When I look back to my college years, I remember a kid who relied on booze to loosen up, ease social anxiety, or just simply have a good time. This started to change even over the course of college as I really learned more about myself and the world, and now as a grown adult, I couldn’t be further from that drunken kid. Now I’ve realized, I don’t need alcohol to have fun – I need something much, much more powerful than that.
The idea that blowing off steam from a long week by meeting up with friends, knocking back four margs and getting sloppy with a bartender before getting an insanely expensive Uber home used to be my idea of fun is now mystifying to me. That used to be enough to put off questioning my own mortality for a little while. Nowadays I would at least need to throw a little cocaine into the mix and a good, long stare into The Abyss for that to feel worth going out for at this point. It’s like, I don’t just want to dance on a bar and tell my friend how beautiful she is. I want to feel like a superhero that has just looked death in the face and made it cry.
Alcohol just doesn’t do that for me, you know?
Partying and over-indulging in alcohol may feel like a good time when you’re young, but after a while all those inebriated nights just start to blur together, and you have to question your priorities and what you’re really getting out of it. That’s why I’ve set boundaries. For instance, I don’t go to clubs anymore unless someone has DMT and is willing to arm-wrestle me on a table full of spikes. That’s just how I am these days.
The fact that I once thought alcohol is what I needed to have fun is almost sad. Like, no, babe, that vodka soda cran is obviously not going to cut it with what you’ve got going on these days. Give me a hallucinogenic. Give me something that’s going to make my feel like a child and an old man, all at the same time. Give me an experience where I’m pretty sure I see God but it’s actually like all of us and then my whole worldview is changed and I can finally be the chill sober person at parties for awhile, but then I start using Instagram again and am like, eh, I don’t know.
It’s great to be at a point where I know alcohol is not the secret to release or pleasure. But staring off the edge of a cliff high on bath salts and my uncle’s diabetes medication sure does come close. I still don’t know what the ultimate secret is to living, but so far this ayahuasca cult is keeping me vomiting enough to put off the thought for another day. Here’s to sober living!
