Antics

You've just left the club, still completely out of your head and wholly exhilarated. With pounding electronic sounds still ringing in your ears you head into the night, that witching hour chill bites at your skin which holds the sweat worked up on the dance floor an hour before. Your now heading to an after party, reflecting effusively about the night that was, exasperated, off your tits, enjoying the brief respite before the explicit shenanigan's resume.

We've all been there. If you haven't you've missed out. Weekend narcotic antics can be incredible. When its good it is savagely entertaining. The general idea is to take the brain to places its never been before, on a contorted roller-coaster ride through the depths of your emotional and spiritual being. For your average recreational drug taker, to get fucked at the weekend is to leave real life behind. Responsibilities, self expectation's, external pressures, see you later. Partying is about hedonistic self indulgence. It means forgetting about everything other than the intense drug revelry which lies ahead; the peculiar yarns, the all consuming revelations, the new modes of thought; much of which will be regrettably forgotten in the morning.

It is easy to become enamoured with such activity and to consider whole heartedly hurling yourself into the movement. Partying demands a 'fuck it' attitude which is attractive to most people as it feels good to fuck things off once in a while. When attending a rave, a festival or a debauched house party, you are socialising directly with people who hold your slightly rebellious, I reiterate slightly rebellious, perspective. If only for a night you belong and what your doing is fine as it is justified by the presence of your fellow revelers. Your all in it together. When big weekend's become the spectacles of your life you needn't pay much attention to other things going on because the frivolity at these events will be so good, everything else is merely filler. My question is when does drug taking and partying stop being about briefly departing your existence, and actually become your existence?

Drug taking for me has always been about escapism, a means of leaving my over analytical and self conscious persona behind and going mad for a night/weekend/week. When I go for it I really can fly. However I have always known since my first foray into this world, that I have to return to the realm of the living eventually and I have no problem with that…I enjoy my working life and other aspects of my social existence. However a lot of people immersed in drug culture struggle to strike a balance. Hitting big nights, hard, becomes seemingly the only ambition; smashing it becomes all that really matters. On the one hand I admire this sybaritic attitude, it is true libertarianism, definitely brave and it can have a spiritual merit also if your on a crusade to ignore societal structures and tear away from convention. However on the other hand I think, what the fuck are you doing?

Perhaps I'm being a bit square here but to hold drug taking as your primary recreation is a bad idea. Championing it as your main source of enjoyment, as your main interest, as the icon of your existence, is even worse. In doing so you are ironically inverting the associated suppositions of 'getting fucked', and turning it into something boring, customary and inane. Sitting in your mates living room every friday night shovelling ket is not 'right on'. Its a bit lame. It is also worth noting that there are things other than unadulterated jouissance to ponder when contemplating your happiness. Job satisfaction? Good relationships? Health? Personal success? Inner peace? Smashing it every weekend simply doesn't lend itself to any of these pursuits apart from if your in a niche creative industry maybe. However the majority of drug takers in society right now aren't budding Mick Jagger's. They are office clerks, receptionists and civil servants. They are weekend rockstars. Serious recreational drug taking is encompassing and antics do not stay the domain of the weekend however. If your on it Friday, Saturday and into Sunday it is the following Wednesday before you are back to anything like form, then before you know it, its Friday again and your going back for more.

Drug taking for Average Joe is borne out of apathy with day to day living, perhaps boredom in employment or an immediate lack of prospects. However once a person is fully immersed with a drug orientated sub culture because of domestic disinterest, it becomes difficult to make changes in ones life away from the party scene as the physical and mental impact of getting off your barnet is heavy. You expend so much energy at the weekend blitzing it, the week becomes more about coping and recovery and thus no substantial changes ever materialise in other areas of a bean-head's life in order to attain, dare I say it, real satisfaction.

Getting out of your head every weekend doesn't come recommended, as Ian Brown put it, its a 'Fools Gold'. However despite what law enforcers say Class A's can be incorporated into a person's life without complete detriment, just like other, legal vices such as drinking alcohol, smoking and gambling. Of course it can. Just go easy on it, let the strange subterranean place one goes to when incredibly high, remain just that...a place that you go to...not a place that you permanently occupy. It's no fun when you have to stay there. Don't treasure recreational drug use as the answer to your mundane problems, and don't put your faith in it, as there is no utopia waiting for you at the end of the party. I get the feeling there are some bad comedowns lying ahead for the buzzing generation.