We had a very long conversation about how she feels like she can't relate to others because she doesn't understand experiences like the stuff I opened up about, so I explained further how I personally felt about it all. Eventually she said smth along the lines of "this sounds awful, but after the last time we spoke I was thinking about it and I feel so terrible, because I realised that if something happened and you were gone, I would move on eventually"

Which is...idk. like I'm glad you acknowledge that was bad but also you don't need to tell me that, especially since I didn't even mention anything of the sort about that. Ik you would move on that's how life works hun

She also at one point said she knew I didn't blame her which... I never said I did? So i said yh ik and she was like yh and it was just like...we're agreeing but why did you bring that up in the first place what do you want me to say to that.

Also said she wanted to know but she would also be really upset about it even though she was the one that asked me about it as a one off in the first place because she was curious. I understand being scared of change but this is also how life works. But saying that is a bit cruel atp

She said a lot of other stuff and idk how to feel about any of it.

I've noticed that alcohol addiction and cigarettes are much more romanticised than other drugs/drug addictions. Excessively drinking alcohol is mostly considered as just another character trait to spice the character up a bit and not the focus of the story. Whereas heroin addiction is only portrayed when characters are already in the category "junkie", so it is much more focused story wise and is only for a specific type of character.

When looking at media with depressed characters, most of the time they are drinking to drown out the thoughts and then payed no mind. But it that character would be using hard drugs, then it would be mentioned more often and not just portrayed as a "normal part of depression".

It's similar with cigarettes, though those aren't often used to really numb pain and instead it's normalised, to be needing smoke breaks. I don't see it often in the media I'm watching, that plays in present time, I just see it in society. Though that has been getting less and less through the years. (That's the reason I said 'playing in present time' because one German TV series playing in the 1920s shows quite a few characters casually smoking, but that's because it was far more common back then. But even then, that was a normal part of life.)

To showcase more the thing of alcoholism being used as a character trait to make them more interesting instead of focusing on it: when playing Call of Cthulhu I've come across two characters where one had alcohol problems and one always smoked cigarettes. Those were both not made by me, one was made and played by a teacher of mine and the other was a pre-made I played. My character just had a flask in his equipment and as the significant location a local pub where he would go to 'forget his worries'. Though to be fair my teacher's character focused a little bit on the cigarettes, when he described how his character was getting fidgety when needing a smoke, but it would still feel different when he would have been using hard drugs. (Especially with us playing in school and him being the adult, but we did far worse stuff there than drugs, so it shouldn't be an issue and also not important.)

What I'm trying to say is, when you portray a character being addicted to hard drugs then most of the time they're either 'just an unimportant junkie' or you're explicitly telling a story about addiction, whereas alcoholism is seen as 'just a normal part of everyday life'.

Another thing is, because of all that romanticising, if I were to develop an addiction, which isn't too far fetched since I'm in multiple risk groups, it would be alcohol: 1. It is not inherently portrayed as bad, so it wouldn't be a thing of 'I'm doing a bad thing as seen by society'. It is normalised drinking a bit, or even getting black out drunk with mates, so the threshold of 'too much' is difficult to spot. 2. Alcohol is easily available. It is fairly cheap and I can get it without a problem at the grocery store, or spirits, which I can't buy because of age restrictions, can be easily found in my parents liquor cabinet. I would go out on a limb, that nearly every household in Germany has some drinkable alcohol stored somewhere.

Groundhog Day

Alarms that ring at the same time, the same chime

Buses that arrive at the same place, drive at the same pace

Things covering things

Cheap coffee trying to warm the insides, warm the cold lies, the I’m fines

Nothing changes but the dull eyes, growing duller

Things covering and under cover

Things you can’t love out from under

Things covering things

Tall tales covering dark wounds, a dark bruise

Tuesday comes and never leaves, dark moods and dark shoes and time loops

Call the sadness magic instead of madness, we all lose

But only I feel what we’re losing

Things covering things don’t stretch far enough to cover me

I’ll die alone in this catastrophe

And things will cover me in misplaced memory

Only I will know to visit me

Only I will know the bleeding

Things covering things and bleeding

Things covering things and your leaving

Your leaving

You’re leaving

then imagining my death and funeral just to then somehow deal with life later after that wish to die was fullfilled, even if just in my own head