What does it mean to be high-functioning

[In response to a comment by ruthcurry]

I guess I didn’t see it before, because Sherlock doesn’t read as necessarily ‘impaired’ or in an altered state of consciousness in that scene, but that’s the point you’ve been making all along, right? That high-functioning use is not chaotic or somehow ‘lesser.’

I have a lot of ambivalence about this. On one hand, I strongly believe that intoxicant use is a part of the normal spectrum of human experience, that drug users are a stigmatized group, that many of the harms of drug use are related to stigma and criminalization and not the drugs themselves, and that drug users are a group whose human rights are routinely violated

But my own experience as a “high-functioning” drug user was complicated. First, when I was actually high, I was clearly altered/impaired. That was the point. I hated getting out-of-control or totally obliterated, but it certainly happened, usually by accident, but also when I tried to replace speed or heroin with alcohol. But one of the things I wanted from intoxicants was the feeling that I was “off the clock” which was something that was very hard for me to manage on my own. (And I want to make it clear that I am not talking about maintenance use of opiates or opiate substitution therapy or pain medication or ADHD meds or psych meds.)

But beyond that, even when I wasn’t actively high, I was really not at my best during the five years when I was using heroin and speed. I was an emotional wreck and my relationships were a disaster, and I used functioning in school as a way to convince myself it was OK (in a way that I even at the time recognized as a parallel to my father’s relationship to alcohol). I was also (as marginalutilite has pointed out) hanging out with a pretty self-destructive and in-your-face crowd, and that didn’t help with moderation. I’m still not sure if I would put myself in the 80-90% of people who do drugs and don’t have a problem (no jail, no rehab, never homeless, graduated magna, managed not to fail out of graduate school) or in the 10-20% who do.

I had some epically unhealthy relationships, but that was true before I started using drugs. Going straight from nerd to druggy definitely left me with some holes is my social education, and I still wish I could figure out a safe way to be as outgoing as I was back then. It’s also hard to tease out what was stigma and what was the drugs themselves because I probably had some undiagnosed mental health issues (because 14 years later, I still have issues with depression and anxiety) that were very hard to deal with while I was using drugs, maybe because of me, but also because the management of dual diagnosis was pretty primitive in the 90’s (still is for the most part). So now that I’m 40 and have a good job and a family and don’t do drugs, I can go to a therapist and feel seen and safe, in a way that seemed impossible when I was in my early 20s.

To get back to His Last Vow, and the question of what it means for “a man like Sherlock Holmes” to use drugs, or to have used drugs in the past (there is the weird decade-long hole in his backstory, between graduating from college – where everyone hated him – and the beginning of ASiP). Sherlock is high-functioning in some ways (he is passionate about and very good at his work, even if he doesn’t have the prestigious job his brother wishes he did) and totally dysfunctional in others (too long to list). And I’m not sure it’s really possible to answer the question of whether he has the emotional maturity of a pre-teen because he used drugs to keep from having to grow up, or because of the “Alone protects me” thing, or because of whatever makes his defense mechanisms seem like the better option.

And I do think Sherlock is acting altered in the beginning of HLV (at least up until his magical bathtime with Janine) and we don’t actually see him trying to deduce anything. But Sherlock-in-a-bad-mood seems to be an altered state in and of itself (see this wonderful retelling of the beginning of Hound of the Baskervilles from Sherlock’s point of view). But, no, nowhere near as impaired as when he was drunk in TSo3.

Would a man like Sherlock Holmes be a coke addict today?

"I think you’d have to ask the question, would a man like Sherlock Holmes be a coke addict today? In Victorian times everybody was taking some kind of drug, largely because there was no such thing as a painkiller. It is a very different thing to say that Sherlock Holmes is a coke addict now."

— Steven Moffat, quoted by Morgan Jeffery, “‘Sherlock’ to play down drug use.” Digital Spy. Thursday, Jul 15 2010.

This quote has been bugging me for a while, because I read it as, “I cannot imagine someone who is very smart, someone who is successful in their field, ever having done drugs.” (Because even in the original stories, Holmes is only actively using drugs in a A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four, and Watson spends the rest of the stories worrying about him.)  And Gattis dismissing Holmes’ drug use by saying, “there are more references to Sherlock Holmes laughing than there are to taking cocaine or morphine” doesn’t help, since you could say the same about Mycroft, and they’ve clearly decided to make him a HUGE part of the show.  To me Sherlock Holmes is the archetypal high functioning drug user.  And, yeah, he has a whole slew of interpersonal problems, and, yeah, he cannot stand to be alone with his own brain without chemical assistance, but in contrast to Isa Whitney in “The Twisted Lip”, his drug use is not chaotic; he does not lose days at a time.  And in a pattern that is probably familiar to a lot of people, his drug use gives way to his passion for his work (even if his relationship to his work is pretty unhealthy).

So all the little sly references to drugs in the first two seasons of Sherlock, the fake/not-fake drug bust, the nicotine patches on his inner elbow, the Danger Night, the “seven percent stronger” quip, just pissed me off — either leave the drugs out completely or deal with them in a way that respects the original stories. (And why is everyone so obsessed with the seven percent thing?  They don’t make seven percent pharmaceutical cocaine anymore and I’ve never heard of anyone shooting street drugs that dilute, even if all the harm reduction guides recommend dilute solutions.)

So now we get to finally see Sherlock-on-drugs to hear some of the backstory, and it’s pretty much what the fandom consensus expected (though opiates instead of cocaine) and I guess the writers either didn’t want to tip their hand about upcoming plot points, or just changed their minds.  I’ll be interested to hear what they have to say.  Did they literally mean that they couldn’t imagine Holmes doing cocaine (but that other drugs were OK) or were they just being dismissive of all current and former drug users for the fun of it.

---

I was going to bring up the similarity to the queerbaiting issue, but was nervous about it, since it is always going to offend somebody when you compare one stigmatized group to another.  But I definitely see the parallel.  Though after The Sign of Three, I was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt and tell myself that they were starting to actually deal with John and Sherlock’s relationship and maybe they just didn’t want to take on every hot button issue at once.  But I guess that’s not it.

In terms of the actual text of the show.  I think Sherlock is very clearly supposed to be high at the beginning of the episode (even if that was not the case in “The Twisted Lip”).  (And even though he is also clearly wearing makeup, since he looks significantly healthier after taking a bath.) First, I didn’t hear Molly saying “Clean”; I heard her asking “Clean?” as a (really pissed off) rhetorical question.  ( I just rewatched the exchange, and I still think that’s what she’s saying.)  Also the line later, when Sherlock has Mycroft in an arm lock, “Don’t appall me when I’m high.”

 

(no subject)

"But, you know, I have been trained as an actress myself. Male costume is nothing new to me. I often take advantage of the freedom which it gives."

—

Irene Adler in “A Scandal in Bohemia” Aurthur Conan Doyle, 1891

Is anyone else disappointed that we never got to see Irene dressed as a boy?