One Pill Makes You Larger

Maybe it's because I'm from a state in the Midwest of America where beer is worshiped and hard drugs are looked down on, but I never had any desire to meddle with hard drugs.  Beer is huge back home, so I did have my fair share of alcohol, but that was my main fix for drugs.  

Pot was definitely popular in my college town, though I don't consider it to be a hardcore drug.  Personally, I think it's less harmful than alcohol, but to each his own.  Occasionally, I would run into a couple of my friends snorting coke, but even that was relatively rare.  

In Australia, however, everyone seems to do a handful of different drugs every weekend.  I'm surrounded by marijuana all the time, but that doesn't bother me.  If you want to chill out and smoke a joint, go for it.  Beyond pot, though, people take just about anything they can get their hands on.  

Every time there's a beach party, I see my friends with glossy, blood-shot eyes at 6 o'clock the following evening.  Many of my friends take MDMA at the beach parties so they can dance all night and stay up until sunrise.  Mind you, these are the same people who refuse to take pain relievers when they have a headache because the chemicals in Ibuprofen. Just a bit ironic.  Aside from MDMA, people often take mushrooms, acid, Xanax, and snort cocaine(to name a few), which is all so foreign to me. 

Now, I'm not trying to preach in any way, it's just to point out a difference in culture, yet again.  Even the friends who I knew snorted coke back home did it very privately.  Pot was smoked openly, but anything else was a well-kept secret.

Sometimes I almost wonder if it's that people are more afraid of being judged back home, whereas here, everyone does what they want because they are who they are.  Either you like it or you talk to someone else.  I find it interesting, although I don't always know how to react to it.  I constantly get asked if I take certain drugs or if I would.  You begin to feel like you're in an anti-drug commercial, with an angel on your shoulder telling you not to take drugs, and a devil on the other shoulder telling you to take them and enjoy yourself.  

I would be lying if I said the opportunity wasn't tempting sometimes, but one thing I pride myself in is standing my ground for what I believe in;  I think I would try just about anything natural and unprocessed--aside from alcohol.  Otherwise, I don't want to touch it.  

Oddly, I like knowing people who do harder drugs because I get to hear stories, both good and bad, without actually experiencing the drugs themselves.  It's simply a large variety of risks to my health that I'm not willing to take.  This, however, is coming from someone who smokes cigarettes.