I am genuinely curious. Somehow this form of bonding and socializing has escaped me. What is the fascination of consuming copious amounts of drugs, alcohol and tobacco that seems to appeal to the masses? I can understand the desire to be in an altered state for a short period of time as a parentheses to an otherwise dreary, stressful world. I also understand people enjoy using certain substances to relax or provide them with some courage. I really do understand this under some circumstances but in all honesty I ask, whats the big fucking deal? Why is this the main choice of fun? Why is this cool?
My biggest point of frustration is with the notion that somehow all of this drinking, getting stoned and smoking is somehow a way of sticking it to the man or emitting the aura of being a bad ass. The outlaws are the drinkers and smokers, the social rejects and anarchists are stoners. Sure I am generalizing here, but there seems to be an entire culture of people from high school to middle age that enjoy some kind of substance.Mind altering substances,illegal substances, may cause birth defects substances, makes you fuck strangers substances and puts holes in your brain substances. I call it "substance culture". The age of enlightingup.
Drinking and smoking are some of the most overused symbols of rebellion. Stereotypes of rock stars include leather, a sneer, and a cigarette or drink, usually both. Nearly every cool character in pop-cuture presented as an outcast does some kind of drug as an act of not caring about their health, the law, or propriety in order to counter the image of the "normal adjusted people" who are square and don't do drugs and sit around reading scripture, listening to Taylor Swift. Because obviously if you don't drink or do drugs you must also be a virgin, play by all the rules, act politely and be a complete conformist. Its not like buying tobacco and alcohol products from the largest money making corporations in the country that also coincidentally give you some of the most awful medical problems that coincidentally cause you to spend more of your money on medical and pharmaceutical services and products which, once again, coincidentally are offered by the other largest money makeing coporations in the country, makes you a mere statistic and complete tool of the system.
But I'm just sayin...
Some may refer to people like me as a prude or "straight-edge". Don't be mistaken. Just because my edge is straight doesn't mean its dull. I am not claiming to give a middle finger to the man while making him rich by drinking his beer and smoking his tobacco. And just for the record, weed may relax you but it doesn't open your mind, it erases it.
Maybe I'm envious.Maybe its because 90 percent of my friends can enjoy subtances socially while I am excluded. Or because so many brilliant but likely somehow lost people I look up to advocate drug use as a means of loosening up and letting go or even as means to tap into a creative flow. Maybe I just wish, more than fucking anything, that a stiff drink or a bong hit would do the trick and erase my pain for a few hours. But they don't. Things get even worse, I feel so out of control, so over paranoid, overwhelmed and out of touch its not worth it to even try anymore. Then again, perhaps the painful lack of an escape substance has allowed me the notice the hypocrisy in the substance culture that everyone else seems oblivious to.
Such a sadly ironic phrase "substance culture", we are full of everything but, substance.
