Young people love to get drunk and fucked up. Their bodies can take the hangovers and it's easy to get around the anxiety of being a grown-up when they let you go into bars.
But there is always a choice about leaving that part of your life behind you. Maybe those hangovers are getting a bit rough, maybe you just don't like the person you are when you get smashed every week, maybe you just get sick of it.
And if you carry on that lifestyle, you won't get far, and all the peers and old drinking buddies I once had - the ones who carried on with that lifestyle and kept going - are now fucking dying in their 40s as their internal organs slowly shut down after decades of alcoholic poisoning.
Nagata Kabi is a super cute Japanese comic artist who I have nothing in common with, but there is a universal truth in getting fucking wasted that shines through. Her cartoons are delicate lined, but the story is heavy with young person anxiety, and how easy it is to get through it with beer and saki.
And in this book, she's right at that point where she could end up a full lush, and will be dead before she's 50, or she makes some lifestyle changes that will keep her going for a long, long time.
It looks cute as fuck, but isn't afraid to show the squalidness and the sickness of it all, and also offer some way out of it. It's not an easy road, and it's not an easy choice for anybody, especially when you're sharing it all with the world in diary comics. I can only hope Nagata finds the escape into reality of the comic page a decent substitute for the alcoholic one.
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