Kimberly and her friends Jessica, Amber, and Anna are sitting inside her mother's 1994 Audi 100 in a space of the parking lot of their high school. Living in a region that is considered "the heart of the country" a job in the coal mines and agriculture is waiting for you, or you could go from welfare recipient to Yale graduate. Before the first period bell rings these young high school teens decide to turn up and get lit. First, someone lends their phone to play some Travis Scott or Lil Uzi Vert. Than the sensation begins. The avenue that this sensation comes from is through a narcotic that has multiple names. This drug is ruining the lives of millions of people and is becoming a pandemic (or already is). I'm talking about no other than the selling and consumption of opium/or opiates.
Using a thin glass tube these four young ladies take turns inhaling and exhaling the deadly chemicals from the opiates. Who will stop them? What will be the fate of these young ladies if the law catches them? Do their parents see the traits of soon-to-be addicts? Nah, Kimberly's phone is stuck on Facebook Live. They're telling on themselves. Plain and simple.
Craig and Lamont have been friends since the second grade. Both are twenty-five and unemployed. With an interest in Criminal Justice, Craig had always wanted to be a lawyer. Lamont, on the other hand barely survived high school, but graduated on time (along side Craig). College was never Lamont's thing, music was though. Three out of five days of the week (randomly) Craig would walk down the steps to the first floor (Apt.1D) to check out Lamont's (L-Boogie) production skills. Where they come from a genre known as Trap dominates the scene. Their city is the birthplace of artist such as Kanye West, Lupe Fiasco, and Chief Keef. Some call it Chi-Town, but you could say Chicago.
While in Lamont's apartment these longtime friends politic, talk the shit, and beyond. Carrying the label of being both black and male is harder than society says it is. Besides sipping on some King Cobra's and hitting a blunt or two, every now and again pills are popped. Xans are what they are called on the streets. At first Craig was fond to popping xans, but time passed and he started to love the escape it formed for his heartache. One day Craig asked Lamont "where did you get this from? This some good shit man." Lamont responded by saying "like I told you I got that connect."
Whether you belief it or not the connection that links Craig and Lamont is the same connection that links Kimberly and her friends. From the projects in Chicago to the suburbs in Ohio this same substance smuggles itself into this country and has users of all ages, races, and creeds.
Drug consumption/or using is a choice. Recovering from drug addiction is also a choice. We as individuals decide the routes we want to take. The consequences that may follow should be accepted to the full out extent.
One of my favorite writers, Philp K. Dick was once a drug user. In the author's note of his 1977 novel A Scanner Darkly Dick states:
Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error in judgement. When a bunch of people begin to do it, it is a social error, a lifestyle. In this particular lifestyle the motto is "Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying," but the dying begin almost at once, and the happiness is a memory. It is then, only a speeding up, an intensifying, of the ordinary human existence. It is not different from your lifestyle, it is only faster. It all takes place in days or weeks or months instead of years. "Take the cash and let the credit go," as Villon said in 1460. But that is a mistake if the cash is a penny and the credit a whole lifetime.
Life is only lived once and we must choose wisely.
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