Whether we like it or not, there are milestones our society has carved into our awareness. These include:
- Turning 16: we can drive
- Turning 18: the purchase of tobacco, lottery tickets, et cetera becomes legal
- High school graduation
- Turning 21: the purchase and consumption of alcohol becomes legal
- College graduation
- Job Security
- Marriage
- Parenthood
- Retirement
- Grandparenthood
- Death
With the exception of death, most of us are conditioned to eagerly anticipate the days when these milestones become reality (and/or we view the age limits as a violation of our
alleged freedom in the United States). Some of us are ambivalent to these events; they just happen, and we don’t commit a large percentage of our thoughts or energy to their arrival or passage. Some of us dread a few of them. I dread about half of them. Particularly the ones I cannot control.
Past: I don’t use tobacco and have no interest in gambling, so I wasn’t overly ecstatic about turning eighteen. Being a minor felt safe; it sheltered me from the trials of adulthood. I also didn’t want to graduate from high school and was so desperate to maintain the relationships I developed there that I actually managed to prolong the experience for an extra semester. When I turned nineteen, I lost part of my health insurance and all of my dental insurance. It wasn’t a great time in my life. Now I’m in college. It’s not cheap, and it’s more stressful than high school.
Future: As far as things in the future, job security is appealing in the financial sense (
Why?), but I really hate the idea of being constrained to a 9-5 schedule. (Yes, I know it doesn’t
have to be like that, but it probably will be. Especially if I want decent health insurance
after turning 27.) I’m so pathetically introverted that the idea of getting married and spending so much time in someone’s company is exhausting to think about. I like living alone. And having kids? I’ll have cats instead. Maybe a few houseplants, too.
Present: I’m 20, and I turn 21 in about three months, meaning there are more conversations in my life regarding my impending easy obtainment of alcohol. I just mentioned my introverted nature, and another consequence of
its severity is my distaste for parties. This has excluded me from the notion that college is synonymous with partying and eliminated the typical associated experiences with alcohol in people my age. I have never been drunk, and the only alcohol I’ve ever had were four beers the guy I’m subletting my apartment from left in the fridge. It was these four beers that confirmed my fear: to me, alcohol is liquid Xanax.
This would probably be a good time to mention how much I love benzodiazapines. A few months ago, I was put on .5 mg of Xanax for sleep. It was glorious and effective for about two weeks. And then it stopped working. It barely put me to sleep, and I started waking up very early in the morning regardless of when I fell asleep. So, my psychiatrist prescribed 1 mg of Ativan (because of its longer half-life), which was, of course, initially glorious and effective. I quickly developed a tolerance for it and was moved up to 1.5 mg. But that stopped working, too, and I decided to double that dosage.
I hopefully and wrongfully assumed that upon learning this, my psychiatrist would move me up to an even stronger benzodiazapine (or at least prescribe the dose I was describing as effective), but he didn’t. He gave me samples of two different medications that gave me a serious sleep-med hangover, but that’s a different story.
...but it's so pretty!
Around this time, I also discovered that taking some of my leftover Xanax during the day no longer caused drowsiness, but it did decrease my anxiety, enable me to talk more honestly, and allow me to participate in heavy or serious conversations with a more appropriate demeanor. In short, my words and actions accurately represented my thoughts and feelings when I took Xanax. Finally.
I’ve been painfully aware of the general absence of my ability to engage with life in a way that feels genuine, so my response to Xanax was rather intriguing and exciting. My perception of being more in touch with reality was foreign, but it felt natural. I crave that feeling, and it’s frustrating that I do not have an endless, honest, and legal option for obtaining benzodiazapines.
So on the first night I decided to open one of the beers in the fridge (which, by the way, I found disgusting), I had an experience similar to the excited feeling I get when I realize I’ve almost finished a puzzle: not only do I finally believe with 100% certainty that I will finish it, I know exactly what it will look like when it’s finished; it transforms into a matter of getting it done rather than figuring it out.
I’ve figured out that alcohol will do the same thing for me as Xanax. I’ve figured out that it’s an answer to one of my life’s greatest frustrations. I don’t need to wonder anymore. I just have to wait. The “getting it done” part is the three months before I will be able to acquire alcohol legally and endlessly. In my mind, it’s as if I’m going to be handed a prescription for Xanax with unlimited refills.
And it scares the hell out of me, because I know I won’t be able to resist filling it unless something dramatically changes for me during the next three months. It scares me because there is an extensive presence of alcoholism in my family (among an array of other crappy things to inherit), and I have a rather compulsive and addictive personality.
Turning 21 is not an event warranting celebration for me. Turning 21 is vulnerable, it is unnerving, and it is unavoidable.
Tags: alcohol, alcoholism, Alprazolam, anxiety, ativan, Benzodiazepine, future, infj, past, present, psychology, xanax
