A few weeks back a programme was aired on channel 4 called ‘Drugs Live: The Ecstasy Trial’, where basically the programme entailed a group of people that had agreed to consume the drug in order to monitor their reactions it. Following from this sparked a lot of discussion on Twitter around the consumption of drugs, particularly around the drug MDMA.

To be frank, I was utterly shocked at some of the statements people we’re saying.  Certainly from the people I follow. There was one particular girl who is a blogger with over a thousand followers who couldn’t praise the use and effects of MDMA enough, stating how it gave her the best feeling in the World. This is a person who potentially has followers who are easily influenced by her judgements and opinions, and I felt was a very dangerous statement to make. I know at the moment this seems like an extremely ranty post, however there is a point to all this.

Four years ago now, I lost my best friend to the use of MDMA. At 22 years old, on 10th May 2008, my best friend took his life by consuming the very drug that this unnamed girl on Twitter praised so much. Since that day, I lost the person I spoke to about everything, who I knew everything about and who knew everything about me. I have never had a friendship connection like I did with him, and to be robbed of it so suddenly has taken it’s toll on me over the fours years of having to come to terms with the fact that he is no longer here.  I’m sure there are people who think that after four years I should be well and truly over this and moving on with life now. However, when this happened I was in the middle of university, and although his life had come to an end, mine couldn’t stop to grieve. I still had to study and work to pay my way through my studies, so until now I haven’t had the chance to accept that I cannot share anymore of my life with my friend.

Sadly, this is not the only drug related situation I have had to deal with. At the age of 11 years old, it was discovered that my then step-father was a heroine addict. We only discovered this after he had stolen all of my belongings in order to pay for and feed his addiction.  Following from that I had to sit and watch my home be boarded up whilst we were in the transition of moving homes, so he couldn’t get in again and take anything else, we had to move to the other side of the city without him knowing where we were, and I had to live with the fact that he had chosen a bag of heroine over his family, which for a long time, didn’t sit well with me. Over time I found out all of the horrific things he did in order to get the money for his next fix. He went as far as trying to make my mother believe she was going insane by moving random objects around that she had placed. One example I remember is when she had put the butter back in the fridge. Once she had left the room he went into the fridge and moved the butter into the microwave, and when my mother questioned this later he told her she had placed it there. This was all so he could take money from her purse without her questioning where it had gone. She would just think she had misplaced it and it would turn up. On top of this we had men coming round to our house demanding to know where he was and demanding money, he would disappear for weeks on end, and he even went as far to fake the death of his son to be given money to go to his funeral, when in fact he was paying for drugs. Months after we had moved into our new home we read an article in a newspaper about a man in his 40’s who had killed himself with a heroine overdose. We instantly knew it was him.

Now I know my opinions on drugs are extremely narrow minded, but throw all of these factors I have had to face together and can you blame me?! I am never one to dictate what a person should or shouldn’t do with there life. They can get on with their drug habit, or they can seek treatment through sites like www.howtohelpadrugaddict.com, it doesn’t really matter. If my friends choose to consume drugs, then all I ask of them is they do not do it in front of me. However I also ask that before you make statements on social networking sites like Twitter or Facebook like the one from the unnamed girl on Twitter, please consider the kind of people who will read your thoughts. We live in a very influential World, so make sure you are influencing people for the right reasons…