18 Different Drugs in 11 Days. And then some painting.

I guess we all know I like to smoke weed. And sure, I have also experimented in with various other mind blowing goodies my days. But I came across Bryan Lewis Saunders, an artist who took this experimenting a interesting step further. This dude has been doing a project where he paints a self portrait everyday for more than 16 years already and then came with a ‘genius’ idea; painting a self portrait everyday while being on a different drug every day. One might think it is a crazy idea and another might think it’s a great idea, but I must say that the outcome I saw is really beautiful.

Bryan Lewis Saunders was born in Washington, DC in 1969 and is known as an artist in the fields of sound, visuals, performance and ‘Stand-up Tragedy’ (basically the opposite of ‘Stand-up Comedy’ and this form of stand-up has the aim to make people cry instead of laugh by talking about very dark matters and subjects). Knowing this, you might realize that his paintings are not the happiest ones as well. Bryan however seems to be a very nice guy and when I asked his permission to show you his paintings he was very pleased by my interest and wouldn’t mind showing them to you to. But taking a different drug every day for several weeks in a row, doesn’t that make a man go crazy? When asked this question, Bryan answered that at a certain moment during the process he could feel that his brain was seriously getting damaged. “I’ve been labeled with: Antisocial Personality Disorder (as a child), Borderline (in my teens), Schizotypal (as a young adult) and Paranoid Schizophrenic (at present)…” Bryan answers, “in the beginning of the experiment I did 18 different drugs in 11 days and getting carried away a bit. After a few days I was just taking a new drugs as soon as the effects of the previous one where wearing off, not thinking about the harm I was causing myself. It wasn’t until my good friend Audra saw my pictures and made me realize I was almost giving myself Down Syndrome. I realized then that I was mixing the wrong drugs with each other for several days and damaging my brain by doing so. After this it took some time before I tried some new drugs again.” Bryan is not a frequent drug user just for fun. In his past life he has experimented with drugs before but he has never been taking drugs very often and for sure is not a party animal. When asked which drugs were the best for him or what was his favorite substance he answers that Butane Honey oil was a real blast but Xanax was his favorite.”Xanax made me feel real at peace with life and made me a real social dynamo.  Normally I’m a bit of a recluse but with the Xanax I could just walk up and talk to total strangers.”

Well I personally wouldn’t like to try this kind of experiment but I sure like looking at the different paintings and I might not come as a surprise to you but I honestly like the marijuana one the most!

Cocaïne

 

Nicotine gum

 

Butane Honey Oil

 

G13 Marijuana

 

Salvia Divinorum

 

Crystal Meth

 

Marijuana

 

Hash

 

Klonopin

 

Dilaudid + Morphine

 

You can find a lot more of Bryan's paintings right here.