Wasted
The first time I got drunk I was 14. Looking back I cant tell you why. I remember the liquor being in the cabinet. I remember a friend I had. But I don’t remember what made it call to me, or why I wanted to answer.
The sheer number of variables would be incalculable by a super computer. Was it because I was in to skate boarding? Was it the community I put myself in?
Was it the horror movies I saw when I was 10 years old, and would stay up all night watching? Or watching MTV and the crazy music videos? I can remember being pulled to the dark dystopia of Sisters of Mercy, I believe the video was for First and Last, and Always. Or maybe it was Lucretia my Reflection. dont remember
Does it go back even farther, to watching my father being an alcoholic and all that entailed?
Is it all of it? Is it none of it? Was the first sip born in the ether long ago before the world formed?
After stealing from the liquor bottle things hypothetically could have spiraled in to everything conceivable. Everything except meth. Reminds me too much of Mountain Dew, or vice versa. Idk.
What I do know at some point a fun and interesting stroll down a mushroom lined path turned in to numbing and self medicating.
We all self medicate in some fashion. Binge watch Netflix until our ass goes numb. Work out until your body wont move any more. Spend 5 hours trying to figure out which porn video you’re going to slam the pole and bash the clam to. Keep rigid schedules so that we keep order in our heads.
These things helps us get through the day. Not inherently good nor bad. Coffee helps give a perk me up.
But what about when these things become crutches, and then wheel chairs?
What happens when you get to the point that you can’t stand the world you live in any more, and you’re desperate to escape it. You find something that kills the pain. That numbs you enough to make it through.
The shy person, who uses a drink or two to loosen up at parties, who suddenly finds him/herself unable to go out without a few drinks, and is unable to stop drinking when they start.
Life is hard. Drugs help. Just ask the Pharma society.
When you have a disease, you take medication to ease your symptoms and pain.
We have a lot of social diseases. We have a lot of symptoms and pain. We have a lot of medication for them.
To top it off, we make being wasted sexy as fuck.
Brene Brown, super awesome shame researcher and sociologist (I once tried to use one of her speeches as a sample, but I couldn’t get a release for it) once said “We need to stop making exhausting a status symbol.”
Vincent Van Gogh was an unsuccessful artist. Poster boy, or maybe it should be painting boy? for starving and suffering artists. He sold one painting in his lifetime. But a guy cuts his ear off and suddenly (well maybe not suddenly) becomes a record breaking (dead) artist.
Jim Morrison. Janis Joplin. Kurt Cobain. Amy Winehouse. Syd Barrett.
Artistry is littered with the tragic.
Maybe thats how they get themselves to cope with the pressures of the public.
Whatever it is, we put it on a pedestal.
For a period of time, you weren’t a good poet unless you met with a tragic death.
These are the stories we tell. The movies we make. The escapes we softly and gently encourage. And then, when it’s too late, we say what a shame. Robin Williams finished suicide. What a shame, he was such a beautiful soul. How could this happen. All the time, just a little afraid if this could happen to someone we hold so high, could it happen to us as well?
But being a tortured soul is only sexy if a group of people decides it is. Just ask a drug addict who lives on the street, or the person who passes them by snubbing their nose.
We all laughed at Brittany when she went, well, Brittany. We said “Whats wrong with her” “She’s lost her shit”. We made memes of her.
Where am I going here? Seriously, I want to wrap this up, but I dont know how to end up. I dont even know what the point is.
I feel I shouldn’t miss Hunter S Thompson and Fear and Loathing
And William S Burroughs and Naked Lunch
I’m a middle aged upper middle class white guy, and I find life unbearable hard to swallow sometimes. I can’t imagine how others must feel. Numbing makes sense.
Around age 25 I decided I had to make some changes in my life or I was probably going to die very shortly thereafter. So I did. I was lucky. And I won’t give you a bs answer of “i’m a self made person and pulled myself up blah blah” I’ve had help over the years. Help from people who cared when they shouldn’t have.
Overdose, suicide, addiction, numbing, they are symptoms of pain. They are the gun shot wounds people walk in the er with. But instead as a society we often overlook it.
I often hear people talk to me about drug addicts and how they should be treated and just stare on from behind my eyes and think “if you only knew me”. Each of these people have an incredible potential, waiting inside to be nurtured and helped. Waiting for people to show them the way through the pain. Maybe thats it. Maybe we dont have answers, so we don’t try. Maybe we dont want to be found out for not really knowing. But by not having conversations and pretending it doesn’t exist, we sentence people and create a worse problem of “I dont suffer with anything, if you do, there is something wrong with you”
So whether you’re reading these with sober eyes, or trying to squint through whatever has made you numb, pause for just a moment. And wonder on connection. Theres a thin line between who we are and who we could be, and it’s only by the winds of the universe, and the drawing of friends, that we’re on the side of the line that we are.