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So which of you are straight edge here, then?

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16:20 / 09.06.03

I consider abstention a drug

One of my favourite quotes is bizarrely Steven Wells, talking about Henry Rollins:

"He makes you realise that doing no drugs at all is exactly the same as doing all the drugs in the world."

16:29 / 09.06.03

I used to be a big "better living through chemistry" type both philosophically and behaviorally, but in recent years I've moved considerably away from that in both respects. On a behavioral level I just gradually lost interest--I never made a concrete decision to quit any particular substance, they all just gradually stopped being attractive and I more and more often I found myself passing up offers as they came--and the various philosophical angles came increasingly to seem like, well, bullshit I found attractive for various (at the time) unexamined reasons when I was younger (I still agree with the intentions, mind you, but no longer feel drug use is a realistically viable method of achieving them and have moved on to other modalities of consciousness expansion). These days I'll sometimes have a moderate-sized cup of coffee in the morning and maybe a few drinks at a social occasion once a month or so, but otherwise I'm fairly straight-edge by default.

22:10 / 09.06.03

Yesterday, when I was in the Lower East Side of Manhattan around Thompson Square Park, some middle aged guy in a Porsche with his top down was blasting "Straight Edge" by Minor Threat.

~head breaks~

anyway...

you all make me feel dirty.

22:36 / 09.06.03

[rot] being really fit also means if you get sick you get reaallly sick, instead of making you tougher it makes you more delicate, like a thoroughbred or a racing car [endrot]

I agree. Back in university I shared with the president of the Sports Union, who spent her time jogging, training, eating pasta etc. When she was sick, she was incapacitated, and she seemed to spend most of her time unable to move with some back ailment or other. In the meantime, I sit there with my red wine and roll-ups, bending over to pick things up (always used to drive her mad), with a slightly bemused expression.

Lovely girl though.

02:37 / 10.06.03

I think I might be 'bent centre' but it just sounds too cocky...

03:24 / 10.06.03

Am I the only one who doesn't buy this "excessive abstinence = excessive consumption" paradox? Druglessness is itself a drug??

Isn't the point of chemical consumption to alter/enhance/rarify one's mental and/or physical state? Please don't come at me with any "cleansing the doors of perception"-type argument. I personally have experienced far too many hallucinations and delusions to accept that drug-altered perceptions in any way resemble raw, undiluted experience. Isn't that one aim of straight edge-ry, to for once experience life as an unpolluted organism? Isn't that why straight edge types are typically so darned hardcore: because achieving such purity in a thoroughly polluted society--if it's not impossible altogether--requires great diligence?

I will readily admit that lots of folks who gravitate towards a drug-free lifestyle are kooky; or that certain philosophies demand abstinence as part of their own peculiar kookiness. Still, though, I wouldn't take such people's unbalanced mental states as the result of their drug-free nature.

And I apologize for posting in,like,60% rhetorical questions.

Murray Hamhandler

06:10 / 10.06.03

Straightedge is just a bit too much for me. I've been vegetarian off and on (off at the moment), but never vegan. I like the dairy too much. Besides which, my vegitarianism was never a particularly healthy vegetarianism and was always a bit on the side of invalid, IMO. Also been on and off w/the alcohol in my lifetime. Drinking very lightly and very infrequently (and never anything stronger than beer because my stomach can't handle it) at the moment and that seems to work fine by me. Don't smoke anything at all because slow asphyxiation doesn't particularly appeal to me for some reason. I make w/the psychedelics when they're available (which isn't at all often) and the occasional pain-reliever but am otherwise drug free. In the loosest sense, anyway, since I drink fairly unhealthy amounts of coffee when I'm in school. And sex... Pshhhh. I always did think that was the lamest bit of the straightedge ethos.

The Return Of Rothkoid

06:32 / 10.06.03

Wow I AM fucking Keith Richards.
That's got to be rather leathery.

14:43 / 10.06.03

Druglessness is itself a drug?

I think there's Straight Edge, there's abstinence, and there's probably two comparable bands on the drugged side of the spectrum - say casual use and indulgence.

So... so I, who merely do not ingest self-proscribed mind or mood altering substances beyond caffeine and nicotine, I am just abstinent. However, were I to really tweak the lack of drugs, quit smoking, kick the caffeine and avoid white sugar and/or red meat... then I think I'd be approaching straightedge proportions.

I basically think straightedge is the result of being dry. If you're not drinking or using, but you're not really sober, your not-using starts to define you the way your using used to.

...I think.

16:50 / 10.06.03

Dislike alcohol in myself intensely, but am comfortable mixing drinks for others.

Dislike cigarettes period. (Not so pipes or cigars. Go figure.)

Occasional cup of coffee - generally after lunchtime. Green tea when I can get it, never too much. Occasional cup of black tea (with milk) before lunch.

No red meat, no fowl, but fish goes down the gullet easy. And I'll eat collards made with bacon or soups made with beef stock in the restaurant without a fuss.

THC rarely, and psychedelics even more rarely. Mainly because I'm not circulating in an MDMA/LSD/various letters-friendly social circle anymore.

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