I come from alcoholism. Real live alcoholism. I come from drunken parties, drunken fights, drunken nights in the house. Once upon a time, I believed that this was my fate, and for at least the last ten years, since I turned 21 and could buy it myself, I accepted it as my fate.
I drank. I drank when I was happy, I drank when I was furious, I drank when I was in fear of my life, I drank just because. Sometimes, even now, I drink before work just to calm the dread forming in my chest at having to perform the duties of my public facing jobs.
I started smoking weed about two years after I started drinking. I had tried it before, but I never smoked right, but when I finally learned, needless to say I was converted.
I spent many nights over the last several years in various states of cross faded states of mind, or even just gone off of one or the other. A lot of it was to mask the despair I felt inside.
Anyway, I gave this little backstory just to get around to my overarching point – I really am getting away from alcohol.
I moved to a state where weed is only medically cleared, and good luck with getting approved for that if you’re mental like me, because these red state authoritarians aren’t approving shit that makes people feel good and that they can grow themselves. Booze, however, runs aplenty down here, hell, I can drive up to a window and purchase a frozen daiquiri in a styrofoam cop or a gallon bag like it’s a Happy Meal, and to some people, it really is.
That’s great and all, but alcohol doesn’t agree with me anymore. It never really did, but now it really doesn’t agree with me. I’ve started to get headaches soon as I drink some liquor, but then it don’t give me the buzz that I’m craving, but then it also makes me angry and sullen and down. Depending on the strain, weed doesn’t do that to me.
Plus, after going home over the winter holidays and getting reaquainted with some good Cali weed, I prefer the feeling that weed gives me over alcohol. Yeah, weed makes me want to sleep a bit longer and eat everything, but the high is so much better than the lows of alcohol.
I don’t know if there will ever come a day where I will completely leave alcohol alone. I probably will. I’ve reevaluated my relationship with it and it and I just ain’t friends the way we used to be. Of course, one of the battle cries of the millenial is letting go of toxic relationships, so why not let this literally toxic relationship go?
Featured photo by Terricks Noah, find his work here: https://www.pexels.com/@terricks-noah-282960
Inline photo by Yash Lucid, find his work here: https://www.instagram.com/thatlucidguy/
