Many people's relationship with what my mother primly calls "substances" is best described by the refrain from Soft Cell's eighties anthem Tainted Love: "Once I ran to you/ now I run from you". I'm not the only one who has punctuated their life with periods of serious chemical excess balanced by total, almost awkward sobriety.
Like many lush girls and boys, I've had my share of burn-outs, break-downs and bust-ups, and I've experimented heavily with the sober (or as the kids say, "straightedge!") life. Here's what I've found:
There are pros and cons to both sobriety and excess, but it's mainly a question of personality. Nobody likes nutjob drunks (mean drunks, horny drunks, depressed drunks, violent drunks) and a walk through Hlavní Nádraží provides a convincing display of the consequences of long-term substance abuse. But there definitely have been times in my life when drugs and alcohol provided social cohesion.
As any thinker-drinker or art-school stoner knows, a group of altered individuals can sometimes produce an orgy of ideas approaching sublimity: literary criticism, Wittgenstein's grammar games, love, movies, music; no subject is taboo for a chemically-limbered mind trying to understand life's great mysteries.
But there's no denying that it's easier to think clearly without a hangover, and being the only sober person in the room can be extremely entertaining (though somewhat burdensome: having to drive, deal with cops, or hold hair comes to mind.)
The bottom line is that anything: food, sex, religion, emotions, as well as drugs both legal and otherwise, can be addictive. The same people who end up drinking themselves to death in seedy bars could have been, had the fates been different, enjoying serial one night stands, Bible thumping, or even that teetotaller's sober self-righteousness some might label an understated superiority complex.
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