Growing up, I always heard the phrase “say no to drugs.” I didn’t understand what all the hype was about. After all, my mom would kill me if I ever even entertained the thought of doing drugs. I was bombarded by the advertisements that cautioned me to reject peer pressure and stay drug free. You would think after years of being brainwashed by it, it would have stuck to me like cheap Velcro. It didn’t. The following is what happens when you ignore warnings and decide to see for yourself.
It was May of 1999. My girlfriend Ann had just graduated from college and we were set to party! Saturday night finally arrived. The hall was decorated, the scent of delicious Haitian food, cooked by my mom, permeated the air and the crowd started arriving. The turnout was overwhelming and we started to worry about crowd control. This might seem a bit of an odd thing for us to be concerned with, because young adults don’t normally have a reputation of being responsible but we were downtown and didn’t want the police to shut down out party.
Since we were there to celebrate Ann’s wonderful accomplishment, I decided I would handle the situation and let her enjoy her party. I began walking around the hall making sure all the attendants were invited guest and that we had no party crashers. The stress of the situation must have been visible to the guests. After about a half hour of me doing this, one of the guest, a young man I knew from school, came up to me and said, ” Ma, you look so stressed out, I got something for that.” When I advised him, I didn’t do drugs; he said, like all the other pot heads, “It’s not a drug ma, its natural.” I stopped laughing long enough to ask him to get out of my way and went on about my business.
The night was a success and everyone had a great time. Everyone except me, that is. I was so exhausted from all the running around and all the responsibilities, I forgot to enjoy myself. So when my little marijuana pusher friend reappeared, I decided to take him up on his offer. Now, you have to realize, up until this point the closest I had ever been to “drugs” was seeing the kids on campus smoking cigarettes and such. My mother was the kind that sheltered us from anything and anyone she considered a bad influence. So, I didn’t know what crack looked like, how cocaine made its way into the bloodstream or how a marijuana plant came to resemble a cigarette until I went to college.
My pusher friend pulled me to the side and showed me the slim brown cigarette, told me it would cost me five dollars to let my stress go and be free. At the very moment I heard the sound of Mommy’s voice, and for the first time, told her to “be quiet” as I made my purchase. Just from the shadiness of the exchange, I knew I was doing something wrong. I proceeded to throw caution and that annoying voice in my head that sound just like my mother to the wind. I found a discreet location and lit the slim brown cigarette on fire. After a couple of “pulls” I definitely felt “carefree.” I wasn’t concerned with anything. A feeling of euphoria came over me and I was definitely “high.” I started to feel a little too free. The last thing I remember was announcing to the entire Downtown community that “I’m free, and I like it.”
When I woke up the next morning, in a bed that was not mine, I knew I was no longer “high” nor was I “free.” I looked around the room in my confused state, for anything that would give me a hint as to where I was. When my glazed eyes finally landed on a picture of my girlfriend Lorraine and her mom, a sigh of relief slowly escaped my body. At the same moment Lorraine walked into the room with all the West Indian remedies her mom could come up with for a “hangover.” God forbid she were to find out what I had really been up to. That would have been the end of me and my experimenting days.
When I questioned Lorraine about the events of the previous night, it became clear to me why all that money had been spent on advertisements that cautioned against drug use. As Lorraine explained it to me, I was so “free” after smoking my slim brown cigarette that I took to the streets of downtown singing, dancing and making lewd propositions to the men that passed me on the street. Lucky for me, she arrived just as one of the men had accepted one of my lewd propositions. As I write this, I am laughing so loud my stomach hurts. However, as I recall just how much danger I put myself in that night, I find no humor in the situation at all.
Now that I am a parent, I have a completely different point of view. For all her good intentions, my mother’s “scared straight” tactic was not effective at all. When it comes time to have the “drug abuse” conversation with my daughter, I will be sure to incorporate the part of there being an equal and opposite reaction for every action. After that, I will pray to God that the idea of waking up one morning and not having a clue as to where you are is not something that sounds appealing to her.