Drug of Choice

Sometimes I wonder if Americans could survive without caffeine and alcohol. Our economy and lifestyle are perfectly designed to promote abuse of and dependency on both drugs. First off, the goal of our economy and any other is growth, and growth requires greater productivity and expansion of activity, which means more work. In order to stay focused in our jobs, beyond our normal capabilities or interest, we frequently and habitually resort to an injection of caffeine into our systems. This accelerates us and, we believe, makes us more productive. When the effect wears off, we take another hit and we’re off and running again. Aside from the psychoactive effects of caffeine, it provides workers and employers alike an excuse to take a break. It is also a subject of conversation in the workplace that allows people to connect and show their compassionate side, in other words, their humanity. For example: “How old is the coffee in the break room?” "Oh, I just made some, help yourself.” Or, “I think it’s been sitting there all night.” “No worries, I’m making another pot, you want some?” “Sure.” If you remember this is just the sort of peer pressure and bonding we remember with pot smoking and binge drinking in college. It seems whenever anyone is poisoning their body, they want company. In our professional lives it seems that coffee and the discussion of coffee (how much we’ve had, how much we need a cup, how good it tastes, etc.) is one of the few freedoms we have left, so we make the most of it. When it’s accompanied by cookies and little cakes or chocolate, even better. Then people rhapsodize about how they really shouldn’t have another, that it’s unhealthy or it’ll make them fat, but do anyway and in secret.

But what if we imagine for a moment that caffeine isn’t the motivational cure-all we’ve pretended it to be. If we draw a parallel between a spider building its web, and the average worker performing his jobs duties, the effects of caffeine are not encouraging for competence and productivity. As you can see from the photo posted on the following website (http://www.trinity.edu/jdunn/spiderdrugs.htm) the caffeinated spider’s web is lackluster at best. If I were a bug of prey, I would prefer to be flying through American spider web country so I could take advantage of the gaping holes. In comparison, the peyote web is obviously more effective. While caffeine in moderation has an ergogenic effect, in that it can positively affect physical or mental performance, in excess it results in the sort of physical and mental conditions that are detrimental to optimal performance, such as: nervousness, irritability, anxiety, tremulousness, muscle twitching, insomnia, headaches, and heart palpitations. An overdose of caffeine can result in mania, depression, lapses in judgment, disorientation, loss of social inhibition, delusions, hallucinations, psychosis, and in extreme cases, death. If 90% of Americans use caffeine daily, and assuming the great majority of them are getting it from coffee, how much of the anxiousness, irritability, lack of judgment, and psychosis of our bosses and colleagues and ourselves can we attribute to our excessive and repetitive coffee addiction? Nevertheless, it seems that what our society values above all else in our working lives is that we take action and produce, in favor of reflecting and analyzing to determine if we what we are doing is right, and if not, how we can do it differently, or forego doing it if it is ultimately destructive or immoral.

Which leaves me to second half of this discussion. What do most Americans do when they are done running through their job responsibilities each week like caffeine cracked-out robots? Why, when Friday rolls around they put down the coffee cup and grab a beer, a glass of wine, a mixed drink, or a shot, to slowly depress themselves into a relaxed state that allows them to detox from the frenzy of caffeine. You see, what alcohol and caffeine have done in their private backroom meetings in certain unnamed brothels at undisclosed locations is plotted the takeover of America. Their success is apparent in the shocked expressions of one’s friends or family when you inform them you don’t on principal, or for the time being, drink coffee or alcohol. It’s almost as if your refusal were a personal attack, a deliberate attempt to reject their fraternity because you somehow think yourself superior. Anyone who doesn’t or, for whatever reason, has stopped using these two drugs is familiar with that feeling of not fitting in, of being slightly resented, or the subject of bewilderment and quandary. In Norway, for example, it is nothing short of a crime to refuse coffee when it is offered to you in someone’s home. And it doesn’t help that it is equally rude to refuse a second cup. With your friends, refusing to have a beer is tantamount to saying I’ve decided that I don’t want to have fun, given that “having fun” in one’s time off almost always involves some form of drinking.

In my opinion, there are two types of drunks: happy and angry, though both can become sad when they’ve had too much of laughing and clowning, or shouting and fighting. Drinking helps the happy drunks to become more cheerful and entertaining versions of their sober selves; it allows them to drop their inhibitions and not worry about making fools of themselves. The happy drunk, sober and in daily life, is generally an individual who is self-aware and socially inclined, and as a result is interested in preserving harmony and his/her reputation, at the expense of his/her personality; this is the formula for becoming what is conventionally referred to as “nice.” The happy drunk is in many ways a coward living in fear of what others will say, and of making mistakes. The angry drunk is more of a me against the world type. He/she sees him/herself as a loner and a victim, and this is because he/she is not self-aware and often does not take other people’s feelings into consideration, thereby creating all sorts of problems in his/her daily life, particularly conflicts with other similarly selfish individuals. He/she is furthermore an individual with a sense of entitlement who, for lack social skills, intelligence, knowledge, or competence, has not achieved the status, power or wealth he/she believes she deserves and therefore has become frustrated and bitter. This is the powder keg that is released with alcohol.

The social repression that we all experience and seek escape from by drinking, on occasion results in the happy drunk waking up with some stranger in his or her bed that may or may not be up to standard or taste, and some months later perhaps even an unplanned pregnancy. Meanwhile, the angry drunk wakes up either in jail, or with a few missing teeth, bruises, broken bones etc., or both. In the case that motor vehicle transport is involved, happy or angry, drinking has resulted in many a DUI and the unnecessary death and injury of drunks and innocent third parties alike. Needless to say, I wish we had more public transport in this country. I’m tired of the hypocrisy of a drinking culture with suburban sprawl that requires everyone to get in their car and drive to the bar, and no public transport to get you there or back. It’s a mixed message: “It’s Miller Time!” but “Don’t drink and drive!” This is very problematic for people who don’t drink in moderation when they go out.

In the objective sense you have to ask yourself: what is the point of going downtown for three or four hours every Friday or Saturday night and knocking back as many drinks as you can before last call, so you can go home and go to bed drunk, with an intermittent drunken lay or fistfight? I guess the point is reproduction (even when feigned and just for sport), and if you don’t hook up and you're a guy, you fight. In some cultures they dance (now that’s a healthy way to work out stress, tension, and anger), but let’s face it, America is not a dance culture. Grab the average guy on the street and ask him when was the last time he danced. Do this a few times to prove the reliability of the sample. Chances are that it’s been a while, because American men are afraid to dance, insecure as they are about their masculinity. And to stop worrying about whether their dick is big enough, or if they’ve got enough money in their wallet, they drink themselves into a stupor. Or better yet, to forget the jobs that have left them emasculated (through subordinance or poor pay or both): those same jobs that they need a coffee to find the motivation to perform in the first place. Remember the movie Fight Club? Exactly. It would seem to me that there is a better formula and that we need to find the joy in exploring the altered and enlightened states our minds can achieve by being curious and open to new experience, where the experiences and connections we make don’t depend on abusing each other and our bodies in concert and calling it friendship and even love.

These leads me to the question of whether societies exist, or have ever existed, that do not drug themselves in some way. For it is a very human drive to want to alter one’s reality by external influence. Just look at children in the playground that spin around endlessly until they get dizzy, or that stuff dirt into their mouth wondering what will happen. The desire to alter one’s mind and body is something quintessentially human, and drug use is just one of many ways we do so, though the least rewarding in that it impairs our reasoning and damages our body. There is much more value to be found sober in critical thinking, creative expression, open communication, and novel experience.