Drugs

Lately, I find that the open use of drugs is becoming more and more acceptable and it makes my stomach turn. I am fearful of it as I would be rushing into a burning building. I want to stay as far away from it as possible and can’t possibly understand why anyone else is standing up close roasting marshmallows on the open flame.

I have always had this aversion to drugs. In fourth grade I read a book called Go Ask Alice. This book shook me to my core and I read it over and over. There was something similar in where me and my sister had come from, and where we could end up and it terrorized me. More than the Edgar Allen Poe book I got for Christmas the same year. So while my sister took a somewhat less traumatic path down ‘Alice’s’ road, I have stood firm and resolute against drugs and anyone who uses them. But they are everywhere.

I boarded the Blue line today to go see the sand sculptures at Revere Beach. The train was packed with a mixture of airport passengers and beach goers, three of which were stoned out of their mind. I sat a few seats up and across from them and watched in morbid fascination. They looked the very part that you expect drug users to look. Snaggled tooth and crazy snake eyes, mouth gaping open and delayed motions. When one woman would try to look up and focus, tremors raced through my body. I felt as if I were sitting with the devil himself.

At one point the man dropped a pill on the floor and it rolled between me and a young guy sitting across from me. The man teetered over to grab it off the sticky dirty floor of the subway car and popped it into his mouth. And they talked about their kids. They were somebody’s parents!

So it can almost be easy to be repulsed by this kind of drug user. But what about my co-workers who openly talk about smoking pot? Or getting wasted the night before? Or how about an article I just read from a journalist who went to a famous celebrity party and talked candidly about how everyone, EVERYONE does drugs? The article made me want to boycott movies for the rest of my life except movies are my drug.

And mostly it just makes me so, so, sad. I love having the control to move my fingers and talk and think clearly and to sleep and wake according to a natural rhythm. I can’t imagine taking something that takes that away from me.

I will never be curious to try drugs, but I am curious to know why others use them. I’m also curious to know why any adult thought these books were appropriate for a 4th grader.?.