In several issues of The 21st Century I have read articles on the drug problem and what should be done about it. In the last issue I noted an article on drugs at my school. This student was lecturing how terrible the drug problem was. I am also a student here who has noticed the drug problem, but I was made aware of it in an entirely different manner.

I am a drug abuser. I have not touched any in almost a year, but I will always be a druggie. I will always have the urge to turn to drugs whenever there is any sort of void in my life. That's why I initially turned to drugs. I was an honors student achieving decent grades, but I had no interest in anything or anyone. I started using them slowly, although I had been educated on how harmful they are. I completely ignored what I had been taught for years and I will not say that I was not having a good time. There was always something to do and it simply made me feel good. It got to the point where I was doing drugs every day after school. I was not physically addicted, but was severely mentally addicted. Everything was fuzzy and barely affected me, and I cherished this. Nothing could hurt me because I did not care about anything, other than feeling good. I floated along for months, getting high every chance I had. It took a horrible incident to make me aware that I was no longer floating, I was drowning. At this point I quit.

For a person who has never experienced drugs to write an article about them seems like hypocrisy to me. People need to learn this for themselves, for the lesson to be real. However, I realize that many will not be as lucky as me. In order to stop the rising use of drugs the "just say no because they are bad" policy must be changed. If I were being lectured about not jumping off a bridge by a person who had read up on the statistics of injury, it would be easy to dismiss. It wouldn't be so easy to dismiss someone sitting in a wheelchair telling me not to jump off that bridge. Observation and learning about a subject is fine, but is nothing compares to experience. If The 21st Century is going to print articles on drug use, it would be far more effective to print ones by those who have experienced the hurt and havoc drugs can wreak on life. ?