NORMAL KIDS SUCK A YOUNG RECOVERING ALCOHOLIC'S EXPERIENCE IN BARS // BEN MCGINNIS

So, it's been a long time.

I started drinking very young, and I got sober very young. It had to happen; I was a complete shit show as a kid. As a student, I maintained very well in school, and, in most relationships, I wasn't a complete bastard. I lasted a few months after my 18th birthday. That's when I made the decision that I needed some help. I went through treatment, and I'm a member of a twelve step fellowship in which I'm very active - it's what helps to keep me away from what kills me. I have never in my life felt normal, or, whatever the hell normal actually is, I've just never felt it. I'm 22, and it's been nearly four years since I've used alcohol or drugs. Just in case you're as deficient as me in math, that means I was sober for an American rite of passage, the first legal drink. I've never had one, apart from being abroad when I was younger, but even in that case it's not a matter of legality - it's a matter of the guy at the bar in the Dominican Republic not giving a damn. The first legal drink is something that is built to from the first time you drink or, at the very least, the first time you understand drinking as an activity.

Nearly every single high school and college age kid romanticizes the first time they will take a drink inside a bar for the first time. It feels like the first trip in the TARDIS, it's an exciting trip that you take around strangers into world that you can't truly picture. You never see the grittier side of the experience; however, the ethereal experience comes from a culture that celebrates the use of one mind altering drug over the use of all others. There is an enormous problem in the language that we use. It's always phrased as alcohol and drugs, and we also tend to use different words for the effect provided. Being drunk and being high are completely separate ideas, even though they are essentially the same thing.

This unconscious sensitization to the socio-normative culture of drugs and alcohol happens to us as children, we learn about alcohol before anything else. I see it in the American male football culture, which is usually a child's first exposure to the idea of alcohol. It was certainly mine. I can distinctly remember watching football with my father, and seeing beer commercials at a very young age. I was always curious about it, I always wondered why I couldn't have any. Then the D.A.R.E. program came into my life at age ten. They told me what would happen to my body and mind if I made the decision to use drugs, and the long term life effects of drug use. I seemed to ignore the warnings and I definitely paid careful attention to the supposed effects of this liquid.

In an ironic, shocking, and unfortunate incident; the police officer who taught D.A.R.E. in my class took his own life last year. He was an addict in recovery - life had become a burden on him to the point where he felt it necessary to take his patrol car to a park and commit suicide. He was a friend that I caught up with whenever I could. This was the kind of story that I ignored through my using, a story I ignored multiple times over during my eight short years of active addiction. I can't blame the education, but, I can say, that it fed my curiosity. Then, as I grew up, I absorbed more culture, and slowly began to envision my first legal drink. As much as I can remember of my imagining, I saw lots of loose women and all of my best friends, a dimly lit bar that catered to my sensibilities as an adolescent. The fact is, I'd never get that experience. Every time that I have set foot in a bar, it has been as a sober person visiting the other world. It feels like being a ghost in a room full of familiar faces.

It took a while before I was comfortable around normal people, I couldn't go to parties or go near people who were drunk or high. Trust me, this is much more difficult than it sounds - it's like trying to stay away from people who breathe oxygen, that's how ingrained it becomes in your life. I was working at a hookah café as a chef when I went into a bar for the first time. I was 20. The Café, as BYOB, was the first place, in sobriety, that I had to handle booze on a regular basis. Other than that, to this point in my life, I had never handled alcohol in a manner that couldn't be called deviant. The Pub is right across from the café, and, when I got off work, my coworkers and my normal friends populated the dive bar. The place is small, lit just like my dreams with dart boards and wood paneling. At first it was nothing, it was off season, all of the college kids were at home. The place was always dead. I would have a cola and just chill out. I first became uncomfortable when the college kids reappeared. The stench of desperation and unadulterated foolishness became my Thursday night occurrence. I always liked watching all the people, filing in like a triumphant marching group of soldiers then stumbling onto the sidewalk in a matter of hours. Every douchebag from miles away coming into start a whiskey sweat and hit on every single short skirt covering smoothed out legs. People falling off of barstools, swinging fists and getting thrown in cop cars. I've seen everything in that bar. It's a regular place to find me. My friends are bartenders and we take over the bar on Monday evenings to play Magic: The Gathering. We sit in an empty bar, play a fantasy card game and smoke cigarettes until the crowd comes. I'm never tempted to drink there. It's a comfortable place, filled with students or just my friends - it's all good times.

It's not an experience that every young person in recovery experiences or, for that matter, needs to experience. It's something that I've become comfortable with over time. There are, however, other bars, and these places make me comfortable. For an admitted and recovering alcoholic to have "a bar" is not a normal occurrence. I'm the only one that I know about. The places that make me grossly uncomfortable end up looking like contained Project X parties. The music is way too loud and every one is sloppy to the point of obviousness. The thing that I enjoy and that makes me comfortable is the living room nature of my bar. Anything that involves loud music and dancing is already anxiety inducing, but add in people who are so shitfaced that they don't remember their names and I just leave. I sometimes accompany friends or my girlfriend to places like this. I hate every fucking second of it. It's a dingy, poorly lit wedding reception, it mixes things that I just can't stand all into one location and at one time. A shithead DJ who is so coked out he can't scratch correctly stands at the head of the room, all around him are people doing what some people term as dancing, I call it dry humping while trying not to spill the cheap well drinks that they buy with work study money. The sound and smell of drunken bourbon soaked lips smacking together is not something that I enjoy paying a five dollar cover to hear seven or so inches from my ears. The sensual overload of a bar like this is frankly overwhelming. The lights, music, people, sounds and sights are a lot to take in at once.

Being in these places with no intention of getting fucked up is an experience that most people never get, not just people in recovery. Even a good designated driver is pissed off that they aren't losing contact with reality. The feeling is like watching the sad denouement of a tragedy. The slo- mo kicks in more and more the later it gets. You get to watch regrets and mistakes happen in real time. The world does slow down around me when I spin my eyes around a crowed bar and feel the intricacies of people's conversations and interactions. There is nothing on earth that can produce the experiences that I've had in bars. I have almost as many sober stories about drunk people as I have about myself drinking (although my narcissism will always privilege my stories as more interesting). However, it does not replace the fact that drunk kids suck - they are inconsiderate, selfish and ignorant of what they''re doing. There's a lot of vomit to clean up, a lot of keys to take and rides to give, plus the sexual advances to rebut (say no to drunk girls).

Jealousy is an enormous part of why alcoholics have a problem being around people who are using (successfully). It's always a matter of why can't I do that? Why can't I have that kind of fun? The fucked up part is that we can't; not anymore at least. The jealousy overrides all fear and logic of what will happen if the act is committed. Finding a place where you're 100% comfy outside of your domicile, that has no booze or drugs anywhere nearby, is difficult - especially for young people in recovery. Sure, nowadays there are a lot of young people in recovery, but they aren't at your college or at your job. There is a certain level of social acceptability and expectation in being comfortable in a bar. For a kid who always wanted to be normal, social acceptability is a huge part of my daily existence. I feel that the relation one feels to society as a whole, through pop culture all the way to simple social interactions, has a direct relation to how normal or abnormal and deviant one feels. The bar is a socio-normative way to associate with people aged 20-35, and is a great way to feel normal - even if you're not going to shit yourself or pass out inside of daddy's little princess.

I'm a busy student trying to juggle far too many chainsaws, but I'm finding dumb luck as they tumble through the air. This particular activity is a normal part of my week, it's just a room with chairs and dartboards if you're not fading into a blackout. There are a couple places I can stand, one place I love and plenty that I despise, they all serve the devil's brew. All of them contain things that have landed me in places I never thought I'd be in, but it's something that can be handled by someone who is aware of what's going on, someone who's observant enough to find the fun in it and still be a helpful and useful member of society. The bar allows me the opportunity to perform this role, I'm not some kind of Mormon missionary trying to stop people from drinking, and I don't live vicariously on every sip. I enjoy the company and the stories that get added to my repertoire. People who drink and people who don't sometimes look at me like I'm an insane person. I have boundaries and they are stringent. All of the time that I spend there is no more or less than other's interactions with normal people during a given day. I refuse to fit inside a little box that's associated with either side of the drinking binary. I do what makes me happy, that's all that I encourage in others. Just like anything, my time in bars has been positive and negative. So – am I a sober alcoholic who hangs out in bars from time to time as a socio-normative exercise in making me feel okay about my situation, or do I just have a lot of normal friends, or is it a mixture of the two? The Pub is my living room away from my house: I see friends, play cards, watch Doctor Who, and all with a healthy dose of party and bullshit.



Ben McGinnis is a senior English major at Cabrini University concentrating in Film and Media Studies. He's a nocturnal, film-obsessed gentleman feminist who has seen well over a thousand films.