We all were taught since middle school that drugs were bad, thanks to the D.A.R.E program. Now let's be honest here, how many of us actually paid attention? We were all focused on the mustache we sketched on the lion from the booklet that was passed out to us. Or maybe we were laughing at the scenarios stated in the pamphlet, assuming those were just made up and that it never actually happened in the real world. Oh, how naive we were. In 2014, 1.3 million teens were diagnosed with a substance abuse disorder.
All over the media, rather it is the news on your television or the twitter notification on your phone, you always see a headline regarding drug use in the celebrity world. Most recently, the world saw Demi Lovato fall into an overdose of heroin. As shocking as this was, Demi has made sure that her following and her team were aware of her previous struggles from early on. She even made a YouTube documentary, Simply Complicated, explaining her substance abuse, alcoholism, and depression.
This incident took social media by storm. I caught myself constantly thinking about someone I lost to heroin, then my mind trickled into an abyss of how many people actually pass away solely due to heroin. My friend who passed away was under the age of 20 and was strung out from heroin every day, according to a journal he kept in his bedside. 21.5 million Americans aged 12 and older struggled with a substance use disorder involving heroin in 2015. This number has only increased over the years, and honestly, it is scaring me.
Now, who do we blame for this in particular? Definitely not the police officers who were forced into a classroom full of kids that weren't paying attention. What about the media? Think about it, all of the songs being played that could influence the children, the tabloids spreading pictures of celebrities. No, that also doesn't sound logical. Surely, I can vouch that it is not the person who experimented with drugs.
Addiction is not a choice, and nobody is actively searching for a psychological addiction.
People are dying no matter what. The moment you are born, you are perceived to be dying. Rather, smoking cigarettes, for example, are known to "speed up the process." Drugs are most commonly used to numb the pain the taker is experiencing, and to distract the mind from something that is not the pain their feeling. Globally stopping the use of drugs is inevitable, but there are some solutions to decrease the statistics of drug use, such as painting, singing, and dancing around your room naked. Seriously.
The world is in drastic need to understand that drugs are impacting how we live on this earth. People are passing away before they should, they are becoming dependent on the feeling of being intoxicated, and their support system isn't as strong as it should be. We as a society need to promote healthier coping mechanisms to decrease the number of deaths and usage of drugs, although as stated before, it can never be laid to rest.
