Of course I had to be listed in the Advocate during a week when I have entirely nothing to say.
Last night on Veronica Mars, someone mentioned GHB. Later, while asleep, I had a dream about GHB. I’ve never seen it in real life, but in my dream it was this enormous red and yellow capsule, maybe four inches long. I was relieved that it was so easy to recognize, because that meant I wouldn’t have to worry about accidentally taking it.
I had another drug-type dream last week, but that one involved smoking. I’ve smoked a grand total of half a cigarette in my life. It was at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, during Beach Week when I was a law student. I was hanging out with an undergrad on a condominium balcony. He was smoking, and I was drunk, and in my tipsiness I decided I wanted to try smoking. So he gave me a cigarette and taught me how to smoke. Although he was straight, I had a crush on him, and there was something sexy about being alone with him and having him teach me how to drag on a cigarette. But after it was only half gone, I tossed it over the balcony, down onto the sand below.
That’s the extent of my smoking experience.
I’m terrified of addiction. I don’t know why. My parents both smoked when I was a little kid, but they quit long ago, thank goodness. I think my fear is twofold. One, the consequences of addiction – lung cancer (smoking), cirrhosis (alcoholism), general life-down-the-toilet-ness (drugs). Two, the state of addiction – being enslaved to something, lacking control over your own body and actions. It’s just creepy to me.
I do drink, although I started late. When I was 14, I wrote in my diary that I was never, ever going to drink. “There’s just no compromising that for me,” I wrote. A couple of years later I did start drinking, a little bit, but I didn’t actually get drunk until the beginning of my second year of college. I realized I was not prone to alcoholism, and no worries from then on.
As for smoking or drugs, though, forget it – addiction to them seems to be much easier, and they can mess up a person’s life. I really don’t want to give them a shot.
Well! Not exactly an uplifting topic, but at least it’s writing.
I find drinking to be a chore- you have to actually drink the stuff, then there’s the going-to-the-bathroom thing, then the (often-times) headache afterwards. I’m a lightweight when it comes to alcohol, so it doesn’t take much to affect me.
Since you’re such a big Veronica Mars fan, you might want to visit Mars Investigations: A Beginner’s Guide to Veronica Mars.
Fear, it seems, can be fairly addicting as well, and just as possibly debilitating to one’s life as any of the things you mention.
Middle-ways and moderation, in all things.
rob@egoz.org