DRUGS CAN RUIN FRIENDSHIPS

Drug and substance abuse is becoming one of the biggest problems in
high schools. You've heard about it too many times before, but have
you ever heard about it from the perspective of a high school student?
If anyone has seen people morph into something they never were because
of drugs, it has to be me.

In the beginning of the year, I befriended some new students at my
school and I considered them the most interesting people I've ever
known - talking to them had this different sort of appeal: I had so
much to know about them. It didn't take long for me to get to know
them. A group of teenage boys who made people laugh, they were witty
and clever, and my girl friends would get bored of me constantly
talking about them.

As the first semester continued into late October, I noticed a change
in all of the boys. One of them had taken up smoking weed and the
others took this chance and began smoking too. I remember the first
time one of them had smoked marijuana and he came into class looking
unusually pale. He asked to go to the bathroom that day and spent the
rest of the class throwing up in the boys' washroom.

As they grew accustomed to the drug, they began coming into class high
every afternoon, and they made the class laugh by pulling stupid
stunts - not teasing and joking, the way they used to. Chatting with
them had lost its magic.

I remember they used to sit in the cafeteria at lunch and often we
would see each other and talk, but that too changed as they began to
move away from their friends to the older students who smoked as well.
As soon as that shift in friendship took place, it was like we
completely stopped talking. I barely saw them and they barely saw me.

It shocked me that they would leave the school every day at lunch,
even when it was freezing outside. They would tell the teacher they
were going to the bathroom and they would come back 20 minutes later,
looking flushed and smelling strongly of weed.

During the year one of the boys had gone through too many
relationships. He had a different girlfriend every month, one of them
being my friend. After she broke up with him, she told me that she
couldn't be with someone who smokes that much. She could barely ever
hold a conversation with him, as he spent most of his time high.

A week before school ended, I ran into one of the boys on the bus, and
we talked for a while, just catching up on everything we had missed
out - a whole semester had gone by and we hadn't talked. Among other
things, I asked him why he smoked weed, and his answer was, "I do it
to relax." I will never forget those words, because I fear for him.

The boys I knew in the beginning of the year would never tell me these
things, and they would never be scared of failing a course, because
they were bright. The boys I once knew would never admit to moving on
to dealing drugs, and they would never get arrested.

Drugs don't have a very big impact on most high school students - just
a handful who don't have self control. Teens experiment with drugs all
the time, but only some of them get addicted to it, due to whatever
reason. Some don't even experiment because they have got sense enough
to refrain themselves.

However, it is a shame how much drugs can change people, especially
teenagers, considering that these are the years which will mold them
for the future.

By Maleeha Ghani

Maleeha Ghani is a co-operative education student from Cairine Wilson
Secondary School.