I am not drunk, Occifer

Have you ever been drunk or stoned and tried to give the illusion that you are neither?


I spent a lot of time in high school and college drinking and getting stoned.  There were many occasions where we would get drunk or stoned before class or church or school functions.

The challenging part was to not be caught or noticed by the adults.

I'd come home stumbling through the door late on a friday night and mom would start speaking to me; asking me what we did that night.  Because my mom believed her son was an angel, my inebriation was the furthest thing from her mind.  I would speak in some incoherent language, tell her we went to the movies and then loudly crash my way into my bedroom.

But for the five minutes she would grill me on my whereabouts that evening, I would prop myself up against the wall and slowly attempt to prove my sobriety to her.



Mom never had a clue how drunk I was.

I was the lucky one.  My friends were always caught.  Their parents saw right through them.


I never put much thought into how delusional we become when our system is overloaded with alcohol or drugs until our alcoholic friend spent a decade drunk; all the while trying to conceal his "problem" from us.

He was perpetually under the influence.

He would get drunk prior to any social setting.  He would drink in solitude and then emerge from his cave ready to do whatever our plans were for the day or night.  He couldn't function without his fix.

We shared a lot of laughs at his expense as he would attempt to appear sober.  No amount of mouthwash and cologne could hide his problem.

He would speak slowly and appear very attentive to every word we spoke.  He truly believed no one could tell he was drunk.  Now, we never confronted him when he was drunk.  He would have denied it.

His dead giveaway was this really retarded Italian accent he would speak in when he wasn't sober.  He had no self-awareness when it came to his tics and tendencies when drunk.

Right before his death, his alcoholic persona had replaced his sober one.  He became unrecognizable in appearance and in word.  The Italian accent became his first language because he was always under the influence.

It's funny watching a drunk man try to act sober.  

The laughs stop when you realize he is dying right before your eyes.


Ironically, I learned a lot about myself through his death.  I became a disciple of self-awareness, perception and all the illusions I found myself entangled in.

I began to realize that how I view myself is not necessarily how others view me.

It's a quite powerful reality check when you realize that who you believe you are is not consistent with what others believe you to be.

We can all sit here behind our keyboards and claim we don't give a shit what people think about us.  We can sit here and convince ourselves that we love who we are and we don't need validation from others.

We can sit here all day and lie to ourselves.

We all have a need for general acceptance and validation.

Some people come across as complete assholes and when they are called out for it, their immediate cry is, "I am misunderstood."

Some people play the nice guy routine really well and have convinced the masses that their online persona is consistent with their real life persona.... kind of like the drunk friend who wants to convince his friends that he is sober.

I will be the first to admit that I am the nicest guy around.  I will also admit that I have a really bad mean streak.

I am in complete awareness of who I am.  It's taken me a lot of time to come to the realization that I am not misunderstood; that how others perceive me is important.

If I am perceived as an asshole, it is my job to stop being one.

If I am perceived as a nice guy, it is my job to make certain that I am consistent in all aspects of my life and treat everyone with kindness.

The reality and the perception should be the same.



At some point before we reach the age of two, we learn to recognize ourselves in a mirror.

The mirror test is a great tool for parents.  Basically, you paint a large red dot on the child's forehead and then put a mirror in front of him.

The child will do one of two things:  He will either reach for the child he sees in the mirror and attempt to "clean" the dot off of his face OR he will realize the dot is on his own face and attempt to rub it off.

It's funny to realize that by the age of two, we have the full capacity to recognize ourselves.

The laughs stop when we are adults and we no longer are aware of who we are.