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I didn't drink, smoke, or do drugs until I was 24, and I have no personal or family history of addiction. My reasons were essentially that I was a little spergmaiden and was very heavily influenced by my ex, who was straightedge (also with no firsthand exposure to addiction) and earnestly believed that there is a culture of oppression against people who don't want to get wasted on Jagerbombs every night and that the people who were heading down to the beach with a cooler of Corona and a bong for an all-night bonfire/dance party definitely weren't really having fun, no, not in their hearts. My reasons for abstaining had nothing to do with any fear of addiction or deeply-held moral beliefs, and everything to do with my sheltered-ness, my lack of confidence, and poor social skills. I didn't seek out new friends because I was convinced that everybody else was getting blitzed 24-7 and that people like me forced them to confront the shallowness of their own existences and that therefore I would be unwelcome. I made it loud and clear to anyone who would listen that I would never attend any kind of event where people drank, smoked, or did drugs. I openly judged people who dared to have a Natty Light while watching the game. It never occurred to me that you have to work at making friends and that it might be my obnoxiousness and awkwardness that put people off, not my alleged maturity and my refusal to crack open a beer. I spent the first six years of my adulthood spending every weekend sitting around watching my ex play video games with his friends, while we all smugly reassured each other that the world was against us for our earth-shattering refusal to attend wine tastings and this was way better than grinding on some rando at the club (which was of course all anybody else ever did ever). Obviously, my ex and I split up, and it was traumatic. I forced myself to reconsider some of my most long-held beliefs, and over time I slowly realized that I had no real moral objection to drinking, smoking, or light drug use and that I knew very, very few people who really could only have fun while getting shitfaced. I started making a point out of getting out of my comfort zone and I discovered that most people don't give a poo poo if someone doesn't drink and that there are very few social situations where not drinking or doing drugs is completely unacceptable, and that is actually is fun as hell to go dancing with your friends, or go camping with a big group and four coolers of beer, or to just sit around smoking a bowl and shooting the poo poo with your pals. My straight-edge identity was really just a cover for me to wallow in my own lovely self-esteem and to avoid social interaction with new people. I am not saying that it's like that for everybody, but it definitely was for me and several other people in my social circle. Nowadays I have a drink every couple nights or so with dinner, and a few socially most weekends. I rarely get drunk unless it's a truly major event. I'll smoke the occasional bowl, but not often, and every few months or so I'll have a cigarette at a bar. I'm perfectly happy with that and I feel much happier and more fulfilled than I ever did in my straight-edge days, not because alcohol or drugs have any particular effect in and of themselves, but because now I seek out new experiences and new people rather than putting up unnecessary restrictions on what I can and can't do. (Again, this is my own personal experience and I totally understand that the situation is going to be completely different for someone else, especially someone with a personal or family history of addiction.) My ex, incidentally, went through a similar period of forcing himself out of his comfort zone. He still doesn't drink more than the occasional champagne toast or something like that, and he doesn't smoke or do drugs at all, but he and his wife have a fun, fulfilling, enjoyable life together. We are very good friends now and last month they stopped over and visited my boyfriend and I on their way to camp in the Blue Ridge. They went to a beer festival with us and had a great time even without drinking more than a tiny sample cup of mead. Edit: Incidentally, my ex's hardcore YOU ARE SCUM IF YOU HAVE A BEER stance has come back to bite him on the rear end, as his best friend from school is now an alcoholic (the can't-hold-a-job-because-of-drinking kind) and won't listen to him when he tries to talk to him about his problem because "God, Brendan, everyone knows you freak the gently caress out if someone has a sip of wine, your perspective is way skewed." CrotchDropJeans fucked around with this message at 18:05 on Apr 20, 2015 |
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Apr 20, 2015 18:01
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 19:50 |
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PT6A posted:To be totally fair to your ex, it's not his attitude that bit him on the rear end. When someone is an alcoholic (beyond just being a heavy drinker; I think too often the line is blurred between those two things) it doesn't matter what you do or say, because there is no fixing it without the alcoholic recognizing the problem and wanting to change. Your ex could drink nothing, or he could drink a case of beer every night, or any amount in between, and his friend's reaction would be exactly the same. Yeah, you're right about that. I'm not saying that if he hadn't been so vocally straightedge his friend would be willing to listen to him, but it certainly doesn't help matters. As a general rule, despite not having acted like that for over half a decade, he's pretty well typecast as the guy who flips out if someone orders a cocktail. Which is of course his own fault but has still got to be super annoying to deal with.
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Apr 20, 2015 19:25
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