drug users

It should be noted that all information distributed in American Media(and this includes Canada too) concerning illegitimate drugs should also correspond with the word propaganda. I base this statement on the following fact:
It is targeted towards younger children with very malleable minds. Allow me to explain.

Most people have free access to real information (like noders here at everything2) and will seek out information regarding issues before arriving at a decision. The propaganda doesn't offer any facts. It simply states that drugs are bad, and cause bad things to happen to good people. It also embeds the (unhealthy) notion that anyone who offers you drugs (be it friend or stranger) is unquestionably trying to hurt you. I would have thought being offered expensive commodities like drugs would be a sign that your friend is quite generous, or close.

Apparently, this is not something they would have you know. I'm not all gung-ho for drugs, and I certainly don't believe that children should be in the habit of abusing drugs, let alone trying them. My point is that children today are being force-fed falsehoods and half-truths. Given, most if not all drugs may have cons that can easily outweigh the pros. However we are never given knowledge of the positive effects of drugs. You only live once. You are going to die, that's a part of life. Drugs *are* means by which a human may reach the peak of their creativity, emotions, and energy. Don't feed kids ignorance, because they swallow it all. That's children learn. They don't really have a choice, until they are mentally strong enough to develop their own opinions. Keep feeding our young lies, and eventually they're going to choke.

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Are drug users necessarily different from everyone else? Under no circumstances. They are human; they eat, sleep, breathe, feel, and die. Maybe at times, they enjoy it a little more.

As a child I was told only that drugs were bad. They were a forbidden fruit. At school they taught of the horrifying side effects and possibilities of using drugs like cocaine, heroin and PCP. There was little they could say about marijuana. They warned of flashbacks resulting from use of LSD.

However, here is where I feel they failed me. They gave me all the bad. All the death and destruction that comes from them. They never once gave me any information about why people would even want to do them in the first place.

Being the big chicken I am, I was thankfully frightened enough away from the hardcore, eat your brain and your money, leave you dead in the street naked variety of illicit drugs.....But...The others. The ones that after some reading and some research, seemed to be largely used by REALLY intelligent people. People I admired and respected for their thoughts, ideas and contributions to society.

Through the years I have experimented with many of the milder, can't-we-all-just-get-along recreational drugs. Marijuana, LSD, Exstacy...

What is my conclusion? People need full education. They need the facts. Not just the reasons it will curl your spine and make you kill people in a fit of rage. They need to know that there are some very good uses for some of these drugs. Cocaine once had a medical use. Many of the commonly and currently used pain killers are opiate derived. Oxycotin and Ultram are in that list.

Exstacy was used in marriage counseling. I mean, really, let's not let the unhappy couples of the world try to talk about their feelings without defensiveness or anger. What an awful thing it would be if we could all just co-exist in this world and love one another. Peace breaking out all over would just be horrid, wouldn't it?

It was my junior year in high school and weekends consisted of smoking marijuana in the back of Evan’s seatless 1994 Dodge Caravan. In the end, 12 of the 17 occupants (many my closest friends) were sent to rehabs or wilderness camps or boarding schools.

Meredith was one of my best friends, and had been for nearly a year. She was smart and open minded and beautiful, and could out-rap Eminem. We’d sit around her back yard during the early part of the school year, discussing religion and philosophy, sex and love, art and dance and music. She was such a talented writer. I will never forget some of her poetry, it still rings true to me.

Soon the leaves were falling off the trees and we added Frederico the Bong to our circle. This was fine, but when Coco the Spoon came along I began to get worried. Our conversations had gotten darker, she was unsure of her sexuality, unaware of her potential and uninterested in how much we all loved her.

She had become quite promiscuous, she had slept with at least 8 guys and 3 girls that semester. Her classes, which had always interested her, were “boring” and “stupid” and all that she cared about was the van. I remember hiding a quarter ounce of weed in my locker while hers was searched, playing lookout for her and her other money/brain wasting friends. I didn’t mind, I loved Mer and liked everyone else, and it was fun pigging out and watching Dexter’s Laboratory with them afterwards. But the conversations had basically ceased, all that was left was meager justifications of her drug use.

When I found out she had been using heroin, I told the school psychologist. They brought her in and confiscated two coke spoons, an eighth of chronic, a bowl and five tabs of acid. She was fuming. I haven’t been able to look her in the eye since.

Meredith went into an outpatient program with the Hazelden Foundation, and has made a conscious effort to stay away from drugs and alcohol, and has been successful (with a lot of work) for over 2 years. Even though I’m extremely happy about all this, and proud of my decision, I can’t look her in the face and tell her that it was I that ratted her out.