This Is Your Brain on Drugs
by A.L.D.

When I was in fourth grade--one year before D.A.R.E. started at my school-- my older sister and her boyfriend babysat for me. They took me into the backyard and showed me something that looked like a cigarette, only different. In the innocent haze of youth, I had no idea what that difference was, but I smoked the joint like they showed me and didn't think much of it. It wasn't until eighth grade that I actually got stoned. By freshman year in high school, I was smoking pot everyday with very few exceptions and starting to experiment with other drugs (especially hallucinogens). It wasn't until last year that I stopped doing drugs altogether. It took a long time to shake off the ingrained habits of about seven years of continuous drug use and while this shouldn't have come as any surprise to me, it did. It wasn't until two years after my first attempt to stop doing drugs completely that I was finally independent of this lifestyle.

Drugs have taken on such great significance in modern times that I can't help but wonder when this happened and why this is. Based on notions of America's past supplied by history books, pop culture, and the accounts of teachers and parents, it's obvious that the 1960s is the time when drugs became such a widespread cultural phenomenon. A study by the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress verified that it was in the '60s that the use of drugs like LSD, cocaine, heroin and marijuana vastly increased.

I imagine that, in the 60s, momentous events like Vietnam, integration and even the emergence of popular bands like the Beatles initiated a movement towards the rebelliousness that marked this decade. As these unprecedented events began to shape society, rebelliousness among much of America's youth manifested itself in political protests (against the government) and in perceived acts of defiance like drug-use (against parents or society in general). The rise of the Hippies certainly helped perpetuate the integration of drugs into mainstream society. You can't think of 1969 without calling Hippies to mind. They dominated the cultural landscape of that time with their music, style, ideologies and, perhaps most significantly, their drug-use. After all, even when the Hippie movement died out, the drug-use with which they were associated remained in full-force and has only expanded its breadth since then.

To try to remedy this, the government has responded with a relentless "War on Drugs," a concerted effort to eradicate drug use by enforcing stricter laws, initiating operations abroad to keep drugs from entering our country and launching ad campaigns to dissuade people from using drugs. Nevertheless, the use of drugs in America, especially among youth, has greatly increased. A website about the history of the Drug Enforcement Association confirms this, claiming that in 1960 approximately four million Americans had tried drugs. Today, that number is estimated to be more than 74 million.

In light of such statistics, it's interesting that few, if any of us can forget the infamous anti-drug ads that plagued anyone born in the late 70s and early 80s. Nancy Reagan's simple and completely ineffective plea to "Just say no," the commercial with the bully who tries to force-feed joints to his unsuspecting peer, the incompetent and ineffective D.A.R.E. officers that visited our elementary schools in an effort to warn us about the harms of drug-use (the officer that taught my class turned out to be a child molester); these were all desperate attempts to curtail the rise of drug-use that failed miserably, and there's no shortage of equally feeble and fruitless ads today.

My point in bringing up these embarrassing tactics is that there is not today, nor has there ever been a persuasive, honest and effective way to deter people from doing drugs or at least inspire one to question their use. The lure of a substance that makes you feel a way that you've never felt before, one that can distort your idea of a surrounding world that many find disturbing, unaccommodating or even worthless and promise some form of entertainment is too much to resist for many people. Threats as feeble-minded as those you find in anti-drug ads on TV can't stop a curious individual from at least trying drugs; if you wonder about drugs, your curiosity probably won't be satisfied until you've experienced them for yourself. I'm certainly not the first person to propose that extreme claims that drugs are bad merely augment their mystique. Our government's war on drugs only makes them seem more enticing and can mislead the drug-user by providing a false sense that he or she is defying authority. Since this defiance is typically identified as an admirable trait among teenagers, the policies being employed today to deter kids from drug-use inadvertently promote it.

Today more so than ever, there are enticing glorifications of drug-use scattered throughout pop culture. In movies, music and television these one-sided depictions prevail. Brutally honest and uncomplimentary commentary on drug use that isn't absurdly presented is few and far between. What about the consequences, both severe and subtle, of the stimulating mind-warp drugs induce? Sure, some films about heroin use, for example, do address the painful side-effects with gruesome, off-putting imagery, but the glorifications and glamorization of drugs in these movies is always more compelling while the consequences- no matter how brutal- always seem to be a mere afterthought.

Drugs are fun. Some of my most pleasurable experiences wouldn't have happened without them. But I mean that as a criticism rather than an endorsement of drugs. None of the noteworthy drug experiences I've had feel earned or enduring because they all derive from a tab, a pill or a bong. And any memory I've retained of these experiences is at the very least smudged, largely lost in the haze of having so many encounters with so many drugs and so little distinctions between them all.

Of all the drugs I've done, pot is the weakest physically but also the most psychologically powerful. This may seem absurd, especially to a casual user of the drug, but in my experience, its effects are deceivingly subtle. Once you smoke pot on a daily or even weekly basis, it is practically impossible to comprehend the extent of its detrimental effects until you are independent of that and all drugs. Pot has a reputation as a milder drug and while it shouldn't be equated to something as potent and destructive as heroin, it also shouldn't be underestimated. It inarguably alters your state of mind and to argue that it does so for the better, that there is any benefit in this altered mind-state, seems foolish. Maybe it's fun in small doses but I've found that anything that changes the way your mind is intended to function is an impediment. Whether or not this impediment leads to entertainment of some sort is beside the point.

The assertion that pot destroys your ambition is both true and false depending on the person. I know plenty of people who have become habitual stoners and fit the stoner stereotype of excessive laziness and indifference to the world exactly. Yet I've also found that you can accomplish remarkable "feats" even if you smoke pot every day and do other drugs in addition. At the peak of my drug-use, I was able to be in the top ten percent of my high school class, perpetually make the honor roll and be inducted into the National Honors Society, get all of my school work done, participate in extra-curricular activities, get a scholarship to this school, etc. Throughout high school, I thought I was subverting the system by accomplishing everything I needed to do with success, while pummeling my mind with loads of drugs at the same time.

Although I haven't always felt this way, I don't think there is some psychological or emotional flaw in a person that can be remedied by marijuana (glaucoma and other such illnesses excepted). I thought at one point that pot was helping to make me happy by providing a fun diversion that let me cope with the stress and/or boredom of everyday life. But I had myself fooled. All it was doing was allowing me to sidestep issues that needed to be addressed seriously in order to be alleviated. Furthermore, pot never expanded my mind, helped me create better art, or any of the other unlikely claims drug users like to draw upon to justify their drug use. To put it in a nutshell, all pot did was give me the munchies, make me think inane, disconnected thoughts, allow me to discover humor in what was otherwise unfunny, and in many cases make me paranoid. As the years of pot-smoking accumulated, I found myself excruciatingly bored with the whole idea of smoking but too accustomed to it to stop.

Pot notwithstanding, I didn't do any other drug as much as LSD. I was enthralled by what grew to be a fascination with hallucinations and the distinct altered state this drug provides. At the time, I thrived on the manufactured insanity and severe distortion of the surrounding world for which acid is made. Adolescence can be hell and high school is hell. Acid made it all more tolerable because it turned everything into a demented game. It forced me to test my limits, both physical and mental. It made the petty politics of high school life more laughable than painful. It was my reward for getting through each day with my head on straight (the irony of doing everything in my power to impair my mind at the same time escaped me then but is entirely evident now).

I rarely paid attention to the effects my drug use had on my body or mind; the perceived benefits of tripping were always too immediately appealing to think of long-term consequences. I considered acid to be both a gateway to a brand of insanity that I found exhilarating and a means of alleviation for the "insanity" brought on by the overwhelming world. I was wrong on both counts and paid the consequences. Eventually, I needed multiple hits to trip. Sometimes I took several hits and barely felt anything because I'd eaten so many in the preceding days. The bad trips started accumulating; trips that involved fighting with friends, dwelling relentlessly on the past, worrying that I wouldn't stop tripping. At the end of a particularly excruciating trip, I realized I'd spent the night unconsciously chewing my tongue into a bloody pulp! Yet whenever when I came realize the absurdity of what I was doing, I still wasn't deterred from continuing in the path on which I was set.

This went on for years. I never thought to stop myself because while I wasn't so dim-witted as to think I'd escape unscathed, the worst consequences weren't readily apparent at that time. Now I'm very aware of them. For instance, I've always been shy but spending a large chunk of my adolescence sitting in a room in silence for hours with copious amounts of drugs in my system has greatly intensified my social inadequacies, making the relatively basic art of conversation a remarkable struggle. I'm emerging from it more and more each day, but for so long the thought of immersing myself in unfamiliar social situations was horrifying and I'd go to extreme ends to avoid them. Drug use made my life insular and I became so accustomed to that detachment that it fixing it became a long process. Assimilating to life at Washington College in the midst of all of this was so arduous that I barely emerged from my room until sophomore year.

There is nothing special about my experiences. By no means do they put me on a higher or lower plane of existence than anyone else and, moreover, the self-awareness that has resulted from them is a typical outcome of the most influential events in anyone's adolescence, whatever they may be. As I look back on my adolescence, I can't help but wince at the mistakes I made and all the missed opportunities. Out of the dozens of friendships that I formed in high school, only two have survived. Why? Because the rest of these short-lived friendships were created by and dependent upon drug use. These are the people with whom I gathered, our top priority being to distort our minds, to have fun doing drugs, to distance ourselves from reality. However, being young, foolish and, above all, high on whatever drug was available, we never had the experiences people that are necessary for a lasting sense of companionship. Once we went our separate ways or stopped doing drugs, none of us felt compelled to maintain the relationship because none of our interactions ever meant anything substantial to each other and drugs took precedence over the engagement that relationships require.

I'm now left to wonder how much more I could have achieved and how much better I could have done what I was still able to accomplish under those circumstances. I think of all the knowledge--of myself and the world around me--that my drug use hindered me from learning and can't help but speculate as to how much better of a person I'd be today, of how much easier adolescence would have been if I had attained this knowledge earlier.

Still, it's not just regret I feel in relation to my drug experiences. Drugs played an important role in shaping who I am. I'm happy with where I'm at now in my life and I got to this point as a result of both positive and negative experiences. The process of becoming involved with drugs, immersing myself in that lifestyle and, most importantly, removing myself from it was a taxing and protracted digression, but it has proven to be valuable despite any damage it inflicted.