Thursday, February 10, 2011

Get High in Few Puffs


From the first day of school there are those who are born to succeed, those born to fail, and those who don’t even bother to try. This is the root of the plant that gives out big green leaves, which dry out in the heat of misery, are rolled into sheets of failure, lit with the burning flame of loss, of pain, of insecurity, of fear and inhaled with inhibition, perplexity and reticence. But as an intense high silently infests the body, nerve after nerve, it all fades away. All that remains is an imprisoning freedom, a liberating confinement.

The reason why people take or do drugs may not entirely be an attempt to make the obstacle course of life seem a tad easier, but it definitely has a lot to do with running away, from a lot of things – people and faces, the past and the present, inner and outer demons or just running away for the heck of it. But many of them run too far, so far that there is no more ground to rest their feet on, and no wings to fly. The fall is hard, especially when they hit the ground. Then the pain ceases. There is nothing to run from, for there is no life. Not any more.

Youth is probation of sorts before real life begins. It is the practice session for life’s obstacle courses, a test drive before the actual race, the first coat of nail polish. It is when we are born. The sad part is that it is during this probation, that we crumble most often.

Substance abuse, drugs, alcohol, risky sexual behaviors and crime threaten the youth as much as involve them. Weed, cocaine, heroine, dope, ecstasy are familiar names for this generation, more familiar than they should be.

Drug abuse precedes addiction. It starts when one makes a conscious decision to take substance. What may start as fun, play, experimentation, peer pressure to try something exciting and dangerous or simply a way of finding refuge from depression, can lead one to addiction. Statements like ‘ I’m not addicted’, ‘I can quit whenever I want to’, ‘I’m in control’, ‘ It’s not like other drugs’, ‘ It’s actually good for you’, ‘I know everything about it’ or ‘ I can go off it in a know everything about it’ or ‘ I can go off it in a day’ only certifies how little one knows about drugs and how diverted one is from the reality of the fact that it ain’t all that easy. There is a reason why drug addicts need rehabilitation, because they have a compulsive carving, which they conveniently deny and cannot quit by them.