Young adults, especially college students, may often feel like drinking, smoking or doing drugs is a requirement to fit in with their friends or at parties. But there are other lifestyles students can choose to live.
The straight edge lifestyle is a commitment to abstinence from alcohol, recreational or illicit drugs and tobacco, or the abuse of such substances.
Straight edge is a movement that began in the punk rock scene of the early ‘80s when “sex, drugs and rock and roll” was a common theme in music. In 1981, punk band Minor Threat released a song called “Straight Edge” that began a new, impactful movement.
The song’s lyrics praised the idea of rejecting things like drugs and alcohol: “I’m a person just like you, but I’ve got better things to do than sit around and smoke dope, ’cause I know that I can cope … Always gonna keep in touch, never gonna use a crutch. I’ve got the straight edge.”
Following the release of the song, the newly named straight edge movement gained popularity among other punk and hardcore bands of the early ‘80s who wished to change the way people viewed the rock and roll lifestyle by abstaining from alcohol, drugs and tobacco.
Minor Threat’s frontman Ian MacKaye shared his ideology that the punk movement was supposed to be rebellious against social injustices, but there was a better way to rebel than to engage in self-destructive behaviors such as substance abuse.
The straight edge movement, or “sXe,” quickly gained traction, with those who abstain from drugs and alcohol using the letter “X” to identify themselves.
Since I was about 14 years old, I knew I did not have any interest in drinking or doing recreational drugs. I felt slightly embarrassed about this because I associated drinking alcohol with being an adult, and I wondered if I just wasn’t mature if I found no appeal.
There were a number of factors that made me uninterested in such things. But to put it simply, I saw what substance abuse did to others, and I knew that I did not want that life for myself.
I knew high schoolers who were struggling with addictions they had to hide from their parents. I went to places, such as concerts, and often saw people having to be wheeled out on stretchers because they were so drunk that they passed out before the main act even came onstage. Neither instance seemed like any fun to me.