This week's article is a tribute to my very good friend who lost her battle with addiction. We love you forever, Kimmie.

From an early age, we become desensitized to drugs and the powerful affect they can have on the human psyche. We allow rap songs, techno music and casual drug use at concerts and music festivals make us believe that drug use is a "normal human experience." It's not. Experimentation rarely ever ends there. It's very easy for one pill to turn into two or three to turn into snorting lines off the back of a toilet tank. I'm sure that for a very select few, addiction may just not be something they are predisposed to. But by the time many of us find out about our predisposition, it's too late.

I had myself convinced that I could take ecstasy just once, just to see how it felt. Within that same weekend, I had consumed 3 ecstasy pills. Not only that, but I decided to take them from complete strangers. I was under the effect of drugs, which made it easy to trust people.

For me, it didn't stop there. My next step was painkillers. I mean, if I could handle ecstasy and Molly, why shouldn't I be able to control myself around painkillers? Because the truth is, no one can control themselves from complete euphoria. An escape from all the real world problems. A few hours of silencing the voices in your head.

Don't worry, it gets worse.

Within the next few weeks, I discovered Xanax. What I used to refer to as the miracle pill. A tiny pill that made you not care about anything. That made you get a good nights sleep. A pill that made you black out entirely.

A pill I decided to overdose on.

I never understood why it had to be me that always took things too far. How come rappers and singers and DJ's take copious amounts of drugs and be fine, and not become addicted? Because they were.

These song lyrics and onslaught of social media photos exemplifying the casual use of drugs, without showing the actual effects this drugs leave long term.

Two years later and I am still recovering from the effects of drug use. My brain will never be the same. I've completely altered the chemicals my brain is able to send and receive. I will be depressed for the rest of my life due to the fact that I abused mind-altering drugs.

I've hurt my family, I've lost every single friend, all to chase the next high.

I cannot completely blame my drug dependency on rap music or celebrities, but I do know that it's time to stop romanticizing and making light of causal drug use.

So the next time you hear a rapper bragging about his extensive use of drugs, try to remember that he's probably got a lot of internalized issues he's not dealing with. There is no such thing as casual drug use.