*This is a long one, more of a story than an outright admission- sorry*
My friends and I get along really well, despite our differences. The biggest one is that they sometimes smoke pot and drink (we’re in college, ok?) and I refuse to touch the stuff. I don’t badger them about it; I’ll be designated driver if they want to get wasted, buy food if they’re high and have the munchies (they pay me back), and sometimes keep an eye on campus security for them.
Sometimes, they rib me about not partaking. I explain that I’m on a medication for my kidneys that makes it a bad idea to consume anything processed mostly by the kidneys or liver, and that drugs aren’t my thing anyways. Both of which are true, as are a couple of other excuses I toss in on occasion. What I admit, however, is my most potent reason for not doing so. I am wary of who I would become if my self-control was mitigated by something.
I regulate myself. I have controls and filters. Normally, they just keep me from doing stupid stuff like trying to backflip off a roof into a pool using a pogo stick. They also, however, restrain a part of me that I never let anyone see. I have a shadow, a “dark passenger” if you’ll excuse the Dexter reference, that I am aware of within me. Sometimes it is near the surface, sometimes hidden deep down. It’s not like a crazy person voices-in-my-head thing, more like a macabre influence, a personality within a personality.
I get inclinations to set things on fire; objects like mailboxes, cars, houses, and so on, and sometimes even animals like squirrels, bats, opossums, etc. I get urges to, without provocation, say or do things that I know full well will deeply hurt someone with whom I have no quarrel. Sometimes, if touching something, whether it be a fishing rod, a cat’s back, or a person’s hand, I get an impulse to crush, shatter or break it. I get inclinations to hurt, to maim, to kill, to damage, to knock down, and the like –all without anger or remorse. I have a side, my “dark passenger”, with a fascination with that which is sadistic, destructive, cruel, occasionally masochistic or even “evil”. However, I can control my dark passenger, my shadow self. I can push it back, and feel, act and think like a normal human being. Though I cannot get rid of it, I can restrain it. I can hide its influences until they abate, and I don’t have to pretend not to think or feel the way I do. My self control keeps me from becoming a monster; it keeps the dark passenger at bay, and from emerging at the surface.
I fear that using inhibition-relaxing substances will open the floodgates. I worry that, if my self-regulation is relaxed, the blockade keeping my dark passenger in check will fall. I am afraid that, if my self control slips, or my ability to watch and monitor myself is compromised in any way, I will lose power over my shadow. I believe that, if it shows though and escapes my control, that it might slowly become all that there is to me, so slowly that I don’t notice until it’s too late, at which point I will not be able to and no longer want to push it away. I think that, if I crossed the line, there would be no going back.
Overall, I am afraid of myself, or rather, part of myself, and what it would mean if I lost control and that part took over. That is the biggest reason why I do not partake; I do not want to do anything that would reduce my clarity of thought and relax my barriers and self-regulation. I know that a lie of omission is still a lie (even in US courts), and I am sorry, my friends, that I lie to you. I would, however, prefer to have to live with my self-doubt and the discomfort of half-truths, hiding my dark passenger, than risk losing to my demons.