i don't smoke
sorry, I'm being a jerk. you offered me a cigarette and I'm giving you a hard time.
i've been pretty good with substances in my life so far. that's a weird sentence. but it is mostly true.
i don't drink much, and i've recently been trying to cut it out entirely as i've started dating someone who doesn't drink at all, which is as good a reason as any. i ordered wine on our second date, she didn't. we had a conversation about it, and i eventually thought 'wait, why am i drinking, actually?' we went and got mocktails after. action and reaction.
i don't smoke. i've actually smoked more joints than cigarettes, which i find pretty funny considering how accessible cigarettes are here and how weed isn't, really. rather than smoking them myself, my interactions with cigarettes have more frequently been staring at a girl's hands holding one and tasting it in her kiss afterwards.
don't look at me like that. it's hot. sue me.
but the description of 'pretty good' does inevitably imply an asterisk. i didn't say perfect.
as of the past few months, i started drinking again. half in a knowingly self destructive manner, half not. my most frequent interaction with alcohol was buying cheap bottles of asahi and setting them aside to drink with a film to close out my nights. for the Sensory Experience. did drinking beer actually make my cinematic experience of the outrun (2024) any better? probably not. made for a hell of a realisation when i got a couple minutes in and realised what the film was actually about, though.
i did sadly come to the inevitable realisation that i was just drinking to fill some undefinable hole and, importantly, Feel Less. disassociation was the target and by god was my aim true.
now, i know this is a pretty standard approach to drinking. many, many people do this as a nightly hobby to help cope with the horrors. it's nothing novel and nothing inherently too concerning. what concerns me about it, and what has led to me cutting it down/out (in addition to my girlfriend's preferences), is the knowledge of how i was with drinking a few years ago: in a word, Dependent.
i was having a real bad time trying to make friends at university (it was my second year, after a first year that barely existed due to pandemic restrictions), and i took the easy, terrible path of creating vapid, literally liquid connections. i got pretty bad. i was drunk most nights. for no real reason other than to stop feeling at all. i don't speak to any of the people i bonded with over spilled drinks and hearts anymore. i can't say that experience was worth anything. i hate looking back on it. what a waste. of money, liver health and time.
as such, i have felt Not Great about drinking again. the breaking point for this was a recent bar shift in which i was incredibly stressed (bartending around christmas, what can i say) and our dear managers were giving out free drinks to staff to help them through it. the morality of this aside, i wouldn't usually take it. indeed, we are consistently offered a free drink after every shift to accompany our 3am decompressing, and i do not take them as i do not drink. i did, however, take it on this shift. and then another, when offered again later. and another, after shift. only later did i realise that i was accepting alcohol with the single intent of lowering my stress, something that was Exactly The Problem previously.
i also, just to really seal the deal, accepted a cigarette from a coworker once we were truly done with work. first time in over a year. it tasted pretty bad. i enjoyed it, though. i can't really explain why. cigarettes are not something from which joy can inherently be drawn. there's just a feeling associated with smoking that is inexplainable. my hair smelled like smoke for the rest of the night. so did my fingertips. i can't romanticise that.
really, i blame the art i enjoy for making smoking look so good. jill stingray in va-11 hall-a. kazuma kiryu and shun akiyama in the like a dragon series. john cho in columbus. tony leung in, like, anything. quite literally poisonous influences and i am not immune. it's hot!
anyway. i feel shame over my failure to stop myself from falling to drinking and smoking. i will not be doing it again any time soon. maybe i'm being hypervigilant here. people are allowed to drink and smoke. but i want to be good to myself. i don't want to self destruct any more than i already do. i want to make good choices. maybe having my girlfriend not drink or smoke at all and my closest friend staying sober has had an effect on my mindset. either way, i don't want to do it again.
we'll have to see. i am famously weak when it comes to making good decisions for myself. but i think i can do it. it's the right thing to do.