Sober In A Smoke Filled Room

An ex-colleague came to the Netherlands for a concert, and we met for a few hours. He's a nice guy, except for his nasty habit of always having an excuse for not making art, which drives me crazy. Even though it frustrates me, I do get it. To get anything done, I have to be slightly obsessed. Similarly, for me, it's impossible to use drugs only once in a while. My friend wanted to smoke weed, which you can do at a coffeeshop in the Netherlands. Weed used to be a daily habit of mine, which I had wanted to quit probably as soon as it became one. So I was reluctant as I hadn't been to a coffeeshop since getting sober. And I knew I wasn't ready to smoke without likely quickly falling back into a habit. But I believed I was ready not to get tempted (and I begged my friend to give me nothing if I asked). Honestly, due to recent anxiety, even thinking of smoking makes me nervous, so it wasn't difficult. That's what this painting captures: anxiously, though unrelated to the setting, sitting in a coffeeshop for the first time since becoming sober, next to my friend who's probably explaining for the fifth time why he can't just paint.