Photo source: Tokyo’s Psychedelic Digital Museum
If you can take shots of hot liquor, drink bitter leaf water, eat bitter-kola or go hardcore like Jägermeister or Stout, please you can dish and receive the truth without a fret.
I actually wish I can get this post as far as possible, but as they say, life na jeje, so I’d hope you share this, and the person you shared it with, shares also and so on.
This post is triggered by my experience on a road trip from Abeokuta to Lagos.
So, I’m seated in traffic, heading into Lagos when a rickety saloon car slowly moves and become aligned with my car.
There are leaves on the front of the car and my friend, reading the curiosity on my face, tells me “it’s a form of protection against bad spirits especially when carrying a dead body”
This nudged me to pay attention to the passengers and there it was…
I envisioned he’d be around 5″8 in height, I mean, I’d like to think so.
With the average naija boy dreads, his eyes were shut, but his mouth couldn’t help but give away the fact, that he no longer had life in him.
On first sight, you would assume he’s asleep, until you notice the uncontrollable drools and the disdainful, disappointed look and teary eyes, the woman ( who I think is his mum) had.
This wasn’t my first time…
My first time was with the face of a beautiful ebony angel, I wanted to touch her hands and feel that coldness, that is said to be associated with death.
I still remember looking at her lifeless body at the backseat of my dealer’s car, while her younger brother had a phone to her ears, with her mum on the other line, cry-praying for mercy on her daughter’s soul.
Cause of death: An Overdose
Yes, the irony…
I feel parenting just got harder with the rise of technology and constant innovations. Old rules can no longer sufficiently make it work in this present era.
It’s not even enough to be protective and it is obviously harmful to be hypocritical.
Drugs?… There are everywhere…in the littlest corners and right under our nose.
In all actuality, it isn’t a big deal anymore; not with the rapid ongoing legalization of cannabis, or our “personal” role models who ‘hippie-ly” show them off as we “look up” to them.
I’m not the type to caramelize my words when I need to speak, so please take this as a “Sushi” post; raw yet yummy. Hehe!
What is this era? This is the era of being unapologetic, of being fearless, speaking the truth and extreme but constant changes.
However, there is need for a drug awareness, and by that, I don’t mean “promotion” but the necessity to shed light better because this is drug season (there is a thin line between hard drug abuse and mental instability), so best believe!
Young lives are silently consumed by these “temporary feel good” with the rich concealing their losses and the average person’s loss is used as a lesson, which isn’t taught properly and not learnt.
Gone where the days when parents scolded their little ones with lies of how they were perfect versions of themselves in their time, or when .
We are fully in the technology era, and I, myself can not even perfectly explain the naturally raised awareness, the newer generation and the one to come own.
House 1: Addiction
To me, addiction is a mental myth, just because, how can you lack control over a thing that has no legs and hands, without a gun to your head.
But how do I drive this home, without speaking my personal truths about addiction? The truth about my life journey and my dangerous zeal to know, seek and experience. The truth about my drug experiments (asides heroine & meth) and how I freely walked in and out of that phase, without adorning the cloak of addiction.
Everyone is trying to escape from pressure and stress, everyone is seeking their fantasies and escape thoughts and the fastest way to “travel” is through drugs.
I love the term “gateway” because it truly in a way, dispels the ambiguous reason for drugs usage.
But do you go through a gate and forget home (you)?
Speaking out of experience, I do not understand the pleasures or feelings of these drugs.
(Yeah yeah… Weed is preached about as good and chilled, but doesn’t that bring to thought, the power acclaimed to leaves? Same with Percocet, and when there is no more? Zero confidence? How dependable hmm!)
House 2: Awareness
Face it, there are messages in everything we see these days; on drug, sex and money.
It’s hidden everywhere in what we see.
It’s why a young child can process what is happening around him, from cartoon and animations, with the games we give them to play which has ads of high adult contents, of social media and it’s openness to keep us vulnerable with all forms of energy and people.
An average aged child of today can easily figure out how to use a new age appliance without reading the manual and much more, so what’s to say about their level of awareness.
Counseling just took a major upgrade.
House 3: Mental Health
I don’t think there is a way to speak about drugs without coining in mental health.
From personal experiences, it’s a lot easy on diagnosis to have access to some harmful medication which create euphoria and in some cases shut you down completely.
According to an article by Madeline Levin, MPH, Nicolas J. Jury, PhD, Kousha Mohseni, MS, Varuna Srinivasan, MBBS MPH, for the National Center for Health Research, “Violent behavior is also a side effect of antidepressants”, so you can imagine my thoughts at the demerits of mental health awareness.
Still on that article, I noted and will quote “There is growing evidence that many antidepressants and anti-psychotics can cause ‘akathisia’. Akathisia is a type of body restlessness and an urgent need to keep moving. Sometimes misdiagnosed as restless leg syndrome, akathisia has in some cases caused suicide, perhaps because the person feels out of control. Forms of akathisia include pacing back and forth, rocking uncontrollably while sitting in a chair, shuffling the feet while walking, crossing and uncrossing legs, general irritability and agitation.”
You can read more on this here: http://www.center4research.org/antidepressants-increase-suicide-attempts-risks/
Going by this research, my concern about mental health awareness is more understood.
But what better advice can one give, considering the fact that “it’s better said than done”?
Power is key in life and power over yourself is paramount. Also right living isn’t just about healthy eating or the expected social and moral values. Right living is simply understanding that life in itself is a paradox; it’s self contradictory, so we must learn how to live and cope within its inconsistency and not depend on external factors to see us through.
P.S: given the growing legalization of Cannabis across some part of the globe, it’s also important to state, if you must, then by all means note that marijuana is a drug of many strains which has different prescriptions.
So if you must…get a prescription and know your strain.
Love and light!
