High on Life

The speaker of the assembly was a recovered drug addict. I thought it was nice to be out of the high school class, but a waste of my time that this freedom should be stifled by a boring person talking about a subject which didn’t affect me directly. I never had done drugs, nor was I expecting to do them. I knew what they could do to you, and had seen the results of them everyday as I walked up to school and passed people hooked on tobacco in front of the school.

The speaker was a thin man, about 25. He had blond, short hair that made him look younger than he most likely was. He stood up, walked to the podium, and just gazed out at the student body. And then he began.

“Addiction. It’s something that we think wouldn’t happen to us, and when it does, we don’t recognize it. Take the example of my friend Glen and I. We’d smoke some weed on the weekend, just to relieve the stress that had accumulated over the week. It was relaxing to sit there, stoned, in a state of bliss.

“I never once thought I was addicted. I always thought, Yeah, this is fun. I can stop at any time I want, but why should I? It doesn’t hurt anyone. Although Glen never said it, I knew he agreed with me. We weren’t hurting anyone. It was just like we were inhaling a massage instead of having one done to us.

“Over the weeks it seemed like the relaxing effects of the weed was decreasing. At first, it wasn’t noticeable. But as time progressed, the change became more profound. I felt that the weekly dosage wasn’t enough, and needed more. I asked Glen to try to increase how much we got per week, but it didn’t work; the dealer could only get so much to us.

“I needed something to smoke, so I turned to cigarettes. They weren’t as good, but at least it was still something. It relaxed me, and fixed the problem temporally, but soon I increased the amount I had. At one point, I even started to smoke two at once, just to help take the edge off.

“I still didn’t think I was addicting. I rationalized what I was doing by saying that I was merely increasing my dosage in order to compensate for the decreasing quality of the product, as well as my increased resilience to its effects. I took it as a good sign too. If I had to smoke more in order to get the same calm that half of what I had before would have given me, then my body is set to help me resist the addictive effects of the substance, and it had already begun. I thought it’d be easy to quit whenever I wanted to.

“Then Glen informed me that the dealer had been caught, and wouldn’t be back for a few months. I panicked. How could I calm myself now? I needed that weed to survive. I went on a search to find another source, but it didn’t work. People looked at me strangely when I asked them if they any weed for sale.

“They looked at me as if I was useless. I knew differently though, that I was something. So I looked down on society. I thought myself better than them. They were just snubbing me because I was better than they were, and they were jealous of that fact.

“I became introverted. The only person I talked to for the longest time was Glen, but only then to see if he had found a new source. I started to become poor in my quest for relaxation. Then the worst thing that could have happened, did. Glen stopped.

“He didn’t explain why really. He just stopped because he had too much work to do he said. I laughed. Work? That didn’t matter. What really mattered was being relaxed and mellow. So I left my only friend like he left me. I moved on in life, a lone wolf.

“The change happened one day when I was walking down the street, going to the convenience store for another package of cigarettes. I saw an old man, homeless, banging on the door, demanding that they give him cigarettes. He yelled about how he had money, how they were killing him, and how they were horrible people at heart.

“I just walked away. I knew what I had become. Addicted. My whole life had begun revolving around reaching that mellow state to the point where I was stressing over it. Nothing was good enough. It wasn’t a sign that my body was resisting, but instead that it was so accepting, it became dependent.

“It took a while, but my mind was set. I had relapses, sudden urges to smoke, but I was determined; I would not become that old man. I came clean, and have stayed that way ever since.”

He paused, and this was the first time that my thoughts we allowed to come back to myself and the place I was in. Most students were busy laughing at the man who fooled himself, but I could not turn away. He was someone to be revered, his wisdom obtained at half the normal age. He resumed.

“But what does this mean to you? How does this tale affect you? What wisdom are you given by this story? Just a few things. Look at what you like to do. Do you play video games? Work out? Strive to be thin? Has this hobby become an obsession? Is it all that you think, eat, breath, do?

“You may think that it’s easy to break out of. You may think that it doesn’t adversely affect you, or those around you, but it may. The best pieces of advice I can leave you with are: 1. Find the person who has taken their hobby, the same one as yours, to the extreme. What happens if you get addicted to a television series to the point where it’s all you watch, and you memorize the lines? Ask yourself if that’s who you want to become. If it isn’t, then slow down a little.

“2. Do everything in moderation. Take a break from that which you divulge in, and reflect on your actions because of it. Is it good that you’re obsessed with that which you are? Would it better for you to do other things? Should you study and get your marks up?

“Your life is yours to live. I got lucky in the fact that I discovered my addiction quickly. Other people go on their whole life addicted to being in a romantic relationship, talking about a single joke, or other things. The worst part is that they don’t recognize their problem, or admit that they have one.

“So stand up. Be a big person and admit you have an addiction. Admit that you are weak. And then set out to deal with it. You can only solve your problem, once you identify it.”

He hovered on stage for a moment while the words sunk in, and then departed to the front row. I knew what I had to do, and that night I’d do it. I’d look at my life, and see if there were any addictions I had, and then analyze them. I knew now; those things worth my time, could wait until I was ready for them. I could overcome my addictions.

Just as soon as I found them.