I had a good and bad weekend. Mac Uni won Sydney Uni’s Frisbee IV (we had a very big team 
), Dee and I won best dressed at the costume party (Dee put my costume over the line with the help of her white body paint, toilet paper, and felt), and then the bad started. When I returned to my bike to leave I found a missing mirror and some other minor damage then on my ride back to Newcastle I reflected a police radar too fast. It was my first speeding ticket and it’s good to try new things so I suppose it’s not all bad (only one point and $84 for under 10 over).
I’m currently studying ethnicity and it’s got me thinking about the silly norms of our society. For instance, we consume a poison to socialise and when our body uses pain to tell us there is something wrong we use pain killers. I haven’t taken pain killers for quite a few years because it doesn’t make sense to me but I am yet to conquer alcohol and caffeine. In an effort to wean myself off from the alcohol vice I was hoping to only drink on Friday night and stay dry on Saturday night. I succeeded in the first part of my plan but fate was against me in my Saturday night attempt. It started with Dee offering me a cider while we worked on our costumes and ended with winning a jug of beer thanks to those costumes :s
A few… partly to see if I could, partly because I felt I needed to and partly because a friend of mine was cruising around the opposite end of the spectrum and it was affecting how awesome she was… so I’m proving a point to her that it can be done and you don’t have to be wasted 24/7
Getting rid of the caffeine has been tough
what were your reasons for going straight edge?
read your little blog post there… if it helps as of Wednesday this week I’ve been Straight Edge for 2 months… So that’s no alcohol, nicotine, illegal drugs or caffeine… I think I’ve also stayed off non-perscription medication that whole time too.
The only hiccups have been about a week in I had a can of pepsi max and then I found out one of the Nutrient Waters I drank had caffeine in it too…
So if I can pull it off I’m sure you can too
I really find this idea interesting, although I did play a part in your lack of success on Saturday (sorry about that, I feel bad and won’t do it again).
You’ve said before that the poisons only do what our bodies are already capable of doing themselves. And that we should be able to train our bodies instead of relying on drugs, like coffee to keep us awake, or alcohol to make us more uninhibited.
I started writing a comment that disagreed with you. But as I was writing I realised that I think I mostly agree with you. I do disagree that my body is capable of doing everything that a drug can do. I’ve experienced things through drugs that I really don’t believe are possible without them. But I don’t think that’s really what your getting at.
As I was writing, the key thing that kept coming up was desire. To me it seems like poisons/drugs are used as a way to satisfy a desire (seems obvious I suppose).
e.g.
- the desire to be alert > coffee;
- the desire to be less inhibited, more confident, and more fun to be around (one of mine) > alcohol;
- the desire to feel good (perhaps also the eternal human desire, to be happy) > narcotics etc…
So that led me to the part where I agree with you. Perhaps every one of those desires can be satisfied or at least quelled temporarily by some form of drug, but maybe you can also address the desire using nothing but yourself and the resources you always have with you: your intellect, will, heart, body etc…
So perhaps we can’t replace everything a drug can do by doing it ourselves, but maybe we can try to figure out what our desires really are and replace the way in which we try to satisfy them.
Thanks for getting me thinking…
I agree with that reasoning. I suppose I am currently trying to achieve the affects of drugs without the drugs themselves instead of just trying to achieve contentment. Maybe I should try meditation, monks claim to be able to achieve contentment without the need for feeling alert, inhibitionless, etc. I’ll start YouTubing now and let you know how I go