The Leader of the free world has close to 75 open lawsuits against him. One lawsuit - dismissed, reopened, and dismissed again - accuses the 45th president of sexually assaulting a 13 year old girl (it actually says rape though - not sexual assault).
But that’s just fake news right?
This isn’t an article about how to decipher truth from fiction, or how to navigate through each of Trump’s fatal flaws. This is a blog about how to deal with the madness while everyone else refuses to acknowledge it. This is a blog about drugs and alcohol.
This one’s for the artists, the working class, the forever-students who still hold debt, and the parents with children who will now have more questions about their undercarriages after taking an American History class before Health 101 begins. This one is for those of us who understand that we are in a time of drastic, terrifying change. This one’s for the revolutionaries who will one day put down their drinks and fight - not the social justice protesting way of fighting, but actual life and death fighting. Yeah, it’s a terrible prophecy, but I’m not afraid to assume that all of this turmoil will eventually erupt and we’ll be at each other’s throats again doing what humans do best - survive.
So when you find yourself faced with opposition by your entire family, neighborhood, or workplace, here are some of the best ways to stay sober.
Change your Brand
Tolerance is a crock. You could drink the same shitty whiskey every day for a year, but as soon as you go one week without the Old Crow in your throat it’ll be like your 21st birthday all over again. Which has you remembering the days in which you gloated about your tolerance. Those days in which it was a challenge to see how much you could drink without dropping dead at the bar.
Those days were a crock too.
You have to be drinking for at least five years before you realize what kind of alcoholic you are (hint -there are no social alcoholics). When you’re 26 you realize the alcohol is there for another reason other than meeting new people. It’s there to medicate you. It’s there because you secretly hate yourself and want to test how strong your will is to live. It’s there because to be human means to be in constant pain.
Change your brand and you change your outlook on alcohol in an instant.
Of course, this is for those people who have a brand. If you go into the bar and just order whatever the special is, you’re doing it wrong. For those of us who know what we like and can measure how drunk we’re getting with each sip, we need to shake it up a bit.
Get the top shelf this time. Drink it down the same way and I guarantee you’ll feel like an aristocrat. That old crow will look like a photo album full of regret. You’ll feel refreshingly depressed and with the cost so much higher now you’re sure to drink, and spend, much less this time around.
Change your liquor
Certain liquors make certain people do certain things. Whiskey will make you an asshole; gin will empower you to think you’re smarter than the rest; vodka will keep you in line; and tequila will make you either horny or dangerous (though often both). In all honesty, each liquor reacts differently with each drinker. This is merely based on observation.
If you’re a whiskey man/woman I suggest stepping it into gin for a while. The taste is terrible enough for you to feel like a champion, and though you don’t need a reason to feel any smarter and start arguments supporting the notion, a good constructive conversation about your views on life with gin will get you ejected from the bar in double the amount of time.
If you’re a vodka drinker, then definitely start knocking back a few whiskeys. Vodka drinkers are usually either stiffs or chicks. The stiffs need a wakeup call and if it doesn’t come from the whiskey alone, it’ll come from the only other asshole drinking whiskey that night - the one who’ll want to deck you in the face after you put that Russian elixir away for the night.
If you’re a tequila drinker, then you’re just as weird as a gin drinker. I don’t often meet people who regularly drink one of the two. If I do, I begin to question my stability in life and measure myself to them immediately. How can anyone drink tequila or gin on a regular basis? Gin is literally poison and tequila is too celebratory to be drinking it every night. If you’re one of these drinkers I suggest you switch to beer. You’re going to be annoyed at how slowly it takes you to get drunk but sooner or later it’ll hit you like a submarine and start sinking your liveliness in a matter of hours. I’m guessing you could use a good simmering.
Fall in love with Beer
Like I said in the last bit, liquor drinkers are not going to be immediately be satisfied with beer. It takes longer to feel drunk and it fills you up quicker than a bowl of brown rice. It’s a casual drug that keeps conversations boring until one of you begins pushing the other off their stool.
It’s a drink that encourages conversation. Conversation we all desperately need right now.
If democracy could be described in one word it would be conversation. Are you feeling ostracized by everyone around you over the current political crisis? Grab a six pack and tell you bar tender how many hours you spend contemplating life before finally falling asleep.
With each new beer your morbid hours of regretful thought will lessen by a third. Eventually you’ll be falling asleep the moment you hit the bed - face first with all your clothes still on.
BeFriend your Bartender
We’ve started this blog assuming you’re a liberal, or a democrat, or a conflicted republican. We started this blog assuming you have no friends to support your views or only have a small number of them and they’re either shy or too ignorant to believe that anything they do will have an affect on the world.
Your bartender, however, is right there with you.
It’s easy to become jaded when working in the service industry. We see the worst of humankind and we often have to clean up after your vomit-filled rants of regret; but we need you. We depend on you for economic survival and you depend on us for emotional support (I keep saying we and us but the truth is I haven’t tended a bar in two years). More often than not, the service industry is bursting with bleeding heart liberals. Most likely it’s the artists and writers and free thinkers who can’t seem to make it through a 9-5 long enough to encourage retirement. Those artists will serve your drinks, clean your tables and pour your beers.
It’s their job to talk to you.
You can go in assuming they’re doing it for the tips or that they only say what you want to hear. Like the gorgeous, yet approachable, young girl who’s shirt rises above her back dimples every time she grabs from the top rack - she is there for you to talk to. She is there for you to admire and return to. She is there for you to fall in love with and continue spending money for.
But she’s not eye candy for the sake of eye candy. For the night in which you’re ready to drink to your sorrows, she’s your best friend. The one you grew up with, the teacher’s aide you admired, the babysitter you wished would replace your parents.
Tell her everything.
Man or woman, the relationship you have with your bar tender will never extend beyond the bar. So tell them everything - right there, right now. Tell them how disgusted you are that your president has gloated about sexually assaulting women. Tell them how you felt personally offended when he accused the former president of illegally ordering a wire tap on a US citizen. Tell them how confused you are at how everyone is still waiting for Donald Trump to somehow transform into something resembling an honorable man. That bartender will listen to you and they’ll tell you just how they feel. Whether they’re honest with you or not doesn’t matter. They’ll agree with you because it’s their job to; and if you can forget that fact it’ll be an afternoon of blissful companionship.
- Note - for those drinkers who are familiar with every bar in the neighborhood, eventually the bar tenders will be honest with you. Eventually you’ll piss the wrong one off or you’ll meet the only one who enjoys a good disagreement. These may be the best ones to talk to. Find one and don’t let go.
Dabble in the psychedelics
If I were any more in line with my inner spirt or my chakra, I would replace this paragraph with something like learn to meditate; but since I can’t sit still long enough to meditate yet, I figure I’ll advise on the next best thing - just fucking trip out.
Get some mushrooms, stick em’ in some peanut butter and swallow em’ whole.
I’ve never done acid so I can’t say how the two measure up, but I know that if you’re worried about hallucinations, mushrooms are a far more mild trip and it’ll end in less than six hours.
We need to remember that there is more to this world than what we see and do every day. There is more to life than choosing to go paperless with your bank statements. There is an entire realm of existence beyond reality and we see and we experience that realm very night - when we dream. You dream, I dream, Donald Trump dreams of not winning the election. We all do it. Why don’t we talk about it more? It’s not like it’s new and weird. Humans have been dreaming since the beginning. It’s a natural phenomena we all share and yet we don’t talk about it anymore.
Consider a trip down shroom avenue as just the same dose of magic you get when you dream (though if you took that literally then what you really want is DMT).
It’s like dreaming for a only few hours. A dream that everyone can share in and comment on later. A dream that’ll pull in reality with it and then leave you more clear headed than when you came in. It’s like pressing the reset button on a Nintendo system - same game, but this time it’s working better, faster, smarter, stronger.
There is a cautionary moment I must address. When the shroom trip comes close to an end your ego is going to become the center of attention again. Before this moment you were floating among a spatial territory in which neither you nor your friends existed. For the majority of the trip your ego will dissipate until there’s nothing left but wonder and excitement; and love.
But when it’s like an hour left, reality is going to bite back hard. You’re going to fall back to earth quicker than when you rose above it. One by one, every moment that ever gave you stress will start piling on themselves like a campfire and before you’re ready your ego will light the fire and watch you burn. You’ll question everything. God, the Devil, that mailman that’s been giving you magazines addressed for two buildings down. For newbies and veterans alike this moment is one of those devastating glimpses of dejavu in which you know you have to make a decision but you’re not sure why or what.
Don’t worry - this too shall pass.
Smoke More Weed
It’s not a gateway drug.
Unless you’re more depressed than I thought, or more outnumbered than I imagined.
It’s a plant on this earth that helps your brain produce more dopamine. Dopamine is natural and your brain wants you to produce it. In fact, your brain wants it so much that another part of your brain is designed to keep it in check. Meaning there is a portion of your brain to make you happy and another portion to regulate that happiness ( kinda sounds like a good metaphor for America).
When you smoke weed, that regulating portion of your brain is dampened and dopamine is free to produce and populate itself for as long as it can. You can be happy again!
Weed can be smoked alone or with a group, but it’s highly encouraged to be shared; because everyone smokes weed and everyone wants to share it with everyone else.
Smoking weed with a group of like-minded friends is the most blissful way to enjoy an evening.
You never stop laughing, you only discuss the important things like how the universe is expanding, you try all sorts of interesting new food like hot chili lime cheetos, and for that one special night you won’t feel spiritually alone anymore.
If you don’t have any friends who will smoke with you (which I highly doubt) then find a good movie and sink into the couch and eventually it’ll be three in the morning and your eyes will be so dry and heavy that you’ll fall asleep with cheeto fingers in your pants.
Stay away from Wine or Champagne
The champagne one is obvious - it’s a drink reserved for celebrations and this, my friend, is no celebration. Wine, however, may seem tricky. Why not drink wine? It’s alcoholic, slow working, sophisticated, and can often times be cheaper in one bottle than liquor is in one drink.
But wine is not how we deal with a 2017 Trump America.
Let’s face it - you want to get drunk. We all know that already. This blog isn’t really about staying sober, it’s about feigning off a debilitating problem long enough to listen to what Trump just did to America this time. Even as I’m writing this I’m finding out that the Republican’s new health bill is entitled “World’s Greatest Health Care Plan of 2017” hahahaha.