PLAIN TRUTH: You don’t have to get high to have fun

Terrifying. This is the word I would choose to describe the experience of watching a man or woman get pulled down the rabbit hole by drugs or alcohol.

There is this backstreet in downtown Nairobi. A dingy, narrow space near Tea Room where men and women inject hard drugs into their arms, thighs and other body parts, and then spread out on the pavements in broad day light as the rest of the city bustles on. It’s a terrifying thing to watch. There is this advert currently running on television promoting an alcohol delivery service.

The setting is a gathering of friends who seem tired and bored with each other until someone thinks to order for drinks, and then suddenly everyone comes to life. It’s a very popular advert mainly because it’s relatable. For a lot of people born into our binge drinking culture, a gathering can’t be fun unless there are drinks.

This piece is not a ‘Don’t drink’ or a ‘Don’t drink and drive campaign’. You have heard all about these. So I will tell you this, if you are one of those people who sneak drinks and smokes to give them highs through the day, if you think you have become a master at disguising this fact, the harsh truth is that you haven’t. Almost always, the people you interact with can tell that you are intoxicated. They just don’t care enough to ask or your habit hasn’t began interfering with their lives — yet.

If you are young enough to even begin thinking that alcohol or weed can improve a tough situation, hear this — whatever it is you are struggling with will still be there when the high wears off. The only thing that will change when you drink is the dent this will put on your wallet.

It’s worrying how thin the line between getting high for fun and then getting high because you otherwise can’t function, is.

I asked an acquaintance why he drinks so much and he told me that he does it to fit in with his ‘friends’. I’m putting the word friends here in quotes because I think that if you must drink or smoke something to fit in with a group of people, if the only thing you have in common with a certain person is that you both enjoy a certain drink, then I think that ‘friend’ is too strong a word to use to describe them.

As long as you are making a free, informed decision, get high if you want to. Just don’t lie that this is the only way to enjoy life or that it is a solution to life’s problems. And pay attention to how your relationship with your favourite drink progresses. A drink shouldn’t be something that you need to have to be able to do this or that.

If you make the decision to stay sober at a bar, don’t feel the need to disguise this fact, or to explain it.