GETTING HIGH, THE DREAM OF BOREDOM
- Gianmaria D'Alessandro
- Apr 2
- 9 min read
Updated: Apr 4
It was a sad Thursday evening in a Brussels stained with cold and curfew, one of those typical February days when the dry and windy air leaves room only for, at best, melancholic thoughts. Once again, I was burdened by a long story of love only imagined, remaining latent since the first encounter. I needed cold to rediscover the taste of warmth. For too long, I had only felt mildness. Luckily, that evening, a call came in; it was my friends from Luxembourg, F, and K, inviting me to dinner at the house of K's girlfriend. A vegan curry because it's less fatty and also because C's (the girlfriend's) roommates were one vegan for wellness reasons and the other a flexitarian on a diet. Good music because T would also be there, bottles of beer and organic wine, and a significant quantity of cocaine and various synthetic powders. That's how they introduced the evening. Naturally, the first thing I told them was that I would eat at home and that I would very, very gladly taste this healthy curry next time. But, more importantly, I assured them I would arrive loaded with cigarettes (I still had three cartons from China), making sure, however, that smoking indoors was allowed. In Brussels, during COVID, neighbors often turned into informants; going out on the balcony could be risky. They reassured me that in that house, everyone had grown up as respectable smokers and that, like in any true smoker's home, the warmth of the dwelling is the perfect ground for ash… and that if I brought two cartons, I wouldn't have to pay for the products. How could I refuse such an invitation, such a proposition!?
It was strangely a period of great culinary creativity, so I made myself a sandwich with some zucchini-cooked escabeche-style and mixed mushrooms with yogurt, dill, and mint sauce; I still remember it. "Mom, Dad, I'm going to watch a movie at B's place; then I'll probably stay there overnight, or I'll come back right after curfew ends." "Be careful with COVID. Who else is going? Are they all negative? What about their parents? Is your phone charged?" And after all these endless ritualistic naggings, I finally managed to grab my scooter keys. I rode the scooter strictly without a license (because when would they ever stop a well-dressed white guy on a red Vespa in Brussels?), and I plunged, with the full power of a modified 50cc engine, into the cold of the night. After twenty minutes of travel and only six minutes past curfew, I arrived at the fourth and top floor of a small yet ultra-modern duplex in a 1930s building. They took me to the second floor, the "attic," where I found more people than expected and more unfamiliar faces than known ones. A good sign: when you want to hurt yourself, it's nice to do it with a few familiar faces around. The sad and shameful pleasure of anonymity, of being able to be reborn as new beings in the eyes of strangers, the ecstatic taste of mythomania paired with intoxication; a truly delightful evening was taking shape. After a clumsy gesture in which, as a good Italian abroad, I presented the two cartons of cigarettes while simultaneously introducing myself to the various people with easy and quick chats, false compliments, and many smiles, the dances began with a simple and elegant gesture: F, with a big smile and a plate in hand, presented it to me along with a short metal straw.
The atmosphere suddenly darkened; it started to smell of anxiety, and it reeked of anguish. This scent, naturally, is washed down with the bitterness of coconut and a nice sip of dissolved crystals in water, or perhaps with a shot or two, or maybe even two or three teaspoons of ketch. The music started, the substances slowly began to release their venom, and between a beer and a cigarette, I realized that smell wouldn’t go away; in fact, it might have even increased. The sips of various beverages continued, as did the drags of tobacco tainted with who knows what substances. The conversations and laughter went on; what was wrong? Why did the air feel drier and sharper? Why did this stench persist? Did the others smell it, too? I hadn’t been using so-called hard substances for long, but I had already had several intense mix-ups. I felt the effects well because I felt them a little, but I had never perceived a stench like this before, and, thinking back, I had noticed it just before my first hit. And what initially seemed like a smell gradually revealed itself to be an atmosphere, mostly dense, that permeated our bodies, or rather, that emanated from our being there, from those sad smiles, those lifeless laughs, those gazes hungry for easy sensations and bored by the stagnation of our thoughts, that anxiety of needing a hit to lie to ourselves that we were finally filling the void of lives without major problems—except for the existential ones mainly caused by this very condition. Was this the dream of Europe for which our ancestors fought and died? A string of rich and privileged kids from all corners of this continent, educated in the best schools and most prestigious universities, speaking no fewer than three languages each, with highly overpaid salaried jobs for the grueling task of four emails and eight columns of an Excel sheet to fill out and send daily, gathered and held together by the abuse of psychotropic substances? Was this truly the destiny of this youth? My mind echoed with these thoughts, bouncing from one corner of my miserable skull to the other. The alcohol, the coke, and the ketch amplified these reflections.
There was no solution; I would have to live through this evening with this anxiety-inducing disillusionment, hoping that the next morning, I would forget everything and return to my apathetic existence as a modern and spoiled young man. I didn't forget this brief and "romanticized" story, on the contrary. Despite continuing to do drugs for a while after that night, finding myself in infinitely more depressing situations, that evening was particularly illuminating for me regarding our generation's condition. Speaking of myself, I don't think I'm speaking only of myself: I needed to lose myself, to forget the world, my "pains," and my "great" fears. I wanted to get high to escape from the veil of daily life, only to return to it later. And I believe that in this process, one can clearly see the arcane of substance abuse among young people in this 21st century.
This quick reflection primarily considers the post-war period; even though people have always used drugs, and in large quantities, in the so-called modern times (starting as early as the Victorian era), there has been a significant increase in drug use within our society. Just look at the components of medications, doctors' prescriptions, all the intellectual salons that extensively consumed opium and absinthe, the increasingly widespread industrial production of alcohol and psychotropic drugs—and all of this in just the first forty years of the century. But returning to a more specific focus, these last seventy years—a period of incredible interest and complexity in general—also prove to be significant from this perspective: they marked the beginning of the current technicalization of substances and, consequently, their progressive corrosion, the loss of their energizing effects, and even their conceptual deterioration. In these years, experimentation began in the most absurd ways and for the most diverse reasons, using all imaginable substances. It didn't matter whether you were a child or an elderly person, black or Hispanic, homosexual or a political dissident—the only thing that mattered was conducting "research" (from vaccines to the MKUltra project, from heroin with the hippies to crack with Black communities, to doping in sports, etc.), and "development" (for example, the creation of new "drugs" that, for a not-so-modest price, promise to extend your life as long as you keep paying for them). Subsequently, through an increasingly drastic and rapid process for various reasons, a systematic criminalization of drugs was established almost everywhere, going hand in hand with an increasingly precise monopoly and widespread consumption of psychotropic medications orchestrated by pharmaceutical companies and laboratories of all kinds.
On a political level, substances of all kinds became instruments of revolution, change, and control of the future—working in both directions, on both sides of the barricade: from top to bottom (as the damn AngloSaxon analytical minds have taught us!) to pacify and disorganize, and from bottom to top to break down walls and unite. This vision is obviously naive, but it unwittingly carries a grain of truth. Unfortunately, it is equally true to say that both these uses have generated deep scars, heartbreaking stories of pain and despair in countless bodies. In this chaos, for many people, drug use took on a rarely seen turn—it became a way to disengage from the world, the ultimate rejection of reality, which, to be realized, required a gradual dissolution of oneself. Go watch this interview from 1976 (look: Ragionamenti tossici nella Borgata Romanina), of course, we’re talking about a specific case, but one that corresponds very well to the nihilism that has gradually developed and spread in our society. In many cases, it’s almost an act of mercy toward oneself and toward the world: "I will not contribute to the evil of this system; I will withdraw from everything until I disappear." However, I would say that today a new convulsion is dangerously taking hold, a new way of relating to substances is becoming increasingly prevalent, especially within our Western society:
today, people use drugs as they would take medicine.
Today, drug use comes with a different awareness and expectation compared to the past; it is no longer an act of dissent or disagreement against the system, but has become just one of many ways to sustain it, to keep it running, to continue consuming and producing it, thereby unlocking all its latent potentials.
Faced with a system that literally profits from brutalizing complex essences, turning them into purely functional objects—objects that hold value only in how efficiently they serve the system's smooth operation— what can an individual do but alter themselves? Many say: "The world will never change anyway; what else can a single person do except take a moment of suspension from this infinitely larger machine? Drugs are just a way to take a short 'break.'" Taking them, regularly or not, is the only way to keep going. Others, instead, argue that we should squeeze this machine dry and become fully part of it to earn freedom from all its monstrous impositions—and that to endure such a life, a substance is needed. Whether it's an antidepressant or cocaine makes little difference. In both cases, the substance is used as a remedy for the brutality of this system: either as an anesthetic to neutralize all the healthy (though painful) fevers—our immune responses to this increasingly toxic relationship with the system (and more simply, to numb oneself and get ten minutes of dreams once in a while)—or as a doping agent to become violent and performant as required. In both cases, it turns out to be an easy amendment to the emptiness methodically generated by this world for the sole purpose of perpetuating itself. However, in this process, awareness of what is truly being pursued is lost, and even more so, of the direction taken, as the goals—whatever they may be—become ever closer, and the horizon increasingly darker and narrower. And think about how common it is today to find very young workers already dependent on who-knows how many substances, and think about how "absurd" it is that these people often have office jobs—jobs where minds are trivialized, and bodies are bent into falsely glorified automatons.
I believe the issue truly lies in the expectation attributed to the substance. Today, even drugs have a well-defined place; they are consumed in specific spaces, on specific occasions, with specific substances. Even drugs today have become precise and controlled, perfectly integrated into a productive mechanism—both in their production and in their consumption. The spirit of irruption and surprise has been lost (today the effect is predicted, and the surprise is programmed… so what kind of surprise is that?), a spirit that was traditionally the hallmark of youth. And in losing this, we have truly lost—and are continuously losing—that sacred breath, that holy wind that has always rebelled against the world and its injustices. Everyone is already old, bored, and cynical because now it seems that the only available resource is a temporary dissolution provided by substances —to feel something that either erupts or disconnects, in an extremely fictitious way, from the everyday. As if trying to break it, but in a controlled way.* Take this phrase:
"People no longer use drugs because they feel bad, but because they want to feel good."
Byung-Chul Han
(-which, unfortunately, for intellectual honesty, I must cite; I found this phrase on Instagram, I don’t know from which of his beautiful and profound books, I won’t look it up, don’t ask me-) And if I remember correctly, he meant it within his argument as a means of adhering to the imperative of positivity— Drugs transformed into a tool to maintain a constant artificial state of well-being. Even though I share this perspective, that is not the meaning I take from his phrase. Rather, I see it as a good example to illustrate the argument proposed here: Even from his point of view, drugs have changed their role—they have shifted from an act of passivity, "feeling bad," to an act of will, "wanting to feel good." We can debate for hours on what passive or willful action means, but staying on point: if the cause of the shift in the role of drugs today is linked to the difference in attitude and purpose attributed to the substance, then we clearly see how our arguments converge, and that this phrase serves well to highlight that today, drugs are consumed as a remedy, as medicine to remain part of the world—to stay anchored to the system that, in the first place, consumes you and pushes you to consume. And if you allow me, I would clarify that today, therefore, people don’t take drugs to feel good or because they feel bad, but to avoid feeling bad—to reject discomfort before it even appears, and thus, not even to truly feel good. Ultimately, the question should be posed on what we mean by well-being; isn’t this the question that has tormented us since the dawn of consciousness? So what is your drug? What does your well-being depend on?
IL SOGNO DELLA RAGIONE CREA MOSTRI,
IL SOGNO DELLA NOIA CREA DIPENDENTI.
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