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Why Can't The Party Go On Forever? |
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Why can’t the party go on forever? Now there’s a question. God knows I sure wanted it to. Everything would be perfect if I could find a woman who liked to drink and drug as much as I did, have a not-too-demanding job that paid well and just party into the sunset. Somehow I got everything I wanted, money, a fun partner, plenty of time and opportunity to party. And party we did. Repeat that scenario three or four times, 20 years go by and I’m still partying. I’m hoping it can go on forever but there are some signs of strain. I need more booze and more drugs to get the party going. It’s starting to dawn on me that I couldn’t stop this whole partying thing even if I wanted to. But I could still handle it, I thought, it was still sort of fun and I had plenty of company. Eventually things started going downhill fast. I needed booze and drugs all the time. I knew I wasn’t thinking clearly (what an understatement!). People were having less and less fun being around me, heck, I was having less and less fun being around me. Soon things were spiraling out of control and I knew that in very short order I was going to be one of those homeless drunks I gave a buck to every once in a while to get them to go away. I don’t know exactly why but I think the collapse of my party lifestyle was inevitable. A large part of that is physical. I’ll give references to a few technical papers later on but basically the facts are that any psychoactive drug, like alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, heroin, whatever, taken for long enough will stop working, stop producing the desired “high”. The brain, striving mightily to function normally despite the chemical onslaught, partially succeeds in adapting to functioning under the influence of drugs. The brain’s chemical processes alter to a point where it needs the drugs to really function at all and then it’s in a poor man’s substitute for a “normal” state, not in a “high”. That’s what it was like for me, I needed the booze and drugs just to feel normal. On top of this, all of these psychoactive substances have other serious side effects. Physically, it is not possible to party forever. Another problem was that I was becoming increasingly aware that the life I was living was woefully incomplete. I had all the material things I wanted. I had lots of party friends. But I was getting this overwhelming feeling that I had missed something, that I was making a big mistake. No matter how much fun I had I couldn’t honestly say I was happy. Not happy, actually, I was pretty damn miserable. I now know I was spiritually sick, dying really. The party could not go on forever, no matter how much I wanted it to, now matter how hard I tried to make it go on. Much to my surprise, this turned out to be good news. Online References: This article provides a good overview of how tolerance to alcohol develops: These articles explain technically and in depth some of the ways the
brain responds to alcohol over time leading to tolerance, dependence and
withdrawal symptoms: http://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh22-1/13-24.pdf These articles explain technically and in some depth how cocaine affects
the brain leading to dependence (addiction): http://www.drugabuse.gov/MeetSum/ccb/weiss.html This article provides an overview of how heroin’s effects on the
brain lead to tolerance, dependence and addiction:
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