There is a history of drug abuse in my family tree that rots its trunk from the core. The bark has become so diseased and flaky, the sap so poisoned, that in the doubtful chance that those wilting boughs have any strength to produce an apple (me), it is over-ripe and withered. When even the gentlest wind breaks its stem, and the mushy thing plops off, it can’t roll very far at all.
Conveniently, an apple can be fashioned into a make-shift bong. This fruit of life might yet serve a purpose. Unfortunately, the process requires one to burrow through the core, strip the seeds, and kill the fruit. But, at least they can get high.
I’m ashamed to admit it, but I can’t remember much of my time in college because of my drug use. The fog is so thick that only memories of the sharpest impact are at all discernible, and even then, they usually revolve around a moment of consumption. In my defense, I had plenty of valid reasons to pump numbing agents into my brain, or so I thought at the time. These escapades were tasked with executing any irksome emotions that spoke towards the truth of things. I was afraid of the deafening silence of an honest thought. Numb, run, come down, sleep. Shove some sustenance down the gullet when the ol’ belly ache told me it was time. On a positive note, I lost a lot of weight over the past four years. Marijuana helped me gain it back.
The problem with the substance
Nancy Reagan might roll around in her grave, but I must say: Drugs are fun. Life is hard. Immediate relief—the chance to take off on a schedule 1 rocket ship to escape the gravity of everything, for a moment—is attractive. Give me some freeze-dried ice cream and a spacesuit; sign me up, please. As Louis C.K. says, “Drugs are so fucking good that they’ll ruin your life.” I don’t mean to jerk him off—that’s his area of expertise–but ain’t that some pure wisdom?
I was never able to “Just Say No,” or even ‘maybe’—maybe it’s genetic, maybe it was environmental, and maybe that old hag Nancy should toss around in the coffin a bit more for such a naive understanding of addiction. For me, it started with a puff of weed. She’s clearly never been an eager-to-please, impressionable high school freshman forced into a blunt rotation under the threat of Jack’s notorious towel snap. “Just Saying No” would’ve gotten me neutered. And then that first galvanic pull, let me tell you, Nancy, hit me like a bolt of lightning. My electrons haven’t quieted since.
And the other one
And alcohol, too. You’re telling me, as an anxiously sweaty individual, that I should avoid something dubbed “Liquid Courage”? Now, it also metabolizes in the less attractive forms of “Liquid Violent Rage” and “Liquid Crying on the Bathroom Floor,” but with some well-paced moderation, one can really find a social sweet-spot. Many a short-lived relationship has been born from a wine-induced conversation.
I was never much of a drinker, though (more of a puker). After a couple of shots, my Jewish gut biome starts to kvetch quite obnoxiously. The contents of my stomach suddenly look at their watches and drum up some hasty excuse to leave. The liquor makes an Irish goodbye, especially if it’s Jameson.
However, before the habitual, porcelain nosedive, I am The Man, and The Man is free. The Man dances with his shoulders and even his hips, too. My tongue is suddenly loose and ambitious, and that cumbersome filter that works overtime to blockade my genius witticisms has been washed away in the welter of whiskey. I send my ex-girlfriend a text of such belletristic poetry that she blocks my number for fear of the passion that I had reignited within her yearning soul. My jello-rendered body performs “the worm” spectacularly in front of an awe-stricken audience.
Then, rearing for more, the roller-coaster inched up a few notches, and I was introduced to the real stuff.
The Injection Into the Tumor
If you’ve been one of the lucky few party participants selected to join in on back-room hedonistic drug behaviour, let me describe a scene you might be familiar with. These VIP sweepstakes include an all-encompassing bacchanal of substance-oriented pleasure, you’ve been told. Trent slaps you on the back to congratulate you on your fortune and leads the way. Before your already intoxicated judgment can protest, the surge of the frenetic herd sweeps you forward. Some tank-topped phantom behind you lets out a guttural ‘Whoop!’ that would be more appropriate in the context of a militant offensive than a frat-boy conga line en route to a coke mirror, but you appreciate his enthusiasm. Candidly, your serotonergic pathways lick their lips too.
This hunger to get high can feel embarrassing, or even pathetic, but not enough to stop you. The room in question is either located on the top floor of the frat or in its basement. This time, it’s the top-floor suite. After ascending an increasingly sticky flight of stairs (fluorescent bulbs flickering eerily overhead), you lumber to the end of a stale hallway interiorly decorated with peeling paint, framed class photos of similarly square-headed alumni, and indiscernible splashes of what looks like a vegetable smoothie, but smells otherwise. By now, you might feel like a hostage trapped under the oppressive, gun-to-the-temple insistence of peer pressure. However, if you’re anything like me, the promise of The Substance allows you to swallow this indignation in the pool of your anticipatory salivation.
The tumor and its company
You move forward with your head bowed in disgusted resignation. The dilapidated scenery of this journey already gives you a premonitory pessimism about the state of the final destination. Unhygienic, rancid. Finally, you arrive at the fiberboard door of the drug den. Perhaps they couldn’t afford the installation of a peephole, for there are already a couple of DIY holes punched through the cardboard. How quaint.
Upon entering the room, still led by genteel Trent, you are blinded by the sheer amount of LED strip lights hung about the ceiling line. The flash-bang disco disorientation from their oscillating patterns (often synched to the chintzy EDM blaring from the desk-mounted speaker) wobbles you as you grip onto the shelf of a juiced deltoid muscle. Homophobic epithets are thrown at you for your undisguised hauteur. But you aren’t there to impress the company, just to take their drugs. The place is a pigsty, except for the mirror on the table, which is spotless. The heraldic emblem of a “Don’t Tread on Me” banner is Scotch-taped to the wall. What is it with conservative men and LED lights?
You squeeze onto the couch, a clockwise queue already forming on the furniture—all waiting their turn to bend down, insufflate, and, for a moment, catch that firefly of ecstasy that bubbles up along one’s nervous system after that initial rush. God, how did I allow myself to get here, you think, but it’s already your turn, and it’s all just too appealing to give any credence to your doubt, and you bend over like the rest of them. Bobbing for that apple. In this metaphorical trough. Oink Oink. A bong is passed around to balance out the amphetamine onslaught.
Malignant or benign?
Now, you’re high. Undeniably, heart-poundingly high. The boring current of sobriety has been cranked up to an all-out white-water rapid, and you’re flying along. Feet kicked out, you’re whooping, and things are temporarily good.
Unfortunately, you’re still surrounded by these dolts who are now able to eloquate their offensively oafish interests even faster. At lightspeed, they prattle on about how easy it is, really, to pick up girls at bars and why, in fact, Twenty One Pilots are actually the voice of our generation. Right. You like to get high; they like to get high—is that the only substantial throughline between these two parties? It forces you to take a step back and consider how you’ve let substances introduce you to the wrong kind of people—and keep you around them. What is the pull?
Based on my observations, the timeline of most affected college students’ descent into harmful drug activity follows this order: introduction to the Substance in the aforementioned trap-room group, whereupon means of access are made available. Then, at future parties, one makes it a quasi-conscious habit to gravitate around these Substance-generous folks.
The pull of the group
As a wary novice, I was brought in front of veterans who made the whole ordeal seem so commonplace. Drugs, to them, were a necessity for managing all sorts of affairs. To eschew them was to deny making Life easier. Whole communities form around the codependency of The Substance, and the drug becomes the only real thing holding this miscellany of people together. The Substance is technically a shared interest, which is the glutinous material of most friendships. But this chemical you’re ingesting has been designed to pique the interest of every participant, so don’t assume that Joe Schmoe, who also worships the stuff, has any specific similarity to you. That’s like thinking that you’ve found your twin flame because you’re both parched and fancy water.
I often concluded that I only like these people when we’re all high on something. That realization led me to another one: I don’t even especially like them when I’m high. The effect is just so pleasurable that I can’t be bothered to dislike anyone. The ecstasy induced by the substance is confused with an affection for the people giving it to you, or also taking it. It’s almost Pavlovian. Still, there is an undeniable comfort in partaking in debauchery with others. In this echo chamber of assent, the shame of your indulgence is hidden under the guise of communal connection.
The group starts to strangle
Once you’ve formed this group, you are entered into a network of people who serve to remind you to return to The Substance. Not that personal responsibility is non-existent, it’s just that these fellow hobbyists are really good at inspiring your temptations whilst widening your access. On a day when you might’ve forgotten to get high, your phone will always ring. Your buddy is on the other line, working every ounce of his oratory skills to convince you to ‘take off’ with him that night. You want to say no, but when’s the last time you saw him, and he’s right—you have been working really hard and deserve a break. Oh, and if you refuse, he will be honestly offended and also consider you a pussy, eternally. Anything but that.
Also, doing drugs feels cooler when you’re with people. Certainly less guilty. This enables one to continue getting high and to deny any shame associated with individual fault. The logic is: If you’re doing this reasonably harmful activity in the company of somewhat reasonable people, then how bad could it be? (Reasonable in the sense that they aren’t lepers or casually overdosing, but in retrospect, they had their share of issues.)
Eventually, one uncovers the source of The Substance and surreptitiously procures personal quantities for themselves. They’re able to remove themselves from the herd’s engagement with the Substance, realizing that it’s the drug they’re after and not the company. One winds up solo-snorting lines off the dusty mouse pad of their MacBook before a 10 a.m. class. Or hardcore dissociating on a date, slurrily forgetting their own name and age because of the heedless urge to pre-game it with Ketamine. Not only will there not be a second date, but the Paramedics are on their way. Run!
The need for an excommunication
This vision of getting high used to get me through the doldrums of the day. Running on the treadmill of tasks, errands, minutiae, and soul-snuffing conversations was a lot more manageable with that horizon-hanging carrot of a joint after it all. This worked for a while, until I couldn’t wait anymore.
Pretty soon, my patience wore thin, having to wait a whole day for the pleasure. Wouldn’t it make more sense to feel good all the time? At this point, I was doing my dirty little hobby alone. In secret, too, because I didn’t want the rest of my druggie friends to know I was cheating on them. Oh, well.
I would walk around campus or the streets, totally blitzed out of my mind, though furtively. I figured myself some sort of wayward, misunderstood Beat-era poet, for the sake of artistic perspective, or maybe romanticized masochism. Really, I was just jaywalking without noticing, running into a series of light poles (they really jump out of nowhere!), and making passes at women that were closer to gibberish than the English language. Boy, was it a fun run! Lots of poetry was also scribbled in this era, which I haven’t yet worked up the courage to inspect.
By the time you’ve wisened up to the necessity of sobriety, and likewise the life-draining concrete block of addiction tied to your ankle, you might find yourself entrenched in a lifestyle that wants you to stay. In fact, it would be in their best interest for you to perennially sit on their couch and hit the bong, line, pill, etc. Misery, or the Substance-induced numbing of Misery, loves company.
Falling from heaven
It could only last so long, this drifting. There eventually came a time for me when The Substance lost its ability to smooth out Life’s wrinkles. In fact, it heightened my awareness of the suffering I was trying to escape, though through the shaky and addled vision of The Substance. I couldn’t even fully grasp what was so bothersome—just that it was. On top of that, I’d been failing to consistently do my laundry, being so vegetatively high and whatnot. And my grades were slipping. I was disheveled and dumb, and the mirror (dirty itself) wholeheartedly concurred that I was losing myself.
However, everyone around me—the community of Substance enjoyers I’d injected myself into to support my own addiction—was constantly doing It around me. From my outsider’s perspective, they seemed to be holding on. I used their frequency as a marker to justify my only slightly weaker indulgence, and this rationalized my persistence. To escape them was a terrifying leap indeed; it meant, for once, having to be alone and honest with myself. Swiping the mirror with an industrial-grade Kleenex to grit-teeth and widen whites at my transmogrified visage. Still, the symptoms were piling up, and I had to stop. The couple of sober neurons left rattling around my head cried distantly for a change. It took a while before I listened to their protests. By the time I was ready, there was a community of blockades to work through first:
Your sobriety in the face of theirs
So, what to do? Sobriety, for me, wasn’t just an internal upheaval. The externality of my world proved to need a cleansing, too. The group that co-established our franchise on the Substance happened to live with me as housemates. Therefore, it was a quotidian occurrence to have a bong passed around the breakfast table, exhalations absolutely fumigating our eggs and rendering our brains just as scrambled. Study sessions in the house library were started only after the communal doling out of 50mg adderall. Once I realized my intentions for sobriety, I also realized the problem with my company. Temptation was at every corner.
Perhaps, my eyes would be closing on a sober night, me wrapped up cozy and feeling oh-so-proud at my willpower, when suddenly an elite unit of Substance-agents would bust my door down and practically force-feed me with the illicit “Catch of the Day.” It was kind of like over-solicitous room service—refusal was hard as their catalyzed generosity literally fell into my lap.
So, I made it clear to my buddies that, “Hey, I think I’ve had enough of all this headmush, and it really might be killing me, so please—for the love of God—don’t offer me anymore.” They groaned and really opined about how I was too young to be so elderly, but whatever, yeah, more for them. I felt a little spineless having to verbalize this request to them, but I’d come to terms with my lack of willpower by then. I needed them to, in terms of The Substance, leave me alone, or else I’d never escape.
The last revolution
I don’t blame them for their reluctance to let me go. In some instances, I even felt flattered that they remembered to include me. But when it is decidedly time, one must push away with the full force of their soul—or else relinquish it to them, and The Substance, entirely. No sooner do you make that break than you finally breathe with your own lungs again.
If they work against your vocalized need for progress, one can recognize these people as leeches. They don’t want you to get better because it suggests that they probably should too. Your revolution is an affront to their stagnancy, and they will wrestle you back down into the mud if you let them. Don’t capitulate.
If this is a turn you want to make, I don’t suggest going about this entirely alone, either. Keep those around you who are supportive and whose presence doesn’t require you to get high. With your structure of support edited to be as encouraging as possible, change becomes easier. Lean into it. Keep your head down and heal.
Drugs are fun. By now, I can admit: too much fun is bad. If you’re able to keep a balance, walk that tight-rope as consciously as possible. If you feel yourself starting to slip, forget the rope and sail towards the safety net. It might have holes, but hopefully this article will give you some of the tools to patch it up before your collision. Good luck, have fun, and mind the company you keep. Birds of a feather fall together.
