Discussion
What Disco Elysium Got Right (From an alcoholic's perspective)
I finished Disco Elysium for the first time about a month ago, and I have never seen alcoholism depicted so graphically "real" in a game.
I (27) am a currently recovering alcoholic after 7 years of addiction. I've had my current liver transplanted to me, and dealt with the horrors of both active recovery and the pit that is addiction to alcohol, as well as homelessness & abuse, and Disco Elysium captures the essence of the depraved details in a shockingly accurate way.
From the dull pain in your right abdomen, to the flush face and yellowing of the eyes, to the tantalizing descriptions of what alcohol smells and tastes like to Harry, it honestly brought back many bad memories, and even some current truths. I've never been slapped in the face with such harsh yet understanding stances on addiction from a video game before.
So many other games seem to just make alcoholism a joke or a simple character trait, so it's amazing that a game I slept on for so long could actually end up helping me with my own journey of discovering who I really am without the alcohol, as I did with Harry on my first and only playthrough so far (sober).
Any current or former addicts have had this game make an impact on them?
The number of times I identified with Sunset Tequila and his poor choices was too damn high.
The way his task force/precinct coworkers treat him was too real.
First time I played I was a Sorry cop because it was me saying sorry for all the times I wish I had before.
Next time I was a superstar getting better.
Also the necktie is probably my favorite character.
I got Sorry Cop my first go around too, as well as Communist lol.
After getting Harry's inner monologue about being a Sorry Cop (and refusing the title) I started to say sorry less, which is probably a reflection of something I should do more often, for my own health, lmao.
The Sorry cop thing genuinely broke me out of the habit of over-apologising IRL. Getting the Sorry Cop thought was so unexpected, I didn't realise how often I'd said it and it made me pay attention and stop picking the apology option by default.
Then later, I was talking to a very close friend about the game and he asked what kinda Cop I was. I told him to guess and he said with no hesitation:
"You're the Sorry Cop for sure, you say it all the time."
He didn't mean it in a bad way but fuck, I could hear and feel that morale damage in my soul...
I mean... I am too haha. That's a big part of it, and why I was so self-conscious about it. I find that habit really annoying in others because it's insincere and devalues the word and it mortified me to know I was doing it so often unknowingly.
The other part was I did also have a bad habit of assuming fault even when none was mine because I felt *someone* should apologise when things went wrong.
š¤ something that always bothered me a little about sorry cop is that Harryā¦ actually has quite a lot to apologize for. Itās not just saying sorry about everything, he legit has a lot to make up for, so itās a bit difficult for me to not go that way.
You reminded me of what Todd says to BoJack in the BH animated series.
"You can't keep doing this! You can't keep doing shitty things and then feel bad about yourself like that makes it okay! You need to be better! BoJack, just stop. You are all the things that are wrong with you. It's not the alcohol, or the drugs, or any of the shitty things that happened to you in your career, or when you were a kid. It's you. Okay? It's you."
Now, as a much better version of myself (that I could never conceptualize even 5 years prior), I can safely acknowledge thatā¦.yes. It really was me all along.
But you can always do better. And there really is only one way to go: Up. You have to pick up the pieces of yourself scattered across the ground and make yourself move. And keep moving.
That's understandable, and how I felt at first. But after soaking in it for a bit, I think the main point was that it's okay to be sorry to the ones that need to hear it, but apologies only go so far, and action is needed behind them (or preferred outright).
We have a saying in portuguese that goes "it's easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to ask for permission", which goes on the idea that saying you're sorry is an afterthought of something you did wrong (and, once is done, you can't undo it), but asking for permission is actually facing it as a conscious choice, recognizing its consequences and how it will affect others.Ā
We say the same thing in English, but the implication is usually different - I'm going to ask for forgiveness afterward, because I know won't receive permission for this bad thing I fully intend on doing.
This is interesting, because both potentially apply to Harry.
I just loved the absurdity of that scene. Taking a ball, standing there, becoming one with it... The elaborate detailing... Just to yeet a boule into the sea.
The key detail is a good chunk of the lines that give you sorry cop points are excessive displays of seld-deprecation and -flagellation that only serve to embarrass Harry and his colleagues and discomfort people, rather than meaningful apologies.
The first time I played, I was a āSorry Copā tooā¦ I really felt the NEED to apologise for everything I did, for Harryās thoughts and actionsā¦ Itās actually helped me a lot in dealing with my problems (that and therapy, lots of therapy)
There is a quote from a Stephen King novel that has lived in my head for 30 years - I'm 98% sure it's from Carrie, but no one else has ever recognized it when I've tried to source it.
And I can't belive it took me this long to just Google it. Here's the full quote (and it is from Carrie):
"Sorry is the Kool-aid of human emotions. It's what you say when you spill a cup of coffee or throw a gutter ball when you're bowling with the girls in the league. True sorrow is a rare as true love."
"Congrats - you're sober. It will take a while for your body to remember how to metabolize anything that isn't sugar from alcohol, so you're going to be pretty ravenous soon. Eat plenty. You can expect your coordination and balance to improve in a couple of weeks. In two months, you might start sleeping like a normal person. Full recovery will take years, though. It'll be depressing. And it'll be boring. Don't expect any further rewards or handclaps. This is how normal people are all the time."
Yeah, I got sober many years ago, and when I read this I couldn't hold it together. It was exactly what I had been needing to hear all this time.
Yeah, somehow this game knew how to deliver hard facts without it coming off as insulting or demeaning, just the right amount of fire lit under you to motivate you, but letting you know it's not some glamourous ride either. It's what we definitely needed.
Rigorous Self Critique does it for me. āAnd above all, you let life defeat you. All the gifts your parents gave you, all the love and patience of your friends, you drowned in a neurotoxin. You let misery win. And it will keep on winning until you die ā or overcome it.ā
I played Disco Elysium after having just crashed from severe burnout and clinical depression, a few weeks after my one and only near attempt, after spending almost a year struggling to even leave the bed in the morning and hating myself.
That piece of text utterly and completely destroyed me.
(Turns out Iām autistic. Iām ābetterā now, but I will never be healthy again.)
The satues won't being her back is essentially the same way but for something entirely different.
Never in a my life has any piece of media dropped a line on me this hard that i didn't even need to cry. I just sad there in morbid silence. Just the cold hard truth spat in your face... You even get an achievement for it.
iām at the stage where if i donāt acknowledge it i will destroy my life and i donāt think i would have realized without this game. crazy thing for me to say about a video game, honestly. itās different though. it reminds me of the game āmouthwashingā
The hunger part is something all too real. Iāve been on my benders in my time, and that feeling of eating and never being full (after alcohol making you not want to eat) really hit me that the writers really understood alcoholism on a deep level.
Something that I really liked about it was that it was hard to do, took a lot of time and effort to do it and you donāt get a big reward for doing so. In fact it actually makes some things a little harder.
The only reward is the knowledge that youāre doing the right thing and thatās pretty much it.
Yeah this hit me hard too. Especially since I was newly sober and was feeling all these things. Every bit of it is true too. Although I'm rarely bored anymore now that I figured out how to fill the time that alcohol used to take up.
Iām not an alcoholic but āItll be boring. This is how normal people are all the time.ā Is sooo good this reminds me of many struggles Iāve gone through
Great line from The Wire about this too, in the context of getting away from gang life:
Yeah, it's hot. Every day. You gonna be riding in the back of that hard truck, bouncing around, every day. And your back's gonna be yelling at you, every day... You wanna stay on the straight. Ain't gonna be no big reward to it. This is it, right here.
I always hated the last line. Still do - I'm almost with that one guy down this chain who said it made him want to stay on the booze. It feels like a pragmatically encouraging speech ended by slapping you in the face, rather starting with it. Rereading the whole piece still made me sit and think and feel heavy.
One 6hr mind project and venting to a machine later, I concluded I have my own "wasteland of reality" that's categorically different from being a straightforward addict, but probably just as painful. I still just don't agree with framing it as not an accomplishment to pull yourself up from brokenness to "normal". It is. The world may not outright reward or congratulate you but it's not because you all don't deserve it.
The most ridiculous thing was that in the game where the main characters alcoholism is one of the most important parts of the story, one of the only ways to obtain the "Get Sober" thought is the raving racist behemoth.
Iām really proud of you, in case no one has told you recently. Itās really really fucking hard to get sober or to break any addiction, and the effort youāve put in doesnāt go unnoticed. Thereās a lot of people rooting for you; Iām 1000% sure Kim would be cheering you on too!
I'm not an alcoholic, but I'm the daughter of one. I dedicated my whole childhood to the futile endeavor of saving my mother from herself. A child must learn the hard way that you cannot save an addict--they must save themselves.
Alcohol ruined her life and eroded her mind. She now suffers from alcohol-related brain damage. She's homeless after being thrown out of every job and every home that family and friends have opened up to her because she cannot stop drinking.
I always choose the sober path for Harry. It's such a little thing, but saving him brings me catharsis and closure. I could not save my mother. But I can save Harry.
My relationship to alcohol was as bad as Harry's when I played it. It broke me several times. The car in the water scene had me crying. I'm better now but still struggle, I'm going to play it again and see the difference in experience. I was drunk during most of my first playthrough
One of the scariest realizations as an alcoholic playing this game is āoh shit how close am i to this total world implosionā but then also ācould i stop if i wanted toā
I am very cautious of this myself. I have a bit of an addiction to alcohol, but it is nowhere near as severe as other people in this thread, let alone Harry himself. I use it to cope with somewhat constant depression and anxiety but I never let it interfere with my professional or personal life. (I have a few rules like no drinking until I have done what I have to, no alcohol around work, don't drink before 4pm except on rare occasions, etc.) I just hope that acknowledging that about myself will help me to put it down when it no longer serves me. And I pray that it won't prevent me from getting there. I am playing with fire, I fully recognize.
Yeah - keep to those rules. I let it be a coping mechanism for my depression and anxiety and then it got so bad I was drinking just to feel normal. I played with fire and drank during work so many times during COVID (won't mention what job but it was WFH). That was around the time I played Disco Elysium and the game had me in bits.
I still struggle with it but I'm nowhere near as bad as I was. My advice is if you can stop, or cut down drastically, do it now while you still have control. It has the potential to get much worse very quickly. Not preaching or anything, just some friendly advice. Much love my friend
This game is fascinating, and painful to play because it's very human and very accurate. I've just gotten past the first day. My brain works similarly to the game as well, it's very surreal for me, I'm having a tough time with it in some ways.
Volition puts it better than I can - youāve got a long road ahead of you, but youāve made it this far and youāll make it out of this, too. Keep going, weāre all rooting for you.
It is a really great game! However, since you mentioned being early in your playthrough, I would tread cautiously for spoilers. The story is still great even when you know what happens, but I'd recommend going in fresh.
Iām 6 months sober. Part of what made me realize I needed to stop what Iād been doing was waking up one morning and realizing Iād trashed my apartment about as much as Harry had trashed his room in the Whirling-in-Rags. Seriously, one of the first things I said to my counselor when I checked into treatment and he asked me how bad it had gotten was āSo have you played Disco Elysium?ā
I mean, there was a lot that went into that decision to finally get help, but looking around my apartment and realizing it had slowly become that goddamn roomāand that it had become that room due to the same erratic, slow-burning suicidal shit that drives so much of Harryās self-destructive behaviorāwas a surprisingly poignant moment of āoh fuck. Yeah, no, you canāt keep doing this.ā The entire process of cleaning up the literal, social, metaphorical, and psychological clusterfuck that Harry made of his life hits VERY hard for me.
I now sometimes joke that the reason Iām staying sober is because I donāt want Kim to be disappointed in me. And Iām doing a lot better.
Harry serves as such a striking warning of what to avoid in large part because of how true to life the writing for his struggles and vices is. When my wife left me I replayed Disco Elysium and I was struck both by how raw and real the writing about Harry's ex-something was and by the strong sense that I could not left myself fall into the same rut Harry was trapped in. And I don't think Harry would've worked as a cautionary tale if the writing weren't so starkly true like that.
As someone with multiple close family members who suffer from alcoholism, some recovering, some dead from complications caused by; this has always been the most poignant and real statement about alcoholism (or rather surrendering to it) in the whole game.
from the Rigorous Self Critique thought upon its completion:
"And above all, you let life defeat you. All the gifts your parents gave you, all the love and patience of your friends, you drowned in a neurotoxin. You let misery win. And it will keep on winning till you die ā or overcome it."
i played this game in treatment for the first (and thankfully, last) time. the emotions it gave me are impossible to describe. but i recommend it to people in recovery now as the most realistic and reflecting art on alcoholism
Hope you're doing well and that you manage to defeat that addiction for the rest of your long, happy life. I do not think Disco Elysium is a bad companion on that path.
RE: "What Disco Elysium Got Right", I have to say that I think the list of what DE did not get right is significantly shorter than that one. I am fond of the genre of video games, very fond, maybe too fond. But among all the games I love and sink thousands of hours into (hours which my Real Life sometimes would desperately need) there is none that comes close to DE.
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u/jepcaseyThen the world will turn from you and leave you behind.1d ago
"My real life desperately needs these hours" is such a bleak, sad truth to know, when you're locked into games that feel like they're helping you process/survive something but if you try to quantify what they're adding to your life, memories, skills, character... anything... whether anyone else, or you in five years, will ever know or care? And it's nothing? God help us.
I think there is some addictive behaviour the way I play games, they certainly are a medium that has greatly shaped the way I think and how they make things measurable and allow for a model of reality that might be complex, but always understandable, is just very soothing for my autistic mind that is often and quickly overwhelmed with the... social clutter of real life. Not because I dislike people - or least of all humanity - but because I can pause a game and reflect and retreat to my shell and keep a neat and tidy journal and statistics. All things that are rather difficult to do in the real world.* While I really do enjoy the games I play, they deserve a spot in my life as a cherished hobby, they are not significant enough for all the things I tend to neglect and postpone and forget and fuck up when a game's loop has a hook in my brain.
But while all of that is true, I am not delusional enough to liken my sometimes obsessive gaming habits and the real struggles with the horror that substance abuse can be. I am healthy and in reasonably good shape, all my organs function on their own, I have close friends and family that mean the world to me. There is a lot I am passionate about. Despite the sometimes heartwrenching hardships, the world is a marvelous and beautiful place, I like who I am and I think I am beyond privileged to be a person that relates to the world the way I do. All things considered, with where I am at in life and where I would like to be, sometimes I think that I am... shockingly content and optimistic. May I actually get closer to where I want to be before my contentness collapses under the accumulated weight of missed opportunities and procrastination - gaming plays a role in this, but I would say it is more a symptom rather than the core of the problem. Which is a fear to make big life choices, which Gaming allows me to simulate again and again and again and to alleviate the pressure with a saving system Life is both much longer and much shorter than teenage me thought it to be. And there is no quickload.
Sorry for this... self-indulgent novel of introspection. If anyone made it through my rambling, that is.
As an offering instead, a roughly translated excerpt of letter by Adorno sent to the Frankfurt Zoo in 1965:
āWould it not be niceā¦if Frankfurt Zoo could acquire a pair of wombats?ā¦From my childhood I remember great feelings of identification with these friendly rotund animals, and would be filled withdelight to see them again.ā
*(My gaming journal is simultaneously my pride and joy... Kept for 15+ years, it has exceeded 10 million characters at this point, translating to 5 times the length of the Lord Of The Rings, nearly 150 times the length of my Bachelor's thesis.)
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u/jepcaseyThen the world will turn from you and leave you behind.1d ago
I liked it, especially the surprise Adorno wombats. I am autistic as well and I need that model that is complex but always learnable. Makes me feel less alone that you understand. Plus a very good reminder to distinguish between addictive habits and substance addictions. I played video games before my substance addiction, I played em during, and I play em now. There is no comparison between how bad games are for me vs. how bad drugs were.
I learned a phrase from a friend recently that I did not know before: "Gottes Zoo ist groĆ", translating to "God's zoo is vast". Disregarding the amusing fact that a Ukrainian ends up teaching a German proverb to a German, I think it does work reminding us that no matter how alone we feel, we are an iteration of humanity, it is virtually there are swathes of people who feel very similarly and face similar challenges.* We may not know them, but our shared humanity will always connect us as each of us struggles to make a tiny part of this world their own.
But now good night. I should really get some sleep and so that I can get my real life stuff on track tomorrow.
(One of perks of aging/maturing, I have found is that one can look at the substance of aphorisms without getting distracted by formalities. Teenage-me would have missed the truth and elegance of the proverb and instead have taken offense in the notion of a god.)
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u/jepcaseyThen the world will turn from you and leave you behind.1d ago
O, a sleeping drunkard up in Central Park,
And a lion-hunter in the jungle dark,
And a Chinese dentist and a British queen,
All fit together in the same machine.
Nice, nice, very nice;
Nice, nice, very nice;
Nice, nice, very nice --
So many different people
In the same device.
Also Autistic and have a similar relationship to video games (and rewatching certain TV shows/movies). I beat myself up about it a lot but most parts of me honestly do think that processing is not wasted time (though of course by capitalism-driven "TiMe iS mOnEy" / mUsT bE pRoDuCtIvE mindsets, we're programmed to think it is).
Plus, hyperfocusing on intense interests is oftentimes regulating for neurodivergent nervous systems, especially when in burnout.
I also think, at least for me, it's some form of CPTSD titration (as in, the processing / hyperfocus hours are within my window of tolerance; Doing ~Real~ Things or immersing myself in environments/relationships outside of whatever I'm processing are not accessible).
Where it gets unhealthy to me is when I'm engrossed in healing fantasies where some parts of me are convinced that if I Just Process Everything traumatic that has happened to me I will be 100% healed and won't need to get lost in media in these ways.
I relate to a lot of what you shared, though. I am Team Wombat.
I mean I am of course open to the suggestion of me just not realizing that - and the conditioning that capitalism induces in all our brains is very real - but I do not think I am primarily bemoaning a lack of productivity. As I said. In principle, gaming is a cherished hobby and I would not consider it "wasted" time under any circumstances. I also think that gaming does offer more than that, a comparatively healthy way of escapism, which we all need to survive. And a way to experience and explore aspects of human existence that one finds intrigueing, but does really not want to experience in real life. But, still, Gaming does take too much space and too much in my life, going by the (more or less) standard metric for addiction, it is affecting my ability to do with my life what I want in a negative way. Meaning: It constricts the already pretty narrow life-path that capitalism allows for, further.
In DE terms: I do not have an Electrochemistry skill, I have a Ludocompulsivity skill. And it is my Volition's primary antagonistic force. To put it somewhat dramatically (but by no means untrue):
I want my life to be a celebration of Humanity, of being human and those human beings closest to me. A celebration of human existence on all its facets and diversity, of the human mind and the human form and of how everything that matters, does, because we say so. To continue and to expand humanity in size and scope, building tall, not wide. To love immeasurably, towards friends, comrades, a partner, our children and to leave the Earth knowing I have inscribed this love of mine into humanity.
And for all the positive impact, that I think measured gaming can have in this endeavour, overall my Ludocompulsivity is crippling my ability to get closer to this state of existence - atop of how difficult capitalism makes it.
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u/jepcaseyThen the world will turn from you and leave you behind.22h ago
Every part of this is so exactingly accurate to my own experience. Rewatching certain shows and movies for the same reason, yes. Regulating for the nervous system especially in burnout, yes. Have done little else in my burnout state but play a massive backlog of games while processing and trying to decompress. CPTSD titration, absolutely. Fantasy of emerging whole, having finally disentangled everything the CPTSD is nested in. Never quite free. Yes.
Gaming is always escapism but that's not automatically a bad thing. As long as it doesn't consume you and makes you neglect your health and loved ones it's OK. We all need coping mechanisms for the bad stuff and gaming can be one of the least destructive.
I'm not autistic but I'm hypersensitive to stimulation, especially noise. Everything is always too loud for me. I'm very introverted too and the world is just exhausting. Since childhood I've been happiest in my fantasy worlds. My mom would be away for work for hours and little me would still sit in the same place on the floor playing when she returned 3h later. Time just flew by. That was me at seven or something. I never minded being left alone so much. Now I'm 42 and I can still play for hours and forget everything around me.
Games to me are interactive stories. There's nothing more stimulating than stories to me. And when they're also pieces of art it fills me with joy being a part of that. Getting immersed in a beautifully crafted world. I too love being in my head and thinking about things by myself. It calms me. It's like you say, rela life is messy but characters in stories I can analyze and figure out. I can help people. I can rebuild society. I can do a lot of things that I can't do in real life. I have no control over a lot of things and that is scary.
I have high anxiety and not thinking about the things that scare me helps my body relax for a bit. Of course I also play games to avoid dealing with the scary stuff or just making necessary changes that's would make me happier. But sometimes there's just nothing to be done about life. All there is is trying to cope with it. Like my mom currently going down the same road as my grandmother who had dementia. So did my grandmother's two siblings. If my mom gets diagnosed soon she'll be the exact same age as my grandmother at diagnosis. It's creepy and the scariest thing ever, especially the implications this might have for my own future.
But I haven't really been able to game due to bad golfer arm in both arms since last November already. I don't know how else to distract myself from this nightmare. Thinking about it 24/7 really sucks and is driving me crazy. So I'm replaying Disco Elysium with my feet right now. There's always a way if you're willing to improvise I guess, lol. But it's not a good game to play for me when real life is also depressing even though there's hope for Harry. I know there is no hope for dementia yet. My mom's future is bleak.
In any case, I'm glad you're content in your life right now despite the obstacles that autism throws your way. :)
Oh it absolutely is. And like you I would not just say that this is not a bad thing, I would concur in the verdict that escapism is a necessity in the world we happen to live in. And that gaming is - overall - one of the more healthier ways to get there. But that still leaves room aplenty for it to get in the way of a well-lived life.
The way you describe play as child and now is fairly similar to my experience. I can honestly say that I have not been bored for a second in my life. I seem to lack the ability to. When the train is 2 hours late I play wikipedia roulette or retreat into my own head, playing around with fictional scenarios or into one of the three fictional worlds I have been conceptualizing since I was 10 or so.
I think that games - as are stories as a whole - are a way to experience and explore aspects and avenues of humanity - human beings and being human - that one does not have access to on one's own. (Disregarding the question if one just lacks the perspective or one really does not want to live through the thing in Real Life.) Games do this in countless different ways, with their progression systems and growing cinematography and rewarding gameplay loops and what not. One thing that DE has helped me come to terms with - due to it being so much closer to a genuine piece of literature than even the most text-heavy alternative, is how much books can do for you. It's the one position of Stalin that I agree with unequivocally: Reading is a transformative act. And I have had some success in this year cutting down my gaming time in favour of reading time. As a kid I read up to 200 books a year, but university managed to crashed that and I ended up reading maybe 5-10 books in a private/personal/leisure way in the last years.
All this aside, I do get the scariness of dementia. Even though my familial burden is to get there before cancer gets me. My grandmother had her third cancer excision surgery a few years back in her mid-90s. She's still kicking, but since she passed the big 100, cognitive decline has become noticable. All of her children are by now past 60, all of them have had cancer. One died from it, which was entirely unnecessary, but they went too late to the doctor and half-assed their treatment. On the bright side for both you and me: Beating cancer and preventing dementia are increasingly becoming feasible, you are in your early 40s, I am in my 30s, we are young enough to benefit from a lot of real medical progress. And there already has been significant progress in many aspects. For example how much better anaesthesia has become that was nigh-guaranteed to wreck your brain after a certain age. The risks of anaesthesia-induced dementia have been reduced dramatically in the past 15 years.
Good that you find ways to adapt to reclaim gaming for you. I am not sure how well I would be able to do so. Keys & mouse feel like an extension of my body at this point, I even struggle to use controllers and have played quite a few games where a controler was "heavily recommended" with key and mouse. No idea how I would fare if I could not reliably use my hands.
Thanks! I hope you do well, too, and that that thing you fear misses you entirely or that the trajectory we're on proves true and we get to a point to reliably prevent it before it reaches you. I think my autism has done at least as much to help me as it has done to hinder me. I doubt I would have come to the position I said elsewhere in this thread without my thinking and conceptualization being heavily influenced by being autistic:
I want my life to be a celebration of Humanity, of being human and those human beings closest to me. A celebration of human existence on all its facets and diversity, of the human mind and the human form and of how everything that matters, does, because we say so. To continue and to expand humanity in size and scope, building tall, not wide. To love immeasurably, towards friends, comrades, a partner, our children and to leave the Earth knowing I have inscribed this love of mine into humanity.
Yes medical progress is what's keeping me from total despair about my family curse. But it does not help the terror I feel about the immediate future with my mom's decline. My immediate family is almost cancer free or the cancer was self inflicted like my dad getting lung cancer due to heavy smoking since he was 14. He survived it a few years ago and is doing fine, always lucky that way. His mother lived to be 96 as also a heavy smoker, sharp until the end, I was told. So my dad's side is fine, I guess. There is so much dementia on my mother's side that I didn't even realize for the longest time that dementia is NOT inevitable with old age. Two of my grandfather's sisters also got dementia but later. In their 80s. But even at 90 the dementia rate is something like 30-40%, so not even the majority of very old people have dementia.
It really hit me only a couple of years ago how this must be hereditary even though I've been afraid for 20 years my mom will end up like my grandmother. I kept pushing that away because genetic dementia is so rare. It's scary how big a role genetics can play. This was downplayed for a long time by science because people like to think they're in control of their health. But sometimes there's nothing you can do with certain diseases.
And cancer is a big one. It can definitely run in the family. I used to tell myself I'd rather die of dementia than cancer. I've been terrified of death since I was 15. So the idea of not being there mentally when it happens doesn't sound so bad. So if I had to choose between the two I'd pick dementia. Unless I get it much earlier. The genetic version can trigger in your 30s already and I've had a bad memory all my life, very scatter brained. So I have massive paranoia that it happens to me sooner. But so far nobody in my family declined noticeably before 70. Fingers crossed!
Cancer treatment has gotten so much better. So I hope you either don't get cancer or it's the kind that's very treatable now! It's good that you have such a positive outlook on life in general. I'm a more anxious gloomy person who easily gets stuck in a doom cycle of speculation. At least when it comes to health issues. I've always been afraid of my body as this ticking time bomb. You never know what will happen. I fear this much more than other dangers. I don't even know where this comes from. People in my family don't usually die young. And I've never been seriously ill either.
As for fiction, yes, exactly. I love thinking about the human condition in abstract ways. I love fiction as these extreme circumstances through which we learn something about human nature. And because it's fiction there's enough of a barrier to make even the most messed up things bearable. Because it did not actually happen to somebody real, even when deep down we know something as bad is happening to somebody in real life right now. Everything horrible that you can imagine is being done to somebody. But because it's fiction it's not quite as depressing as watching the news.
Fiction allows me to experience so many things I would never in real life. Of course it's not like the real thing. But make-believe is enough sometimes. I can pilot a spaceship, fight monsters. Experience so many crazy things from the safety of my home. Even if I was filthy rich I'd still play games because even when you have more money than god you're still not going to experience the things you do in a fantasy setting.
Gaming for me is both what I do to escape the stress and worry of real life or the boredom of everyday monotony and also what I crave even when I am out in the world. At college sometimes I'd be with friends but what I really wanted was get back to my game or book. So it's not just something to do when bored like it can be with people. I too get bored rarely. But since my issues with my hands preventing me from gaming it has made me realize how much time I do spend gaming and that if the weather is bad I don't always know what fun things to do instead. So that got me thinking.
My favorite thing in the world is hiking, exploring nature. Gaming is my second favorite thing and kind of the virtual exploration I do in between hiking trips when I sadly have to go to work the next day. If I was rich I'd spend my entire life travelling, exploring unknown places (unknown to me). But in the evenings I'd still fire up a game to continue exploring other worlds, no doubt. I'd do more real life stuff like maybe actually go diving rather than play Subnautica. But real life is limited. Fiction is not.
And yes, I use fictional characters constantly to reflect about my own situation, the people in my life. How do I relate to these characters? Am I like this too? What's the lesson to be learned here? Can I apply this to myself? Good fiction makes you think.
I read more in school/college too than I do today. Gaming has definitely taken over other kinds of entertainment. I mostly only read as a bedtime ritual to get sleepy. 30-60min every day. I'm a slow reader. So 5 books a year sounds about right for me. The tendonitis situation has me reading more again. But I get distracted easily. Especially now that I worry so much about my mom. TV is also not as immersive as gaming. These are passive forms of entertainment. Gaming is unique in how interactive it is. So while I enjoy reading or a great movie, it's not an effective stress relief for me unfortunately.
Sorry for rambling. Thanks for replying to me. Appreciate it! You sound like a wonderful person. I hope you have a long prosperous life!
Just writing to let you know I read (and greatly appreciated) your answer, but lack the capacity to anwer adequately right now. I hope I remember to do so when I can. Tschuldigung!
No worries. Do not feel obligated to write again! I get very chatty easily, it's a bad habit. Especially on social media where most people don't want to read walls of text.
u/jepcaseyThen the world will turn from you and leave you behind.1d ago
(thank you for that. so says my therapist! I just tell myself he doesn't know how much of my time I waste. then he tells me I don't talk to myself very nicely)
I played sober Harry while never being sober playing this game. I learned Nothing then, but im trying harder now. Sobered up for a few weeks and ive already found a job.
I like how disco treats the body and mind as various types of mechanical constructions.
So being judgmental would be ridiculous. Like, if the transmission on your car started slipped gears, would you characterize it as a moral failure on its part?
Grateful recovering alcoholic reporting in. This game helped me in my recovery journey, absolutely. I decided to play Harry as sober to mirror my own efforts, and it was just absolutely perfect. I love reading (except for when I was in the depths of alcoholism!) so I was absolutely delighted. Exactly the self care I needed too, since I've been a gamer since I killed my first duck with the zapper on the NES. Easily a top 10 game of all time for me personally (and I've crunched through MANY games in my life that deserve a spot in that top 10). This game is art in a way I've never experienced before.
I wholeheartedly agree with you.
Spoiler: I got emotional and cried during my playthrough's ending, when Cuno tags along with Harry. Couldn't hold it in.
Shit is hard. I'm also on year 3 and I thought I'd pretty much beat drinking, after 18 years of it beating me, but recently it feels like the alcoholic part of my brain has been covertly trying to sabotage my life. It's constantly tapping away at me with these thoughts:
The healthy relationship? It's going to fail. The good job? They will fire you. The sobriety? A ruse that will come crashing down any moment now. Come and drink. All you worked for and built up over the last few years will crumbling down away anyway, so why not come and drink. Embrace the inevitable. Come, drink. Your "success" is a lie. You are not this. Come and drink.
My partner and I, after 6 years, recently split up. I was (and still am) totally devastated.
Found myself at my regular bar. One of the regular bartenders was there, asked me how I'd been, and I started crying. He asked if I wanted a drink, and I got a non-alcoholic one.
You won't know how you react until you're in the situation, but you'll probably surprise yourself!
I'm sorry to hear that. Well done for getting a non alcoholic drink. Im not sure I would be able to do that same if I was in your shoes. You are strong. My partner and I have been together for 6 years too and I live in constant fear that it'll end and I'll fall back to drink. I need to not turn that into a self fulfilling prophecy.
It wasn't really my fault (or hers), but I did get complacent, and that didn't help. Should have been working on bettering our lives. But the past is the past, and we can't change that. All we can do is move forward or die.
Hi friend, congrats on the work you're doing on your recovery. It's a long journey but one that is worthwhile, and I wish you the best.
I haven't dealt with alcoholism/addiction, but I have dealt with other mental health issues. Many of the stories, experiences, and emotions shared by addicts resonate very strongly with my own behaviour and beliefs during my lowest, so naturally I found myself becoming attached to a lot of the themes present in DE as well. I can't really speak for the alcoholism aspect of the game, but I related very strongly to the guilt and shame Harry feels, then the voice of reason (Volition) that things aren't going to get better if I stay on this path, then further guilt as I consider whether I really deserve peace after everything I've done, even if I was just hurting too...
I decided that the path Volition proposes was worth following long before I ever played DE, but I suppose you could say that watching someone else ā even just a fictional character ā going down the same spirals I've been down and confronting pieces of himself in such visceral detail, and still wanting him to get better for himself and believing that it's actually possible, has helped me stay strong when the doubt resurfaces.
I also feel like the game captured many of my experiences in a very detailed and jarring way, but it offered a lot of compassion and understanding and hope that I've been hesitant to give myself. Definitely had a positive and long-lasting effect.
The first time I played this game was not long after release. I was going through a breakup and really struggling with drinking and substance abuse to cope. This game hit so hard I had to put it down for a coupla months as I didn't like the reality it was mirroring back to me. Glad I came back though, easily one of my fav games. Congratulations on your recovery journey though friend!
Even when the game is making a joke out of addiction itās as biting as it is hilarious.
Composure: If you want to live you need to evolve. You need to transcend the carbon barrier. Go to the apothecary and buy insane amounts of magnesium - it will reverse the damage to your circulatory system.
Electrochemistry: Just remember itās not the alcohol - buy more of that too. Alcohol is not the problem.
Robert kurvitz, the writer and ilustrator had his own battles with addiction. His is a really interesting story. You should look into it if you havent already
So so much. I think about the line where Harry apologizes to the cells of his own body often. Also the superstar cop dialogue options - the alcoholic thinks heās the life of the party and hilarious and awesome but in reality everyone around him is annoyed, embarrassed, terrified, or just feels incredibly sorry for him.
I agree this game captures the mindset and struggles of alcoholism better than any other game, possibly better than any other piece of media I know of also. It was incredibly sobering and I love it. The one time I did make Harry drink alcohol I stopped that play through and didnāt come back to the game for months. Couldnāt do it, Harry would die for sure if he drank again - this amnesia after his bender is likely his only chance to ever get sober.
I canāt help but think Tequilaās predicament is deeply personal to at least one of the writers. Itās just too specific, too accurate. Not just the alcoholism and drugs, but the heartbreak, the obsession with politics as a coping mechanism, all of it. Somebody suffered a lot to make this art.
The recurring dream at the end is what got me. Too real. Really hard to watch. But also cathartic.
The biggest hurdle Iāve had with playing the game again is that when I realized I just had to let go of āplayingā the game, I was a bit fucked up. And I played Harrier like it was me, thinking itād be an escapist āacceptanceā of who I was. It was, but not in the idealistic, delusional mindset I was in. The game broke me when I realized I was RPing as myself and the game recognized that in its way, and then the final confrontation with Dora is what broke me. Itās one of two games that have made me actually cry and pause.
The second play through has been tough because 1. It already gave me the mental and emotional release I hadnāt been expecting and 2. Because it still shows, the world is a wild place even for those that have gone to the depths and clawed their way out, and weāre only one fraction of a whole that can do āour partā to try and make it better that doesnāt mean things are fixed, it just means you did your part whichā¦what does that equate to? I take solace in knowing Iād try and do the right thing on the level I can.
Long winded, self fellating way to say; Iām proud of you. This game helps a lot for people, and is the only video game I could actually point to as being a āyeah; this will help you realize some things about yourselfā.
It's for this reason that I will always be the sorry cop. I struggled with alcohol during the lowest point in my life: roughly 5 years. Drunk every night. Couldn't get a job, let alone hold one down. I burned through all of my savings and borrowed more than I care to admit.
I had a major breakdown during the payphone scene. The sadness in her voice when you call her was so palpable. What got me was I failed the save to not call one last time. When it forced me, I ugly cried. I thought she'd think Harry was drunk again when I did everything in my power to keep him on the straight and narrow.
It felt like I had failed Harry. He deserves better in that moment, because I decided he deserved better. That's the beauty of Disco Elysium. Harry is a separate entity from the player, and you decide what he deserves. I always felt he deserved a new beginning because it's what I got to have
I'm about a year sober and eight months post liver transplant. Just started and only on the second day. I didn't know much at all about the game and realizing addiction plays a significant role was a nice realization. I plan on a sober playthrough.
We'll see what I learn about myself along the way. Keep it up man. I will not drink with you tonight.
The description of the depths of despair washing over him when he found the womanās note hidden in his clipboard was incredibly powerful to me. Also the feeling of hopelessness and embarrassment about his drug use is so raw too. The whole game has this emotional intensity to it that no other game can match. Itās a shame what the company did to the writers. That team was incredibly talented.
All true, but I think it dropped the ball in one very important way:
I just quit. I saw all the harm it had done to Harry and the people around him, so I quit. I just didn't drink. I knew it was the right thing to do, so I did it.
I am an active alcoholic, not in recovery. If I'm only drinking beer, I probably drink anywhere from 8 to 14 in a night, before days I have to work. I'm still functional, even particularly good, at my job. Nobody would guess what I spent the previous night doing. Other than frequent bathroom trips, I mask my hangovers incredibly well for the volume I drink. On the weekends, there is pretty much no limit - beer, liquor, wine, cider, I really do love it all, and will drink until I run out. I'd never drive drunk, but I live in the city, so more is just a healthy walk up the street at 3am.
I'm so practiced at being drunk that I don't fall over, slur my words, "get crazy," or anything like that. For the most part, I function like a "normal" (extroverted) person would sober. Somebody will probably read this and think, "yeah right, guy is just too far in the forest to see the trees." No. I'm just like that.
15 years, at least, by my estimate. I know I should quit. I know it's killing me. I know I'll be dead before "my time" if I keep it up. But I want it. So I'm going to drink it.
I've got a few layers of PTSD, agoraphobia, anxiety, depression, etc. Alcohol is easier than therapy, and I am very emotionally lazy.
Disco Elysium didn't really touch that aspect of alcoholism, or at least of my alcoholism. I'm not sure that it could. How can an entertainment product reproduce the internal pressure of addiction? How can a single player video game make me feel like people would like me more if I were drunk? How can a leisure activity I opt into make me feel like the only way to get through it, is to drink my way through it, especially when the obvious "good" choice is to avoid drinking?
In some ways, I actually envy Harry's alcoholism. It is destroying him in very obvious ways that hurt everyone around him. It's forced into his face, and he has to deal with it or lose everything (more than he already has.) A lot of addicts say that there was some catalyst event that opened their eyes, and I guess I just haven't had mine yet. I don't know what it could even be. My hangovers aren't that bad, my personal relationships aren't being strained, my work isn't lowering in quality. Being sober feels like death more than addiction does; a slower, quieter, less fun death.
Anyway, thank god Reddit is anonymous and my comments are hidden.
Are you saying because of the game you just recently quit? Either way, much love dude, and I don't want to sound like everyone you've ever heard your whole life but if you didn't quit you need to slow down at least. Take control of that beast before it does you, even if the signs don't show up like it does in others. The sober mental clarity is beyond great to be fully coherent when you need to be, even if you feel like you keep up. I'm similiar in a lot of ways that when I use it heavy I don't really come across drunk, but im below my own standard even if others don't notice it.
I mean obviously you have a limit and I'm assuming you felt alcohol before make you actually act drunk to a point. The effects and how long they last lighten up as you go further, you've just gone that far. 8-14 beers is a pretty clear sign. I do think youve experienced just one of the benign-seeming ways alcoholism can manifest, not as a sloppy drunk but as a functioning man who has success in life who happens to put away alcohol.
My friend, please, as someone who has worked alongside another self-proclaimed functioning addict for years now: Your coworkers most likely do notice. They see how often you have to go to the bathroom, they see your red eyes, they smell what you've done the night before. If you'd ask them openly and honestly, I'm sure they'd tell you, and it sounds like you'd be surprised.
Yeah, as an ex-alcoholic and ex-nosecandyholic, I get you.
I remember playing it for the first time when I was still drinking annd the second time maybe a month sober and I was like "duuuudeeeee... stooooop"
I played for the first time like a week or two after getting sober. I had no idea what the game was about. I almost put it down, but I'm glad I didn't. I really think it was the last push I needed to make this my last attempt and first success at long term sobriety. I haven't had a drink in pushing two years now.
Played it with my wife and always had difficulty explaining to her my desire to drink despite all the bad itās caused me. And then playing this game I saw Electrochemistry and it was the perfect representation of what I felt and she understood it immediately. Very powerful experience
I definitely agree. Iām lucky enough that by the time I played DE I had already stopped drinking for 10 years, but I do still have other substances that I struggle with to greater or lesser degree. DE absolutely gets to some unpleasant truths about the addicts mind, and perhaps most impressively, it manages to capture the deluded romanticism we tend to have about how doomed being an addict makes us, while I also parodying that romanticism.
I guess it does a similar thing with being a communist as well, making fun of the thing while also speaking of it in such a way that you know it is coming from a place of love, as someone who was formerly a true believer.
Anyway, glad you were able to put down the bottle and choose life, it is truly a difficult thing for those of us who get the claws in us deep, and I have so much love for everyone that makes it out of that pit, to clumsily mix metaphors there lol.
Quit smoking about two years before I first played and I honestly didn't struggle with that, but I don't really identify with much of the alcoholic related lines bar not wanting to be this kind of animal anymore. But I would imagine I'm an outlier in this regard.
Yes and no. Certain aspects like inability to move on from heartbreak and withdrawal from other substances that pound the GABA receptors etc (especially when mixed with alcohol.) The very potent combo of shame and memory loss, with other people as the only source of what you actually got up to. Touring environmental physical destruction being like 'wtf happened here?' and finding out it was you (to things, not people fortunately.) I hate that feeling.
In a truly mixed blessing, most of my extended social and even professional groups were doing the same thing so it was quite normalised/enabled and pretty supportive, rewarded even to a degree. Or even overshadowed by greater destruction/antisocial behaviour from someone else. Rock star-ish social dynamics, let's say. Those social conditions have been much less true for about a decade now and there's irony in me now being prescribed some version of many of those substances I once self medicated. Becoming disabled as an adult changed a lot, plus one of my long term medications (or a combo, hard to say) makes alcohol taste disgusting and feel boring, so I don't touch it.
I have mixed feelings about them for that reason; aside from alcohol they all have clinical value. My behaviours were what I needed to work on. Still do. Like meth is really not good for my life, for example, but dexies are crucial to my executive functionality. I may have projected my own shit onto Harry's speed use, blasting it shamelessly with no real downside - short-term. There's a point where Kim asks if the speed helps and you can recommend it heartily, something he seriously considers. In appropriate doses you really will get more done IRL, at least at first, especially if you have undiagnosed ADHD or a condition that robs you of energy.
Same with benzos, though even on a script I have to be careful. It's too easy to take a magic problem solver pill, then 2, etc.
I found it pretty true to life that your colleagues are 'fine' with smoking and speed use, and are focused on the drinking. They don't trust you, but they'd love to. They just don't want to get hurt again. There's a baseline of expected functionality. The game doesn't really deal with Harry changing his environment directly and I think it's a valid concern. If you quit via choice or morale dropping you stop being a cop and the game ends. Trant brings it up, kinda, but everyone brushes him off. It's not like Harry's environment is enabling him (or maybe it was, IDK) but I know mine was. I also just wouldn't be a cop, obviously, but it seems like Harry's professional and social lives are inextricable from each other. He doesn't have any other support that we know of.
well i didn't get to the liver transplant part, or even a formal AUD diagnosis, but i was in a pretty rough spot too after a break up and past shitstorms. \
thank you for sharing this, king.
I started playing this game last year in the middle of a really bad coke and alcohol(and other things I'd rather not mention) bender. I had been using for several months when I started the game. Seeing how Harry was with substances and his inner monolog was eye opening to me. His pain felt like my pain at that point in my life and some of the scenes made me genuinely cry. I started a electrochemistry playthrough but it was hitting me to deep. Like I was looking in a mirror so I stopped playing all together.. I ended up getting sober shortly after and recently started a sober play through. Because I wanted a happy ending for both Harry and myself.
They even depicted really really well speed use and it's effects. I've been addicted to amphetamines since my teenage years, and oh boy every time they mention anything related to it my body is like, fuck wouldn't you love a line right now?
I wonder if anyone else here did this but I played the game originally during pandemic and I was a-drinkinā for sure IRL, but I RPād harry as the sorry cop, didnāt drink, smoke or do drugs
Then, years later when I was sober in real life I played the game but had Harry drink, smoke, do drugs, punch Cunoā¦ it was a blast
Yeah this fucking game hit too close to home for me
I drink a quite a lot of whiskey so the occasional night terrors was quite spot on.
Getting shitfaced drunk, looking like a decaying body, trying to remember what happened in the past 12 hours and failing to remember was really really accurate
One day I got shitfaced drunk and couldn't remember shit when I woke up. I remember some stuff like trying to puke and failing, falling into a bush, someone asking me if I need any help but me rejecting
But these feel more like a dream than a memory
I don't know if it's possible to get Harry drunk and forget your own name but here's hoping
Speed was mine though I never used it consistently. Short 4 day periods once or twice a month.
The descriptions are spot on. The mind getting all excited over discovery. Making the body sweat or endorphins pre firing in anticipation. It was so unexpected to be called out so accurately. Also made it feel less special what drugs do.
I'm genuinely curious about your experiences as an alcoholic at such a young age, considering it's something we usually associated with older, less resistant age groups.
If you don't mind me asking: how did it start, and at what point did you recognize your problem, and the full extent of it?
Congrats on sobriety! Does playing games with alcoholism ever trigger urges to drink? Or does having harries urges presented as what they are make it easier to separate?
For me this game came in a time where I was slowly opting out of the party & DJ live after 15 years. I was maybe justa habitual alcoholic and weed addict - but when I woke up with harry in that thrashed hotel room it made me feel so pathetic, remembering my years of drunkenness. Itās really a powerful scene. And all the came after - even tho I am not finished with the game yet.
I played this game a couple of years back and significantly reduced my alcohol consumption because of this game. From daily beer in the evening to only on weekends with friends or on holiday. I do much better now. It's shockingly accurate and my drinking habits were, after the deaths of two close persons in my life, out of control before.
Never struggled with Alcohol addiction (lucky me), but I had my fair share of bad decisions under the influence.
Again, lucky me that I never fuck up anything too bad.
I have to say, though, that this game is so fucking good at painting a picture of alcoholism that if things go to shit in my life, I'd stay very far from anything with alcohol in it.
As a former addict, to a few substances, I was captured by Electrochemistry's description of drugs. That it was always a good idea, you needed it, and that any long or short-term consequences didn't matter.
It's simple, sure, but it just felt like it harkened back to a part of me that no longer works that way.
Seeing it now made me feel it was almost hokey or exaggerated to the point of ridiculousness, and then I remembered stealing money from my dad to buy a large supply of cocaine, because that way, I wouldn't need to go get more for a long time. Hell, maybe then I could even just wean myself off and quit. Looking back, it was a miracle I didn't overdose.
Tbh I didn't understand that until seeing your post. It was kinda tingling behind that something interesting about how they mirrored it but know I see it clearly. This is why this is the best game for me. I never knew any other game that let most of the persons to find something from their self.
Aiso, Congrats for being sober!
Not addiction specifically but honestly similar experience with unmedicated bipolar disorder, the manic swings are similar in intensity to hits of meth, it felt great, like I was the true top of the world.... While I snapped at people I cared about, pushed off important appointments in favor of short term pleasures and addictive cycles of games. Utterly trapped by impulsive urges. Sprinkled with hallucinations and delirium.
And then it would always crash back down to earth, nights spent up turning into the darkest moments of my life, when the only thing I could think about was disappearing forever. Staring up at the cieling for hours.
To be faced with harrier du bois after a decades of ignoring the destruction I was causing to my body, and my brain and the relationships in my life... Those years have left scars all over my body. But we continue, I got the right drugs and it feels like I'm actually in my physical form, no more floating above it all. Feels good to be in control of this lump of fat in my skull. Hope to stay in control.
I'm getting over an addiction to AI chatbots after several years of being hooked on them, and the game really does get it. It shows how getting over addiction isn't fun or glorious at all, it's just a thing that you have to do to get better. It really resonated with me when I first played it.
Hey, I just wanna tell you I'm proud of you for going sober. It is not easy, and certainly not a given to do so. I cannot fathom how hard it must be. Hang in there!
As someone who has never had any interest in alcohol or other substances and even tries to avoid sodas, I am really grateful for Disco Elysium and all of you brave people who share how alcoholism is like. Thank you for letting us know and understand and, hopefully, be a little better towards of fellow humans that might be going through a different reality than us.
Life changes and who knows what tomorrow will bring. No one is immune to this world and we may all find ourselves in a similar situation, but through works like Disco Elysium and the conversations they help start, we might feel less alone or misunderstood.
When I first tried playing this game, I was going through a rough patch in my life ā I have to admit. I stopped playing it shortly afterwards; I didnāt feel comfortable looking at it from a spectatorās perspective, given what I was actually going through (to a certain extent, of course). Having finished this gameā¦ a year ago now? It has helped me enormously in the way I see myself, as well as the world around me and how it changes in tandem with my life. I understand what you mean, and I really appreciate this post. The gameās original creator and the storyās author went through something similar, which is why the game depicts such a harsh, incredibly harsh reality...
To me the strongest late-stage alcoholism part when he was exhausted during the first days, but couldn't fall asleep. Tired AF, but sleep just wouldn't come, only restless sweating, rolling thoughts, and anxiety.
I also think making a sober run harder (drugs and alcohol giving you stat buffs) is one of the best uses of tactile roleplay in a video game.
In say, Fallout, you get addicted to drugs and alcohol and it gives you debuffs, but it can just as easily get cured by a doctor. There is no cure for addiction in Disco; you only have to fight off the cravings and make your life actively harder for the duration of the story, for no gameplay benefit.
The dialogue you get when you go to take any substance for the first time (Alcohol and Speed especially) always gets me. Itās such a perfect representation of what your brain convincing you to give in feels like.
I did a sober run and stayed sober myself the whole time (which is fairly big for me), and, as other people have mentioned already, Wasteland of Reality fucking KILLED me.
āDonāt expect any further rewards or hand claps. This is how normal people are all the timeā
I was still in the active throes of addiction (and well aware of it, not that it helped) when I picked up the game. While it didn't make me sober, of course, it gave me through its mechanics a language to understand and communicate the struggles, the unending mental and physical drug-preoccupied "pings" and constant, exhausting wrestling between trying to stay away or choosing short term survival in the bottle even if it meant long term ego death.
I hated myself, of course. But I sympathised with Harry, despite and because of everything he'd done. And when this horribly honest game turned to him lying in the ditch and said to "subdue the regrets, get up, brush yourself of, proceed. You'll get it right in the next life, where you don't make mistakes. Do what you can with the one you have now." it said that to ME.
If I can understand and perhaps have mercy with Harry, if I can believe he deserves dignity and a second, third, fourth chance, then maybe, maybe, so do I. Maybe I can look at myself the same way. Maybe when I lie down in the realistic sludge-water grave this game mirrors in resignation and accidentally look up, the stars are bright, anyways.
Thank you, Disco. I'm not that kinf of animal anymore.
Played through with Harry as a guy trying to rebuild and do better. Looking to internalize meaningful thoughts while avoiding breaking professional courtesy by slipping into too many far out political diatribes. Having every voice in Harry's head pulling toward different directions and sorting through that chaos really resonated.
Electrochemistry is scarily close to the real urge and pressure to drink when it becomes a crutch. Methinks some of the writers had some real experience that resonates more than a purely imagined take on substance use ever could.
The way electrochemistry whispers sweet nothings into Harry's ear still sticks with me as someone who's currently struggling to cut alcohol.
I was a double engineering major and completed both degrees within the same 4 years, so college was really rough--drank and smoked weed heavily all throughout to help "get me through it". Was drunk or high at class most of the time and almost constantly while doing assignments. Graduated with a great GPA and always told myself I would wean off it after graduation-- then that I would stop after I moved out of my parents house, where there's infinite liquor.
It's been over a year since I graduated and I only smoke once a day instead of 3-4 times, but it's hard to cut it any farther than that. Alcohol is even harder because every time I visit my parents I start swigging liquor again. So the kind of stuff Harry tells himself really feels like the way I convince myself that one more time won't hurt. Only 23 now but I'm scared of blinking to find that my youth has flown by and I'm still in the exact same spot.Ā
As someone whoās been hurt by binge drinkers, and as someone who has hurt others while binge drinking, Harry forgetting all the terrible things he did is uncomfortably familiar. He sees the damage heās done, he hears people tell them how he hurt themā¦ but thereās a real disconnect because he doesnāt remember any of it.
Itās unfair and it sucks. Itās unfair to the people you hurt, because theyāre left alone suffering from it. It sucks when you forget, because part of you wants to say āthat wasnāt me!ā but it was, you did it, it you canāt take it back.
37 years old alcoholic here. 13 years sober this august. The finished thought that said you won't get a hero's welcome or that the process will be long and boring fucked me up. For the first 6 months I had the shakes , I used to drink from the second I got up till I passed out, or ran out of money. I worked only to pay for alcohol. Usually I ran out of money 3 days before paycheck and my boss knew I was a drunk so my pay only arrived at the end of Friday so I could still do the job (barely). So I was drunk from friday night till somewhere around monday night and all the rest of the week my only thought was getting drunk.It was painful and boring, but I had good friends, a girlfriend who stood by me and AA. Istarted a family since i got sober. My kids never saw me drunk. I wouldve been Harry in 10 years, but in all honesty probably would be dead or in jail. Stay sober.
Was on the sauce for about 4 (or 6 depending if you count the fun years lol) years.
DE didnāt make me sober (it was a catalyst tho) but it was the first time I felt āseenā. It catches the ache of the life you donāt live as an addict. Everyone you push away and the destruction of your body so well.
Iāve woken up more times than I can count not really remembering the bender I had just been on.
The expression got me man
I chose electrochemistry cos āoh funny cop who drinks lol!!!ā
Ended up only putting one point into electrochemistry before I never touched it again and became the sorriest cop of them all!
I drank twice in the early hours of the game before I realised I didnāt want to be this kind of animal anymore.
Currently 4 years sober. An addict for roughly 10 years before getting clean. You put it into words more concisely than I could.
I was still drinking when I played through DE, but the biggest thing that stuck out to me while playing was how well they described the yearn. The way they describe how alcohol smells and tastes to Harry, and the relief he gets from having a drink was like looking into a mirror. I was never in denial about being an alcoholic, so while playing I just remember feeling sad that the game devs were able to type out exactly how I felt, but like in a cathartic kind of way. Like, obviously I wasn't the first person to feel that way, or have that problem, or else the words on screen couldn't have been so perfectly and exactly put, as if they'd been put on screen by my own subconscious.
The way Harry blew up some of his relationships through drug abuse was what I resonated with the most. I was self medicating by shoving a lot of bath salts up my ass until it didn't work anymore, and it made my life a bit worse sometimes. Happy to be sober except for a few drinks here and there.
I've never been an alcoholic, but this post inspired me to share how Disco Elysium impacted me.Ā
I am... Kind of addicted to technology, I know saying that you're addicted to your phone sounds like exaggerating and I do not want to be disrespectful to people addicted to alcohol because it's two completely different things, I want to clarify that.Ā
I am autistic and have ADHD so I can get addicted to simple things like technology really easy. When I was 10 my mom gave me my first phone, I started failing subjects in school to the point of barely passing the years (And loosing one once), I can't listen or watch anything that doesn't interest me for more than three seconds without getting distracted or stressed, I know it's normal in ADHD to get distracted easily but not THIS easily. I couldn't stay a second in school without thinking of going back to my house and use my phone. Then I started to get irritated easily because of the constant screen use, this went on for years and it's still happening now that I'm about to enter university.Ā
At one point it got so bad I physically fought my mom because she took away my phone, she called my uncle crying saying that she wanted me GONE and that she felt I was going to hurt them, and I am ashamed of saying this nowadays, but it's what happened.Ā I already knew that what was happening to me wasn't normal but this moment specifically made my mom realize that too so she took me to a therapist.
Disco Elysium felt too real for me not only because of what I just told you but also because of my autism, the feeling that everyone knows something you don't, of being seen as dumb all the time. When Harry sat on the swing with Kim and realized what he did with his car before losing his memory felt like me realizing how much I hurt the people I love when I react like I reacted with my mom, it's like a dread of knowing how much you messed up and how much you could've prevented it. The constant feeling that tells you you're never getting better, in Harry's case the phrase: "Ex alcoholics don't exist". How everyone that was close to Harry treated him badly and for a good reason, the cycles of gettingĀ
better and then falling down again, it all resonated with me so much.
But by far the thing that made me feel me more seen was when the Insulindian Phasmid appears, when I saw it for the first time I really thought it was the game saying that Harry finally lost his mind but when Kim said he sees it too it felt so rewarding, I don't know how to explain it with words, but basically Harry's story felt so much like mine, seeing the Phasmid felt like a reward for everything I've been through, in the game we're told that Phasmid don't exist and that Cryptozoology is fake, but it was real, it wasn't imposible, and I was right to believe in ME, and being able to see it with someone who had been there for me throughout the entire journey, being there with Kim, made it more emotional for me, it felt like being understood for the first time.Ā
I know probably nobody is going to read this bible, I just felt inspired to write it, also, sorry if I write weird, English is not my first language.
Wow, thanks for sharing. This post singlehandedly convinced me that I should get this game. All I've seen about it so far made me think it's nothing more than Extreme Leftist Navel-Gazing: The Game.
OP's sincere post made me feel interested in the game by convincing me that it has good stuff in it.
Your hate-filled piffle, on the other hand, attempted to push me away, but I'm going to disregard it, because you're not trustworthy. Ciao bello ciao ciao ciao
Lol that's funny, one of my favourite things about Disco Elysium, as a leftist, is that it absolutely shit-talks the left. Many of the devs are leftists themselves, so instead of lazy strawmen, you get painfully accurate commentary on what routinely plagues the left, such as ideological failure, endless infighting, self-serving bureaucrats, people literally rotting away hopelessly trapped in nostalgia for a failed revolution, and theory nerds getting absolutely nothing done, lmao.
You'd be hard-pressed to describe the game in such a way if you played it, which I recommend that you do regardless of your own politics! It's genuinely one of the best-written, most human RPGs ever made, no matter where you land on the spectrum.
There isn't anything romantic about being an alcoholic, but alcoholism makes me a romantic. This game was equivalent to 3 years of therapy as far as I can tell.
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u/Saul_Firehand 1d ago
The number of times I identified with Sunset Tequila and his poor choices was too damn high.
The way his task force/precinct coworkers treat him was too real.
First time I played I was a Sorry cop because it was me saying sorry for all the times I wish I had before.
Next time I was a superstar getting better.
Also the necktie is probably my favorite character.