By Aina Michaella G. Licodine
Features Editor (2016-2017)

Fun is rolling up a joint, lighting it up and puffing in rings. Fun is mixing ecstasy with alcohol and gulping it down. Fun is snorting cocaine through a rolled up paper and inhaling it. In this day and age, this is how fun looks like.

Appalling, I would say, how the use of drugs is so in vogue right now. As terrible as it sounds, people mistake the words ‘illegal’ for ‘acceptable’ and ‘distasteful’ for “normal.” For them, it is a glorious gamble; it is thrilling; it is definitely alright.

Many are magnetized, even blinded, by the powerful glare of the silent killers. Most of the time, they just want to jump in the bandwagon with the fear of being a wet blanket or an outcast, while there are some cling to drugs as it if were some sacramental bread and it can bring them the eternal salvation they thirst for.

Using drugs can also boost one’s level of ‘coolness’ to a certain degree. It can largely contribute to the illusion of you being a cool kid, a rebel, a risk-taker or a blue blood. People who are perched on top of the social ladder probably think enormities are forgivable and liberties are absolute. I cannot, perhaps I will never totally grasp the logic behind the use of drugs to “have fun.” What most people consider as recreation is seriously unsound and downright fatal.

I personally do not know how to react to the 2016 Closeup Forever Summer concert at the SM Mall of Asia last May 21 as it turned out to be a catastrophe. That night, out of the 14,000, the Grim Reaper took with him five souls dosed up with party drugs. It was shocking, indeed.

So upon learning the news and autopsy reports, I thought to myself, ‘Is ecstasy so elusive that ingesting pills of the same name their only way to achieve euphoria?’ Is pleasure dependent on the amount of methamphetamine or marijuana taken in? For all I know, bliss is within reach and enjoyment is not far-off.

Of course, I still have to point the shotgun to the culprits in charge of selling the little killers, because what was supposed to be a taste of paradise turned into a kiss of death. But take in mind, you always have to the choice to close your fist from the offer. But the damage has been done, and let us be reminded of the chalk talk about the perils of drugs courtesy of the summer festival.

I never really understood the service brought about by illegals drugs to the human race, aside from the temporary rush of ease and bliss, of course. They end lives and I will never see the beauty of that, I will never see the fun in that. It is illegal, it is distasteful, and it is destructive.

Let’s get high on something that is definitely not lethal at ainamichaella@gmail.com.