Regarding Drugs

YOU ARE SO MUCH COOLER AND FUN WITHOUT THEM.

Here is a big secret: you are much happier without them, too.

What I mean is, drugs make a lot of things seem okay. You use them to escape from your crappy job, your stress and problems, your ugly surroundings or your boring relationship. You use them to make the party more fun. You use them because you are bored. You use them because you are lonely, or to fit in with your friends. You use them to expand your mind. Sometimes you use them out of habit because they are there. Sometimes you use them because you think you need them because you are an addict. Whatever the reason, you use them to feel happier.

Unhappiness is a motivator and, whether you like it or not, a gift. You need to use it as a tool – it will help you guide your life into directions that will make you happier. If you mask your unhappiness with drugs, you become okay with all of those aspects of your life that you could easily change, like a bad job, lonliness, debt or a crappy apartment. You just keep masking it and need more drugs, and then you burn out.

I know that this entry makes me sound judgemental, boring and possibly hypocritical. I mask my unhappiness with cigarettes, I make the party more fun with beer, and I take sleeping pills to sleep which probably means that I’m masking my stress or anxiety. But there are alternatives that I’m trying. I run instead of smoking. I go to weird events instead of bars. I still take more sleeping pills than I should, but I’m getting there. The point is even though I have my vices, I understand that there are positive alternatives, and if I have an ounce of extra strength in me then I give those alternatives a whirl. More often than not, it’s rewarding.

I have many, many circles of friends and one reason I don’t stick to a core group anymore is because I have lost a lot of friends to drugs. They infect circles and that’s when I have to bail. Nothing breaks my heart more than when cool, fun people I love fry their brains and turn into shells or shadows of the amazing people they used to be. Nothing makes me roll my eyes more than people who complain about being broke as they dig through the gigantic bags of dope that they just bought. Nothing is more frustrating than people staring blankly at whatever, too incapacitated to talk or understand what I am talking about. There may be a party going on inside of your head, but from an outsider’s perspective it is seriously lame. Look around! NO ONE IS SMILING ANYMORE, including you.