sobriety as world-building
dispatch 28a
hello out there,
As promised, this dispatch is coming your way from Finland, and an extremely jetlagged but excited writer!
Recently, I read a compilation of essays and interviews on straight edge and radical politics within the global punk and hardcore scenes and while I’ve never identified as straight edge, it was super interesting to think of voluntary sobriety as political choice. This post came out of my post-read ponderings and I really recommend checking it out if you are into dorking about sober subcultures. The book is listed in the roundup at the bottom of this post!
sobriety as world-building
The central event in Norse mythology is the end of the world. Ragnarok, the twilight of the Gods. Precipitated by the death of Baldr, the most beloved of the gods, the world is plunged into never-ending winter. A massive wolf swallows the sun, turning the sky dark. It is an apocalypse, it is a death, it is an end. The gods die. Ragnarok is, by all description, the worst thing that could happen. That’s the point; it’s the worst imaginable thing that a people could imagine at a time in history.
Addiction is a kind of personal apocalypse, an ending, and a beginning. Drinking didn’t just black out my nights, it stole my future, and my conception that I even had a future. In those years I lost the ability to envision anything different for myself and for the world around me. Life became a series of hours, a Westworldian loop that kept me passive and separate. I am not sure if I thought I would die, but I know that there were many years when I did not care if I did. There is a certain power to knowing that you almost destroyed yourself.
