Drugs Are Bad

As I sit here writing this, I feel an urge...a responsibility, to tell you that drugs are bad. To say that if you choose this path, your life will descend into a maelstrom of hurt and despair. But, that would be a lie, and if there is one thing I have learned from a lifetime of using and abusing drugs, it's that living with addiction would be preferable to living a life of lies.

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I was fourteen years old when my older brother offered me hashish. His friends were cool, and I wanted to be just as cool. So, I breathed in the vapour and got high for the very first time in my young life. We went to a pub on Stradbroke Island. I felt relaxed and grown-up. I had fun that night, and it wasn't long before I was smoking pot every day.

It wasn't until my twenties that I first tried hard drugs, MDMA, or as it is otherwise known, ecstasy, which I took at a Ramones concert. Always having been shy...not an introvert, but preferring to watch life, rather than be the star attraction, but that night, before the bands had even started, as I walked in ever-growing concentric circles, my hands continuously running through my hair because it felt so damn good, I spotted a girl, went over to her and without saying a word began to dance. I remember her disbelief as I moved around her, my eyes fixed on her own, with the biggest smile on my face. I had never felt so alive and confident, and it didn't matter to me that once the band began to play, she disappeared into the crowd, and I never saw her again.

I wrote in my autobiography that being on MDMA turns the world into one big beautiful mass of friendliness...where the smile on your face cannot be wiped, at least until the last pill is swallowed...when reality brings deleted levels of Dopamine and Serotonin, leaving you feeling like you have been dropped off the end of a rainbow and straight into a bucket full of shit.

The problem isn't the high (obviously). Our minds are not programmed to remember specific pain, otherwise, we would not survive as a species. What woman would want to go through the experience of giving birth time and again if she mentally retained the pain? The experience of using drugs is similar, where we (users and addicts alike) push the lows out of our minds, choosing only to remember the highs and always chasing the euphoria of those first few experiences.

I refuse to tell anyone they should never try illicit/recreational drugs. Far be it for me to be that reformist hypocrite, trying to deny someone the most amazing sexual encounters they are ever likely to experience. To say, "Drugs are bad!" To attempt to deny them the joy (all be it false and temporary) and love they will feel for their fellow man. Feelings that come from taking a drug like ecstasy.

Yes, I could give warnings, and the list of reasons not to go down this path is long. But, if I were to go back in time to my younger self, to warn him not to take drugs, I know for a fact that warning would fall on deaf ears. We all need to make our own mistakes, and honestly, when it comes to my past drug use, as much as the cliche thing to do (post-use) is to try to discourage others, the truth is, in my case, there isn't a lot that I would change.