The other week, my friend Reina and I were talking about choices and intelligence. The questions of the hour seemed to be: How do we approach qualifying the decisions we make? How do we go about interpreting our actions, discerning “right” from “wrong?” If and when we act out of impulse and, less consciously, move with a certain self-interest, should we demand or expect better from ourselves? What does it mean to bear oneself wisely, to act “smart?”
Having found myself in a “who-have-I-been” and “who-am-I-becoming” loop at large, it was a timely conversation, one that has been sitting in me with this Drug Issue in mind.
It has been interesting to arrive at and occupy a space of consciousness that begged me to be aware of how and why I engaged with substances — to pay attention to and challenge my desires. It is only now in my early 20s that I am beginning to appreciate just how longstanding and far-reaching Puberty is, how growing out of the behaviors it initiates or orientations it inspires is contingent on believing you are clay. We do not simply “grow out of things” — we have to mold ourselves, know that we can be responsible for our form.
I think about that blind arrogance, which especially young youth find themselves in — an arrogance that represses hesitancy and stifles reservations, which, at least in my eyes, is always held in deep tension with an acutely confused sense of self and worth. It’s a hubris that comes into existence without intentionality, an insolence that doesn’t betray maliciousness or pride. It is a mode of being that has us all humming on the notion that feeling is synonymous with reality, and reality as something that you have no say in shaping.
It is in this position and from this perspective that everyone finds themselves involved with drugs, as little more than a child.
I’m speaking here for the class of people who want to consider themselves responsible recreational users, who believe that they are capable of setting boundaries and drawing lines, who do not fall into “excessive” use, who are functioning and reliable, maintaining routines and keeping commitments. This is the class that I found myself and others in during my later teenage years, and which I think more and more people are falling into as the lines between acceptance and tolerance are continuously blurred.
Like, if you start doing ketamine regularly but tell yourself that because you only do it on weekends and don’t drink on it, it doesn’t qualify as a problem, or that of course every time you are socially engaged, you find yourself with a beer in your hand because isn’t that how people socialize? And one of the classics: that you can’t possibly have a negative relationship with weed because it rarely makes you feel lazy and you only smoke after you have finished all the work for the day or that psychedelic use has brought you a lot of insight, so it doesn’t fall into the same category as debilitating or stupefying drugs.
In a country with the highest rate of drug use as of 2021, a country where we are subtly and explicitly encouraged to not feel ownership over our lives or connection to others, self-proclaimed recreational users fall victim to emotional stagnation and stuntedness, lacking the control or enlightenment they are desperate to believe in. There are the moments when things plainly go wrong, when the experience you have should lead to the conclusion that substance use is not only not a necessity but shouldn’t even be a desire.
But we continue onwards, rarely batting an eye or tilting a head. So self-assured, and yet so distraught.
When we find ourselves disoriented, unclear about who or where we are, where we would like to go, how we would like to be, we dig our heels into the ground and look outside. We respond like children, thinking that everything we feel or think reflects actuality, that we are always entitled to act on feeling as a means of validating it and ourselves. We are inclined to create narratives of ourselves and our choices, stories to reason for our behaviors and offer us a sense of fixed identity, manufacturing a mist that delays an honest viewing of and confrontation with reality.
It is this sort of disposition and mentality that is facilitated and reinforced by the embrace of and engagement in casual drug use as distinguished from problematic drug use. Because at the end of the day, what is ever truly casual about drug use, about taking a substance that alters my perception and movement, about a substance that is “offering” me something I don’t think I can receive or cultivate myself? How are there not ramifications on my relationship with myself and the way I participate in my life?
Doubt is threatening. For me it had sharp teeth and the eyes of a deer, that unflinching pitch black that, when its gaze finds you, gives the impression that it sees something in you that you know nothing about. I wasn’t interested in sitting with myself and questioning my behavior and that of others — it felt like a way of undermining myself, of denying myself. But I think we need to move past this almost infantile self-soothing, this inclination to reassure ourselves or declare legitimacy by quelling misgivings or pushing through apprehension.
At the end of my conversation with Reina, I suggested a definition of intelligence as the will to learn, to admit wrongness, to be open to doubt. At the moment that our relationship with drugs is deemed beyond scrutiny, we have already lost ourselves, gave ourselves over — admitting to and feeding avoidance of some kind and unconsciously inviting our own constraints.
Kyriaki Yozzo is a senior majoring in philosophy, politics and law.
Views expressed in the opinions pages represent the opinions of the columnists. The only piece that represents the view of the Pipe Dream Editorial Board is the staff editorial.