It’s time for another Bad Behavior roundtable! This week we’re talking about vices, and so we asked our team: What’s your favorite drink and/or substance and/or drug? What’s drug or substance you used to do, but have since cut back on significantly or entirely? Why? How has it changed your life? We’d love to hear your answers in the comments!
Al(aina), Staff Writer
I smoke a lot of weed. I’ve actually cut back, and I still smoke a lot of weed. It’s partially self-medicating, but being high is also fun. Sex is better, the sunset is better, music is better. I write with less anxiety, I’m more willing to have conversations with people I don’t know, and I’m generally happier. I laugh so much more when I’m high, everything is hilarious. I used to drink, I don’t anymore, except for communion wine once a week. Alcoholism is in my genes, and I felt myself getting more and more comfortable with drinking a bottle of wine a night, so I stopped. I didn’t really like being drunk, even when I did drink, so the change has been mostly positive. I don’t have hangovers anymore, and that’s a blessing.
Alexis, Staff Writer
HELLO ME AND VODKA GO WAY BACK LIKE ANIMAL CRACKERS AND APPLE JUICE. I was more of a wine person in high school ’cause, like, we didn’t have hard liquor/I already felt unhinged enough and I was guessing alcohol wouldn’t make it better (like what if… I got too tipsy and CAME OUT?????? the horror). But now that I’m stable(?)??? BUDDY.
Like actually any and all alcohol is my favorite, like if it gets me tipsy/drunk, I’m pleased. Except beer. Don’t bring beer anywhere near me please. But vodka? That burning shit that has made me brave enough to leave my house, do performances, talk to pretty people, and also make me cry enough that I literally just need to go to sleep thereby avoiding doing anything more dangerous/embarrassing, has been a pal and a half. (Honestly for most of these alcohol has been the reward more than the motivator). Vodka, tequila and Long Island iced teas when I’m feeling fancy are where I’m at at the moment and my ultimate faves.
Tequila makes me wanna make out with everyone and convinces me I’m a much better dancer than I am, so I avoid it more than the other two but Long Island iced teas make me feel 10% classier than I really am and that obviously enhances my life. It’s changed my life by making super terrible experiences/truths bearable cause it’ll blur ’em for me for a bit! Like work is hell but hell is tomorrow and right now?? Everything feels light and wavy and bad things are far away. I cut back for like a week and then go back to it cause work is hell and I’m always amazed at how magnificent alcohol is.
I can’t really do anything drugwise because 1) New Jack City fucked me up 2) the absolute terror of even getting my prescription meds right let me know that it would take even longer/be even more catastrophic for my sensitive ass to find the right drug and 3) all my family says to each other both in real life situations and when we are gathered around the TV watching a black person about to do drugs, is “Don’t mess with that, we don’t come back from drugs like white people do.” So.
Heather Hogan, Senior Editor
My favorite drink is beer! I used to drink a lot more than I do now, and honestly I wish I still could. Beer is delicious! I love trying new and different kinds of beers and spending a weekend afternoon sipping on my favorite IPAs! I love leisurely sipping beer flights and talking about everything in the world with Stacy for an entire afternoon! I love a very cold beer in my back yard (slab of concrete) at the end of a very long day! But I am nearing 40 and anything more than two beers once a week makes me feel pretty terrible. So it’s a special treat now, and not a multi-times weekly indulgence. I’ve never really done any other drugs or substances because my mom and both my grandfathers struggled with addiction and I have a very addictive personality — ask me how many hours I’ve played Zelda: Breath of the Wild in the last month — and so I’ve always had CONSTANT VIGILANCE where alcohol and drugs are concerned. I even turned back in half the Percocet I got when I had endometriosis surgery last year after two weeks and I didn’t need it anymore because I didn’t want it just lying around. (I Googled “how to dispose of prescription drugs in NYC” and Google said take it back to Rite-Aid and I did. I’m fun.)
Erin Sullivan, Staff Writer
My drink/vice of choice is wine. I think in the past five years there have been at least three conflicting studies on how much is good or bad for you (like only one glass of red a day is heart healthy versus, my personal favorite, a bottle of red wine a day is healthy), but even if they came out with a study that said wine killed you the second you hit (x) amount of glasses, I’d be like, let me go pick up this Cote du Rhone I’ve been meaning to try. Life is hard enough, let me have this.
Yvonne Marquez, Senior Editor
My favorite drinks are IPAs and bourbon. I don’t drink as often as I did a few years ago because my partner is sober now. We used to go out and try craft beers at bars a whole lot! We did it for fun and to socialize but it got expensive! We ordered about two beers each and then bar food because we got hungry. I sometimes miss those days because I missed trying new beers and hanging out with our friends mid-week and on the weekends a whole lot more than we do now. But I don’t really care that I don’t drink as much as I used to. And it seems I only drink bourbon at A-Camp and when I’m trying to Party. I was in Brooklyn with my siblings recently and we went to a bar near the place we were staying and I thought it was so funny how I didn’t really like any of their drinks except their whiskey ones? My sister got some tequila thing similar to a Paloma and my brother got some rum drink and I was like eww. And then my lesbian friend joined us and she also wanted the same whiskey drink I had and so I concluded only lesbians like whiskey.
Creatrix Tiara, Staff Writer
I’ve usually stayed away from substances, mainly because my medications already fuck with my brain enough that I don’t need to add to the chaos. I don’t smoke and have only tried edibles twice — once unwittingly, which led to a meltdown, and once in a more controlled environment which was OK but not really enough to interest me to go further.
I’ve got a possibly weird relationship with alcohol. I didn’t start drinking at all till I was about 23 — I didn’t like the taste of most drinks and I didn’t understand the appeal of getting drunk. I tended to drink in moderation (like once every few MONTHS or so) but I got into a relationship with someone who had an alcohol problem, which made ME worry about whether I had a problem too. We decided to go cold turkey together, then reintroduced alcohol slowly — yet when I’d check in with my ex about her alcohol usage, LIKE SHE ASKED, she’d accuse ME of projecting. This fucked me up to the point that I’ve had guilt trips about “Oh no what if I am actually an alcoholic,” despite me drinking way less than the average person (or at least the average Australian, which may not be saying much).
I’ve cut down on my drinking severely again, mainly because of a couple of incidents where I got really bad food poisoning or mood drops and went “Welp! My body rejects it now!” Once in a while I’ll have a drink, but it’s rare. I don’t know if it counts as a vice but out of the question’s general category it’s the only thing that fits.
Molly Priddy, Staff Writer
I love indica strains of pot. For a lot of people, it makes them feel snoozy and snacky and like they can’t move from the couch because they’re now part of it, but for me it does the opposite. I feel like an anthropologist when I smoke it, and it gives me a sense of having a slight bubble around me, a little world of my own where everything is interesting. I make slow but generally good decisions on weed, not like when I drank and made decisions to explode my life. Gave it up and wouldn’t you know it, things stabilized. After 18 months totally sober, I got medical card for pot to help with migraine issues, and ever since, it’s the most emotionally consistent I’ve been in my life. It’s amazing.
Rachel Kincaid, Managing Editor
At this point in my life my biggest vice is definitely alcohol; specifically, cheap red wine (Bota Box Nighthawk Black, $21 for 3 liters (!!!) of wine) that I have maybe two glasses of a night before bed and bourbon (Bulleit, which I know is problematic so this is really LAYERS of bad behavior here) occasionally as a treat, which I drink neat or with one (1) ice cube. I’m aware that like… ten drinks a week? Ish? Is not necessarily ideal or super healthy, and my family does have a marked history of alcoholism that is like, not nothing. I rationalize this by telling myself that this is really my ONLY vice and everyone should get ONE — I’ve never smoked, I cook at home all the time and don’t eat meat, barely leave my apartment, I don’t even smoke weed, and I’m down to like a fairly normal amount of coffee in the mornings!! Let me have this.
In my youth, when I was going to a fancy liberal arts school on the east coast, my vice was more definitively prescription medication — it was the heyday of Adderall for both on-label and off-label use, you couldn’t throw a rock without hitting a wealthy white kid with a psychiatrist, and I had a constantly replenishing supply of Adderall and benzos in my dorm room and my purse covering everything in a fine film of gross pill dust. This changed, obviously, when I graduated and was no longer in those same social circles, and also things are so different now — even my friends who need it for medical reasons have trouble getting Adderall, and the opiate crisis means I feel slightly nervous asking for a refill of my legit prescription for Xanax. Time flies, etc!
Riese Bernard, CEO/Editor in Chief
I used to be really into whiskey drinks, like manhattans or just straight-up bourbon, but lately I’ve been really into tequila and grapefruit juice for no real reason? If I’m at a bar with specialty cocktails I usually go for a bourbon or tequila base.
My main vice right now I guess is weed, which helps me sleep and is also sometimes fun for feeling creative or passionate or giggly with friends.
My last relationship was with someone who was sober, so while we were together I probably drank like, once a month. Now it’s basically just when I go out, which varies from zero times a week to a few times a week, depending. But i used to drink every night and I don’t do that anymore!
Becoming a person who drank every night seemed to sneak up on me, you know? I started drinking regularly VERY late compared to my friends, like; after college — so it was like a “me” / “not me” thing. It started around the time we launched Autostraddle, which was a very stressful time! And I think got worse when I first moved to California near the end of 2010, ’cause my girlfriend did. And I don’t think it was impacting me in any significant way like socially or work-wise or anything, but as I started getting older i was like, how long can I keep this up really. Then suddenly — I think partially due to what happened at Dinah Shore (long story short: I passed out and had to go to the ER, it wasn’t drugs/alcohol related but they also didn’t know what it was so it just freaked me out in general about my health), but also just, changing as a person — one night i poured a drink and didn’t want to drink it, and I noticed immediately how much better I felt the next morning! Like SO MUCH BETTER. So I just … stopped. I usually don’t have alcohol just sitting around in my house or apartment anymore ’cause I only drink it when I’m out. I also don’t do illegal/hard drugs anymore (I’ve done cocaine, mushrooms, ecstasy, acid in the past) but that was sort of a brief phase in my early to mid 20s.
Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya, Staff Writer
I was late to the alcohol thing because of my deep-rooted fear of breaking rules and getting in trouble as a kid. But I got over that pretty quickly in college when I learned about tequila and how much fun it was to drink before going dancing! I love natural wines and sour beers and mezcal and spicy cocktails and super bitter amaros and FERNET GOD I LOVE FERNET. Sorry @ all my friends who I’ve convinced to try fernet who hate it.
That said, I do occasionally take breaks from alcohol, because in college I also learned that when I was depressed I would sometimes drink so as to numb my feelings and that is…not good! So I have rules with myself now about being careful about alcohol when I know I’m in a particularly bad place and making sure I’m not using it to self-medicate in any way. Something you should know about me is that I almost never get hungover, which is both a blessing and a curse because hello being hungover sucks but also the fear of a hangover doesn’t act as a deterrent for drinking for me, so sometimes I drink on nights when I really shouldn’t like when I have a flight at 7 a.m. the next morning for example.
Laneia, Executive Editor
My favorite drink is probably an obnoxiously piney IPA, or a dry as hell organic Cabernet Sauvignon (because if it’s not organic it stains my teeth ok), and I use THC to go to sleep or stop anxiety attacks.
I started smoking cigarettes when I was 16 and I’d like to walk you through my brand evolution if I may: Marlboro Lights, Camel Lights, Capris, Capri Menthols, and occasionally Capri Menthol 120s when they were out of the regular ones. I stopped when I was about 28? Or closer to 30 maybe? And then I’d sometimes smoke one socially, or at music festivals or other outdoor events that involved music and/or alcohol. I haven’t smoked in several years though and I’m pretty sure I won’t again, even socially or at a music festival, but! I do miss smoking cigarettes. I miss the ritual of it and I especially miss smoking on long car rides. It broke up the monotony! But I do enjoy being able to fully inhale oxygen into my lungs. That never gets old.
Alyssa Andrews, Cartoonist
Fun fact! I don’t do drugs. Like, none of ’em. Less fun fact! I don’t do them because I used to do too many of them.
I’ve had a lot of surgeries in my life. Some resulting in hospital stays for months at a time, and opiates throughout all of those months and beyond. I’ve also had my bouts of being very sad and anxious, and prone to a lot of self destruction. Life is very hard.
It’s changed my life in probably about a zillion ways, both the starting and the stopping, and I’m not good at talking about it, but I AM very committed to never doing them again.
Archie Cartoonist
I admittedly have many vices. Addiction runs in my family and I have been very unsuccessful whenever I’ve tried to cut back on my vices in the past. I’d gamble and drink the night away every night if I could just get a ride to the casino. It’s fine, it’s finnneeee. I’ve cut back on my drinking a lot, although it does get the best of me at times. I don’t think my drinking would have ever gotten out of hand if I wasn’t in the service industry — the cooks were all high on coke and all the servers would rush to the bar that’d serve us after last call just to get as drunk as we could in half-an-hour. It was like, the thing EVERYONE did. Also, basically everyone I dated after coming out up until maybe a few years ago was a low-key/high-key alcoholic, so partners and I often indulged each other (most folks I dated also worked as cooks/servers). I’m still in the habit of getting drinks after work and while that’s not a problem, I feel myself getting anxious if I can’t get one and am w o r k i n g on it. Also though, I fucking love drinking sometimes so I don’t actually know if I’m working on it at all. yolo.
Carrie Wade, Staff Writer
I’ve never been interested in drugs, not even legal ones — I think because I’ve had to take so many painkillers and such as part of medical recovery, the bloom kinda fell off the rose from the start. I’ve experienced nasty withdrawal from taking medication as directed, so it never really occurred to me that I would want to do this stuff for fun. I recognize that I’m lucky to have reacted that way.
I drink more now than I did before I moved across the country, but not in a way that’s concerning. I still rarely have more than one drink at a stretch; it’s just that I might have that one drink on a couple more weeknights than before. My desire to maintain tight control of my circumstances is (usually) a lot stronger than any impulse I might have to drink beyond the pleasant place. That same desire is also what gives me a ton of unnecessary anxiety, so it’s not necessarily a virtue in all cases. But it does help keep the brakes on these kinds of habits.
The vice I have the most trouble controlling is (ironically, maybe) internet use. When I’m in a funk I’ll spend so much more time mindlessly scrolling through whatever. It’s such an easy temptation, which is of course by design. Shutting yourself out from the world is a hell of a lot simpler than engaging with it these days. So when I’m feeling off, you’ll know, because I’m on my phone way more, filling up the hours I’m otherwise too scared to figure out how to use. I recently took a cold turkey month off of social media, which had the rejuvenating effects I hoped for, but also clarified that my ideal level of internet engagement is not actually “zero.” It’s professionally important for me to be out there and I do miss opportunities when I’m not. So I need to figure out how to use the internet for all the things it’s great at without simultaneously enabling my most destructive habits. I recently got a new watch so I have fewer excuses to look at my phone. It’s working.
Cameron, Cartoonist
Oh man. So, let’s talk about cigarettes. I don’t think anyone ever intends to become a smoker. I mean, I never meant to. I didn’t think I was at risk for that particular addiction. I had a few cigarettes in college when I felt especially stressed, sure, but it never stuck as a habit until around 2016. Around then, I started smoking cigarettes as a social crutch and as an escape. If some friends or coworkers were going out for a cigarette break, I’d join them. If I felt overwhelmed or uncomfortable in a situation, I’d go outside and smoke. I conditioned myself to associate smoking with some kind of respite. And I hate that.
Right now I’m in the active process of quitting, which is especially difficult because in my industry so many people smoke. It’s hard to get away from it and it’s hard to find people who will stop me if I’m really, really craving a cigarette.
I’m not doing patches or gum. It’s not the nicotine that does it for me. It’s the ritual of the whole thing, of turning off my brain but still having something to focus on. I cut down on drinking–which really I needed to cut back on anyway — and that’s helped. Now I just have to stay the course, which is easier now because I have motivation now. I have people looking out for me. And also? I’m really looking forward to being able to run again without my chest feeling like it’s on fire.
Vanessa Friedman, Community Editor
I’m about to be very boring here, and I apologize in advance, but also this is my truth: my biggest vice is Diet Coke.
I love Diet Coke so, so much. I started drinking it in high school when I hated my body and was always on a diet of some kind or another, and I don’t know if I conditioned myself to love it more than regular Coke or if its sweet sweet chemicals really do taste better to me than its full sugar counterpart, but like, Diet Coke is objectively the best soda in the whole world. Come at me for this, I don’t care, I will die on this hill.
I am addicted to Diet Coke which is why I cold turkey stopped drinking it on February 1. Honestly I do feel weird talking about it this way, because I’m aware that many of my sober friends who cut alcohol out of their lives use Diet Coke as an alternative beverage and that is truly awesome and also none of my fucking business. I don’t judge anyone who drinks Diet Coke, obviously!!! But for me, a fairly neurotic human with a low tolerance, an uncomplicated relationship to booze, and a fear of being out of control that has kept me away from most drugs (sometimes I smoke weed and then I fall asleep immediately and I tried coke once and it hurt my nostrils), Diet Coke is My Big Vice. And I was extremely dependent on it, to the point of getting stomach aches and headaches when I didn’t consume my regular 2-3 cans a day, so I decided to give it up, because being that dependent on a thing felt bad.
I haven’t had Diet Coke once since February 1 and I am going to be real with you, I have woken up every single day since craving it. I am never not craving Diet Coke. I assume I will eventually fall off the wagon (I gave it up for two years right after college but eventually went down the slippery slope of “only getting it with pizza” and then “only getting it at restaurants” and then “only one can a day and never keeping it in my own fridge” and then I was back to “2-3 cans a day, let’s keep an extra 2 liter bottle in the pantry just in case, WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON’T SERVE DIET COKE AT THIS ESTABLISHMENT I AM GOING TO LEAVE”) and to be completely real, I can’t wait for that day.
Stef Schwartz, Vapid Fluff Editor
I’m a bourbon drinker, have been for years. Bulleit bourbon is my go-to, but I’m happy to experiment with others and I hold a special place in my heart for cheap Old Grand Dad (mostly because I love ordering it). I work in a bar and I’ve always been a social drinker, but since I took over a management position at my job I’ve had to cut down quite a bit because being drunk at work is unfortunately not a good look for the boss.
I will tell you that as a youth, I used to do cocaine recreationally with some vague regularity. I don’t have a particularly addictive personality, but I did enjoy it because I’m generally very awkward in social situations and coke made me feel that people around me were interesting, or that I was interesting! I think it made me almost like a normal social human being (although from the outside, I was probably just really annoying, like everyone else on cocaine).
I had quit for a long time, and then at a Halloween party a girl I had a crush on asked if I’d like to do a line off a glow-in-the-dark Ouija board, and I decided this was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. I’m not terribly proud of that.
That said, I much prefer drinking. I’ve learned when it’s time to go home, when it’s time to order water, and although my hangovers have certainly gotten worse with age I don’t wake up feeling like an actual trash bag the way I did as a youth.
Valerie Anne, Staff Writer
I love drinking wine in my apartment. Just me, a mason jar of white wine, and the night is mine. I like writing while drinking wine, I like watching TV while drinking wine. I swear sometimes wine is the only thing that cures my insomnia. I don’t drink it every night, and sometimes I end up drinking too much of it in a night, but usually it’s just a nice mason jarful and I’m pleased as punch. I know this is probably a boring answer but I don’t like smoking weed and I’ve only tried coke once. I have an addictive personality and I don’t want to risk it, yaknow? Drinking so much is a dangerous game as it is, since my dad is an alcoholic (though he quit when my mother got pregnant with me.)
And I also know this is the most boring thing, but I think it proves my point about why I should never do anything harder than alcohol, because I get addicted to diet coke something awful. It happened once in college, and then again last year. If I had one diet coke, I had five or more in a day. It was nonstop, I would crave them, I would have them for breakfast, for lunch, dinner, always. Just constant Diet Coke, day or night. So January 1, 2018, I quit cold turkey. It was hard and sometimes when I’m hungover all I want is an ice-cold DC but it was too much aspartame for one person to handle, too much carbonation for one human body. I feel less bloated since I quit, and also less like I am being controlled by wondering when I was going to be able to have more Diet Coke. It was consuming my MIND and that was the scariest part, and that’s why I’m glad to have quit.
