A Hazy Shade of Winter

Why do people do drugs? In our war on drugs and those who use them, no one has really asked this simple question. Why would someone ingest chemicals that they know can’t be good for them. There are probably lots of reasons for drug use and everybody who’s done them must have some decent ones. I can’t speak for anyone else but I can tell you a little something about my reasoning. Unlike most teenagers, I never smoked pot. I did the opposite of what peer pressure dictated, and that was to abstain from smoking weed. All of those school lectures by police constables and former heroine addicts had me convinced that drugs were a risk better not taken. It wasn’t until I got older and societal norms changed a little that I saw that propaganda for what it was. In college I caved in to my curiosity and blazed for the first time. I guess you could say that in drugs, as in other areas of life, I was a late bloomer. I didn’t get high my first time but after trying some more, I began to see what all the fuss was about. It turns out that drugs are a lot of fun. I’ve never done any of the really serious ones like cocaine or heroine, but even the slightly less illicit drugs that I tried seemed great the first time. They totally change your perspective on the world. Granted that change means an overall decrease in reasoning ability and motor skills, but still, it’s a big change. Smoking up is the chemical equivalent of lying upside down and looking at the ceiling. It’s the same as before, but you see things that never really looked at before. Suddenly all of your priorities in life are different and everything that you cared about seems less important. At the same time, things that seemed trivial take up most of your attention. I guess the surge of endorphins that is released into your blood stream is pretty good too. The newfound happiness and the departure from normal realty make drugs perfect for one of the most common activities of the modern person, escape. It is here that drugs become dangerous. While escapism is healthy in small doses, it ruins people when they become dependant on it. This is as true of all non-chemical addictions. At the heart of addiction is the desire for escape. For those with hard lives, drugs can provide the only respite from suffering. I think that this particular aspect of drug use is largely ignored, to the detriment of those who really need help. I think that if more people understood the allure of drugs, they would be less critical and more understanding of those who become addicted to them.