Felt like they were on the rage as I was finishing high school, but now they’re nowhere to be seen.
I’d wager most of you haven’t even heard the term ‘straight-edge’ in months, or possibly years.
I was agreeing with you cause I haven’t really seen or used my straight edge since high school. Here I am thinking I don’t even have a ruler. Then I read the comments. I guess it’s not the literal straight edge.
So does straight edge strictly refer to not doing drugs? If that’s the definition, then I’m a straight edged person… Hell, I don’t even drink and I work for a Scottish company where all my co-workers drink like fish.
I’m not religious, it has just always seemed dumb to me that people felt they needed to be inebriated to have a good time. Maybe this is just the normal for them so they don’t know any different? But doesn’t that seem pretty stupid? Anyways, I was stubborn in college and resisted peer pressure and by the time I didn’t care anymore, I just never saw the need to start drinking (or doing drugs). But I’m not here preach, I don’t really care what you do as long as it doesn’t affect me (i.e. drink driving).
I’m a CTO for a midsized company. I have three kids and I’ve been happily married for over 25 years. Between my friends, there are less people who drink than those who don’t, but within my work environment, I’m definitely an oddball… But I’m also old enough that I don’t really give a shit what other people think so I’m perfectly happy going along and being the guy who doesn’t drink.
Davey Havok is still out there, somewhere
Maybe once you grow up you become first a Sober person, then a Teetotaler.
I wasn’t really around when being straight-edge was an identity but honestly I think you don’t hear about it as much today because its a horrible time to be sober 24/7. Can’t imagine raw dogging this shit. Props to anyone who can though.
I don’t have a choice. Alcohol gives me insomnia and weed gives me super intense panic attacks. CBD stopped working so I just stopped everything.
Yes, it sucks very very much.
That sounds awful I’m sorry. Funny enough weed is the only thing that actually works for my DSPD with any consistancy.
Thanks! To be honest it isn’t alllllll terrible, it’s kinda cool having dreams again lol when I smoked I either never had them or the short term memory loss just made me forget I had them.
Used to go to the Cuckoo’s Nest.
I mean they may not know what straight edge means, but there are a shit-ton of people who don’t do drugs or alcohol…
To quote NOFX:
It’s not the right time to be sober, now the idiots have taken over.
To quote 3Oh!3:
X’s on the back of your hands, wash them in the bathroom to drink like the band
To quote Leftover Crack:
And all the boys in the straight-edge scene are in the basement huffing gasoline
God is dead to me!
And to think they retired in 2024. 4 decades of no sobriety
I mean, I never really heard about straight edge anyway. It was something someone would talk about every once in a while 15 years ago. My guess, though -
Straight edge started off as a cool way to say “I’m a drug addict in recovery”, which was cloaked in a thin veil of justification about how taking care of your mind and body was the first best step towards dismantling oppressive systems of power.
But pretty quickly, the term got co-opted by teens who were scared to drink at parties because their mom might get mad, and/or Tumblr-style online activists who base their whole identity around vices they don’t engage in. Which kinda kills any amount of cool the term had to begin with.
And of course, there is the very obvious fact that billions of people around the world regularly consume moderate amounts of drugs and alcohol on a reasonable schedule, while continuing to function in their roles as workers, hobbyists, friends, partners, parents, and yes, activists. Having a couple beers every other Saturday isn’t the reason Trump won the election. And even if you don’t like the hangover - or just don’t like alcohol - there are plenty of other drugs you can take recreationally with the same or different effects which give you less of a hangover.
Finally, it just isn’t that hard to say “nah, I’m good” when someone offers you a beer or whatever. You don’t need to come up with a special word, make it part of your identity, or get tattoos about it. Outside of a social scene where intentionally self-destructing is seen as virtuous, everyone understands that some people sometimes just don’t want to indulge for any number of reasons.
by teens who were scared to drink at parties because their mom might get mad
I’ve never felt so seen (scene?).
Seriously, though, I fell victim to a lot of DARE propaganda, and I avoided alcohol (and other drugs) for a looong time. I never considered myself “straight edge” because it sounds so cringe, but I guess I fit the definition at the time.
Now, I partake in moderation, and it’s not really a problem.
What the heck is straight-edge even
People that listen to hardcore that abstain from drugs and alcohol and commonly also from eating meat. They were easily recognizable by having painted a large sXe with a marker on their hand and maybe some additional letters on top and bottom for their particular flavour of Straight Edge. Here in Sweden they were quite common amongst punk rockers from the mid eighties up to late nineties.
Thank you for the link. I’d heard of “straight laced” but never straight edged: punk was a bit before my time and I was out off by the general punk aesthetics when I was younger, only to realize I would have gotten on famously with punks over politics and many other things.
Having read the wiki, it sounded reasonable until it got to no caffeine, hard stop.
That’s wild. I lived there during that timeframe and I have never seen the tattoo, neither even heard of those metalheads.
Maybe it was a regional thing? I mean in Sweden.
It was an international thing but there was a very big sXe scene in Umeå. If you’re into 1990s punk and hardcore you may be familiar with Refused.
Södra Sverige och metal 🎶 vilket kanske förklarar det.
Jag växte upp i Stockholm och där var det straight edgare på konserter.
Hey it’s me I’m in this picture
Somebody who believed the D.A.R.E. officer.
An old fashioned type of razor.
Also,
Folks who put the bar “no alcohol” (common at 18+ or family shows) permenant marker X’s across their own hand-back; punk and adjacent subcultures
Some folks were on the wagon. Some folks wanted to not become their parents too quick. Some folks were young and new to everything else, and felt not ready for drugs yet. Some were physically or ideologicaly sensitive.
Some still are, from the little popups.
They’re still around. I see them at hardcore shows
Sadly, every single straight-edge person I knew (a grand total of 5 people) later became a drug addict. Two of them died of overdoses. This was two decades ago at least and I really haven’t heard anyone use the term in at least 10.
Straight edge people have been bred out of the gene pool by sex having druggies
Considering all the straight edge people I know seemed more into it to hate drugs and drug users more than about keeping a “straight edge”, they probably got absorbed into the manosphere somewhere.
Legitimately, the straight edge people I knew in high school are all republicans now.
They grew up
