Drugs saved my life
Showed me an open hand
I owe more than I can say
To those select days
Eyes each moment anew
I know it’s not right to say
But if you’ve walked through those fields
Then you know what I mean
Michelle Gurevich – Drugs Saved My Life, 2016
Crises and war are a known risk factor for drug use. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Middle East which has been rocked by conflict, war and instability for the past few decades. In Lebanon, surveys conducted in 2021 and 2024 showed how the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown led to increased cannabis use; the 2020 Beirut Port explosion increased cannabis use while reducing the use of cocaine, MDMA and amphetamines. With the war in Lebanon, people impacted by Israeli airstrikes reportedly increased their use of cocaine and cannabis.
What the statistics, which focus on quantifying “increases and decreases”, don’t show are the many ways drugs became intertwined in our daily lives, mediating our relationships to these collectively experienced events. Looking past these numbers and trends, what does the use of drugs look like in times of crisis and war?
On a recent Friday night in Beirut, we gathered among a group of friends, four cismen and ciswomen from a rather privileged background, and spent the evening and a good portion of the night reminiscing about our drug use, unveiling through our narration the many ways these substances became a key part of our way to navigate the turbulent years we have lived through. Our stories reveal how drugs play various roles and can act as a collective tool for liberation, and as personal coping mechanisms. They reflect how differences in personal trajectories, drug preferences and availability, and changes in setting affect substance use in times of crisis. But more importantly, drugs were essential to surviving the madness of looming death and destruction, on our terms.
The text below draws on this discussion, with all participants (W, A and F) anonymised.
Freedom from the norms: Alcohol, cannabis and MDMA
W: One of the first thing we did, during the early days of the protest was roll a joint and light it in the middle of the street. Before 2019, we had gone through a long period of arrests and oppression of people who use drugs, so we hated cops. There was power for us in doing this, it was a form of rebellion.
In the early days of the October 2019 uprising, there was a prevailing feeling of euphoria, one that comes from mass protests: a collective feeling of hope, communion and unity. Thousands of people took to the streets to protest financial measures taken by the government, corruption, unemployment and decades of national mismanagement. Some of us had been politically engaged and had been waiting for this moment for years. Others, more politically mature, knew that this would fail, yet wholeheartedly engaged in the protests.
I remember walking down the streets of Beirut at 2am: a woman, alone, in the dark – and I felt invincible. Somehow, standing up to men in uniforms at protests had transferred their power to me.
During that time, I remember how open drug use had become, particularly the use of cannabis.
A: “It was new, and exciting. A period of exploration.”
We explored the limits of this new freedom by using. Friends smoked cannabis in cafes and on the streets. As political change surrounded us, we also imagined a new reality of open and free use. Drugs and alcohol were part of the general euphoria of that time. They emphasised the freedom, happiness and hope of the new times we were living through.
Bars were a common meeting place at that time. During the day, we ran from teargas cannisters; when we needed a break, we ran to the bars. In between fights with the anti-riot police and the army, we had shots of whiskey, we regrouped, realigned, filled ourselves with liquid courage and charged back again. When protests ended for the night, we would meet again for one last drink before doing it all again, the next day, every day.
The global pandemic break
Euphoria came to a sudden halt as a result of the global pandemic. But, still riding off the high of freedom of the past months, the suspension of societal expectations fuelled by capitalism and productivity gave us an opportunity for continuous use.
A: “COVID was great, we needed this break. The world needed it. We should do it again.”
We smoked, we drank, we cooked. After all, these were the last days of humanity. This fear brought about a renewed sense of carelessness. How were we expected to deal with an apocalyptic pandemic without some substances? We smoked joints with morning coffees, we smoked them over the stove, we smoked in an inflatable pool. We were high, high on what was left of our lives.
But fear and isolation were also very real. The lockdown had forced the city into a silence, while the number of dead rose daily. The city’s stillness was only marked by ambulance sirens, both close and far. Drugs became a communal experience which allowed us to escape the terrifying reality of what felt like the end of the world. It also helped create an alternative bubble away from the socio-economic collapse that was becoming more and more glaring.
F: I was terrified to confine on my own. One morning, I watched the sun rise while on MDMA, and understood that this was going to be four months of non-stop binging. A group of 20 people decided to create a party community where we would only see one another and avoid seeing our families to keep them safe. We started renting homes every two weeks for two days, then every week for 2-3 days. All of this was happening with the deepening of the social crisis. My salary dropped from 4,000 USD to 800 USD and I was spending half of it on drugs. Drugs had allowed us to construct an alternative world for those four months; we were removed from the despair we saw in our friends.
I remember one day we were heading back home from the weekend bender and on our way down, we saw a barrage of people burning tires and protesting the rising cost of gasoline, fuel, electricity and medication. This is when I realized we had created a bubble to shield ourselves from the collapse taking place in the real world. We had all gotten fucked financially, there was no point in working anymore. We could all sit alone and be depressed or just fuck our brains collectively.
Facing the end of times: cocaine and ketamine
Amidst the deepening economic crisis and the global pandemic, one event would turn our lives upside down, forcing us to look at the abyss.
On 4 August 2020, the city blew up. Literally. Not much was left of Beirut. Friends and family were dead, injured or displaced. The city shone with shattered glass. Despair grew into rage. Four days after the massacre, we took to the streets again. We no longer wanted fairness and justice. This time we wanted revenge.
We were shot at. Bullets flew past our heads. And our past sense of invincibility began to feel suicidal, a feeling exploited by the authorities. On 8 August, security forces violently repelled protestors with live ammunition and rubber bullets, critically injuring or blinding many. To discredit the uprisings, the state blamed protestors’ violence on their drug use, looking to polarise public opinion. Many of those arrested were subjected to urine tests to link their protesting to drug use.
A: I remember a couple of days after the explosion, I had commissioned a small truck to help carry shards of glass we had cleaned up across the city. We were parked in a no-parking zone for two minutes while we carried heavy bags of glass onto the truck. A police officer came to tell us to move the truck. You have to understand there was no city, no cars, nothing. After negotiating with him, I lost my shit. The cops were doing nothing, watching citizens clean up the street after the biggest trauma of our lives and he wanted to tell me to move the truck for no good reason. He turns away and asks the truck driver: ‘is she on drugs?’. I thought I could kill him.
Broken, we returned to our shattered homes. The months and years to come would be spent reminiscing on the failed uprising. Rationalising, justifying, rehashing where we failed and how. Stimulant-fuelled conversations kept us talking until dawn.
Through this, we coped with excesses. Excess became a way of being, serving no purpose beyond survival. The years that had come to pass had been dramatic and traumatic, and those that would come would be even more painful.
To live in a city like Beirut, one cannot be sober.
A: “It’s difficult for me to bond with people who are able to live in this world sober. The world is shit.”
F: “I didn’t want to admit to myself how important August 4th had been and how it affected me. Ketamine became my favourite drug. I started microdosing, then went full on. I wanted to use alone; I wanted everyone to leave so I could use alone. I didn’t want to take part in collective wallowing. Connecting and opening up started scaring me because we were all destroyed. This lasted until the end of 2020. New Year’s Eve was a fuck fest of drugs: I took K, 4-MMC, MD, LSD and 2C-B. At this point drugs became a mini-suicide.”
Savouring the end of our lives
What started as a challenge to authority morphed into a coping mechanism, ending for many of us into uncontrollable excess.
A: “From November 2023 onwards, I increased my consumption of cocaine. The war was very tough on me mentally. I was sad and angry. More sad than angry. I don’t like cocaine anymore; it’s not a happy drug. I now associate it with coping. It left a stain, it’s not light.”
The months before September 2024, before the Israeli pager attack happened and airstrikes began hitting Beirut, we savoured our last days on earth. We went out and used drugs as an end-of-life celebration.
W: “Between December to May 2024, the party was insane. The last moments before shit hit the fan. We knew war was coming. All plans were on pause. No expats came during the summer. People started leaving Beirut.”
We were spiralling. Then, the war began.
For months, the sound of drones overhead would not stop. The news would bring us to tears. Reality became unbearable. At home and next door, the pain was immense. Fear returned. A new kind, one some of us had experienced 20 years earlier, and others for the first time. Nothing was under control. We couldn’t turn off the news or leave our phones.
Through that fear, we stayed at home, afraid to move, never knowing which neighbourhood would be targeted next. We drank and got high.
F: “Drug use moved to homes, where it’s safe, and where you have access to your phone and to the news. I couldn’t accept going out somewhere to have fun and dance.”
But we drank and snorted out the pain and the fear.
Without drugs, the past five years would have been unbearable. During our discussion we realised the extent of our individual and collective traumas, and how these interplayed with our drug use.
Some of us have since decided to take it easy, or at least expressed the will to do so. But in a city like Beirut, these decisions can only hold until the next crisis.
