Sometimes I just get cold and clinical. I'm just a machine. I work and consume. Drive and refuel. No emotions needed. This is not a feeling I like having.
Usually that's when I'm smiling the most. The deserved, genuine smile is reserved for times off work: usually intoxicated. I get relaxed with the Ws (a little weed and wine) and it makes it easy to put the stress of a busy day behind me.
I've had problems with alcohol in the past. Ages 16-21 feel like a smear. I drank destructively, I blacked out more times then I kept track of.and I found myself locked in detox twice, and attempted suicide twice. I'm not overly ashamed. I've made peace with many of the people I've hurt during those times; and am now in a committed relationship, a key employee at work, and an A student.
I've lived in the shadow of depression throughout my life, but I can safely say that right now is the best life has been. One major reason, I feel, is that I no longer take antidepressants.
I've taken Prozac, Cymbalta, and Effexor for sustained lengths of time since childhood. I can recall going into withdrawals, after leaving my pills at a friends house, and fainting and being hit by a car on the way there. I remember days where I'd be in withdrawal for some reason or other and be unable to leave the house. I would tear up over any show of sentimentality: TV commercials, and faces my cat makes.
It's no better than being hungover, and I began to think "What is this actually doing to my health?" I raised the concern to my doctor and he said (for Effexor) that the metastasized drug can cause harm over time, and that it's not meant to be take indefinitely.
I safely weaned myself off of antidepressants. Before doing this I quit drinking completely to detoxify. Isolated myself (over the course of a Minnesota winter) and spent the season writing, painting, and composing music. I wrote notebooks full of my beliefs and methodologies and started a routine of light cardio.
I started drinking again many months later to taste wine at the restaurant where I work. Starting over again with an education in drinking gave me a vastly different perspective, and it made it significantly simpler to feel satisfied after one drink. I am off antidepressants and I drink one glass of wine or one bottle of beer each night.I never drink more than four, and I only do that every other month or so. I feel little temptation to drink more than that, and when I am tempted to over-consume I openly ask my girlfriend to help me cope with it.
I smoke weed every night as well. Rarely more than a bowl, I spend maybe forty dollars a month on it. My prescription medications had cost triple; and they made me feel that hollow, machine-smiling way that I feel when I spend to much time at work.
There was a time in the past where I smoked too much weed, where I was burning through $20 worth of weed a day. I was skeletal from spending money on weed instead of food, and I spent all day dehydrated walking around in the hot summer sun.
There's nothing about weed that I fear. Weed is a significantly better antidepressant than any prescription drug I have ever taken. Alcohol is also an excellent antidepressant.
I realize that not everyone has the ability to drink moderately, and I don't recommend restarting it if they've managed to quit. They can't appreciate slow sipping, a slight buzz, a lightheaded smiling mood; without feeling a desire for the primal, night-monster mode of binge drinking. I understand and respect that, despite my own choice to drink. Instead they strive for purity, and they usually end up being more creative, righteous, and successful than the majority of moderate drinkers.
My girlfriend is aggressively anti-smoking. I quit cigarettes before we met, but have relapsed a few times since. The first time I lied and said I wasn't smoking. I hated lying to her, but I also realized I couldn't help myself from lying defensively thanks to the conditioning of a dysfunctional family. I knew that the only way I could keep from lying was to confess immediately. So when I later caught myself buying cigarettes, I would call my girlfriend's cell, or tell her as soon as she walked in the door.
This ended up being a major strain on our relationship, but we worked through it and never left each other feeling angry. I felt unsupported by her when I confessed, and I worried that we'd break up if I continued to relapse. I'd try to draw unfair parallels to her personal vices, and defend myself for smoking.
Always I'd buy patches the next morning and hand write an apology letter for her, and we always had amazing make-up sex.
All in all I'd conclude that if I had drug and alcohol awareness education that taught me how to appreciate drugs and alcohol, to use them sparingly as medicine instead of hopelessly trying to resist them altogether, I would have reached this state of balance a lot sooner.
I used to feel nihilistic, I was reckless and sometimes I would actively pursuit death. Now I feel purpose. I'm motivated to write, to work, to be a good boyfriend and student. Most importantly I can feel genuinely happy again, not just the hollow happiness one feels while working. And that pursuit is a right of independence.
Saturday, April 13, 2013
Monday, April 8, 2013
Introducing PizzAmerica
Being in a band is difficult. Especially in the suburbs.
"Suburban rock" is itself a derogatory term. That's a descriptor I've only heard used by old (think late 40s, early 50s) coffee shop hangers-on when they describe the band at their daughter's wedding. It's characterized as over-polished, boring classic rock covers, and it's performed by church group volunteers and dads. Suburban rockers always perform in collared shirts. Usually they have short, moussed hair and if it's long it's in a ponytail.
Genres that aren't as played out as white-man-guitar-rock, like hip-hop, metal, and electronica, seemingly have no place in the sprawl. Their subcultures grow fungal in the depths of the inner city and the furthest reaches of the Middle American flatland.
But demographics change! The rolling highways of the middle century lost their luster once gas topped $3 a gallon, and the far-flung populace is finally beginning to concentrate. The suburbs are the new hoods, with the former status-obsessed commercial-culture moving back into the inner city and giving up their townhome communities to the trailer trash on the outskirts of town.
But can you be taken seriously as a musician in the suburbs? No. You ain't shit until you're struggling in the city. But does that mean you need to give up the job and family you're building in your neighborhood just to be cool? Yes. It sucks and we're sorry. Does it need to be this way? No, let's try to change it. We need to be proud of the suburbs. We need to encourage garage bands. The Greatest Generation only has a couple decades left. All those retirement homes are going to become low-income housing eventually. Let's claim our territory now and make future suburban culture a liberal arts culture!
One major obstacle to face is the distinct lack of music venues. Share-houses by colleges are the prototype for basement venues, then it's cafes/bars, then clubs. Since most people move into these share houses to get away from their parents, next to none exist in the suburbs. Also, cops in the suburbs have nothing better to do than bust house parties, so the longevity of share house venues is questionable.
But this is our movement, still trying to find definition. We need to invent a new venue, one where music isn't just an excuse to consume psychoactive chemicals (although those are nice) and where suburban kids have some breathing room to be something other than burned-out, overworked, or depressed.
Americans, particularly suburbanites, are defined by work. Menial labor of the stressful or boring variety dominates our waking hours, and this is what separates us from the rest of the world. When America eats, it eats fast because we never outgrew the half-hour public school lunch break. Rarely does a meal last longer than an hour, and rarely is it cooked by anything other than an industrial flash oven or deep-fryer.
Pizza is the food of the American suburbanite. Pizza doesn't take long to make, even for like, a dozen people. It's high in carbs, so you can get fat off it if you want. It's designed to be shared, because meals are pretty much the only time you aren't working, so it's nice to see other people. It's also a childhood rite. Whenever a group of public school kids know they've done something right, it's because some authority figure is throwing them a pizza party.
Teens and twenty-somethings in the suburbs should redesign the Chuck E. Cheese model of pizza, performance, and video games. Although the pizza will have to be less shitty, the performance less animatronic, and the video games will have to be free to play. Actually, the performers can still be robots but the music has to be less corny.
I believe this is a critical step in rebranding the suburbs, and staking out the future of creative spaces and indie music. Anyone else who likes my idea of a fucking sweet pizza venue should continue to read this blog as I update it and should listen to recordings from my band (once we have some).
INTRODUCING PIZZAMERICA!
"Suburban rock" is itself a derogatory term. That's a descriptor I've only heard used by old (think late 40s, early 50s) coffee shop hangers-on when they describe the band at their daughter's wedding. It's characterized as over-polished, boring classic rock covers, and it's performed by church group volunteers and dads. Suburban rockers always perform in collared shirts. Usually they have short, moussed hair and if it's long it's in a ponytail.
Genres that aren't as played out as white-man-guitar-rock, like hip-hop, metal, and electronica, seemingly have no place in the sprawl. Their subcultures grow fungal in the depths of the inner city and the furthest reaches of the Middle American flatland.
But demographics change! The rolling highways of the middle century lost their luster once gas topped $3 a gallon, and the far-flung populace is finally beginning to concentrate. The suburbs are the new hoods, with the former status-obsessed commercial-culture moving back into the inner city and giving up their townhome communities to the trailer trash on the outskirts of town.
But can you be taken seriously as a musician in the suburbs? No. You ain't shit until you're struggling in the city. But does that mean you need to give up the job and family you're building in your neighborhood just to be cool? Yes. It sucks and we're sorry. Does it need to be this way? No, let's try to change it. We need to be proud of the suburbs. We need to encourage garage bands. The Greatest Generation only has a couple decades left. All those retirement homes are going to become low-income housing eventually. Let's claim our territory now and make future suburban culture a liberal arts culture!
One major obstacle to face is the distinct lack of music venues. Share-houses by colleges are the prototype for basement venues, then it's cafes/bars, then clubs. Since most people move into these share houses to get away from their parents, next to none exist in the suburbs. Also, cops in the suburbs have nothing better to do than bust house parties, so the longevity of share house venues is questionable.
But this is our movement, still trying to find definition. We need to invent a new venue, one where music isn't just an excuse to consume psychoactive chemicals (although those are nice) and where suburban kids have some breathing room to be something other than burned-out, overworked, or depressed.
Americans, particularly suburbanites, are defined by work. Menial labor of the stressful or boring variety dominates our waking hours, and this is what separates us from the rest of the world. When America eats, it eats fast because we never outgrew the half-hour public school lunch break. Rarely does a meal last longer than an hour, and rarely is it cooked by anything other than an industrial flash oven or deep-fryer.
Pizza is the food of the American suburbanite. Pizza doesn't take long to make, even for like, a dozen people. It's high in carbs, so you can get fat off it if you want. It's designed to be shared, because meals are pretty much the only time you aren't working, so it's nice to see other people. It's also a childhood rite. Whenever a group of public school kids know they've done something right, it's because some authority figure is throwing them a pizza party.
Teens and twenty-somethings in the suburbs should redesign the Chuck E. Cheese model of pizza, performance, and video games. Although the pizza will have to be less shitty, the performance less animatronic, and the video games will have to be free to play. Actually, the performers can still be robots but the music has to be less corny.
I believe this is a critical step in rebranding the suburbs, and staking out the future of creative spaces and indie music. Anyone else who likes my idea of a fucking sweet pizza venue should continue to read this blog as I update it and should listen to recordings from my band (once we have some).
INTRODUCING PIZZAMERICA!
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