Life's Pleasures Quote by Bill Griffith

Griffith is doing two things at once: admitting he was there, and refusing the romantic alibi. The first clause - "I sampled them just like anybody else" - is a credential, a way of saying he wasn’t a square peering in from the sidewalk. But the pivot lands hard: he draws a bright line between experimentation and dependence, between a scene’s vibe and a professional ethic. In a culture that often sold altered states as a kind of artistic ID badge, he’s stripping away the myth that stoned equals authentic.

The jab at "various cartoonists in the underground" isn’t moral panic; it’s a critique of a creative workflow held hostage. Calling being high a "prerequisite" recasts drug use as bureaucracy: an entry requirement, not an inspiration. That phrasing is deliberately unglamorous. It turns the counterculture’s supposed liberation into a small, repetitive ritual you have to complete before you’re allowed to work.

Context matters: underground comix were built on transgression - sex, politics, bad taste, and a general refusal of mainstream respectability. Drugs fit the brand, and sometimes the economics: long hours, low pay, constant self-mythmaking. Griffith’s subtext is that the real rebellion might be steadier and less photogenic: showing up sober enough to make pages, to refine a line, to keep agency over your own output. He’s not denying that drugs can change perception; he’s arguing that needing them to create is just another kind of dependence, and not the cool kind the scene liked to narrate.