An honest look at how to get through the week when you’ve overdone it at the weekend.
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I arrive at his place with a box of biscuits, an illegal download, and a spliff to take the edge off.
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I say ‘we’ but I admit I’m feeling smug this week. My mate Lauchlan called me on Tuesday to cancel a game of tennis we’ve been putting off for months. He’d been out on Saturday night and now was paying the price. I don’t normally let friends get away with last-minute cancellations, but I’ve had enough suicide Tuesdays of my own to understand Lauchie needed all the help he could get. I arrive at his place half an hour later with a box of biscuits, an illegal download, and a spliff to take the edge off.
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“It’s not fair” he complains as we watch the kettle boil. “Why does everything that feels so good make you feel so bad afterwards? Alcohol gives you hangovers, sugar makes you fat, drugs give you downers.”
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The suicide-rate for party-going ages peaked in the E-fuelled years of the early nineties.
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I point out that sex doesn’t make you feel bad afterwards and we sit for a few minutes, lost in our own memories, until we each admit that, yeah, sometimes it does. But on drugs, especially party drugs, there’s no room for debate. I’ve just done a quick trawl online to see if there’s any scientific support for my theory that the rise in ecstasy probably led to a rise in young male suicide. Turns out that ‘my theory’ is an established fact (watch this space; I’m thinking of forming a band called Radiohead). In 2011, the American Association of Suicidology found:
“The rate of past year suicide attempt among adolescents with lifetime ecstasy use was almost double that of adolescents who had used other drugs only, and nine times that of adolescents with no history of illicit drug use.”
Admittedly, this is looking at a younger population, but if you trace the suicide rate of more mainstream party-going ages, for men it peaked in the E-fuelled years of the early nineties, and then starts to trail off again. ‘Suicide Tuesday’, it seems, isn’t just an expression.
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Lauchie and I talk about this again later that afternoon. Apparently a spliff doesn’t mix well with House of Apples (Claire Underwood is too hot and the rest of the plot too confusing) so we discuss survival strategies for the coming week instead. Exercise and sleep, I tell Lauchie, are key. Mikey the kitchen-fitter told me this years ago. He’d noticed that no matter how big a weekend he had, as long as he slept all day Sunday, and slogged his guts out on Monday, he’d be fine for the rest of the week. Lauchie snorts at the idea.
“Mikey can also drink three bottles of wine and get up the next morning” he says. “It’s not fair. Some people can just hack it.”
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That anyone could go out indulging on a Saturday night and then train all the following week astounds me.
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This, I admit, may be true. I am still, years later, stunned by the revelation by Australian Rugby League great Joey Johns that he took ecstasy on and off through the last ten years of his career, sometimes during the football season. That anyone could go out indulging on a Saturday night and then be in full-on football training all the following week astounds me.
“Mikey reckons it’s all down to Positive Mental Attitude” I say.
“Maybe.” Lauchie, curled on his sofa, leans his face into the nearest cushion. “Maybe it’s just me being a total pussy.”
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Imagine you lived in a culture where complaining about self-induced mental illness was unacceptable.
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Or maybe this attitude is the problem. ‘My mate can take it so I should be able to take it too.’ Maybe it’s men’s tendency not to talk about pain which explains why, at all ages, our suicide rates are generally four times higher than women’s. Lauchie might not be lucky with his downer-tolerance, but he is lucky he can open up and talk about how miserable he is. Imagine you couldn’t do that. Imagine you thought you were the only person suffering. Or imagine you lived in a culture where complaining about self-induced mental illness was unacceptable.
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The work environment doesn’t help here. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve sat in morning meetings where talk goes around the table of how hungover people are, or what drunken weekends they’ve had, or how they woke up in the cat litter tray again. As long as that’s all down to alcohol it’s fine. But you say “Yeah, I know what you mean man. I got so baked on this Indonesian ganja on Saturday I’m surprised I managed to get dressed this morning,” and see what happens. Society supports your post-booze downer but it doesn’t want to hear about any other kind.
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Going too far is far too cool in too many male circles.
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But I don’t think men’s reticence to talk about how bad we feel is our only issue here. I think we also have to look at our competitivity (forever our best friend and our worst enemy). Being the most fucked-up person in the room can become an object of pride. In my hazy daze, I was proud of the story of how I once fainted into two girls drinking strawberry-daiquiris in a white bedroom, then lay there convulsing and splashing red cocktail onto the pristine walls and bed linen. And who can forget that scene from Knocked Up! where the main character is wearing a gas mask attached to a bong shouting “I am your stoner!”. Going too far is far too cool in too many male circles, more so than in most female company I’ve known. Check out your girlfriend sneering at her drunk friend if you don’t believe me. Or try intervening and seeing what derision you get from the other blokes there. I’ve lost at least one mate to cocaine (house, job and clothes, it all went up his nose) and I always wonder if I shouldn’t have tried to step in and do something earlier.
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Be realistic about what drugs are going to do to you. Not to your mate, not to most people, but to you.
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Above all, I think the answer is to be realistic about what drugs are going to do to you (not to your mate, not to most people, but to you) over more than the next couple of hours. If you’re one of the lucky ones who can hack it, good for you. If not, work out when your downer comes and book those days off-life. I can’t do this as my downer lasts three weeks, but I knew a delivery guy once who used all of his annual leave so he never had to work on a Tuesday.
But it’s not just about timing. If you’re like me, you’ve sat at your desk midweek holding onto your sanity with your fingernails, terrified someone might talk to you, it might be time to find a new pleasure. Trust me, there is a life after drugs and – bizarrely – it’s even better than when you’re on them.
Especially on Tuesdays.
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5 Bad Surfers are a group of Australian dudes who are trying ever so hard to navigate the choppy, and at times, shark infested waters of 21st century masculinity.
Photo Credit: Getty Images
