had to be bad.

It took months — and a heroic amount of self‑medication — for the pain to fade. Maybe I beat cancer without knowing it. That’s the thing about addiction: when you’re high, you can’t die. You only reckon with the devastation you’ve inflicted on your body when you get clean. For many people, that’s reason enough to stay high.

When a crack smoker wakes up after a long slumber, there’s a brief, terrible window where you feel everything: the aches, the wheezes, the diseases. You feel mortal.

A good session wipes all that away. Crack smokers don’t even age while high — or so we like to believe. Men will proudly announce their age like it’s a miracle.

“I’m 85!” a withered creature will declare. “Can you believe it?”

I’d play along, insist he didn’t look a day over 30, maybe even ask about his skincare routine.

Women follow a different system. Under 40, they’ll tell you their age. Over 40, they drop to their 20s. And any woman over 60 is usually around 37.

Of course, crack doesn’t actually hold back time. But you can’t blame us for believing it. Prolonged illness — even aging — is unheard of in crack country. We tend to just drop dead.

This is why getting clean is so daunting. The first reckoning is with the body. The doctor’s appointment is a horror show: skin condition, parasites, heart murmur, shadow in the lungs — and, oh yes, you’re actually old.

Whatever happened to my neck never mattered much. I probably did sleep upside down.

But if you manage to clean up your medical charts and even take up a fitness routine — I recommend swimming — you experience the first unexpected high of sobriety. Coming back from the dead is intoxicating.

Then comes the mind. Pills, books, school. You wonder if you have an attention span left. But you do. That thing you used to do with your cheeks — puffing them out like a chipmunk when you thought no one was watching — that’s gone too. Memory still works. The brain doesn’t need a new transmission. Getting straight As still rocks. Planning for the future is a very good drug for grown‑ups.

This is where the addict takes stock of what remains of his mind and is surprised — even thrilled — by the results.

And then comes the final reckoning, the one we worked hardest to avoid: the soul. Feelings return. All of them. The drag of life’s drumbeat — taxes, relationships, toxic people. But music sounds incredible. Relationships can feel really good. The good, the bad, the boring — all of it is food for a soul that’s been starved too long.

Every crack smoker has their reasons for not wanting to feel the world. I’m still not entirely sure about mine. What I do know is that to live, you have to keep showing up. All I have now is a strong body, a clear mind, and an honest relationship with myself. It seems to be working.

Because sometimes — and I swear this — I can feel my soul.

When you can feel the world again, in all its agonizing stupidity and ecstasy, and embrace it anyway, that’s when you finally understand what it means to live forever.