Drugs, etc

I went and saw RJD2/Kid Koala at the Prince of Wales last thursday and took a pill. I was a little reluctant, since the last few I've had were pretty mediocre, and made me resemble a zombie the next day. But this one was fantastic. Buzzing away, dancing freely, with liberated hands and feet, my mind went wandering, as it usually does. I started thinking, looking back over the past two months or so. It dawned on me, in a serotonin flash, that this was almost the first time I'd felt happy, felt upbeat, since the start of the year. Sure, I was high, but these emotions felt musty, unused. I'd felt pretty good after I got my first article published in the paper, head crammed full of cold air and tranquility, calm and slow and at peace, but these were almost foreign emotions. And I'd even fooled myself. Normally I can fool other people perfectly; I've always been the counselor type to my friends, and I find it boring to talk about my own mental state, but more recently, I wish they would ask, would probe like I do. Is my facade that impermeable? Do people assume I'm ok cos I always appear to be? Because I find it boring to be down around people, so I force a positivity? Being around people always cheers me up, so I suppose it's a bit of a bind. But I've never fooled myself this well before. I kept rationalising: I'm doing everything I wanted to do this year; I've moved out, got a casual job as a writer, doing a great internship, learning Indonesian, doing a telephone counselling course, finishing off uni, so of course I'm happy. Nup. A lie, all a lie. A convincing appearance of reality, the willing of my ideas to change reality. I've been more lonely than any time I can remember, the loneliness that comes from being around people all the time; good people, solid people, fun people, but still there is this hole. Perhaps it's always been there. Perhaps it relates to limerence (I posted on this recently). Perhaps I just want to be in love, perhaps that gives me meaning. But I don't think so, I think even love is a veil - a pretty veil, a satisfying veil, but a veil nonetheless - and that the real root of my disatisfaction lies deeper. Perhaps it's losing my faith (or finding that I never really had it), perhaps it's the absence of a metanarrative within which to position my life, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. The things which make me happiest are love, travel, and writing, and these things are escape hatches, temporary abandonments, detachments. I see other people, I see this same hauntedness, I see rings under eyes, sideways glances amidst conversations, sadness amidst laughter.

I have no answers to this yet, but at least I've discovered that I am unhappy. And this is why I value drugs - the pill let me find this out. I've never been tempted by the repeated escapes, the 8-hour/twice weekly binges, the splurges of brain chemicals so attractive to the rave set. In fact, I think it's no exaggeration to say that the people I've met at raves are the most selfish I know. There are no friendships there, without chemical enhancements. I can't stand that, I can't even see the appeal. But as a transformative tool, drugs are hard to beat. You temporarily step outside your established confines of your personality and methods of thinking, and become able to inspect yourself as if you are someone else (which, for a brief while, I suppose you are). I find it pretty valuable. Perhaps I would have unearthed my disatisfactions myself sooner or later, but I find that drugs offer a neat break with conventional reality, a useful perspective. It's like holidays - I always find I change the most when outside my daily habits and habitats.