adult topics discussed // rant // drug abuse mentioned

overarching thesis here: theres a difference between real substance issues and people performing or glorifying them

so recently, my friend who is 19 has been going through some shit. lets name her Kate. We will get to her story in a minute

when a little kid gets a new toy, they wave it around, they are proud, they talk about it, they play with it all the time.

when a teenager gets their hands on a vape, or a cart, or alcohol, they wont stop talking about it. they will always mention that they are drunk, or high, or smoking. they will find anyway to weave it into any conversation. it often comes off as attention seeking behavior.

i know this whole post might be a hot take. but this is a commentary on my observations throughout my life. i am never ever referring to someone who has REAL drug abuse problems. i am talking about the glorification of drug abuse, the "desire" to have a drug abuse problem, and attention seeking behavior.

ive been around many of these people in my life. when i was in high school, i surrounded myself with them. between all of them, ive noticed a pattern.

these people usually have some level of personal issues (small to medium, in my view. obviously everyones threshold is different), glorify drugs, partying, and unhealthy lifestyle. they all have presented attention seeking behavior even before they "got into drugs"

and honestly, these people annoy me. they are constantly posting about it in the most inappropriate way possible. from instagram notes, to tiktoks etc. they are constantly posting about being drunk. they have this innate need to let the WHOLE world know they are under the influence. i think this is childish as fuck and reckless as fuck. especially when your profile is public, you have a job, you have family etc.

all of this to say, my friend Kate has reached this limit and im struggling to empathize, which is something i deal with in general. however im at the point of writing this blog post to restrain myself from going off on her.

kate has goals, she has things she wants to do, id like to think shes smart but recently she has been making very dumb choices.

about last year or so, kate had told me she "wanted to get addicted to nicotine" ii vape, so i immediately felt like i might have influenced her just by being around or smoking on facetime. i asked her why she would ever "want" to get addicted to something. she said she just wanted to try it. upon reflection i think kate thought nicotine was a mind altering substance. kate had just started a new job with mostly adults older than her. i felt she was grasping at strings to fit in, especially when she mentioned that one of her coworkers vaped.

soon after all of this, she bought a "no nicotine vape." i praised her for not buying a real vape but i did mention that hand to mouth fixation is real and it still wasnt worth the risk, especially since it felt like a gateway.

over the course of the next few weeks she claimed to be "addicted" to a no nicotine "vape." this statement really annoyed me after the third time she had mentioned it. i told her there wasnt a chemical addiction there, and that it seemed more behavioral. she told me about the hand to mouth fixation. a fixation is very different from an addiction. they are not equal. another thing that annoyed me was how light hearted she said it. she thought it was cool, i could tell. she was practically begging me to console her and worry about her. i continued to tell her she was being ridiculous in a nice way.

wash rinse repeat everything i said above, except this time it was a synthetic, low quality, mysteriously made cart (think vape but weed) weed isnt chemically addictive in the same way as nicotine, but people can still become dependent on it. from what I could see, she wasnt smoking that much. she just wasnt. regardless, she posted about it constantly and made it known that she was infact a weed smoker. the way she talked about it was so juvenile in nature. like a kid who just got a new toy.

she had her weed phase for all of two months, smoking about once a day and not getting seriously high. i knew this because we facetimed frequently for hours and she never showed the symptoms of being under the influence. i had a YEARS long phase with weed and became physically dependent on it at one point, so i could just tell she wasnt high all the time. and when she was, it wasnt severe. it was a very light high.

she kept a job, she kept up with school, she babysat her siblings, she hung out with friends. she was perfectly normal and honestly if she didnt talk about it 24/7 i wouldnt have thought anything of it.

let me preface this by saying: ive had to deal with drug abuse problems in my family and even with myself. i take the terms "sober" and "addiction" very very seriously. it is nothing to pretend to be and nothing to make a mockery of. REAL LIFE PEOPLE ARE STRUGGLING WITH REAL LIFE THINGS THAT ARE NOT FUNNY. hard drug use is NEVER okay and casual drug use is ONLY okay if it does not hurt yourself or others, or impede on your daily life. its okay to casually smoke weed. get home from work, light up. cool. no problem. that is not an addiction. if you drink tea with 25mgs caffeine in it and then stop drinking tea, you are not "sober." you just stopped doing something.

so anyways, kate suddenly mentions that she is "sober" and now she wont stop bringing up her sobriety. i decided to not speak my mind on what my definition of sober was and praised her for stopping because thats whats important. if she felt like she needed to quit then who am i to tell her to keep going. so yay, i thought i was finally going to hear the end of this drug shit. she got sober and nothing in her life changed, from everything I could see, it never escalated into dependency. she tried weed. thats it. she was casually smoking. it didnt present like a real addiction to me. she tried to imply over and over again that she had a problem, she was glorifying the problem.

quick sidenote on the glorification: during all of this i felt very guilty. kate was a very goodie-type girl. never mean, never did anything wrong, refused to do anything bad etc. kate and i became friends when i was at my worst in my drug problem, and this expanded beyond weed. she told me many times she looked up to me. i told her to never be like me and to never do drugs. my addiction was very pinteresty. it displayed itself exactly like the "aesthetic" made it out to be. it was very "girl failure" core. throughout this whole phase kate had going on, i couldnt help but feel guilty, like i had possibly opened her eyes to this. i didnt mean to be the blueprint for this, but i couldnt help feeling like i was.

she kept a daily sobriety tracker, which, given the circumstances, felt excessive to me. anytime she brought up her sobriety (everyday) she had the exact day in her head, she knew it instantly without checking. i didnt like this behavior because i thought through the day count she was still giving the weed power and still feeding into her delusion that she had a problem.

fast forward to today. ive finally had enough, but now i feel like she has a real problem. shes become good friends with her significantly older MANAGER who is now buying her alcohol and supplying it to her at work. shes drinking at work. thats a big nono. at this point it feels like its gone past experimentation and now i dont know what to do. honestly, i dont think its life-altering yet, but its a risky line to walk. it irks me that she cant see how unprofessional this is. anyways, shes been going through some self esteem problems. and now she is drinking to combat that (?) shes knowingly making dumb choices. after she admitted to having a shot at work and then telling me she purposely drank on an empty stomach, i told her she was being reckless and that she shouldnt let her problems win. drinking because you have problems and you want to feel different is letting your problems win. she responded negatively. i dont know what she expected, did she want me to praise her for drinking at work? did she want me to think she was cool for that? im still not sure.

regardless i am watching her closely, and i only wish her well. i pray that this phase in her life will be over soon