I rang in the New Year with my friends, watching an endless stream of K-Pop music videos and eating lots of mushroom chocolate. I thought, as we all did, that we were going to be consuming psilocybin mushrooms and see God or something, but we left our preppiest friend in charge of procuring the drugs, and we ended up with a couple bars of suspicious chocolate that may or may not have been infused with lab chemicals rather than the beautiful mushrooms mother Earth supplies us with, the kind I was more familiar with.

Instead of the swirly, surreal high I was expecting, we had a chemical-tinged, manic night, giggling until we were exhausted while being dazzled by the beautiful faces and perfect choreography of Koreans trained in the idol system.

Perhaps because of the small-ish dose I took of the questionably sourced, allegedly mushroom-infused chocolate, none of us had a powerful trip to some higher realm. I felt very present all night, joking with friends and telling stories, having grand visions of the future (we predicted this century to be the one in which Asians and gay people gain more cultural and economic power, probably because we were a bunch of gay Asians watching the music video for “Eclipse” by Kim Lip at the time).

A thought rose up from the edges of my mind, emerging from the cloud of sparkling dopamine fireworks: I want the rest of my year to be exactly like this.

I’ve always been a little afraid of doing any substances regularly — alcohol, weed, psychedelics. I’d seen addictive behaviors take hold of people in my family, and growing up in the gambling mecca of Las Vegas inoculated me from most of the promises of an easy hit, the illusions of control, the magical thinking around any addiction that can slowly bury you in the sand.

But, in my avoidance, I had fallen into an unhealthy pattern with weed and alcohol anyway. Trying not to participate in it recreationally, avoiding a beer at dinner because I’d had a beer with dinner three days ago and didn’t want to feel like an alcoholic. I’d mostly try to face the discomforts of my early twenties and of the pandemic lockdowns without the help of a joint or a cocktail.

But then, instead of just letting myself take the edge off a hard day, I’d completely disassociate, splinter my consciousness from myself, unaware of the ways in which I was unhappy with my own life, my own personality, my relationships. I’d become numb to the growing catastrophes of the pandemic, and then three years later, slowly become numb to the atrocities being reported live from the genocide in Gaza. I’d totally checked out, danced along the edge of oblivion and turned into a part-time nihilist.

In the middle of this, I’d also, of course, occasionally drink too much when I felt like the big ugly tranny in a bar full of straight people. I didn’t want to loosen up, I wanted to just forget I was there. I was such a bad chronically-online bisexual witch-type. I was not doing the shadow work.

I spent nearly a year half-heartedly sober, because I’m very bad about being strict with anything in my own life, but I did realize I needed to recalibrate my relationship to myself and to these substances. I got comfortable dancing by myself in the club, completely sober, talking to strangers at house parties with just a cup of soda in my hand.

Now, I feel like drugs are not portals to escapism, little devils that I must avoid to maintain my status as a Good Person. Now, I see them for what they are. Or at least what they can be: good fucking fun.

I can force myself out of my productivity brain rot at the end of the day with a joint, force myself into becoming a giggly person who cannot answer an email but instead must draw in my sketchbook while I watch old movies. I can have a drink or two with my friends at a rooftop bar and tell secrets and laugh until I cry. I’m hoping to have a couple of heroic doses of psychedelics this year, to let my ego die and see what happens when I let go.

While things get harder and reality becomes more difficult to digest, I’m letting drugs soften the edges, gently dabbing an eraser at my outlines. I’m letting them help me to loosen my fist, to be open to the horrible dissonant truths of the present, and to keep laughing, even while things don’t seem very funny, so that I can keep working to make things better, so that I can sufficiently hold the truth that this world is capable of gut-wrenching evil and profound joy.

I want to stay present. I don’t want to blast myself into oblivion, to give up hope for something good, to give up on myself and everyone I love. I want to be present for dinner with my friends and to zone in to the hypnotic narration of Los Angeles Plays Itself instead of fixating on the idea of having to flee the country.

I want to know and witness everything and still hold onto the hope that the beautiful utopic future I dream of is still very much possible. It seems like a mere mortal such as I — with my ego and my anxieties and my wild imagination — is only capable of achieving this by smoking some pot with my friends.

Autostraddle’s Pride 2025 theme is DEVIANT BEHAVIOR. Read more, and be deviant!

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