All of us are brilliant at giving excuses. Every action of ours, right or wrong is justified. I might not have traveled to every place in the world, but to the few I have, I always wanted to find out the reason behind alcohol consumption. The justifications are in fact colorful and varied. There have been instances where I have been asked to try and see it’s worth. “Stress”, “Law school”, “Med school”, “University”, “Breaks-ups”, “rejections”, “job failure”, “weather”. The justification might let you sleep peacefully: Oh wait! You are too drunk to realize and too hung over the next day to contemplate. There are these clichéd advises, I can give you about the impact of it on your health, family, loved ones, your self-respect, but hey, it’s not as if you haven’t heard all this before.
This is the story of a person who left the bottle behind and moved on but wishes every day she had never picked it up in the first place. Popular, pretty, intelligent, humorous, athletic, everyone craved to be her. Oh! she did hide the difficulties very well. Nobody knew she was fighting her own battle and was living a nightmare behind the pretty facade. All were in awe of her life and some were even jealous. A lot of people judged her, but she was one of the sweetest girls. Years rolled by, school ended, everybody branched out into their own lives and the contact with her kept dwindling. Then one day, in the obituary page, one of her friends’ saw her mother’s photo and was shocked. For years together, this “perfect girl” had been balancing two jobs to help her mom’s cancer treatment. And you know what the worst part, she didn’t want to lose her “image” and take help from her friends. Her friend met her and was astonished to see her. She was a shadow of herself and that moment she could tell was her changing point. She broke down and told her friend the times she had picked up the bottle to hide the pain and all those pennies she had lost and thought would have helped her mother get better. On and on she went on about what could have been done and what should have been done. After hours of consoling, her friend knew she had to be the real friend and took her to the rehab. Oh was it as simple as it sounds? No! It took days to convince her and counsel her. And after that she wrote a letter explaining that the worst thing that happened to her was the aid of the bottle and even her mom’s cancer battle was better than that, because her mom would have never imagined her daughter doing this.
“I totally understand how you feel” is the most said lie ever, but we college students who are competing in this rat race called life have become more and more dependent on the bottle. It’s the city way of life, we might think, but we fail to realize that when we shut down in all the senses, the city will still keep going on. Parents are under this belief that they have brought up their kids in the best way possible and you can see the pride in their faces, I am not so sure it would be the same when they see your health deteriorate. All the years of struggle and accomplishments will disappear the moment you pick up the bottle. I have “social drinks”, I am not an addict! Heard that a lot of times and I am sorry it doesn’t stay that way most of the times. Remember, you are in charge of your life, but that doesn’t give you the rights to misuse it. Reports say most kids try their first drink by the age of 12-14 and most of them become addicts before the age of 20 while the legal age is 21. Who are we fooling into believing that this habit is “cool” or “the in thing” or “not harmful”? It’s not too late to stop and college or job or a relationship is just one thing in your life, don’t give up on the rest before you have had the chance to live it.
About the Author:
Subha Nivedha. S
She is a law student at School of law, Sastra university. She is an active debater and has participated in various moot court competitions, MUNs, and debates. She is part of a numerous NGOs and wants to bring a change in the society. Her interest lies in Human Rights and Intellectual Property Rights.
yes… youths need to understand the consequences of it…. i know a friend of mine who started at his school days…. and he started with a petty reason… and now it is part and parcel of his life.
But how these people start being high at so tender age? well i think their parents should be blamed. they are not conscious and their children dodge them giving silly excuses.