Anxiety: It’s Just the Drug
By: Matt Braunger
Tags: Drugs, Parenthood, Anxiety, Comedy, Comedian

My wife is pregnant with our first child, and she’s giving birth any day now. Our bags are packed and sitting by the door with the baby car seat, and now all we have is the waiting. It’s nerve-wracking, but… at least everything else in the world is too. You-know-what is ravaging the world and spiking all over the USA. The Federal government is pushing back on testing while simultaneously pressing the schools to open it’s NBD. On top of that after weeks and weeks of protests, the push for police reform has ground to a halt while people in my hometown are gassed, beaten, and abducted (in mini-vans) by ICE agents dressed as soldiers. Look, if I’m abducted, at least use a black Suburban. Call me insecure, but getting “taken” in a soccer parent van just hurts my feelings. Thanks, dickheads.

To my point, everything is peaches.

I wake up several times a night from nightmares or strange dreams where I’m climbing or exerting myself in some other fashion. I wake up tired. Every morning I want to chug coffee but I limit myself to one or two cups so as to not boost my anxiety and to sleep better that night. My creativity, once something I could always count on as a Professional Silly Person, is now forced on a daily basis. I make myself write, every day, but I still find myself staring into the gaping abyss that is Twitter, hoping to find something uplifting or affirming. I’ll then look up and an hour of my life has gone by. Every night I go to bed wondering if I’ve done anything of constructive value. All of my stand-up dates have been cancelled or moved, and I’m almost completely certain the ones I have coming up in 2020 are not going to happen. I’ve been offered dates here and there, but I didn’t see the point of chancing bringing it home to my wife and our unborn child. Comedy clubs and music venues are windowless dark rooms, and Covid-19 is like me in my 20s living in Chicago during the winter: it loves to party indoors.

Speaking of Chicago, one of the best pieces of advice I ever got was from my friend Dan, a fellow waiter/bartender I worked with. Back then I was mainly a heavy drinker, with some pinches of marijuana thrown in for spice. Dan did it all. Every morning I’d see him with a quadruple iced espresso, and we’d drink together after our shifts almost every night. At times he’d sneak off for a toke or a toot or to chew up a little tab of paper, but I never saw him “wasted” like I did some of of the others. I remember being at a friend’s family’s rental house way out in the Indiana Dunes with Dan, and I was high off my tits. One of those situations where you’re trying to be cool and calm, but inside you’re a Raging Waters Adventure Park where everybody is screaming at you. I looked at Dan and he saw in my eyes that I was barely holding on. He smiled and said, “Hey man, relax — it’s just thedrug.” I calmed down immediately. Weeks later we were sharing an after work beer and he told his philosophy. “I used to take a lot of mushrooms, and I mean A LOT, and then go off into the woods. One time I was mountain biking and I looked down and saw a lizard with my grandma’s face climbing up my leg. Freaked me the heck out. But no matter what happens I just say to myself, “It’s just the drug.” She wasn’t really there, and she’s not a lizard. It’s just the drug.”

So that’s what I’m doing now. It’s just anxiety. It’s just the drug.