I've been exposed to drugs since the day I was born, but I never thought my experience with drugs as an individual would escalate to the point it's reached today. My first thought every time I wake up is, "When can I have my drug?" or "Where can I go to get my drug?" My mind is a prisoner to the necessity of my drug. When I need my drug, I absolutely need my drug. It consistently dominates my actions, my thoughts, and my mind set throughout the day. If I do not get my drug when I need it, people might as well avoid me for the rest of the day. I will not function as my regular "self" as people know it-- my thoughts will be scattered into jumbled words leaking from the corners of my mouth, and I will have no interest in or desire to engage with the environment around me, including the people in it. There are some days where I don't sleep at all because of my drug use. My addiction runs the entire course of my day and carries over into the night, when I just fixate on a singular speck on my wall, wondering when the drug will leave my body so I can finally rest. When you start to take a drug, the drug starts to take you.

The drug I am writing about is caffeine, which I consume in the form of coffee daily. Perception is defined as "the way that you notice or understand something using one of your senses" and "the way you think about or understand someone or something." In describing caffeine above, you were able to sense that I was talking about a drug, but quite possibly your perception of the actual drug I was talking about was very different than caffeine. When we sense things around us, by human nature we are immediate to make judgements about the things we experience (which are shaped by our perception of them).

Perception is a very powerful tool in so many aspects of our lives and affects us each day. Sometimes perception can hurt, because often many things are misunderstood. If I weren't to reveal that the drug I was talking about were caffeine, I wonder what people would think of me and if their perception of my character and lifestyle would change based on this article. What I have come to terms with as a person functioning in a very chaotic and misleading world, is to never trust my own perception of things until I truly experience and understand them for what they are. I often reflect on how many more friends in high school I would have had if people did not perceive me in a negative manner; if they knew the real me and not the fabricated perception of their mind. As I write this now I'm wondering about if my Facebook friends think I'm suffering from a detrimental drug problem, because they only saw my headline and did not take the time to read my article. But you see, in my life I've learned now that the type of people I want to spend my time with are the ones who do take the time to understand a story, to understand a person, and does not settle for the first opinion they hear or their own perception as their truth. I am not bitter about these kinds of people anymore.

So I make sure each day of my life that I do follow my instincts, but to never muster a concrete conclusion in my head about something unless I've really experienced it. Perception can be a cruel trick, it can be a curtain to the real set of a scene, and it can be a very potent lesson for the individual and community to educate themselves on a subject matter before falling under an illusion of perception.

"When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."- Wayne Dyer, American self-help author and motivational speaker.