This is a factual retelling of a teenager’s history. Some of you may find this disturbing but it is a story that needs to be told. For the sake of anonymity I will use the name Jake when referring to the person the story is about. This story is about Jake and his introduction to drugs.
Jake was a good teen. He never missed a day in school. Made good grades and while he suffered from obesity and was bullied because of being overweight, Jake was well liked by most of his peers and had friends in many cliques at his school. Jake’s parents kept a close eye on him until he was about sixteen at which point they started allowing him to mingle more freely with other children from his school that he was friends with. One of Jake’s best friends when he was sixteen was a young man by the name of Buddy. Buddy was a wild child if there ever was one. He was smart but undisciplined. He liked Jake’s company because Jake himself was smart. Maybe even smarter than Buddy was.
It wasn’t long until Buddy first approached Jake about smoking a joint Buddy bought from a neighbor after school. Buddy lived in a middle class neighborhood so many people would never think drugs were being used and dealt by their neighbors. Jake refused that evening and for months afterwards refused every time Buddy encouraged him to smoke a little pot. Thats how Buddy said it. ” Whats wrong with smoking a little pot? ” he would ask Jake. Jake made up all kinds of excuses mostly moral in nature, but the reason he really didn’t smoke those joints with Buddy was that he was scared. Jake had been told horror stories about pot his whole life and thats all he knew about it. Eventually after seeing Buddy and some other of his friends smoke pot and not die or seemed to be harmed, Jake started to doubt what his parents had taught him. The longer this occurred the more angry Jake became because he felt he had been lied to by his parents about pot specifically and all drugs in general.
Almost six months to the day after Buddy first offered Jake a joint, ” Just a little pot. ” as Buddy would say, Jake’s will was tested yet again and this time his will power and upbringing failed him. Doubt had eaten right through the walls built to protect Jake from the horrors of drug use. On the way to a midnight movie showing in a nearby city Jake was offered another joint and this time at the urging of three of his friends he took his first toke of pot. He kept telling his friends that he didn’t feel anything and did not understand what they meant by getting high but after 2 of those joints his head was spinning like a top. Jake managed to follow his friends into the movie theater and sat down at the first seat he could find to keep from falling down. His friends all piled around him shoving food and drinks at him and when he started eating he found he was very hungry. Afterwards the 4 boys smoked another joint in the bathroom of the theater and drank liquor from a flask that Buddy had in a hidden pocket inside of his jacket. Jake was still a little scared but he felt really good so his view of the world had been totally changed. A drug user had been born that faithful night.
Over the next 2 years Jake’s personality changed dramatically. He began to distrust anything adults told him. He continued to smoke pot and drink liquor on a regular basis. Sometimes he would go to school drunk or high. He began to stay up late at night and sleep during school hours. His grades suffered but he still managed to graduate high school. College was another matter. Jake could not get a job because every place did drug tests and Jake could not pass a drug test where he could work and save money to pay for college. His parents did not have the money to send him to college, they were just low paid factory workers. And Jakes grades has slipped so much that nobody was going to award him a scholarship to attend college.
At age nineteen Jake was working in a restaurant. He cooked food. He smoked pot and drank every day of the week and 50% of his income went to pay for these substances. Jake never read books or the newspaper any more. He quit hanging around all of his friends that did not use drugs and spent what time he was not at work or sleeping hanging out with his drug buddies. Many of them could not even hold down a job so Jake ended up paying for their drugs as well. Jake thought these guys were his friends but they were just really using him. Jake is about to turn twenty now. And he has realized how much drugs have changed his plans he had made for the future when he was fifteen. Jake has quit using drugs and only drinks at parties, maybe once or twice a month. After Jake finished telling me his story I only had one question to ask him. That question was; ” Jake, was it worth it? ” Jake replied ” Hell NO! I wish I had never seen a joint in my whole life. ” Telling this obviously upset him because he broke into tears at which point I comforted the young man and changed the subject. To this day I think about this story occasionally and it always makes me sad. I often wonder what type of man Jake would have become if he had never became involved with drugs. But its to late now. Not all the kings horses, nor all the kings men can take those memory’s away from Jake.
I hope you share this story with your children if you have any, Or give it to a friend. Spread this link far and wide. Together maybe we can prevent another Jake from making a mistake he is not equipped to deal with.
