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Fun. This word has varied definitions that keep changing as we grow.
When we were kids, having fun was all about meeting our friends, playing, running around, and creating elaborate, dramatic storylines for house-house and doctor-doctor that would put any Indian TV serial to shame.
As teenagers, fun was all about gossiping, discussing the ‘secrets’ we wrote in our diaries, and talking about our classmates. My teenage years also involved a lot of badminton.
Fun as adults
As adults, fun was more about exploring our newfound freedom.
Whether it was going out with friends, going on dates, checking out pubs for the first time, or attending our first ever house parties, everything was new and exciting.
Even university parties had the ‘cool’ element that was much coveted by us since our school days.
At my university, the lawn was the standard party destination, where alcohol, cigarettes, weed, and hookah would be circulated freely.
When I realised parties aren’t a big deal
I’m not a person who chooses to avoid ALL parties, I just prefer to party with my close friends because we are more comfortable with each other, and are aware of each other’s habits.
It took me exactly one semester to lose interest in university parties.
As a non-smoker and someone who comes from an extremely dramatic family that made me stand in front of the puja room and promise I would never touch drugs, cigarettes, etc., I grew up with an aversion to such things, and never experimented with them.
When it came to alcohol, I tried it out at a friend’s place when I was 21 or 22, but found it quite gross and bitter. I’ve never tried it again. I find Tropicana and Minute Maid far more enjoyable.
Knowing our limits
It’s impossible to tell a youngster to never experiment with anything, as our younger years come with a curiosity that goes hand in hand with making silly mistakes that later become funny stories.
However, as a sensible people, we should know where our limits lie.
I just cannot stand it when people justify getting addicted to weed, taking alcohol on a regular (practically daily) basis, smoking whenever they feel stressed, and doing hard drugs to ‘chill.’
We all hear stories of people who had to struggle with addiction that almost ruined their lives, so why would anyone knowingly get into it in the first place?
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Not the way to deal with pain
When I asked some of my acquaintances why they started taking the above substances, they said it was a diversion to deal with personal problems.
I’m sorry, I sympathise with you, but I feel barbecuing your lungs and getting high every other day is just a temporary escape that is going to add to your problems.
I normally don’t rant about this because I’m told to ‘stop being so moralistic,’ but trust me, I’m not looking at the moralistic aspect here.
A boy in my college smoked weed daily, and one day he passed out. His hostel room door had to be broken open by the warden, and he was found in very bad shape, having neglected his health in pursuit of his addiction.
Another college contemporary got high while sitting on the hostel balcony. In his dazed state, he fell off and incurred fractures. Since it was night, no one even discovered him till the next morning.
Even if you sit in a room with friends and get high, I feel it’s an escape from reality, and will gradually just make it harder for you to deal with you own life, till you find that you use substances as your crutch.
We all go through shit, but the way to deal with it is through therapy and treatment, not by descending into substance abuse.
Hard drugs
I am not really aware about hard drugs, but I came across two people during my masters who used to experiment with these.
One of them used to buy tiny bottles like from the movie Udta Punjab, and when his friends from his hometown came to visit him in the city, they’d ‘enjoy’ by sitting in the room for three days, experimenting with these different drugs.
I don’t need to explain how dangerous that is. What if the mixture of these substances had killed them? Would it still have been ‘fun?’
Another guy I spoke to once described an incident where he overdosed and passed out. He was much taller and heftier than me, and he jokingly said that if I had taken the quantity of drugs he took that day, I would have died, and that his sheer size saved him.
I don’t know if he expected me to find this impressive, but I found it disgusting. And when I asked him how he could boast about it, he went into a long rant about how taking drugs helps you see visions and how it boosts his creativity.
Don’t need drugs to be creative
To be honest, that was the lamest thing I’d ever heard. Needing drugs to boost one’s creativity??
I’m someone who writes and draws in my free time, and the right side of my brain functions perfectly well without any drugs as stimulants.
I can’t stand these excuses and reasons to justify substance abuse as cool. I’m not going to go into the agony it causes your family once they see you changing for the worse, I’m just talking from the purely practical side.
Spending large amounts of money every month to enter a dream world for a few hours that will eventually lead to a downward spiral? Seems like a lose-lose situation to me.
Image Credits: Google Images
Find the author online at: @samyukthanair_
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