WARNING: DEPICTION OF DRUG ABUSE.
NOTE: This work is in no way attempting to normalize, romanticize, or advertise the use of drugs. Serena is not perfect. Serena is not to be admired or followed. Serena has other options.
If you ever feel yourself going down a similar path, or already are—please seek help. There are kind people out there who have gone through the same journey willing to help, and have made it their life's mission to do so. People care deeply, simply just off the basis of your struggle. Please contact your local Recovery Centre, Mental Health and Addiction Services, etc. Even just talking to a stranger might help.
As you are reading, please remind yourself of the following:
1) Substance use never solves the root problem—at most, they mask it temporarily, if at all.
2) They can trap you in a cycle of dependence by artificially creating a false sense of relief.
3) Over time, it increases anxiety and depression, considerably harming mental health.
4) To add, they damage the brain's natural ability to regulate thoughts and emotions—sometimes permanently.
5) AS THEY DISTORT JUDGMENT, IT CAN LEAD TO IMPULSIVE AND DANGEROUS DECISIONS.
6) They affect the nervous system, heart, lungs, liver, etc.—ruining physical health. This can also be permanent.
7) Due to a wide array of factors—systemic, mental, physical, economic—addiction can make life even harder than before.
8) Socially, physically, emotionally, economically—they are not only expensive, but unsustainable. They often lead people into debt, and in turn illegal activities. This further fuels the cycle.
9) Due to the above, they rupture and weaken social connections with loved ones.
10) Last but not least—there are always healthier alternatives. If you cannot afford or access therapy and do not currently have a support system, you can try: exressing your creativity, exercising at your own pace to reclaim your body, and/or focus on self-growth.
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NOTE: This work is not meant to push a certain 'political agenda'. The author, Farting_Cat, simply wishes to showcase the main character's morale compass and personal conflict by using an allegory that pertains to current real world events. Serena's attitude, behaviour, and action(s) pertaining to this topic are simply a reflection of her fictional personhood. She is not meant to be the most reliable narrator. Readers can disagree with a book's characters.
Farting__Cat is not Serena. She is not a reflection of the author's thoughts and beliefs. The Farting Cat simply likes to write realistic characters and pull from the real world for inspiration. To add, readers can disagree with Farting_Cat's narrative choices, as everyone is entitled to their own opinions.
Lastly, the author would like to clarify that the slight emphasis on 'facts' in some parts of this narrative is to make the book feel lived-in and realistic—not guilt-trip anybody or force-feed 'agenda'. If you do not believe in any of the information laid out, then that's your opinion. Once again, Serena is not meant to be the most reliable narrator.
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The first protest was a baptism of fire, and Serena drowned in it. The crowd, which from a distance had looked like a unified river, was, from within, an ocean of jarring sensations. A thousand different voices chanted, but to her, it was a cacophony of shattered glass. A loudspeaker crackled, its voice a distorted needle driven directly into her temple.
She tried to chant, but the words stuck in her dry throat. She tried to hold her sign—"Remove the Blockade"—but her arms trembled with the effort, the coarse wood of the stick feeling like exposed wire against her palms. Her breathing, that flimsy dam she relied on—became shallow, rapid pants. The buildings seemed to lean in, the sky pressing down. The collective grief and fury she had witnessed now felt like a physical pressure, threatening to crack her.
When a mounted police horse shifted its weight nearby, the clink of its bridle and the muscular twitch of its flank became the final triggers. The world tunneled. Sound became muffled. It was if she were submerged. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a psychotic bird trying to escape a cage of muscle and bone. She was having a panic attack, here, in the middle of the one thing she had resolved to do. Stumbling out of the crowd, she leaned against a building wall, gulping in air that didn't seem to reach her lungs. Tears of pure, frustrated shame had welled in her eyes.
'Weak. Pathetic.'
Their suffering was bones, dust, profound loss, and starvation. Her suffering was a malfunction of nerves—a privileged, first-world collapse. She was a fraud through and through.
———
The memory of that failure was a cold stone in her gut weeks later.
This time, she had a plan. A habit from her more vibrant college days—a half-remembered key. The weed was secured from the local dispensary. It felt seedy and desperate. Before leaving her apartment, she smoked a single, cautious hit. The familiar, skunky taste bloomed in her mouth, a time capsule from before the restraints, the museum, or the gray numbness. The effect was a gradual softening.
When she joined the rally, the edges of the world were sanded down. The chants were no longer assaults, but a rhythmic wave she could ride. The crowd felt like a communal dance. She saw faces—a grandmother with steely eyes, a young couple holding hands, their signs held high—and felt a surge of warm passion. They reminded her that there were good people in this world. She raised her voice, and it joined the chorus, clear and strong. For a few hours, she was not a collection of broken pieces, but a part of a whole. It was the first time she had felt at least okay in years, a fragile chemical-induced sunbreak in her perpetual winter.
In the months that followed, a new dependency took root, entwining itself with the old. The Sertraline and Trazodone were her baseline, the pharmaceuticals that kept the thing at a manageable murmur. But her psychiatrist had been clear at her last appointment; 150mg of Sertraline was the clinical maximum for her condition. Going higher risked serotonin syndrome, a dangerous toxicity. She had hit a wall.
She should stop. She knew better.
Weed, however, was a mercenary. It gave her the courage to leave her apartment, to endure the overwhelming stimuli of the protests, and even, she convinced herself, to tolerate the museum with a detached hazy amusement. It helped her 'work'—the work of being a person in the world.
What started as a pre-protest ritual became a post-work decompression, then a morning fog to take the edge off the day. The plant matter in the little tin box became as essential as her wallet and pills. And with it came a shift—a slow unraveling of the constraints she had placed on herself. The weed began to feel less like a tool and more like a liberation, a return to the self before she had to make herself small. She remembered the harassment, the leering comments that made her want to disappear. Her response had been to erase herself: high-necked sweaters, muted colours, boring hair, a downcast gaze. One Friday, high and feeling a flicker of defiance, she stood before her closet. She pushed past the uniforms of black and gray and pulled out a deep emerald green dress she hadn't worn since university. It was simple, but it clung to her form, and the color made her skin look like silk. She looked at her reflection, really looked—and saw not a target, but a woman.
The club was a sensory assault. The bass was not a sound but a physical force, punching up through the soles of her feet and into her chest cavity. Strobing lights sliced the smoky air, freezing moments of laughter, of swirling drinks, of grinding bodies in stark, white flashes. She was high, higher than she'd ever been, the weed mingling with two vodka sodas to create a blissful, floating disconnect.
She let the music move her, an unthinking rhythm. In the flashing darkness, no one could see the hollows under her eyes or the faint scars on her wrists. Here, she was not the museum's quiet cog or the protest's anxious participant. She was just a body, beautiful and anonymous. Strangers looked at her, their gazes hot and appreciative, but in the chaos, it felt like validation, not predation. She felt free. A man with a sharp jawline danced close, his hands finding her hips. She wasn't interested, but she let him. His touch was not a violation, but a confirmation of her presence. It proved her desirability. She threw her head back and laughed, the sound swallowed by the thunderous music. The world was a kaleidoscope of colour and sound, and she was at its brilliant, spinning centre.
She was blissful. But it was the bliss of a wire stretched to its breaking point—singing a beautiful, high-pitched note just before it snaps. It was the bliss of a chandelier crashing in slow motion, each shard glittering with a light that was not its own.
She had merely traded one form of dissociation for a more vibrant one. And for now, in the glorious roar of the club, that felt like progress. She was now part of a more potent cycle. But—at least it was different, quite unlike the one she's been spiralling down for the past years.
It was as simple as that.