I’m not sure I can still get this idea out properly, but through extensive meditational exercises I’ve returned to a state of calm, and I have a long story that needs to be told. First of all you have to understand that I live in a place where alcoholism is status quo. People who only get throwing up drunk on weekends are viewed as light drinkers. It isn’t surprising to see Ryan laying on the floor drunk any given night. The people across the hall, the people down the fall, my roommate, all of them drink.
This is where the story gets kind of heavy, because I’m breaking some sort of code, but I ask you not to intervene to heavily or complain, even if this bugs you remember that I’ll be moving out in a few weeks anyway, and that he hasn’t been a bad influence on me, I’ve been a good influence on him.
My roommate drinks. Regularly. He’s a local, so he has both his newly acquired UW friends as well as an extensive network of pre-existent friends. There’s this amazing phenomenon where literally 8 people will all file into my room at once, filling the room to a point where any kind of movement will result in disturbing somebody, and just as quickly and spontaneously my room will empty out. My tendency to get lost in either my thoughts or a video game allows me to sometimes not notice the processing of the multitudes, so I have the incredibly surreal experience of looking up to discover that my room is crowded with people I’ve never met, or the equally surreal experience of having my room be overcrowded one instant, and completely empty the next.
When he drinks I usually take up some position where I can fake having been asleep or overly distracted by something, or I simply leave the room. By and large I stay mostly so I can serve as a wellspring of sobriety and knowledge. While I won’t deny that I look down on these people, I still have a duty to protect them.
One thing you have to understand is that I see a vast procession of these people, and Conrad is by far the most intelligent. While I stick by my theory that life will someday bitch slap him, he’s still got potential. Many of them lost the potential to be anything above mediocre long ago.
This is the first thing that gets me. Conrad could do so much more, but he doesn’t.
I listen to their conversations. I can’t deny that I’ve made a habit of eavesdropping throughout my life, and when there’s a mob of drunken teenagers 10 feet away it’s almost hard not to. What they say is by and large the grey noise of the normals, with the occasional interesting or insightful remark, usually made by Conrad, or interesting story, which could’ve been told by any of them. Say what you will about chemical abuse, and I assure I will, it makes for some interesting stories.
There is one thing I overhear all too frequently. It’s the story of how somebody got caught doing X, or selling X, or whatever and now they’re in Jail. Or now they have to go to court and pay a big fine etc. In either case it’s a story of how doing exactly what they’re doing has completely destroyed the life of a friend of theirs. Do they learn from this and, oh I don’t know, stop?! No. They keep right on going. There’ve been at least two occasions where I’ve shouted this at them, I don’t remember what happened because those memories are a blur of righteous outrage and frustration, but based on that I assume they didn’t get the message either due to human stupidity or drunken stupidity.
I want so much to help them, but I can’t get my point across. And then I want so much to beat them within an inch of their life, but I can’t do that either.
There are people I see routinely throwing up in the bathroom. I won’t lie, I used to drink, and I’ve been there. I know how much that sucks. I learned from that experience though. When that happened to me I said “Okay, so now I know my limit, noted.” They don’t. It’s at this point where I begin to tremble and shout WHY?!?!
Now that I’ve said that I’m obligated to give a bit more background to stop my parents from hosing me. Yes I drank, no I don’t anymore. I stopped… I think it was early senior year. Why did I do it? It wasn’t peer pressure, it wasn’t depression, and nobody corrupted your son. I did it for life experience. I stand by my philosophical belief that one should try and experience the full breadth of what life has to offer, and that every experience, even painful traumatic ones, can lead you closer to enlightenment. And I learned a lot from it, but in the end one of the biggest things I learned was that drinking itself wasn’t enlightened. It was an escape from the burden of thought, and thought is the nature of enlightenment. I also learned what drunkenness is like. I learned that tequila never ends well, and I learned that while you might drink because you feel bad you’ll feel even worse after the liquor wears off. Most of all I learned that those around me will inevitable always pursue some form of release. They don’t find release in bizarre artwork, literary madness and video games, so they pursue it chemically, and they need someone around to help them when they fall. I stopped drinking to be the designated driver, to be the guy who says “Okay, you’ve had too much.” To be the one who may ruin your fun that evening, but when you wake up the next morning alive you’ll thank them. It was a much more enlightened role.
And once again, I stopped drinking years ago, so calm down.
My frustrations aren’t over yet anyway. I’ve only covered liquor. I don’t think anyone other then Kevin has ever met Thomas, but if you want confirmation of just how Fucked up he is you can ask him. Also, for the record, there isn’t any other way of describing him. I’ve got a full batch of creative and artistic ways of saying that he’s burned out his mind on drugs, but they’re too artistic for him. He hasn’t earned them. Thomas is a person who is permanently stoned. Have you ever seen snoop dogg? Do you know that look he always has that conveys the fact that he just smoked weed, even when he didn’t just smoke weed? I hold fast to the belief that it’s because he’s got so much weed left over in his system from years of abuse that his default level is a little high. Thomas has that too. Thomas has done everything, he’s a burnout, and a dealer, and a chemical engineering major. This amuses me on several levels, both because he’s making an offering to the patron saint, but it also amuses the part of me that is vaguely evil, because when he realizes that you can’t apply for an engineering major with a 1.7 G.P.A. and 6 hours of attended class time per quarter part of me is going to laugh. The more I think about it I can’t really see why I felt the need to mention Thomas. I guess he’s just one of the most destroyed in the parade of broken potential that courses through my room.
Another person much in the same vein as Thomas is Stanley. He’s a pothead, I’m not even going to go through the process of justifying my accusation, he is. In fact I have a picture that should speak the thousand-ish words I would need.
Both of these people are ish friends with Conrad. They smoke with him anyway. Yes, my roommate smokes weed. Remember don’t freak out. At least wait until you’ve heard the whole story. It gets to me because Conrad when he’s sober is a smart kid. He’s clever, he’s someone who’s seen through a lot of the bullshit in the world, and he’s got legitimate potential. Then I see those two, and I know that this is where he’ll end up if he stays on this path. I’ve done all I can to make him see that, and I think I’m getting through. He’s tried on three different occasions now to stop smoking, but most of his friends smoke so it’s continuously awkward for him not to. The most recent attempt is still going on and while I don’t monitor him by any means it seems to be going well. Unfortunately he seems to be drinking more now that he’s not smoking, but I’ve pointed that out to him and I think we’re making progress. I don’t think I can save Stan of Thomas, but I may make a difference I Conrad.
Okay let’s zoom out again. Most of the floor knows Thomas. They’ve got a clear “This is your brain on drugs” icon to point to. But essentially none of them are saved by it.
*TANGENT: Ugh, I’ve got a cold. I woke up to write this and I’ve been sniffly the whole time. The weather actually pulled a fast one on me and went from being Houston spring level of heat, which meant people here were complaining that it was way too hot and I was laughing at them, to being Houston winter level of heat, meaning that I generally like it, but wish it would go back to being cloudy. I began to suspect I was getting a cold last night when it was cold in the room and my innate cold resistance wasn’t working. Anyway back to the rant
Tiffany and Ayan. Friends of mine. Good people. Lives being gradually destroyed by alcohol. Remember the story about tacit consent, that was one of them. Drinks on the job, that was one of them. Duty to God (It’s an earlier post from April) also inspired by them. I like them. They’re creative, they’re funny, and they have an amazing level of insight every now and then. Tiffany has this amazing ability to see through other peoples self delusions and hit them with the harsh truth. She can only do this when she’s drunk, but she’s always drunk so it all works out. It would be helpful if she could do this to herself, but that’s just wishful thinking. On a quick side note, she’s one of the only people who have ever managed to successfully do that to me. People try. A lot. Whenever I get philosophical on people and say something that upsets them they try and blow my mind, but I most of things that are mind blowing to the average person are things that I came to realize either through musing or meditation years ago. It’s one of the very few advantages of being someone who wasted his childhood thinking about things. Anyway I’ve done all I can to help them. I stopped doing tacit consent stuff. This involved some lying on my part, but I think it was better in the end. Besides it’s her fault that she didn’t see my Zippo in it’s tray on my desk. I wonder what I would’ve done if she had. Hmm… Not the point. These are people who are funny, clever, artistically gifted and, (I have to include this as a due diligence thing on myself) hot, but are killing themselves. And I can’t help them anymore. They got an apartment nearby. I have to admit I’m legitimately worried that the next thing I’ll hear from them will be that one of them either died or suffered massive brain damage from alcohol poisoning. It makes me want to help them, and it makes me want to destroy them, and I can’t seem to do either.
Things like this are why I’ve built up so much outrage. I was unnecessarily harsh on the drum circle. I think they deserve a little face time with the nerf bat, but not as much as I ranted at them for.
Now if you’ve just read this and you’re planning on calling an R.A. or something stop. They both know. They’ve taken up the same stance as me though. We’ve already got evidence that calling the cops won’t solve anything, it’ll just give a different group of kids a story about a friend of theirs that got arrested because s/he was doing the exact same freaking thing those kids are doing. I ask that you not pass judgment, but simply learn from this. These things can be an interesting life experience, but they should be an experience in your life, they shouldn’t be how you experience life.
This is also why I’m officially declaring my one step program. If I know you know, and you’re either clean or at a stable state, and yes I do think there is a stable state of alcohol consumption, but it’s much lower then what most of Lander is at. If you’re clean or at a stable state, and you start heading down that path I’ll come for you. I’ll show you what you’re doing, why it’s wrong, and I’ll warn you that you’re now on the one step program, and from that moment on if you take one step out of line, I’ll kill you. That goes for all of you too, Mom, Dad, you were warned. James, Shlomo, Kevin, anonymous person who is just surfing through blogs at random, I’ll come for you man. I’m crazy.
