#Drinkingtoo, #Drugstoo, #Huggingtoo and #Chickentoo

“What did you put in this anyway?” Bruce said with a smile. “Acid.” I winked and nonchalantly picked up my guitar. He picked up his trumpet and started to play our song but about ten minutes later he asked me again, “You didn’t put acid in my drink did you?” I laughed. “Dude, I would never do that.” A few weeks later he brought me some noodles from a Chinese restaurant and I was really excited but then after I started eating it, I realized there was chicken meat in it. “Dang,” I said,”We go out together all the time and you know I’m not a carnivore.” he laughed. “Just take out the meat!” he chided. I frowned. I know that inadvertently spiking a non meat eater's food with chicken isn’t the same as giving someone drugs without their consent but the theme here is trust and safety. If I was a Muslim or Hindu and eating chicken was against my religious beliefs then I probably would feel more violated or maybe not. We are in an era where non consensual hugging is considered sexual harassment for some, and surely most of us can remember a non consensual hug from someone in our life or could at least imagine how violating it might feel I hope. Consent has been the hot topic since the #metoo and Aziz Ansari scandal of late, so i started to think about all the friends I knew who had been forced to drink or drug when they clearly didn’t want to. The phenomenon of non consensual drugging of drinks at bars which would lead to sexual or other petty theft crimes is a thing but what if it didn’t lead to these things? Is drugging itself assault? Apparently, it is. One of my sister’s friends was drugged to the point that he was vomiting and throwing up on himself for hours but for what gain did that give the perpetrator? We really couldn’t figure it out as my friends asshole and wallet were not touched by anyone while he was ill. Ansari was doing the classic,”Let me just pour you another drink…(to get the panties off)” move during his sexual coercion date (and I'm going to call it that because at the very least it was coercion if not violence). This had a selfish intention towards fucking Grace even when she said she did not want to have sex or feel forced. Boundaries are boundaries and if you have strong vices you hopefully learn that strong boundaries save lives. Things like clean needles, things like respecting sobriety or hard limits, having a caretaker or a shooting buddy to get high with you or someone more experienced who can guide you through your trip when it goes bad. Most of the drug users I know still using have hard lines because they’ve crossed them close to death and have learned from their mistakes or their friend’s deaths. This is why the idea of putting acid in my friend’s drink was probably not even a funny joke, but perhaps it was a funny joke to me because I knew it was something I wouldn’t do, and this particular friend was pretty naive so i chose to fuck with him. I think that we are in a climate where we need to assume that everyone has boundaries that we do not understand until we ask, so we need to check in with them and often so that we can proceed with confidence. Hopefully, you wouldn’t be like Ansari and not respecting a certain safe zone for only a few moments until going for the claw down the throat and panties in the next few moments. But I guess it is naive to think that everyone is going to follow these rules for the sake of your safety. People lie and they don’t even think that they’re being malicious for it! Dealers often cut their drugs with other shit and don’t tell you simply because of profit or ignorance of the consequences as we have seen with the Fentanyl opioid crisis. How many people do you know have accidentally snorted meth when they wanted to do coke (and nowadays, they can accidentally snort Fentanyl and DIE)? And yeah, the consequences are on you if you are awake and pacing for hours beyond the high you wanted or if ends up being a worse gateway to a habit that you kicked years ago. But really, just like Grace and Ansari, both are responsible and hopefully will make lots of corrective behavior adjustments so that they make better choices in the future. But this was a huge media blowup and most of these kinds of bad dates are quiet and unseen and often swept out of memory because of shame, never spoken because of self blame. How many of us were bought a bunch of drinks we didn’t want to drink in hopes that we’d be so drunk we’d fuck? We drank them and had to deal with him grabbing and slobbering all night til we ran away or slammed a door. Sometimes it doesn’t even leave the bar, just shot after shot after until you are throwing up in the parking lot and someone “rescues” you with a ride home in pseudo safety. Alcohol, drugs, hugging and chicken all seem wildly different, but when served non consensually all feel like a gross violation and some lead to major trauma and worse. But what seems like minor should not be ignored because the more you are able to see boundaries as boundaries that should be respected in all aspects of your life, the safer you will be for yourself and for those that are around you. Don’t wait for someone to jump out of the closet holding their dick in their hand, it can be as simple as a coercive drink bought when you are already drunk and we all can use this media momentum to reality check in with ourselves.