Zapoi / Zapoy
A couple of my favorite experiences are trying to explain to non-Russians the concept of "zapoi" and conversely, trying to explain to Russian people that the rest of the world has no idea of what "zapoi" is and are totally stumped when it is explained to them, that it exists, and what it means.
But over the years of pondering Zapoi, I came to the conclusion that it exists only in Russia for perhaps a certain set of reasons and that it is not a completely random phenomenon.
For centuries Russia has had an unusually high portion of its male population composed of men who have experienced war. While some other countries have had that for periods of time around World Wars, Russia has had more wars from Napoleon to World Wars and a higher percentage of its male population participate in them than anyone else.
When people are exposed to horrors of war they are often left with PTSD. Or what is now referred to as PTSD but 50 years ago was an undiagnosed and unknown mental health condition. The shortest possible explanation of PTSD in lay terms is that it is an experience of overwhelming negative emotions which are a consequence of the horrific nature of the war itself. It is emotional trauma specific to war and different from other emotional trauma such as family trauma or other difficult emotional experiences.
In Russia, men returning from war had no access to mental health help and they were supposed to plug back into daily life just as if nothing happened to them, which is similar to the experience of any soldiers coming back from a war. But in Russia, this was shared by a much larger segment of the male population and what developed over time as a coping mechanism, I believe, was zapoi.
The meaning of it is a state of continued intentional drunkenness for at least a couple of days where the first thing one does upon waking from a drunken stupor is to drink more in order to achieve the blank, numb state again and fall asleep (more like lose consciousness). Often, one does not end up in the same location where the sequence started and men truly go missing for a while.
In the absence of electric shock therapy or microdosing of hallucinogens to help veterans deal with PTSD, Russian men drank for a few days to achieve, for a period of time, a state where no emotions, thoughts or memories were present. An alcohol induced coma of sorts which was a very manifest "thing" that one did in order to get past all the "troubles". It was a socially accepted thing that men had "troubles" by definition and that one best leave them alone when they are "dealing with them".
Of course, over time, it developed into a male coping mechanism for just life and was not happening only with men who have experienced war. When veterans were half of the male population, the rest of the men did simply what the other men did. And once established as a coping mechanism it was embraced as such to an extent by society. Not as a good, laudable thing but rather as an unavoidable necessity at times.
But over the years of pondering Zapoi, I came to the conclusion that it exists only in Russia for perhaps a certain set of reasons and that it is not a completely random phenomenon.
For centuries Russia has had an unusually high portion of its male population composed of men who have experienced war. While some other countries have had that for periods of time around World Wars, Russia has had more wars from Napoleon to World Wars and a higher percentage of its male population participate in them than anyone else.
When people are exposed to horrors of war they are often left with PTSD. Or what is now referred to as PTSD but 50 years ago was an undiagnosed and unknown mental health condition. The shortest possible explanation of PTSD in lay terms is that it is an experience of overwhelming negative emotions which are a consequence of the horrific nature of the war itself. It is emotional trauma specific to war and different from other emotional trauma such as family trauma or other difficult emotional experiences.
In Russia, men returning from war had no access to mental health help and they were supposed to plug back into daily life just as if nothing happened to them, which is similar to the experience of any soldiers coming back from a war. But in Russia, this was shared by a much larger segment of the male population and what developed over time as a coping mechanism, I believe, was zapoi.
The meaning of it is a state of continued intentional drunkenness for at least a couple of days where the first thing one does upon waking from a drunken stupor is to drink more in order to achieve the blank, numb state again and fall asleep (more like lose consciousness). Often, one does not end up in the same location where the sequence started and men truly go missing for a while.
In the absence of electric shock therapy or microdosing of hallucinogens to help veterans deal with PTSD, Russian men drank for a few days to achieve, for a period of time, a state where no emotions, thoughts or memories were present. An alcohol induced coma of sorts which was a very manifest "thing" that one did in order to get past all the "troubles". It was a socially accepted thing that men had "troubles" by definition and that one best leave them alone when they are "dealing with them".
Of course, over time, it developed into a male coping mechanism for just life and was not happening only with men who have experienced war. When veterans were half of the male population, the rest of the men did simply what the other men did. And once established as a coping mechanism it was embraced as such to an extent by society. Not as a good, laudable thing but rather as an unavoidable necessity at times.
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