A lot of things these days all seem to lead to drugs. It seems like wherever I turn, I can’t escape them because something new will come up and I’ll be staring them in the face yet again.

And it all started when I got into high school.

I don’t mean when I got there, some senior came up and offered me a joint. No, a lot of things aren’t the way they’re made out to be. A lot of them come gradually, and before you know it, you’ll be living your life with it right under your nose and you’ll realize that curious smell isn’t what you thought it was.

I won’t name names. I’m not that kind of person, you know? But it needs to go somewhere and why not here? The Internet isn’t as anonymous as I’d like, but it’s better than putting this on paper so my hand hurts and no one ever reads it so I feel like I’ve wasted my time. Maybe no one will read this anyway, but it feels good to know there’s that possibility. All I want is to know that.

It seems like everyone I know is involved in drugs in some way. My best friend, who got arrested for ‘lifting a while back, has parents who work with drug dealers and the other scum of the earth (not with, exactly, but that’s all I’ll say.)

On the subject, the most she’ll ever say is, “People who do drugs are stupid,” and I know it won’t be her talking. It’ll be her parents and the school.

My biggest pet peeve: censorship. Not about like, cussing, because sometimes even I can’t stand to listen to it because of my society-trained sensitive ears (yes, I too am a conformist), despite hanging around some people who use words like mo-fo every other thing they say.

I’m talking mostly about drugs. How you can’t talk in school about them, not where staff are listening and not to your friends. You can’t joke about them because apparently drugs aren’t a laughing matter, something I find rather ironic considering the side effect a lot of my friends have from drugs is laughter. And you can’t talk about pills or powder, not even in Health.

That brings me to my next victim. She’s new to my school, a real spoiled kid by the look of it. She said she used to be real rebellious in middle school but now she’s straightened up except for the occasional smoke. She’s taking Health, and this is basically how she describes the class, with me summarizing what she said because I can’t remember it exactly:

“I have an essay due tomorrow about the side effects of marijuana, and if I like it and why, or if I don’t like it and why. My brother’s in the class with me. And when the teacher started listing things that were bad about it, I asked why he thought it was so bad. He came over and asked if I’d tried it and I said yeah, so what? Who hasn’t tried it? And the teacher asks the class who has tried it and everyone sits there and the only one who raises their hand besides mine is my brother. But I know for a fact most of the kids in that class hang out afterschool just to pop a few or smoke, but none of them raised their hands. And the teacher glares at both of us, and I know then that he’s going to remember what we’ve said and even though I haven’t smoked a joint in nearly two years, he’ll assume that I still do it just because I’ve tried it. I mean, I’ve tried Ecstasy too and that makes you totally trip out, and once I ran into a parked car on it with my boyfriend. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to do it again. I mean, my dad even knows I’ve done it and all he did was get out the video camera and watch us make idiots of ourselves and show it to us later. That’s why I don’t do it anymore. Not because of some list on the board and a teacher who gives me a C because I admit I tried it. If you ask me, he has too.”

So it’s kind of long, but we were talking for a while. Mostly it was about how addicting some of the stuff can be. And a lot was about how ridiculous it is that schools tell kids not to smoke weed.

And it doesn’t work. I can say that right now. At least 70% of my friends have tried it, and at least 20% have done worse. Sometimes I’m not sure how many still are, and it makes me sort of sad.

This is a lot like the abstinence program. I heard about these studies that showed schools that provided birth control to students had an exponentially lower teen pregnancy rate. (Well, dur.) But then all these other districts and organizations were saying that this only compounded the problem because it encouraged kids.

Um, what? I’m sorry, but can you say that again?

I’m just saying, telling kids not to do something just makes them want to try it more because they wonder why it’s so important, to have all these adults tripping over themselves trying to stop it. Why don’t we do what those East-coast schools did and teach kids to do it safely?

Well sure, that could be considering encouraging them, but if it saves lives, why is there all this arguing?

I don’t get it.

For me, it’s not facts and statistics that keep me from trying drugs. I could get them in a snap. In fact, I could get them within the next half hour but there’s more stopping me than some figure on gateway drugs and side effects. No one has ever died from smoking marijuana. Even if nothing else is true, I’m pretty darn certain that is.

So why don’t I? Because the way a close friend of mine describes the high, it’s like finding peace with yourself. Nothing is worrying you because you live in the moment, for every breath and every second.

That sounds lovely. In fact, I’d go seek out some of the green but for my own preferances, which have nothing to do with what the school teaches me. They have nothing to do with what we learn in Health class, having bad things shoved down our throats and we’re not allowed to talk about the good.

If I find that peace, I want it to be real. I want to be able to keep it forever, make it last. I don’t want to have it for a few hours because even going in, I’d know that it wouldn’t last. Nothing good that you don’t fight for ever lasts.

Also, I see what it does to the people who don’t do drugs. And what it does to the people who do, without their knowledge.

I know this kid, who may or may not be considered my friend, who goes to his house every night smelling like marijuana smoke. And his parents notice it but they don’t do anything because they don’t think there’s anything they can do. So they just let it be and watch in horror as he flushes his life down the toilet for three hours of glory. And then three more. And three more. And eventually he’s living the glory, but not much else.

And then he’ll wake up off the high and realize what he’s done. And he’ll get back on because he knows what he’s done is not good and the road he’s on can lead nowhere but to that dead end.

He’s tried just about everything, I believe. No, not everything. I heard about this new drug…I don’t think he’s tried it yet. But he will. Meth, heroin, coke, ecstasy–I mean, you’d think he’d be completely hooked, right? But that’s just the thing. The only drug he stays on for a while is weed.

I guess he’s just one of those people who don’t get addicted. At least, not to the things everyone else does.

But even then, it makes me sad. It makes me sad that people are so fake these days that they have to find happiness in burning grass. It makes me sad to think there’s nothing else they like better, and that the only reason some people get hooked is because they tell you at school not to do something and then you go out and do it.

Plus it makes people look and act like retards. And maybe that’s a good thing because it means that for a while they don’t care about what the world thinks about them, but what they think about themselves, but what kind of life is that? I know people shouldn’t worry about how they look and how the world sees them, but drugs make people alienate themselves from everyone else. No matter who you smoke with, the high is still your own and nothing’s ever going to change that.

I’ve lost touch with my friend. He’s doing better then he was before, when he was failing his classes and he was so depressed it hurt to look him in the eyes. And now he has drugs and what does it say about the world that the only way he can be happy with himself is through something that doesn’t last?

Maybe it’s better to have fake happiness than to be depressed all the time. I know it’s not, in some ways, as big a deal as the school makes it out to be. In some ways I know it can kill, but it kills because it releases a person’s inhibitions. It’s like nowadays, we need inhibitions to survive. And when we don’t have any, we get into accidents and people die and the way we live has allowed for that. People are built up on law and order. I don’t think they’re ever built on happiness or peace like they’re supposed to.

So that’s the biggest reason I don’t think I’ll ever do drugs. Because I see how it makes your family sad and it makes you not care about life. And when you stop caring about life you stop getting further and eventually you just stop. And while you might have the high, it lasts only for a time and then it dies and you’re left with the consequences of your neglect. You wake up and find yourself failing and you drop out. Then you fall into the glory again and the next time you wake up, you’re in a jail cell with a roomie named Bubba.

Then what?

Well, this has got to be the longest post I’ve ever written. But there was a lot to say and maybe someone will actually read it, and if they do I hope they don’t think I’m callous for saying there are some pretty darn good things about drugs, and that the way schools deal with drugs just plain ‘ol sucks. Because it does. It completely does and it just doesn’t work. I could think up alternatives but they wouldn’t be considered because I’m only a kid and what do I know? Except in this case, don’t I know at least a little?

I just wonder if this really is how high school was like when my parents were growing up. I’m sure they could get drugs as easily, but was the system so inefficient? Were there as many useless ideals and denial? Was everything so fake?

~

Update: 29 August 2008

The drugs have died down. I think it was worse my freshman year because it was so noticable when someone came to class smelling like pot. Is it a sad thing to say a person eventually gets used to those sorts of things?

When I say, “Pot smells disgusting,” some people give me strange looks and others just accept it as is. I can always tell the people who’ve never seen grass in their life by the way they react. I can also tell the people who’ve done it, like it, and/or are still doing it.

Sometimes all that fakeness turns out to be pretty darn transparent.