ecstacy

i wonder if drugs have always been as big a problem as they are now. or maybe they aren't a big problem. maybe it's just me growing older and more uptight.

drugs were for high school and college, and i have enormous pity (the four-letter-word kind of pity) for people still doing them beyond those formitive years.

i haven't done much; though, that's subjective. i only reminisce about one drug and smile. the rest were just to fuck around, fit in, assuage the tedium of teen angst. but i still think it's a weakness, and in my everlasting effort to be the perfect human being (if not physically, i will be the mental Wonder Woman! i guess the pun is intended there) i think that's enough for me to never go back there.

and i wonder why or when i made this transition. in college, i was dating this guy who would eventually propose, four years later in another state only to break it off over the phone from yet another state, 4 months later. he gave me the ultimatum. drugs or him. and goddamn was that an impossible decision! i inevitably did both, sneaking around when i could. not that i was an addict, but i just enjoyed that form of recreation. and i was in fucking college. either i was stealth or he was just in denial. could be either. on my first acid trip i peaked while being lectured by my parents. they'd discovered me in a lie the night of my boyfriend's junior prom and hunted me down in the dusty-blue Dodge Dynasty with dark blue fuzzy interior. i was waiting at some kids house, already out of my dress and into some clothes i'd brought along for the after parties. somehow i'd forgotten to bring underwear. i hadn't worn any to avoid lines at the dance. so i was panty-less and tripping. back home, in my living room, they never suspected a thing. only recently did i reveal the truth of why i was acting so dramatic that evening.

and those are fun memories. and i can laugh and not have much regret at all. but why am i so scornful of others now? why do i feel superior? maybe that last night, rolling on god-knows-what-the-hell-is-in-this-ecstacy-molly-shit-because-i'm-freaking-the-fuck-out, i hit a plateau. maybe i saw myself in the others around me. patheticly self-medicating because the world is too hard not to. the rest of the universe can get by without this shit, but i can't? why the fuck not? i'm hardcore!

so i just stopped.

on my way home from the mall today i thought of all the people eager to purchase genuine leather stillettos and those sweatshirts and skirts that are so i-don't-give-a-fuck-what-i-look-like that you just know that the shoppers would die without them. and then i drove by a couple standing by their car. neither was smiling; in fact, they were almost frowning in some vague effort of contemplation or flippancy. but they were clutching each other, staring toward the road, not each other. they were so unhappy, it seemed, and yet holding onto each other like that it was the one blade of grass left on this tilting planet.

i think i ask too many unimportant questions.