#speaking of. bipolar kazuto. when are we having that conversation.

[pitohuimaki]

okay, i mentioned it in this ask here but a couple of people wanted me to open this conversation, so let’s do it

tw: mentions of alcohol, drinking problems and generally heavy mental health stuff

again, a disclaimer, this post is just my opinion and my thoughts based on what we see in the series. i’m not saying this is what reki intended to be canon and i’m not saying you have to agree with me.

i can’t see [kazuto or asuna] being regular heavy drinkers but i think if they’re out with friends and the mood is there they might have a drink or two

but i do think kazuto would ~drink iykwim

i said i thought kazuto would ~drink, and what i meant by that is, i think kazuto has/is vulnerable to developing a drinking problem. i don’t think he would necessarily be a heavy drinker in every social situation, nor am i saying i think he would be consistently drunk or dependent on alcohol for significantly extended periods of time. but i do think that, at times, kazuto would drink as a way to cope and we already see him struggle to decline alcohol in the series.

in volume 10, chapter 6, kirito says that it was a “considerable act of self-control” to only have two glasses of the wine leina serves. this isn’t really “evidence” (? i can’t think of a better word atm) of an issue on it’s own, but this combined with a couple of other things made me want to keep it tabbed as a minor flag.

in volume 9, chapter 5, kirito says that, despite it not being articulately strong, one long swig of the alcohol in the village is enough to make his face hot. we know that kirito has a relatively low tolerance for alcohol anyway (i don’t have the source off the top of my head, but i believe it’s mentioned in one of the lisbeth (?) scenes in lycoris), but he drinks way more than he can handle and ends up needing selka to walk him back to the church while she scolds him for drinking too much.

particularly notable, kazuto says that he drank so much because he was trying to forget his uneasiness and his general homesickness/anxieties/etc. “it took another three cups of the apple beverage for me to forget about my unease and rejoin the intoxicating dance circle.” NOTE he says another three cups, it’s safe to assume he’d only had one cup before, but we don’t know how much he actually had that night.

okay, so... why does any of this matter?

kazuto has ptsd. kazuto has severe ptsd, as well as depression and anxiety. kazuto admits to the fact he doesn’t always cope with that in healthy ways. he often shuts people out and self-isolates, self-destructs, and engages in reckless and harmful behaviour. it’s not much of a stretch to think he could, potentially, drink to cope at times.

i think, when kazuto is going through his moods when he’s shutting down, he could potentially drink as a way to distract himself and make himself forget. we see him do it in volume nine, where he drinks to forget the fact he feels upset.

say he had a bad ptsd attack irl, it’s entirely plausible to think that he would use the alcohol he can readily get (midori keeps beer at the house, at the very least, and one of his close friends own a bar) as a way to cope with it.

personally, it’s just something i believe because of kazuto’s personality, his ptsd and the way he acts. i have personal experience with this kind of thing and notice a lot of the red flags in kazuto (i could go into it more, this post is already too long and a LOT of my other thoughts on this general topic also lead into a discussion of kazuto and bipolar disorder, which is a conversation i’m happy to open as well)