My Relationship with Intoxicants: It's Complicated

[Originally posted to Tumblr in "Solving Cubes" on April 19, 2013]

I fear I won’t make many friends by posting this, and that I might lose a couple given recent events, but I feel the need to organize my thoughts and share them on the off chance that someone identifies with me.

Throughout my adolescence I have had an internal conflict with mind-altering substances.

In junior high and early high school, drugs and alcohol were in a completely different universe as far as I was concerned. As an only child, I knew I could never get away with doing either since my parents would almost certainly find out about it (and they eventually did). I hardly had any friends apart from the internet and my family, let alone friends who partied, so it wasn’t even something I could make a choice about, really.


- imgur

Junior and senior year in high school brought some experiences, which were fine until I was busted by my parents, grounded for a month, developed heavy guilt about it, and refused to engage in it ever again (or at least for a while).

In high school and even during my first year of college, partying had this dark, skanky color to it in my mind. I associated the word “alcohol” with big high school or college parties, with low lights and loud music I was never able to get myself to like, with half-naked people making out in the corners, cheating on their partners, picking up people just for sex, getting stupid drunk and forgetting all their convictions about right and wrong until they spewed out all the evil onto someone’s couch.

- goodreads.com
Something like this (see: behavior with which I don’t really identify)

I confess most of this impression had to do with a lack of experience and education. But part of my anxiety with intoxication had also been borne from what I had seen of marijuana in real life.

I had found several times - even for my best friends with whom I had the most in common - when kids experimented with marijuana, they would almost unfailingly become borderline dependent on it. Getting high multiple times every day, driving high, wasting their freedom and opportunities by smoking and then not doing anything, gradually giving less of a shit about things in general, causing conflict in their families. It has often gotten to the point where my friends are bored around me when weed isn’t involved.

So there have been several times, both in high school and in college, when I have developed relationships that were extremely important to me, but after a while I could no longer bond with those people because they picked up some kind of substance to use every time I was around them, and I didn’t want a part of it.

My image of parties as dark and skanky entities extended into this past winter break, and I am thankful that since I’ve been of drinking age in Thailand, I’ve been able to get to know that scene a bit better.

I can now honestly say that I have been drunk, that I have been to bars and clubs and parties and drunken beach-fests. I’m extremely glad that I’ve done that, because now I don’t tremble in my own little world when I’m at those things anymore. I don’t have miniature panic attacks or find it impossible to speak to anyone. A party environment used to be paralyzing to me – now it’s relatively normal.

When I was on Koh Tao recently, I had an epiphany as I was watching a crowd of young, drunk people party around some fire dancers. I watched girls shake their asses in men’s faces, bros hold their beers in the air. I had people slur at me trying to be friendly and clever. I saw vodka sweat dripping down people’s faces and had some drunk asshole push me over into the sand. I imagined watching this scene with absolutely no context: no visible environment, no music, just people standing in clumps ingesting things, entertained by the dizziness and in turn ingesting more. I saw a crowd of animals with their neocortices – the thing that essentially makes them human – switched off.

In that moment, suddenly partying wasn’t a mysterious grown-up thing anymore. It wasn’t intimidating, but absolutely absurd.

- imageshack.us

This isn’t to say that I stand against turning off your neocortex every once in a while. I’m not against smoking a doobie to see things in a different light, or downing a tasty cocktail and feeling your fears melt away for a while. I’m not even against partying or doing stupid things young people do. I’ve gotten a lot of good stories from things like that.

What I’ve found in Thailand is a happy medium between being deathly afraid of substances and being married to them. Thanks to medication and an all-around better attitude toward things, I’m now better able to enjoy intoxication, so I understand why people like it. New experiences have opened me up to the possibilities of that world.

But there’s still this little chip on my shoulder about using most or even half of one’s free nights as drinking or smoking time. I could say it’s because I’d rather my friends spend their time thinking about important things, or going to new places, or saving their money. But ultimately what I think it’s really about is that I don’t want to lose any more friends.

I value time spent with people when I’m coherent, fully present, bonding with them as real people with real curiosities and real fears and real flaws. There’s nothing I enjoy more than when someone else fires up my brain, when I’m deep in conversation and literally feel myself shaking from excitement in my seat.

What I fear is that all my relationships conducive to that are doomed to vanish when others find substances and can’t enjoy those simple moments with me anymore. I fear all that meaning I find in friendship will be lost on booze and THC, that I will no longer be enough, and once again I’ll be left to sit around and wait for another temporary someone to relate to.

But maybe that’s just me.