A thought occured to me tonight, sitting at home, with some friends around.

A lack of drugs has killed many of the conversations I used to have.

Let me explain this. It's been a few years since I gave up smoking pot. I was never a heavy drug user, giving up was surprisingly easy in fact. One day, I just decided that I'd had enough, and stopped. I've not really been tempted since. Most of my friends also were drug smokers. None of them really use anything harder than pot, every now and then one or two will give up too, with varying degrees of success, and lengths of time. But there have been periods when just about everyone I associated with, was a drug smoker.

So, we'd sit around, passing the bong from person to person, and have the most incredible conversations. 'Yes', I can hear you say, 'but did any of them make any sense? Or was it just the drug fucked ramblings of a room of fools.' I can understand why you might think this - particularly if you've never been exposed to this type of thing. It's sickening really, you watch a movie with some people smoking drugs, and almost instantly they're giggling madly, spinning out over the most ridiculous of things. Making no sense whatsoever. That wasn't the way things were with my group of friends. I learned so much in this time...I learned about geology, astronomy, ancient history, music, philosophy....and so much more. We'd talk about anything, and everything. I'm not going to claim that all our conversations were deep and meaningful - far from it. Yes, sometimes they were silly, or totally irrational. It didn't matter though...

Because they were conversations with friends

A short while ago, I quit smoking cigarettes. And recently, I've realised that yet again, I've lost an opportunity for great conversation. My two flatmates and myself would go out under the pergola out the back, have a cigarette, and a good chat. We'd talk about anything, work, computer games, music...whatever. Now, come the weekend, my friends go out the back, for a smoke, whether a joint or a cigarette, and I stay inside. I could go out with them, but it's always more difficult to enter the conversation, when you're already standing apart. And I've lost the opportunity for conversation with my friends. As they sit outside in the sun, talking and laughing, feeding their minds, I'm somewhere else, preserving my health.

It's a real shame, that we can't just sit, friends together, and have these conversations without a substance acting as a focus. It's disappointing, because I miss these talks. And I sometimes feel myself growing further away from some of the people I love most in the world. I hope, one of these days, I'll be able to have talks like that again...drug free, and not caring. All of us knowing that the each other's mere presence is enough to stimulate, that none of us need to be on anything before we can open our hearts, and minds. One day....



Nothing here is supposed to be a judgement on those who choose to use drugs....it's just a thought that occured to me, that I thought was interesting, and wanted to put down in words.