askchapo

Drug use in social rituals is almost ubiquitous. In Australia before sunset we get a coffee if catching up, some people chew khat and chat, in the Pacific islands they have kava rituals after work, tobacco smoking is a very common activity to bond over.

It just really sucks that alcohol is the social drug of large gatherings and intimate moments in a lot of cultures. I gave up taking it last year after internalising how out of line my beliefs about risk and side effect aware drug taking was with alcohol (organ damage, sleep impact, GI health, addictive potential due to mu opiod receptor activation etc) and spent a lot of my twenties not drinking earlier in life.

I'm not terribly judgy about it, getting high is fun and life is hard. I get it. But it's such a messy drug that people on it are kinda boreish to be around if you aren't, it tends to escalate bad situations, and it destroys bodies and minds over time. It can end up isolating because like yeah I'd love to hang out, no I don't want to go to the place where everything is expensive, people talk too loud, and you get increasingly less coherent and more repetitive.