Three Broken Rules
Article by Anonymous Art by Liz White
I am nothing without nicotine. Is that a crazy statement to make? I think it is. I am unrecognizable, even to myself.
When I was in middle school I made three resolutions: never drink coffee, never drink alcohol, and never do drugs. It sounds religious, but I couldn’t care less if there was a God or if he was judging me. The reasons I made those rules were purely narcissistic and selfish.
I refused to drink coffee because I heard it stained your teeth, and my dad complained of headaches every day he went without a cup. My mom’s drink of choice, wine, made her angry or sad and I also heard that it stained your teeth, so I decided to never drink. My mom also said alcohol had a lot of calories and made you fat. It was a logical decision to want to please her and avoid becoming like her when she reached the bottom of the bottle. The drug rule was also obvious; private school drilling taught me that addiction was bad and that drugs, more or less, would kill you eventually. At the time it didn’t seem like too far of a stretch, because my grandma had passed due to health complications resulting from her history of smoking cigarettes. My prepubescent brain could easily equate drug usage to early mortality.
I have broken all three rules.
The first blow came when I went to high school and all-nighters became a thing. I pulled all-nighters to pass chem. I stayed awake to write my final essay for IB. I never slept before a debate tournament. Once, I stayed up for 37 hours because I wanted to binge a TV show before school and then run a marathon the next day. Some chose adderall, but my poison was coffee. Namely, iced lattes. That shit was so good because it was cold enough to wake you up, and at the time I wasn’t lactose intolerant, meaning I could guzzle at least two before I felt the urge to go to the bathroom. Coffee was exciting. It was the big girl drink that all the cool upper-class girls would waltz into class late with, shiny car keys and perfect blonde hair in tow. Coffee kept me awake in BioMed, it kept the pressure off my back from being called into the office to discuss how I had fallen asleep in said class a few days prior. Coffee was coping, and coffee correlated success. I quit drinking it when it started making my stomach hurt. It was so easy to cut it off, too. I thought I had a uniquely strong will to be able to cut something out so quickly. I retain this sentiment of thinking I can quit anything. But that’s a lie. I can’t quit school. I can’t quit loving some people. I can’t quit needing more. Apparently, I can’t quit nicotine.
The first time I drank alcohol was also in high school. In my penultimate year, my friend and I decided to do shots of the liquor we found in the alcohol cabinet in my house. My mom had some nasty assortment of flavored rum and this shitty vodka that was probably expired. The bottle was covered in so much dust we had to wipe off the other bottles so our transgression wasn’t noticeable. We did shots and my friend gagged, but surprisingly, I took it well. We did a second round and she threw up in my sink. The only buzz I felt was the thrill of doing something new and exciting. I wouldn’t say I’m addicted to alcohol. It also makes my stomach hurt, and I only enjoy its effects when I’m with my friends. The only time I questioned my dependency was that one week when I got wine drunk every day right after class. Considering my grade, I think it added to my life rather than subtracted. It made me more creative. Perhaps while writing this I will pick up a glass, take a sip or a shot, and see if more riveting sentences can be formed to express my experience.
Is addiction truly addiction when it’s endorsed? I made Thanksgiving dinner for my family, and my dad and I bought liquor for a spunky apple cider sangria I wanted to make. They didn’t even check our IDs, despite me (hopefully) not looking 21 yet. When we got back from the store I joked that we had to hide the alcohol from the children as I put the bottles on top of the fridge. My dad laughed – in the store, he had even asked what my favorite wine was. (It’s Moscato for anyone wanting to supply me). It’s hard to find a problem with your behavior when no one makes a fuss about it. Even harder when it’s a punchline for a good joke.
The first time I experienced weed, I greened out. My friend got some free edibles from her drug dealer boyfriend, and being noobs we had no idea how much to take, so we each took 25mg. I remember eating it in the car and laughing. I drove home cautiously hoping that it wouldn’t kick in before I got back. I was alone in my basement when it hit and the only thing I could hear was “Caleb said it almost killed him.” Caleb was the drug dealer boyfriend. He was six foot something, heavy, and a huge stoner. If one edible had nearly killed him then I knew for sure that I would die, too. I ate spicy red chips that I threw up on the carpet and spent the next week bleaching and scrubbing so that my parents wouldn’t find out. I would hear my sister walk by and want to cry out for help, knowing that she would help me and that I wouldn’t be alone or die afraid. But I also knew she would force me to tell our parents, so I kept silent even when I curled into a ball on the floor and cried. I kept a high diary the entire time in case I truly did die and the last thing my mother ever saw of me was my dead body on my bed.
My death letter, my goodbye:
It’s like your body is a Ferris wheel that rotates, so you move in a circle with it and you can’t go against the wave or it will take you so you just go around in circles and if you lose the wave you can’t see but if you ride it your eyes buzz and the good thing is your ears ring when you ride it mine is dead now because I’ve been keeping a record for future me and now I return to the call of the wave.
Whenever you think about being high or that you are high, the high goes away so you know you’re high but you refuse to acknowledge it because you want the high
I’m the kind of high person who reminisces when high all my childhood memories or whatever. I am also paranoid
Are my fingers swollen? I don’t wanna barf ew
I will never want to do this again. I hate it at first it was fun and now it’s too strong and I’m scared and I don’t want to die and I don’t like it anymore now it makes me dizzy and sad I just want it to be over
It was 500mg
It wasn’t 500mg, I’m just bad at math. Especially when I’m high.
I remember at the worst point I wanted to just fuck it all, go to the ER, have them stick me with an IV or drain me somehow of that terrible feeling of dread and fear.
The next time was a lot better, though. It was almost a year later at college, at my first party of freshman year. Weed was so much more fun mixed with alcohol and surrounded by friends.
Nicotine came another year later; it started off as a casual joke. A friend of mine worked as a hostess at a local seafood restaurant, and her coworkers constantly lost their vapes around the establishment. She would find them and sneak them away, promising to let me try one and joking that I would hate it because I hated weed so much. Eventually, we rallied and bought a new one; I was so sure that nicotine would immobilize me as much as weed had the first time I tried it that I don’t even think I hit the vape properly. I have this habit of not understanding things until I think heavily about them. Nicotine has a negligible effect on my body, which I realized when I thought about how in Europe everyone smokes cigarettes at every meal and still manages to function just fine. Nicotine isn’t like weed; it doesn’t make me slow or tired. It’s just fun. It’s a drug you can use so casually it can become a part of everyday life.
I think the dictionary would define it as a habit. A hit before a lecture to get the courage to participate for my grade. A hit after work because it was exhausting using a customer service voice. A hit during homework so that I can write a fucking great essay my professor will compliment later. A hit while I write for a magazine. A hit before a meeting to mediate the mundanity of a packed schedule. Hit before my car breaks down. Hit before my grandfather ends up in the ER. Hit before my dad gets cancer. Hit before my breakup. A hit can prepare me for anything. I hold my pen like a cigarette in class sometimes, which I realize is both funny and tragic. Sometimes I think it makes me look classy: a finger edging the line between pen-twirling nerd and full-fledged addict. It is a reminder that looks are deceiving, and that addiction is high-functioning.
I am made of my memories. I am made of the promises my memories tell me I have made. I am nothing without either. But memories are fickle, hollow, and so easily forgotten.
And I can lie. To everyone and to myself. In my mind I am still little me, my rules are still steadfast, and they have not yet shrunk into a hollow, meaningless symbol of my naive youth. In my mind, I am still free.
