Day 37

My eldest sister, who has taught both fifth and sixth graders, said she’d like to know how and when my drug addiction started. She said her students have expressed curiosity on how addiction progresses also. These are fantastic questions. I think educating our children is very important. Although this is part of my past it still plays a big role in my alcoholism I’m battling currently.

It all started in seventh grade. I went from elementary to middle school. I was a teenager and these years were very awkward. Peer pressure and self esteem mixed with a bad influence or two become recipes for disaster. The culprit that opened the flood gates to the drug world are cigarettes. You go to a party or two and some kid who probably stole cigarettes from one of his parents brings them to a party to be cool and pressures other kids into trying one. Some of the victims may have seen an older kid doing it and thought it looked cool, or seen cigarettes glamorized on T.V. or the movies.

Although I was in D.A.R.E. and you learn in school to ‘Just say no!’ it doesn’t prepare the weak for that moment when some idiot passes a cigarette your way and says, “Want a drag?” and you look around and the whole room is looking at you and the pressures on and you just want to fit in. You want to be loved. You want to be cool. Terrified, you say yes. It is at that moment, at that weak moment, that the devil tightens his leash one more notch. This is the time in a teen’s life that sets the pace for the rest of their teenage years.

If you gave in you could be a follower, someone who hates to disappoint people or someone who likes to try new things. I was all three. The leaders aren’t at that party because their parents wouldn’t let them go. I was also a leader but I was also a trusted good kid most of the time so it was easy to lie to my parents and sneak out to bad places. There are also the kids who are there but do not have strong personalities. They avoid the peer pressure situation which is a good thing, but they always stand in the sidelines as a spectator. They knew it was wrong and didn’t like what was going on but didn’t have the authority to stop it. Maybe these are the kids that go into law enforcement or become treatment counselors. They can finally speak out and help both the ‘kid that was pressured’ and put the ‘bullies’ behind bars or help them.


Today some ignorant psychologist on ‘The Doctors’ said she had been an addiction expert for 15 years and she didn’t believe there were such things as gateway drugs. She probably studied addiction in a text book and just doesn’t get it or know. Any chemical can be a gateway drug. I strongly believe in them.


For me cigarettes were my gateway drug. You try it to be cool and the first one makes you cough and feel light headed. Then at the next party the same scenario comes up and because you know it ‘wasn’t that bad’ and you try it again. You think you just scored two more points with the ‘cool kids’, but you just disabled yourself for a long time. The problem that arose is that this one doesn’t make you sick. This one actually makes you feel great. You get buzzed, or high, which is a sense of euphoria.

You like this feeling and it feels different than anything you’ve experienced, so you do it again and again. You may only do it at parties, but what you don’t realize that is happening in your body is that the drug nicotine in the cigarettes is actually addictive. Pretty soon you actually crave it and want more. The sad thing is that by this time, you will never feel the same sense of euphoria as you did with your fist few cigarettes. Your bodies will never in your life feel the same again. What a waste! Satin has some nasty tricks he likes to play on teens.

I’ll explain what drug came next later. I’m tired:)