Talking Drugs at Uni

Lately in one of my Writing classes, we’ve been discussing and brainstorming our ideas for feature articles. I’ve been indecisive about mine, but have finally settled on large age gaps in young peoples’ relationships. Madison, who I quite like, is doing hers on the conflict that drug use has on parent-child relationships. One of her friends went through quite a traumatic time with it, and I think that if Madison comes at the issue from the right angle she could come up with an extremely revealing and helpful piece. The brainstorming of her feature article, in conjunction with someone else’s idea about the culture of clubs, led to an unexpected and highly entertaining discussion topic: drugs.

It started off with people asking random questions of each other about the addictiveness of certain drugs, what exactly certain drugs do, and so on. Our tutor, Stu, who is a very quiet and somewhat awkward person who specialises in poetry, sat back for the start of the conversation and watched it play out before chiming in with information of his own. He seemed to have quite a thorough knowledge, and I was a bit surprised. Well, a lot surprised. The conversation was mainly light-hearted, and included stories of the antics of drug-takers that people had known (never personal stories).

A story that I found particularly amusing was one told by Madison about a friend who took a “Mini-man”. Apparently, upon taking this drug, one feels as though they are significantly smaller than what they actually are. Like baby Chihuahua-sized. She told us that her friend was really freaking out, and shouting up at the people around them to watch where they were stepping. It was so extreme that when her friend was on the road he thought he saw a car coming, and that his tiny legs wouldn’t be able to get him across the street fast enough, so he got down and crouched behind a small stone about the size of a tennis ball, thinking that it would hide him. Why he’d want to hide I have no idea, but the image of someone crouching behind a stone and thinking that they were safe from sight really made me laugh.

But drugs are bad, not funny.

Dale.