If she wants to dance and drink all night
Well there's no one that can stop her
She's goin' 'til the house lights come up
Or her stomach spills onto the floor
This night is gonna end
When we're damn well ready for it to be over
Worked all week long
Now the music is playing on our time
Yeah, we do what we do to get by
And then we need a release
You're getting mixed up with the wrong guys
You're getting messed up on the wrong drugs
Sometimes the party takes you places
That you didn't really plan on goin'
When people see the track marks on her arms
She knows what they're thinking
She keeps on working for that minimum
As if a high school education gave you any other options, you know
They don't know nothing about redemption
They don't know nothing about recovery
Some people just aren't the type for marriage and family
No mother ever dreams that her daughter's gonna to grow up to be a junkie
No mother ever dreams that her daughter's gonna to grow up to sleep alone
No mother ever dreams that her daughter's gonna to grow up to be a junkie
No mother ever dreams that her daughter's gonna to grow up to sleep alone
-Against Me!, “Thrash Unreal”
As a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, this song fucks me up. I understand it, completely. The feelings, emotions - the darkness. If you’ve never been in the depths of addiction, these words probably won’t resonate with your soul as they do mine, but that’s okay. I’ve been listening to it on repeat the last week or so, and it inspired me to check in about sobriety, recovery, drugs, alcohol - you know, the “things”.
As a recovering addict in a spiritual program, it’s in my nature to let bygones be bygones. To let people live their own lives without judgement. I know I can’t take drugs and drink alcohol, but that doesn’t mean you can’t. While I completely agree with this ideology, there has always been a voice in the back of my mind that tells me something different. See, as an alcoholic, I have unique sensibilities to the role alcohol plays in any given situation. In my four years of sobriety, I’ve noticed something so glaringly obvious it wouldn’t be right to just overlook it. Alcohol and drugs destroy lives and open the door for people to horrible, unthinkable things. I don’t think they’re a force for good for anyone - addicts and “normies” alike. This stuff causes so much pain, and I see it in brutal clarity.
Think back on the times in your life where you did something you regret. I mean, really regret. I’d be willing to bet alcohol and/or drugs were involved. We have this notion that the party life is a positive thing, it’s “fun”. If we go overboard or do something fucked up, it’s no big deal. We’ll just wake up the next day with a hangover and brush it off. I think this is one of the biggest lies we’ve ever been told. The truth is, everything that we do lives with us, always. This doesn’t mean healing and learning isn’t possible, but I think far too often we chalk very serious matters up to, “I was shitfaced”. As you might know, I’m a huge believer in the Butterfly Effect, and every action we take “echoes into eternity”. Not only that, but Newton’s Third Law tells us that “every action (force) in nature has an equal and opposite reaction”. With these things in mind, the gravity of every single action we take, no matter how big or small, comes into light.
This brings us to an important point - the idea of “mind-alteration”. The singular goal of using drugs and alcohol is to get out of ourselves, to leave the reality which we normally inhabit. We give it names like “letting loose,” “having a good time,” or “letting go of inhibitions,” but at the end of the day, it’s all just mind-alteration. When we’re not ourselves, we don’t have a handle on what can happen. This is a scary, scary thing. It actually brings up immense sadness in me as I write this - drugs and alcohol turn otherwise very good people into monsters. I’ve seen it time and time again.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not calling everyone a drug addict and an alcoholic. There are clearly addicts, and there are clearly non-addicts. What I am saying is that drugs and alcohol have a much more sinister effect on the total population than we give credit for. I see everyone around me walking around with SO much pain (just hop on a New York City subway and you’ll see what I mean), and I can’t help but wonder if I’m seeing echoes from the past in real-time. I can’t help but wonder how much drugs and alcohol played a part, whether we realize it or not.
Obviously, what you do is up to you. The only think I ask is that you take a second to reassess the role drugs and alcohol play in your life. I know I can often times be a brooding, melancholic writer, but the truth is my sobriety has given me a beautiful life. It’s the reason that I’m even able to write and wrestle with my demons. That just happens to be what I choose to do with it, and for you, the sky is the limit. I want to see a world where we all put down the knives we have at our own throats, and I really believe this plays a big part in that. It’s time for me to speak up, and this is the first step in that direction.