Glad you had a good night.
Alcohol isn't really my ideal 'equalizer' though. I favour opioids, because unlike alcohol, MD(x)A (where 'x' is an alkyl substituent or bare primary amine if MDA or one of the benzofuranyl/benzodifuranyl
analogs of 'E'), cocaine or any other stimulant, caffeine included, they leave me clear-headed completely as long as the dose isn't big enough to make me sleepy or knock me out. Kills anxiety if any, completely, but without turning me into a drunken oaf, or egomaniac (although I rarely EVER take such a stimulant dose as to do so, unless it is at home, alone, without company, so no matter how many grams of meth/3-fluorophenmetrazine/ or methyl/ethylphenidate I smoke/shoot there simply isn't another person there to bother or annoy, and just stay there reading books, playing videogames, or working in the lab.
I don't NEED anything at all though just to socialize. I just pick and choose WHO I socialize with, pick those I am comfortable with, or new to meeting and thus deciding how much, or IF I wish to associate with them at all, and if so, when.
First meetings I want to keep clearheaded, although I have nothing at all, nothing whatsoever, about sharing a few rounds of drinks, or passing the bong/doobie around, if its not mine and it gets offered
by a totally new someone, then certainly I'll toke away and take what is offered me. Likewise, share my own if its someone worth it.
But I don't go getting drunk and sloppy. I want my wits about me lest the person or people turn out not to be decent human beings and need to be either avoided entirely, or dealt with. Although
like having a few pints or a toke, if someone OFFERs me a line of charlie, etc. then yeah, I'll bite, with gratitude. But I'd not really be that inclined to say, snort my way through a gram of coke, or take
huge quantities of H (although I confess, its a lot, a great massive huge deal easier to tempt me with a bait of gear or other opioid(s) than it is with almost anything else of a psychotropic nature)
I have done things like meet someone and spend about a week with someone I'd only just met, sharing his (freely given) methadone and smoking his likewise freely offered H off of slivers of baking foil.
Both of us ended up more or less crashed out, utterly hammered, flopped down on a couple of sofas.
Quite a bit of....questionable activity occurred during that week, after we both returned to a state where we didn't have to crawl to the loo on all fours to take a leak (no, not sexual, it was a guy, a totally random dude I'd ended up getting talking to, and going back to his place after I'd spent some time in hospital after getting injured. Guy was kind enough to look after me, keep food around for me, let me share his gear without asking a single thing in return, realized I was sore, tired, shellshocked and miserable, all I'd done, IIRC, was ask him if he had a lighter, or a spare cigarette, but it ended up first a talk then going back to his place and getting munted.
No idea even what his name is now, it was quite a while back. Despite some fairly serious criminal activity (non-drug related, he had to secure us transport by dragging the owner out of a car and borrowing it to get to his place. Can't believe he asked NOTHING, in return for as much heroin, and as much methadone as I could tolerate, literally an all-you-can-eat buffet, only with gear instead of chow, although he didn't let me go hungry or thirsty either. He knew I hadn't money, a phone or way to get home. So he just let me stay and party, smoke both his tobacco, his weed and his (really fucking GOOD) hash too. And once I'd recuperated from my hospital stay and we had finished chilling out for that week-week and a bit, then let me use his own phone to ring my dad and get him to come round and give me a lift back home again (we couldn't use the original car, as he'd hijacked it, so it had to go, and besides, either one of the two of us behind the wheel, that would have ended up with SOMEBODY getting squashed into person-SPAM because neither of us was in a fit state for driving, legally or not. Couldn't care less about the mere letter of the law, licenses etc. But I would certainly care about not killing anybody who has done nothing at all to earn death or injury.
The kind of socialising like THAT though doesn't happen regularly!