Now, the reason I don’t drink is because alcohol tastes horrible. Beer? Blech! Wine? Really bad grape juice with an after burn. Hard liquor? Pretty much…paint thinner. Drugs: just couldn’t get over the whole smoking thing. I never wanted to put a burning object in my mouth. And if I can’t get over that, you know I wasn’t going to stick myself with a needle. Basically, in my mind, if you have to get over a hurdle to get pleasure, I’ll just go with the direct pleasure: chocolate pudding. If alcohol tasted anything like chocolate, I’d be such a lush…
And it turns out that I am- drat!
Here’s what I figured out: intoxication has many forms. One of them is delusion, my greatest strength (and weakness I suppose). I’m really good at delusions because I make them so close to reality, it’s like they’re not delusions at all. I take real people in real situations and put them inside my head for a little chat. We have imaginary conversations. We have imaginary relationships. We have alternate realities that are based in my reality. I even delude myself into thinking that this is healthy, that I am processing these emotions and working things out with people It's quite lovely and I so enjoy it. I can have all those interactions, and in my head everything works out just fine. But then I leave the happiness of my head and actually interact with these people. That’s when the hangover hits.
You see, because I entertain these thoughts, even though I know that I’m making them up, they change my perception of reality. When I come back out of my head, I have a new perception of my relationship with the person who was in my head. Often, this perception is way better than the reality of my relationship with the person. And then I’m disappointed or confused or angry. This person simply says hello to me and I am disappointed in them, “Wait, this weekend in my head we totally bonded. All that stuff we were working through, we figured it out. Why are you only saying hello to me? We’re, like, best friends now.”
Or, a coworker will remind me that I need to finish that thing and I get totally upset, “We talked about this. Remember in my head when I explained that I needed to have some boundaries? You agreed not to ask me to do things that were above and beyond my job description?” In my head, it’s all good and then when reality hits me, it’s all bad. It really is like a hangover: you get drunk to avoid reality and it feels great until you wake up the next morning worse off than you were the night before. All those issues that you were having with these people are still there and you’re even less likely to deal with them because now you’re hurt and disappointed that they aren’t participating in your delusional perception of them.
The only reason I bring this up is because I experienced it myself recently. I really felt like the delusions, the fantasy, the imaginary conversations were totally harmless. But two things happened when I returned to reality. Not only was I disappointed and hurt, but my new perception actually kept me from seeing some really great things that were happening around me. Because I was seeing things through my delusional reality, I misinterpreted or straight up missed some beautiful interactions that people were having with me. It was a very long day and the hangover turned me off delusions for awhile. So I guess this is my way of being your high school brother who tries to turn you off acid by describing his really bad trip. (Oh, I so hope I used those terms correctly… it sounds very 70’s. Do people even do acid anymore and do they call it a trip?)
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