My cultural awakening: a punk band advised me stop ingesting. So I did | Tradition

I began ingesting once I was 14. It was how we’d have enjoyable as children in Aberdeen – I didn’t come throughout any youth golf equipment or something notably productive. You drank beer or alcopops in some shady lane, and also you drank so rapidly that you simply’d get drunk however then be sober sufficient to get house at 11pm so your mother and father wouldn’t discover something. It wasn’t ingesting for pleasure: binge ingesting was simply what everybody – no matter social teams – gave the impression to be doing.

Throughout my teenage years I labored at a newsagent and I’d learn Kerrang! each week, which was extraordinarily formative for me in discovering music. It’s unbelievable what number of new bands I used to be launched to, and simply how my music style developed – from nu-metal bands equivalent to Korn to Rage Towards the Machine and, most influentially, Fugazi.

Sooner or later in 1999, once I was 16, I learn in regards to the hardcore punk band Minor Risk. Ian MacKaye, a member of Fugazi, was an necessary determine for me: he had a really particular method of approaching music and was fiercely unbiased. I used to be impressed by him, shaving my hair and carrying a beanie. A good friend even began calling me Bain MacKaye. His earlier band, Minor Risk, have been energetic within the early 80s and had been a part of what grew to become often known as the “straight edge” motion, a subculture of hardcore punks who turned away from medicine and alcohol in response to punk’s excesses.

In Minor Risk’s track Out of Step, MacKaye sings lyrics equivalent to “I don’t drink”, however he shortens it to “don’t drink”, so it sounds extra like he’s telling you to do the identical, which to a point he’s. It wasn’t a lot the music itself that grabbed me, it was extra that I took an interest on this perspective of questioning the mainstream.

I wasn’t notably rebellious: I didn’t speak again to academics or have an issue with my mother and father. So the idea of being straight edge and never taking medicine or ingesting appeared like essentially the most radical factor I might do in a middle-class atmosphere.

To start with, not ingesting was simply experimental, then it grew to become a problem. With time, I began to see the great in it. You by no means understand how you’re going to react beneath stress or grief, and from an early age I had simply dominated out ingesting as a strategy to take care of this stuff. I had additionally developed a capability to talk my thoughts or simply have the balls to talk to new folks sober, not needing one thing to assist ease social anxieties.

I used to be the odd one out amongst my pals. They’d marvel why I used to be doing it and possibly made enjoyable of me, however I used to be by no means excommunicated from my circle. Nonetheless, once I went to school in round 2003, one man mentioned to me: “You shouldn’t come inside a pub if you happen to’re not able to drink and smoke in it”. Individuals would typically ask me if I used to be non secular or if there have been alcohol issues in my household. There at all times needed to be a purpose, prefer it wasn’t a option to be sober. That’s what was so interesting – it simply appeared so radical to be sober. And I’ve been ever since. It’s largely a power of behavior these days, not the teenage revolt I felt again then, although I do nonetheless take heed to Minor Risk every now and then.

Sobriety has given me a really completely different expertise in life. At college I spent numerous time with international college students who have been barely older than me. Alcohol was nonetheless part of their social circle however in a extra refined method. That group included the one that grew to become my spouse. I now stay along with her in Finland, the place I work as a lab technician. In Finland the phrase straight edge, or streittari, is well-known to explain the life-style of those that don’t drink or do medicine, however not many individuals know its roots – an 80s hardcore punk band.

Did a cultural second immediate you to make a serious life change? Electronic mail us at cultural.awakening@theguardian.com