The Truth About the World We Live In.

 

         “Razors pain you; alcohol conceals the blemish; and drugs allow you a lifetime on a rollercoaster, you might as well live.” People all choose different paths. Some choose to hurt themselves and the people that surround them, while some choose to make the most out of every challenge and stumble. It’s easy to cut yourself, it’s easy to grab a drink and chug, it’s easy to sniff in, but it’s hard to simply live, love, and laugh. Why is this true? As we can’t blame anyone but ourselves for our actions we can share some of the blame with the media. The media is something that you can’t escape. You walk down the street and a bus with ads selling cover girl or the next weight loss miracle catches your eye. The beauty of our world is lost in the hands of the next movie starring big time actors and actresses that we adore. We teach ourselves, our friends, and our children to do the same. Even when these ‘stars’ fall we look upon them saying, “oh how hard life must be to always be under the spotlight” when we put the spotlight there. We illuminate them as idols and chosen ones when they are human, they make mistakes, some more then others. Then the stars are whisked away to some fancy rehab place where they are trying to wean off of cocaine, meth, ecstasy, or whatever drug they tried to escape their problems with this time.

Growing up I wanted to be just like Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, I loved to play with my Barbie’s and watched princess movie after princess movies. The songs that Ariel, Cinderella, Aurora, and the others sang were a second language for me. Every little girl and boy grows up with their favorite hero and looking up to certain people as role models. I watched my little neighbor girls admire Hannah Montana, I watched as they got confused when they would hear something about ‘Miley Cyrus Scandal’. The celebrities in Hollywood are often the people that young and old look up to. We look up to them for perfect skin, perfect bodies, and a perfect life, a life that seems unreachable, unbelievable and a fantasy. One thing that Hollywood is famous for is its stars that “fall” by turning to drugs and illegal substance abuse. I do not know what goes through their mind as they reach for the joint or get ready to sniff cocaine, but what I do know is how disappointing it is to know that the person you looked up to so much has made such poor choices.

“The basic thing nobody asks is why do people take drugs of any sort? Why do we have these accessories to normal living to live? I mean is there something wrong with society that's making us so pressurized, that we cannot live without guarding ourselves against it?” John Lennon summed up the question that flashes through each of our minds as we reach for people magazine to see which Hollywood star has cracked now. Why is life so hard, why is it such a climb that a lot of us choose to skip? Do the drugs truly allow us to skip the climb and fly to the top? Sure, for the time being, for the hour you are high you feel on top of the world, you feel capable of anything and everything, you feel invincible. What human would not want that feeling? True but there are other ways to get that invincible and on top of the world feeling. One thing that I have recently done is make a list of things I want to do before I die. This list is a work in progress and I don’t believe it will ever be complete until I am. I am searching for myself, I want to know who Anna Louise is but I’m not going to look for myself within an illegal substance or beneath a prescription drug. I like every person have suffered, suffered from heart break, from too many tears, from just plain being a young adult in today’s world. Suffering is one of the main causes of drug abuse. People, young and old, from all walks of life, suffer. They suffer from death, loss, change, anger, and all the things that are common in life. So why oh why can I not take the easy way out, people around the world ask this everyday. I ask myself, and yet I am no wise prophet I do have a guess and an opinion. I believe that drugs screw you up more then they can ever help you. Drugs are just another crutch in life that you become dependent on. There are so many things that especially Americans depend on everyday. That morning cup of coffee, the daily facebook update, the need to be charged up from sugar and processed foods, the daily medicine that we take for God knows what, and the daily reminder that yes we are still alive. Sadly? I think not, life is a gift, living each day in the present is something that everyone makes the mistake of. I myself live in the past and the future, anywhere but the present, why, because the present is scary as hell.

One night I just had to go, I just had to know what the hype was all about, I found myself deep underground in a club like scene, looking around me I did not recognize anyone. Not like I knew anyone, I just saw zombies; people who were so far down or too high to even look straight ahead. Walking around, I felt like I had stepped into a horror movie, I began to run trying to find a way out, and then all of a sudden I began to fall, just fall. Hitting the ground, I looked around not knowing where I was, who I was with, or even what day it was. All I knew was I had a sensation inside of me that I needed again; I needed to take another whiff. Oh God! I know I said I would only try it once but you don’t understand. Stop, do you see what you just did, what your life has become; you have become dependent on a substance, on a drug. Life is full of choices what will you choose? Will you choose to become a zombie and live life on a roller coaster or will you choose to be aware and awake to your surroundings? Pretend you are in a movie, just sitting there trying to concentrate on the setting and the plot while a group sits behind you carrying on their own conversation, feeling so distracted, not able to concentrate, not able to think straight. This is the feeling the drugs give you. The pros can be that you forget who you are, you get a minute to breathe, to let go of the last argument you got in with your parents, the last failed test grade all come to halt when you are under the influence. The cons are that you will eventually fall, and be deeper than you were when you started. You will be trying to climb out of hole that keeps getting deeper and deeper as you are grasping for air. The drugs hold on tight, they turn you upside down and shake. They don’t care about you, they want to steal and steal until there is nothing left to take.

To fall is not to fail; you fail when you don't try. Sometimes Goodbye is a second chance. At the times when you think you have lost all hope and your life has hit the end look up into a corner and you will find the light, reach for it and you will be healed. “I was 16 when I first tried cocaine. It became casual, a weekend thing that all my friends did. It became something that I began to do on Fridays then Thursdays until it became something that I needed, something I relied on.” As this man spoke I couldn’t bear to take my ear off the receiver, I urged him on as he told me of his accident where he was stoned and got in a motorcycle accident. He is a paralyzed man in his 40’s. He has been off drugs and sober for almost ten years. I find him a true hero. Most will say a hero is someone who was an example and idol for their whole lives someone who always lived better and higher then others, but I believe a hero is someone who takes a detour and finds the way to get back onto the road. He now works in a rehabilitation facility where he has people come in everyday hooked on anything from alcohol that take about 30 some days to try and overcome to meth addicts that can take a lifetime to overcome. By, talking to a family friend who has experienced the journey of being stuck, being at the end, choosing the easy way out, and then his decision to end his addiction was a true gift.

Stimulants create a temporary getaway, a quick easy escape, but one thing it doesn’t do is make your problems dissolve, it expands them. Most drugs are stimulants. Try amphetamines you will feel, irritability, anxiety, paranoia, psychosis, depression, aggression, convulsions, dizziness, sleeplessness, and malnutrition. Try ecstasy, you will feel disturbed, panic, anxiety, depression, nausea, blurred vision, sweating, increased heart rate, tremors, hallucinations, fainting, chills, sleep problems, and reduced appetite. Oh yeah, these sound great! No, see this is what your friends or the people who ask you to try it will NOT explain to you. They will just tell you that it will help “release” your problems. No person, no drug, nothing can release your problems, but you.

Rehab gives the chance to start over, to erase your drawing and begin again. Life is filled with so many second chances, that may only appear when you are waiting at the bus stop with your one way ticket out of life, but they will appear you just have to look. They may be right in front of you waiting to be grasped and carried on. So as you reach for the pills, joints, or smoke ask yourself if you are willing to turn away and choose to buy a ticket to opportunity, free choice, and life; or if you want to buy the ticket to get on the roller coaster that rarely ever stops long enough to let you off? The choice is yours and only yours.

As we drive down the road of life we have times where we hit pothole after pothole. Then we have the times where we can hit the cruise control and watch the scenery. Times when we just want to curse at everything and everyone that comes on our path and others where we want to hug and kiss everything and everyone. The true gift is that we never know when we are going to hit the pothole or when we are going to want to hug that random stranger that helped us. There are no signs or no road maps to life; there is merely just each day ahead that we can look forward too. And that in itself is what we have alone not much, but not nothing just simply life.   

Reviews

[Ru Banerjee]

such a powerful and intense piece!! loved every word of it...your way of storytelling in this piece was unique and utmost original...keep it up!