Hey, kiddo. Mind if I awkwardly sit on the edge of your bed in a way that I’ve never done before? I think it’s time we had a talk about the worst possible thing that can ever happen to a human being.
Drugs.
Believe it or not, I was young once, too. I grew up in the early eighties to mid-nineties, so if there’s one thing I have a clear-eyed understanding of, it’s drug use. It seems like every other day our school was running some kind of antidrug program like Just Say No, DARE, or even just this local couple who used to come by twice a year with a raccoon puppet. And their message was loud and clear:
Drugs are going to kill you.
You’ve reached the age when friends are going to start offering you drugs. But kids who push drugs on you aren’t really your friends! They’re just burnout losers who are only doing drugs because of peer pressure, to be popular! You don’t want to be an extremely popular burnout loser, do you? I can tell from your confused expression that the answer is no.
In order to avoid drugs, you’ll need to know how to spot them. Drugs are kept in sock drawers or under the bed, in a nice wooden box or metal tin—kind of like your grandmother’s sewing kit. But inside? You guessed it. One small plastic bag full of powder, one pill bottle, two blank postage stamps, one fully prepped, uncapped syringe, and a couple of rolled-up bundles that look like stuffed grape leaves from a Mediterranean restaurant. Also, there might be an eyedropper situation in there. Lucky for me, I’ve never had to actually see drugs, but I know what they look like, thanks to the many VHS tapes they showed us during recess whenever it was raining.
It’s not just “friends” you need to watch out for. It’s also drug dealers. These soulless junkies are usually about fifteen years old, and wear bandannas, sleeveless denim jackets, and asymmetrical neon sunglasses from Pizza Hut. You can always find them standing in front of some graffiti that says “RAD” or “BAD” and snapping their fingers along to a boom box. That’s how they lure you in. And when it comes to these pushers, the first dose is always free. That’s how they get you hooked. There’s nothing a drug dealer loves more than to give away their product for free. It gives them a sick thrill.
Drugs are the most addictive substances in the world because they make you feel so bad and miserable. Of course, I’ve never tried drugs, but I don’t need to in order to know their horrible effects. I learned the safe way—from a series of P.S.A.s in which Nancy Reagan teamed up with He-Man.
These are the main drugs:
You’ve probably heard marijuana referred to as “Mary Jane,” “bud,” and “doobies.” But Mary Jane is not your bud—let’s “doobie” clear about that! At first, smoking a joint seems as harmless as puffing on one of my fine cigars. But then comes a serious case of the munchies—for harder drugs. That’s right; marijuana is a gateway drug. “One puff is never enough—soon you’ll want the harder stuff!” I got that tidbit from a Scholastic Book Club sticker, and you know it’s true because the worm on it had glasses.
After your body’s tolerance grows and you become numb to the soaring highs of weed, you’ll probably move on to LSD, or “acid.” Now, when I was a kid, our baby-boomer parents were enjoying a bit of nineteen-sixties nostalgia—“Forrest Gump,” “The Beatles Anthology,” Woodstock ’94—but those weren’t the only flashbacks they were having. One drop of acid turns your whole world into a crazy cartoon where anything is possible. Sounds fun, right? But while you’re up in that diamond sky with Lucy, you’re actually teetering on the I-beams of a half-built skyscraper because you think you can fly! This literally happened to a cousin . . . of Spider-Man’s, in “Spider-Man Meets the Acid Badger,” a free comic I received after getting a tetanus shot.
Then there’s cocaine. Cocaine is what provided all my favorite comedians with the incredible energy they needed to give legendary performances on shows like “Saturday Night Live” before going on to blockbuster movies that launched them into unprecedented superstardom. They had it all—fame, talent, record-shattering paychecks, and billions of fans. But soon a few of them died young. Not all of them, but a couple, for sure, and I don’t like those odds, do you?
Worst of all is heroin. If you’re listening to a rock song and the singer mentions an animal, a color, a plant/flower, a woman’s name, or a feeling—guess what? That’s code for heroin. Heroin is the easiest drug for you to avoid, because it’s deadly to acquire and difficult to inject. I suppose, in theory, there could be some kind of slippery slope to heroin addiction in the form of easily accessible pills in the medicine cabinet derived from similar opioids. But I don’t know much about that because, like I said, my drug knowledge firmly spans 1983 to 1995.
O.K., kiddo, that’s everything I learned about drugs from cross-corporation cartoon team-ups, giveaway pamphlets featuring talking versions of Presidential pets, posters of Mr. T reading and gardening, and the autoplay warnings on arcade games. The only way I could possibly know more about drugs is if I actually used them myself. As if! The only thing I want to get high on is being a dad.
And, hey, now that you’re a street-smart big kid, how about we go out to the garage and you crack open a beer with your old man? I think you’ve earned it. This is number three for me, though, so you’re going to be playing catch-up.
