let it be known that i was completely childishly ignorant of what my actions freshman and sophomore year would end up doing on my future highschool career. getting heavily into drugs and the drug culture of a small town was completely cool at first, it's different and interesting; it feels like it makes a small town a lot bigger than it really is. it makes you feel like you're experiencing something exciting and like you're apart of something more than just horses and green gas and diesel 4x4's. black out parties with black out faces felt a lot better and a lot more mysterious than white dominated downtown with white men and white wives.
however, i did not anticipate what would happen when i stopped. i forgot the basic rule numero uno of a small town of : everyone knows each other in one. the negative effects hitherto have included
1) The primary negative effect has been the fact I am somehow known by every parent in this goddamn town. This may sound like a generalization, however so far I have had six, yes SIX people, completely not able to hangout with me outside of the school system purely on what their parents have heard about me. As a person trying to make friends with people that are healthier or not as sketchy, it's a bit hard to do when your reputation follows you like a consistently pot-smoking and cocaine using shadow.
2) Secondly, I burned myself out(literally) on drugs with an older generation of people. As someone who has bestfriends that are now seniors in college, or dropped out, but most over the age of 20, it is simply boring in a high school now. The parties with the other teenagers are not as exciting as they were 2 years ago. There are no 8+ person fights. There is nobody carrying 500 jell-o shots into a party. There is not an outside bar with 7th grade guidance counselors selling cups of alcohol for $5 a cup. There are no familiar faces anymore. For some reason it felt like Mount Sterling lost all 7,000 residents in 2012.
However, there has been some good in it. I've forced responsibilities on myself and gave myself priorities. I actually care about getting scholarships now, and I actually got into a Governor's School for Creative Writing of all damned things. I care about seeing my family more to makeup for the lost 3 years of consistently being gone every summer night drunk in the back of cars on back roads or every winter day when I was heating up my body with THC. I've began to care about certain things, but drugs have certainly made me annoyed in other areas.