andrewdavies inspired me...

Which is a sentence that is usually completed with the words 'to violence'. However, on this occasion, not so.
Inspired by his fine example, I was thinking of going to give blood on Saturday 18th, during the day before ksirafai's party. You know, to make sure that drinking during the evening will be a Really Good Idea.

Any London-type folks want to come and hold my clammy, quivering hand?

Well, Hellooooo, Wendy....

( Hot David Lurve Compatibility test. )

So, David, what did you do at the weekend?

Well, er...

I was chatting to someone a while ago about how we spent our respective weekends; they’d gone out clubbing and spent the weekend ramming the nearest pharmaceutical into the most appropriate orifice, whilst I’d dressed up as a monster in the upstairs room of a pub (I’d been clubbing too, but the contradiction in our lifestyles was clear enough…).
Something about this struck me as odd, and thinking about it, it came to me what it is. In the industry I work in (Media, darling), and especially some of the offices I’ve worked in, the standard Monday-morning conversation was of the ‘I went out clubbing on Saturday and got off my tits on [Insert trendy drug du jour here]’ variety. However, you can bet money that when I was asked what I’d got up to over the weekend, my answer never began “Well, some orcs had kidnapped the miller’s daughter and stolen a bull to try and breed a minotaur…”
But why is this? When did excessive drug use become socially acceptable, and why is hanging out with your friends telling stories and at worst dressing up not acceptable in most social contexts? How did this happen?
When you think about it, it’s damned strange. Drug culture and the drugs trade have demonstrable links to organised crime, corruption, and hundreds – if not thousands – of deaths and murders ever year. Roleplaying, on the other hand, has demonstrable links to eating too many Pringles and pizzas, not getting enough exercise and – at the most outrageous estimate - three deaths (unless you’re Jack Chick, of course). But, oddly, the majority of people are more willing to boast about – and much more willing to accept – association with a culture which leads to untold human suffering and corruption than they are willing to accept association with a culture whose worst sins revolve about poor personal hygiene and not having a girlfriend.

Some years ago, the government ran a sex-education advertising campaign which pointed out that when you sleep with someone then you were sleeping with everyone they had ever gone to bed with too*. This is possibly the best analogy as to why I dislike drug culture: it doesn’t exist in isolation. When purchasing drugs, it isn’t just buying them off your local dealer – it’s buying them off everyone in the chain of control and production, and everyone affected by that chain. It never ceases to amuse me (in a bleak sort of way) that it is very often the same people who have no problem with drug use who rail the most against government and civil corruption. Bearing in mind that a vast amount of the money which pays for that corruption (especially in the third world) comes from that selfsame drugs trade and associated organised crime, I can’t help but look askance at the apparent immunity to irony which so many people seem to display.

And then we’re back to roleplaying. It’s a hobby which (on the face of it, at least) promotes and generates social interaction, creative, analytical, and flexible thought, and wit: and yet, despite all of that, it’s got a fairly shocking reputation and most certainly isn’t cool. I just can’t help but feel that it’s odd that actively and artificially altering and reducing higher thought processes is widely seen as a better way of spending time that doing the exact opposite. What am I missing here?
Okay, there’s a caveat to all of this, and that’s the sort of people that gaming attracts tend to be ones with fairly poor real-world social skills. We’ve all met ‘em, and the fatbeards are often the people with whom gaming is most associated in the public eye. However, it can hardly be said that the poster children for drug culture are exactly going to be getting invited to any parties either, so really it isn’t the people within the lifestyles who define the acceptability of that lifestyle.

Is it the media, perhaps? As previously noted, I've worked in some environments where I was far the exception rather than the rule for not indulging my nostrils at every opportunity, and gamers were thin on the ground to say the least. Is it control of the message which defines the society around it?

By this point, I know some people will be thinking: ‘But the drugs laws are worng/unfair/stupid/lah lah lah and we should all hold hands and sing a song instead.’. I’m not interested in debating the rightness or wrongness of the legislation; the fact that the black market which thrives through illegality is responsible for a tremendous amount of human suffering, and being involved in that chain is effectively condoning that suffering, is undeniable. If the law changed then I’m sure many other things would too, but for the moment it’s okay to break the law if you think it’s wrong, right, kids? Oh, and if none of your family are being forced at gunpoint to work in Columbian Coca plantations either, obviously.

All that said: the day anyone can put into pill form the feeling I got when I saw the expression on baalazamon’s face when I told him just what I was going to do to the Valentine of Set**, I’m buying.



*A thought which, if I’m reminded of it at the right moment, is capable of causing me to curl into a whimpering, semi-catatonic ball and scratch at my eyes.

**Valentine of Set: It’s like being bride of Dracula, but less of a commitment.