The Style of Substance

I was quite a goody-two-shoes as a kid. From my infancy up until my final year of high school, I was always disgustingly well behaved (except when I watched porn. I fucking loved porn.)

I don't regret being a well-behaved child. It may have made me less fun among certain other kids, but in some ways I do believe it gave me a leg up later on, and I'm quite pleased to be able to say that I made life for my parents and teachers much easier. But now that I'm an adult, I am infinitely more adventurous than my teenage self, and I am glad of it, because if I hadn't come out of that shell I may have bored myself to death.

However, one subject on which I still remain a bit of a priss about is substance abuse. And I have to say, as an artist and as a gay man, it's becoming incredibly difficult for me.

As a teenager I always avoided the kids who smoked pot and drank underage. It wasn't hard, since I went to a relatively nerdy school anyway, but if I heard talk of drug use I would quickly plug my ears and go "LA LA LA LA!" I didn't really, but in my head that's what I was doing. If any of my friends were involved in that stuff, they knew better than to tell me.

Since hitting adulthood I have certainly lightened up about marijuana and a couple of other things, but the majority of substances still give me the heeby-jeebies. However, unlike my younger self, I am not necessarily proud of this. For some reason, there have been a lot of drug conversations going on in my life over the last couple of weeks with people that I have a lot of respect and affection for, and I fear that I've been alienating some really great people over things that shouldn't be as big of a deal as I've been making them out to be. I mean, of course I'm not going to running around with hardcore meth users and heroin junkies, but if someone very occasionally and responsibly uses cocaine or ecstasy, is it such a big deal as long as they respect my desire to not be involved? And can I rightfully judge them for it when I drink regularly, use poppers once in a while, and have enjoyed the recreational use of percocet in the past?

It's an evolutionary thought process for sure, and most of it has to be decided case by case, but it's been occupying my mind a great deal this month, more than it ever has before. Honestly, I just want it to stop altering my view of the person involved, especially when they respect my desires not to partake.