Addiction

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.

3 thoughts on “Addiction

  1. 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.

  2. 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

Comments are closed.