stay straight edge

The majority of the population is intoxicated every minute of their life.

The physical energy that we suck out of Starbucks, Red Bulls, and uppers is not true energy. We’re drunk on a fake energy that fades away and burns us out, leaving us dependent.

Even the “Healthy” choices we meet are often disastrous on our body, diminishing our energy so that we’re sluggish and running most of our day in a flight-or-fight state, instead of creating supplies of good energy.

Prozac, Zoloft, and other drugs numb our depressions instead of dealing with problems. The complex web of our problems just fades away until we are so out of touch with the consequences our decisions up to this moment.

Narcotics, psychadelics, chemicals, escaping reality. No doubt, they allow us to experience “altered states”, expand our creativity, and make things fun. But they also destroy people’s lives, distort our reality to an unworkable point, and drastically invade lives.

There is a level of moderation to all of these, and I respect that. Though I’ve found that we can alter our reality without drugs.

I’m a weirdo that way. I’m the life of the party, I see things people don’t see, I’m energetic, and I had to learn to become many of these things in the course of being sober for several years. It’s totally possible! All those positive things drugs promise can be found in sobriety.

Straight edge IS the altered reality. Sober, clean, and in touch with the clarity of every moment is not what most people experience as we live in an intoxicated world.

What it means to me is choosing to deal with everything with a clear mind and seek to completely emerge into the experience without the need of the numbing agents we put in our bodies.

Some experiences aren’t as easily accessible to the sober mind as the intoxicated mind, true, but the opposite is also true: until you’ve detoxed, you can’t experience the clarity of a truly sober mind.

I choose straight edge for the altered state of clarity. For me, having that energy and clarity fuels that drive in me to affect change in the world—dullness only makes the path more obscured and harder to walk on.

When I was younger DAMN did I ever smoke lots of weed. Like copious amounts to the point it affected my memory, make me constantly paranoid, I was even spitting up gross pot-loogies daily.

There are times from when I do have good memories about smoking weed though. Like on Halloween last year I got blasssted and I was dressed like Cochese from the Beastie Boys – Sabotage video it was fun as hell!

The overall effect weed has on my life has not been good. I’ve smoked weed most of my life, I know it hasn’t ever really helped me in the ways I want. In many ways, it helped me enjoy movies, video games, and experience things in brighter colors.

That is the secondary payoff though, and it comes with a price (like I said before, for me that was poor memory, presenting myself in a dumbass stoner manor, and procrastinating the hell out of doing anything—ever heard the track Because I got high?

Anyways, I’m reading a book right now by someone I have massive respect for, and the first thirty pages is advocating smoking ganja. It has made me think twice about keeping my edge the past few days. Yesterday some people I was with at the beach all smoked up and offered the joint to me, of course I declined without thinking twice.

But it has crossed my mind a few times the past few days even though it has been over half a year since I smoked up.

Why I prefer straight-edge, veganism, fitness and these things is because I think many of us live our lives in drugged state through caffeine, poor diet, lack of movement, and being able to see things completely sober is relatively like being in an altered state.

Smoking pot just brings me back into that drugged up state.

Some people have a great relationship with pot and are able to balance it as well as they have the right temperament for their personality types, and I’ve seen it work great.

For me, the fast-talking self-improvement lifehacker that I am, it doesn’t work that great. It hinders me. It only amplifies the problems I’m trying to alleviate.

Since December 1st, 2008 I haven’t drank or taken any drugs.

As of Monday May 4, 2009, I cut-out caffeine as well, which makes me 100% drug free as I stopped taking medications of any kind a long time ago.

So I’m now officially 100% sXe!

...Unless you consider non-committed sex to be a violation of the edge.