Happy 4/20, everybody. I celebrated by... drinking a beer. Beer is my chosen sin. This has been a constant choice for the past fifteen years—all beer, no pot. Sometimes I wonder, though, did I make the right choice? Did I pick the correct drug to corrode and to comfort?
How would my life be different if I had decided to stick exclusively to marijuana, and forgo ever drinking a beer? Answering such a question would require a lot of assumptions on my part, because I do not know how I would behave while high, seeing as I've never been. But I am best friends with people who indulge, and have been around pot in my life (I am pro-marijuana-for-others), and so I can make generalizations about how people behave after smoking.
The generalization, exemplified time and again, is that smoking calms you down, and drinking riles you up. There are plenty of exceptions (drinking making you pass out; smoking making you paranoid), but overall, that's the distinction.
I can speak about myself and say that my favorite nights were the ones that went absolutely off-the-rails because of drinking. Someone got a little drunk and did something stupid and hilarious. I got a little drunk and felt more sociable / like the king of the world. The nights when my stomach is filling with beer at the same rate that my heart is filling with love. The nights when alcohol gives me the courage to dance.
If these were my favorite nights, then alcohol made it happen. If I am the type of person to enjoy the nights that are electrifying and life-affirming, then alcohol is the drug for me.
But maybe this is a chicken/egg type of thing, and I am only that person because I drink alcohol. Say I had chosen pot over beer. Would I be that same person? Would I be writing about how I love the type of nights that are insular and comforting? The nights that condense, like a big hug, pulling the things and the people I love closer to my chest? Maybe.
It's so tough to talk hypotheticals like that, because I enjoy my life as it is currently, and the thought of fucking it up by fucking with the space-time continuum is discomforting. Maybe I wouldn't have met so many great friends, had I been content to stay in small groups and pass the blunt. Maybe my career path would've have gone in a different direction, an avoidance of a drug test here or there sending me diagonally though completely different jobs. Maybe I smoke on April 30, 2010 instead of drink, and instead of getting the courage to talk to a beautiful girl I just met, I'm staring at a beautiful chicken parmesan.
There's a simple answer here: this doesn't have to be an either/or question. I could've drunk beer and smoked pot. I didn't have to choose one of the other. I could've chosen both.
Knowing myself, I also know that this is the scariest answer of them all. Look at how I've behaved with alcohol over the years. Now add another controlled substance on top of that. There's not a chance in hell that smoking would've blunted my alcohol intake. It would've inflamed it. I would've destroyed myself. I would be dead right now.
So I stick with alcohol, for now. I'll continue drinking 0.5-1 beers per day, for the most part. I'll get drunk this Saturday morning at a book club. Pam will be pissed that I drank too much. I'll wring myself out and drink 0.5 beers the next day. The cycle will continue forever. It's a cycle I'm comfortable with. The thought of adding marijuana to this scares the fuck out of me.
Happy 4/20, everybody.
NOTES
BEER: Belhaven Scottish Ale
GENRE: Scottish Ale
ABV: 5.2%
BREWED BY: Belhaven Brewery Company Ltd.
LOCATION: Dunbar, East Lothian, Scotland
PURCHASED AT: IGA
PAIRED WITH: a nice cheddar, the same cheddar we paired with Pothole Perils (this was a superior pairing, I think)
GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5
BEER COUNT: 157
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