So Here’s the Thing…: Notes on Growing Up, Getting Older, and Trusting Your Gut(25)

No—it turns out speakeasies also serve very strong drinks. Or at least that was part of this speakeasy’s thing. I guess that’s also in keeping with the 1920s theme, but it wasn’t what I was thinking about.

Everyone got completely wasted. For months I’d been relatively temperate—only a glass of wine before bed—so by three drinks I was plastered. Around 10:30—yes, PM—my friend/ex Doug showed up. He took one look at me—I don’t think I was hard to find—and shook his head.

“Alyssa, you’re hammered.”

“I’m going to throw up!” I said this cheerfully, as if I were saying “I’m going apple-picking this weekend!”

He put me in his car and drove me home to my bathroom. While I was in there puking, he ordered a pizza. The next thing I remember is waking up on the bathroom floor next to the pizza box.

And then, despite it being a Saturday, I had to go to work. Earlier in my tenure in government, when I worked in the Obama Senate office, Friday mornings were always a little trying—Tommy (Vietor), Favs, and I could be spotted getting French toast or bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches, and Pete Rouse would always know what we’d been up to the night before. This morning, however, was the most hungover I have ever been at work, and maybe the most hungover I’d ever been ever. Calling in sick was not an option, and even if it had been, I don’t think I would have done it: Hangovers are self-inflicted, and unless you’re in the hospital, you have to pull your shit together using some combination of Advil, Gatorade, and breakfast sandwiches. It helped that everyone else there was in bad shape, engaged in similar anguished muttering that went something like, “Fuck…Mess isn’t open…I need McDonald’s…fuck…oh my God I did have another drink after that…”

When I was still depressed five days later, I had an epiphany: I was too old to get that drunk.

*



Americans have an unhealthy relationship with substances—too many people can’t control themselves and binge, or restrict themselves entirely. Our gluttonous sense that bigger is better pervades everything from food to shopping, but it’s particularly noticeable in our attitudes toward booze and drugs. I’ve always been of the belief that there’s nothing wrong with moderate imbibing, and even a righteous hangover like the one I just described has its uses. It gives you valuable perspective. Your actions have consequences. Death is no longer an abstract concept but imaginable through your devastating headache and inability to stop puking. Assessing your hangovers over the years, you get the sense that age is actually more than just a number.

Nevertheless, it doesn’t make much sense that alcohol is the least intimidating of the ways to chemically alter our brains. As I’ve already said, I’ve always loved smoking pot and think it should be legal and available. I wouldn’t call myself a “pothead”—I never got into waking and baking, and even now I still can’t roll a joint (luckily you can buy them!)—but ever since I was in high school I could appreciate the way it easily subtracted the drama from my life. When I got into it, I loved what it represented—chilling out and listening to the Dead and Phish—but I also truly felt, and still feel, that I’m my best, most creative self when I’ve smoked a little weed. Not completely stoned, sprawled on the couch not knowing where my arms are, but a little mellow and fluid. Vape pens helped me write this book (and with my IBS). I don’t think that’s something to be ashamed of.

As far as other drugs go, weed shouldn’t necessarily be lumped in with them: It’s not the same as, say, acid. But as we learn about the positive effects MDMA can have on people with PTSD—and I just read an article about how octopuses become sweet and loving when they’re given ecstasy—and get more and more comfortable with drugs like LSD, I think it’s time to admit that all drugs are different, that all people’s relationships to drugs are different, and that they don’t have to cause life-ruining experiences. Particularly if we started a genuine conversation about how to use them responsibly, rather than issued grave warnings that always end up making people curious instead of scaring them away.

So I’m going to tell you about the one time I did acid, which was actually very wholesome. I was always interested in it because the musicians I liked did it; I looked up to them, and they always said it opened their minds. I agree that it opens your mind (if you take the right amount), but to fully take advantage of that, you have to be the kind of person who channels your creative energies into something in the moment instead of lying on the floor staring at the ceiling and laughing. As you’ll see from this story, I’m a combination of both.

I took a quarter tab at a friend’s house and had planned on spending the night, but things took a turn when I started feeling it and decided I needed to locate one of my ex-boyfriends from high school, Jon. Well, Jon was never really my boyfriend-boyfriend; he was a year older than I was, a farmer, and always smelled like soap. I’d thought he was funny; maybe I was reminded of him because once I was on acid I couldn’t stop laughing, to the point that my face and stomach were sore the next day.

I maintain that I was not pining for him—I was just inspired to seek out a spiritual reconnection. My buddies all felt very strongly that this was an impulse I should follow through with. But what form would my communication with him take? I thought and thought. And then somehow I’d written an epic poem. I didn’t sign it because I thought at the time that my essence would shine through in the writing. In retrospect, maybe my sober subconscious was looking out for me.