You know the ocean? Beautiful thing. Lots of fun. Surfing and cruising and swimming and scuba diving. Also, it kills people. Every day. And that’s not even counting when the ocean goes crazy with tsunami and hurricanes.
If your fear outweighs the pleasure, you can avoid it. Move to Colorado. We’ve never had a tsunami, never had a hurricane.
But the ocean will always be there. We can’t make it disappear just because we’re afraid.
So the key is respect. Respect the ocean’s power, danger, and unpredictability. Take precautions, make good decisions and your chances of getting killed by it go way down.
If you missed the second half of the title, I’m actually not here to talk about the ocean today. (It’s a metaphor.)
It’s a metaphor for recreational mind-altering substances. Drugs. Booze. Weed. Coke. ‘Shrooms. They’re just like the ocean. They can be fun. And they can kill you.
First, fun. If you’re like me, you grew up terrified of drugs and alcohol, this dark sorcery that takes good, smart, normal people and changes them, slowly tears them apart from the inside out. I’ve never been particularly rebellious, so I never cared to find out more than that. Until 2015.
I was 20 years old. And for the first time since puberty, I decided to spend social time with people my own age. I went to Europe with 35 twenty-somethings. Bars. Clubs. Sex. Alcohol. Weed. First time I experienced anything like them. I was cautious and slow, and I recommend that to anyone reading this for whom it is not too late.
One night, I drank a glass of Prosecco. (Disgusting, if you’re wondering.) Next night, a shot of vodka. Next night, a single beer. To this day, I have never blacked out, never vomited (as a result of drinking) and I have had a lot of fun. One of the last nights of the trip, I had three shots, two beers, then went back to the hotel where four of us proceeded to open and empty a bottle of tequila. To this day, the most drunk I’ve ever been. And that was a good night.
Drinking has been a lot of fun. I enjoy being drunk in social settings. It’s a nice feeling.
And I’ve experimented with marijuana too. And tobacco. I’ll be honest, neither did anything for me. I mean, I get it. Just not my thing.
Second, death. Because alcohol and marijuana and heroin are very effective distractions from pain and hardship, it’s very easy to use them to distract you from pain and hardship. And if you’re done with life, you’re done with life. But if any part of you wants to keep trying, to keep living, STAY AWAY.
Drugs mess with your brain chemistry. Once or twice they’ll be able to cheer you up. But it’s like walking along the edge of a cliff. Maybe you’ll be fine. But all it takes is some loose dirt.
Then you end up in a downward spiral, spending all your money, dedicating all your time to the pursuit of nothing but staying high. You lose your friends, your family, everything you love in life just goes away. It is the saddest, most painful existence humans can create for themselves. It really is.
And the worst part, it’s the easiest thing in the world to do to yourself. So, for the love of God, be careful. When you’re in a good place, drugs might be fun. When you’re not in a good place, they can ONLY make things worse.
The fact of the matter is we can make drugs like alcohol and marijuana illegal if we want. It might even be a good idea, I don’t know. But we can’t make them disappear. So our only real option is to respect them.
