Going California Sober for the holidays
Why you should swap out alcohol for drugs during the festive Winter months
Listening to the audio version of this newsletter is kind of like listening to a Calm meditation recording, only you’ll want to do drugs afterwards:
“I don’t drink anymore,” you say to your parents. Your dad, who is holding two tumblers of the single malt Scotch he breaks out only during the holidays, has a flat expression. Your mom is a few feet behind him. She sort of stands straighter and smiles in an affirming way, but her eyes are concerned. They have watched and tolerated your machinations over the course of your young adulthood with very little commentary. As long as you’re happy, they’d said during your dieta prior to the ten days you’d spent under the influence of a Peruvian shaman and a substance that they could not pronounce vomiting, tripping, and journalling about how much they fucked you up. As long as you’re happy was their assessment of your career transition from investment banking, a reliable, remunerative career for which the hundreds of thousands of dollars they’d spent on your education perfectly prepared you, into life coaching. What did they say when you told them you’d realized you were not entirely straight and thought that monogamy was as bad as colonialism after returning from your first Burning Man? As long as you’re happy. Here they are, taking in yet another seismic, puzzling proclamation from their child, whom they had hoped would become a relatable, productive member of society cast in their likeness. “I’m California sober,” you continue. What on earth is California sober? they ask with their matching frowns.
California sober is when someone eschews alcohol (except for skin contact orange wine) to justify doing a lot of recreational drugs. The term California sober originated not in Nebraska, as most people assume, but in California, where oppressive health trends give people something to talk about since the weather is too consistent to be a topic. One of the biggest benefits of being someone who is California sober is lavishing someone who is not with subtle criticism, which brings Californians joy. The substances preferred by someone who has become California sober include all of the Schedule I narcotics, all but oxy from Schedule II, ketamine from Schedule III, and the two from Schedule IV that, like a camel topcoat, are always fashionable: xanies and valium.
The holidays are a great time to hard launch your California sobriety, because there are lots of alcohol-intensive gatherings where you will be able to advertise your superior life decision to lots of people who are totally fine drinking alcohol. To the hammer that is booze, each of these holidays - beginning with Diwali and ending with New Years - is simply a nail. Being California sober lets you not only avoid roughly 36,000 calories worth of alcohol but also thoughtfully pair each of these occasions with a more nuanced substance to optimally accentuate or numb your experience.
Diwali, November 12
Diwali celebrates the victory of light over darkness, good over evil, and people of Indian descent entirely running Silicon Valley. If you are celebrating Diwali in NYC or California, it’s a great excuse to wear the saree, lehenga or dhoti that your mom had custom made for you by her in-house team of seamstresses and flown to you on the family jet. Given that Diwali is the festival of lights, and the sensory experience of a good Diwali party is basically the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, and a raging Bar Mitzvah combined, acid is the optimal alternative to alcohol. Because everything Indian is intrinsically a visual, a half dose will sufficiently blow your mind.
Friendsgiving, Nov 19 - 23
Friendsgiving is celebrated by coastal Millennials who are still resentful of their Midwestern parents and defiantly celebrate Thanksgiving with bland vegan food, gluten free bread, and traumatic childhood memories. Given that every Millennial party becomes into a floor party, which could turn into a play party, the ideal Friendsgiving base drug is mushrooms for the lols with a bit of G or MDMA for sexy vibes and a few bumps of K to dial down. You won’t need to explain your California sobriety, because everyone at your Friendsgiving will also be California sober (unless you don’t live in Brooklyn or California).
Thanksgiving Eve, Nov 22
Thanksgiving Eve is the Olympics for people who are California sober. On this day, known as Blackout Wednesday or Drinksgiving, young people travel back to wherever they grew up, reconvene with old friends at the bar where their 8th grade phys ed teacher still moonlights, and drink excessively to compensate for the fact that they no longer have anything in common. When you refuse the first shot of Jaeger, you will be asked by your high school friends, who now look exactly like their parents did twenty years ago, if you think you’re too good for them. You will need to be on something stronger than just the Ancient Nutrition Collagen Bone Broth that you brought in your Ember Travel Mug to manage all of these aggressively drunken inbound feels. Sprinkle around 100mg of peyote into your mug to underscore the profundity of just how far you’ve come from your suburban origins and supplement with small bumps of ketamine throughout the evening to deflect the questions about how polyamory works and the taunts about your nose ring.
Thanksgiving Football, Nov 23, 12:30pm
If you’re reading this, it’s highly unlikely that you are a fan of any televised sports other than the US Open, which you attend IRL. During the time that your traditionally masculine male relatives sit in front of a television intermittently yelling at a game entirely out of their control that is happening in a different time zone, you would ordinarily be lecturing your mother about why she should switch from coffee to matcha, doom scrolling through the Hinge profiles of local people your age who look 15 years older, and trying to find a gym that’s open so that you can borrow your dad’s Audi and get in one last workout before assaulting your stomach with beige food. You can’t do any of this now that you’re California sober, because you won’t be able to make up for being a distant, patronizing, urban sophisticate by raising a convivial glass of Kendall-Jackson Vinter’s Reserve or Meiomi Pinor Noir and getting buzzed during Thanksgiving dinner. You will need to be present and convivial all day. Your best bet is 1/3 dose of mushrooms to entertain family members who are cooking and just a wee bit of cocaine to match the energy of family members who are watching football.
Thanksgiving Dinner, Nov 23, around 6pm
Most of the family will be intoxicated by now, and the half who have been cooking will be annoyed with the other half who are dozing with their mouth agape in bulky leather den furniture. You are the only hope for salvaging Thanksgiving dinner. You will do this by making a toast that reminds everyone that, despite how annoying you were about forgetting to pack your your special hemp protein powder, you’re still the charming, loving child they adored before you turned 25 and got your first big bonus and spent it on Burning Man costumes, a yoga retreat, and DJ lessons. Now is the time to go large on molly. Don’t try to write a toast - that will be a shit show. Just stand and deliver words of affirmation whenever your heart feels like it will explode and your jaw hurts.
Black Friday, Nov 24
All of your favorite facial products and nutritional supplements will go on sale at 12:00am on November 24, and the best ones will sell out by before you even wake up at 11am on Friday. This is an easy fix. Just take your long-acting variation of Ritalin a few hours later than you ordinarily would and you’ll be ready to click yourself into credit card debt when sales begin at midnight.
Setting up holiday decorations, Nov 24 - Dec 15
Even if you the only holiday decoration you own is green facial glitter, you will will still somehow be drafted into helping a friend or relative set up their festive holiday plastic. This will probably come in the form of an invitation to a holiday party that seems just a bit too early. Before you became California sober, you might have gotten through this by getting so drunk that you were excused from untangling the Christmas lights and put in charge of wearing garland. This is no longer an option. Any kind of decorating, whether you’re hanging shiny things or drawing things on the face of bland white cookies, will require focus and patience. You may be tempted by cocaine, but you would probably break a lightbulb and electrocute yourself. Try instead grinding Adderall in a mortar and pestle and doing a line of it. The decorations will get done faster, and you will have no appetite for the shitty cookies.
Social holiday parties, Dec 1 - Dec 21
Social holiday parties are the best kinds of parties all year. People who leave for the summer and the winter are still in town, everyone is wearing their best holiday cape, robe or kimono, and you can be on any kind of substance as long as it makes you fun to be around. Acid is probably ill advised, because you don’t want to be the party guest who everyone has to take turns managing, but everything is else is fair game. Of all the holiday gatherings, this is the one ideally suited for a Marriott pour of Cocamollyketamine. The holidays are a time to give, so consider bringing truffle cheese, Kin Elixirs, and mushroom chocolates to complement the hosts’ provision of a DJ, a charcuterie board, and pine-scented ketamine nasal spray.
Work holiday parties, Dec 5 - 7, Dec 12 - 14 (or Dec 4 if you’re in media / advertising)
Holiday parties that you’re obliged to attend for work are tricky. You need to be high energy, because you never know when someone will ask you to PDF something, but you also need to be high. A great choice for the work holiday party is a bit of MDMA paired with three small bumps of cocaine over the course of the three hours you’ll be there. If you stay any longer than three hours, you will probably be fired.
Hanukkah Candle Lighting, Dec 7
Hanukkah is also a festival of lights, but it’s a touch more reflective and a lot less raucous than Diwali. After reciting the Shechecheyanu on the first night and before lighting the shamash and first candle, take a tug of your DMT vape. By the time you start singing the Ma'oz Tzur the two candles will look like a bonfire and you will feel like Moses.
Saint Lucy’s Day, Dec 13
Saint Lucy’s Day is the obscure holiday that you didn’t know you needed. It commemorates the heroism of St Lucia of Syracuse, a 14th century virgin martyr, who brought food to persecuted Christians hiding in Roman catacombs. She wore a candle wreath on her head to light her way and leave room in her arms for food, sort of like how you wear a headlamp at Burning Man to keep your hands free to carry molly water and caviar from your RV to your side piece’s tent camp. Because this holiday doesn’t involve eating to excess or gifting, no one in the United States celebrates it, but you should: it’s a great opportunity take a break from holiday partying, take a heroic dose of LSD, and see how long you can balance a candle on your head before it feels like its melting into your scalp (that’s actually happening btw).
Christmas Eve, Dec 24
By the time Christmas Eve finally roles around, your neurons will as frayed as the bottom of an angsty teenager’s Costco jeans from all the drugs you used to avoid drinking alcohol. If you weren’t California sober, you would probably be sipping spiked egg nog or a hot toddy, which roughly translates to an indica gummy. Take one an hour before your dad starts playing the Frank Sinatra Christmas album and wear something furry.
Christmas, Dec 25
You stopped giving material gifts in 2016, but this year you will be making an exception and giving everyone a copy of Peter Attia’s book, Outlive, along with the supplements you think they need in order to optimize themselves. Celebrate the improvements your gifts will make to the health of your loved ones by taking your favorite holiday supplement cocktail - warmed raw milk with a blend of powdered Reishi, Turkey Tale and Cordycep mushrooms, two tablespoons of fair trade Colombian cacao, a half teaspoon of Ashwaganda, a teaspoon of New Zealand Manuka honey, and a dusting of Sri Lankan cinnamon. You will be able to talk about the functional benefits of this beverage all day long.
New Years Eve, Dec 31
New Years is always a difficult holiday for people who are California sober, because everyone who is California sober travels to San Miguel, Cape Town, or Verbier, which makes it difficult to bring anything but mushroom chocolate unless you’re flying private. So, fly private.
New Years Day, Jan 1
New Years Day is a time of reflection, a time to check in with yourself and consider what you want you new year to be about. It’s important to be clear eyed and thoughtful on this day and to begin mapping out your goals and how you will achieve them. Instead of nursing a Bloody Mary like people who are not California sober, host a private tea ceremony just for yourself. The best kind of tea for this is Ayahuasca. After ridding your body of the chateaubriand, pâté and truffle mac you had for dinner, Aya will help you see exactly how to scale your SaaS startup, double your roster of coaching clients, and convert your free Substack subscribers to paid. You will know which of the six people you’re dating to double down on and which to simmer, and you will finally figure out the optimal time ratio to spend in New York, Miami, The Hamptons, CDMX, Nosara, London, Lisbon, Venice, Berlin and Bali (answer: 153:45:30:30:30:21:15:15:13:13).
Dry January
Dry January, the month when drinkers arbitrarily stop drinking, is a fabulous loophole for people who are California sober and a time to talk drinkers into becoming California sober, because most drugs are not wet. An excellent gateway drug for luring drinkers into the California sober lifestyle is mushroom Mezcal, which is Mezcal that has psilosybin mushrooms in it. The finest variety of this is called Nectar of the Gods, and it can only be acquired through word of mouth if you precisely follow the geographical ratio above.
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If the benefits of California sobriety aren’t already abundantly clear, consider these three reasons to give up alcohol in favor of drugs this holiday season:
There’s no such thing as a drug belly (unless you’re drug mule).
It gives you something to talk about if you aren’t vegan and haven’t yet thrown out your television.
Alcohol is expensive, and narcotics are plentiful and freely given out by your wealthy friends who do not work.
Share this with a friend who is California sober, should become California sober because they’re fat from drinking, lives in California, or is pretentious about their use of drugs: