school help: I graduated high school last year and a boy I went to class with over-dosed and died yesterday. - Help.com

Don’t do drugs.

you need a nap wrote:
Don’t do drugs.

Good Advice lol

Sorry for the loss of your classmate.

Be prepared to feel this way several times throughout your life. People die every day, and sometimes in an odd series of times. It’s all just the way of life, and the sooner you realize the mortality of it all the easier it will be.

Death is inevitable. Everyone will have to come to grips with it at some point or other. For me, that was during highschool, heh. A few years after that, some kid with the same last name as me committed suicide at our school. He was probably the only other kid out of 450 with my last name. That gave me interesting things to think about.
When you hear about people dying younger than you do you think to yourself, “That could have been me?” I probably don’t ask that question enough, because I often forget that I’ll die. It seems so far in the future. Perhaps it is, perhaps not. However, when it comes, hopefully people are ready for it.

Well said Dark.

DarkSnow wrote:
When you hear about people dying younger than you do you think to yourself, “That could have been me?”

No, I don’t think that. I never think like that really. It was either me or it wasn’t and it usually isn’t. I just feel strange that people are willing to do things like drugs even if it can kill them just because someone else told them that they would be cool if they did it. He was never really a bad guy, he just wanted to impress the wrong people I guess. And then I hear the people in my community say things like “teenagers these days, not a single one has any sense. Me and my friends were never like that…etc” quite literally actually. They act like they expected it,in their tone and their expressions, like it could have been anyone under the age of 21 and it wouldn’t have mattered. I guess what I’m getting at is that I don’t think “that could have been me?” but “It wouldn’t really make a difference if it was me”.

Anonymous wrote:
And then I hear the people in my community say things like “teenagers these days, not a single one has any sense. Me and my friends were never like that…etc” quite literally actually. They act like they expected it,in their tone and their expressions, like it could have been anyone under the age of 21 and it wouldn’t have mattered.

I’d say this is more because as you grow older death just becomes more natural. And really, 20 years ago people weren’t doing the crazy drugs people do today. More so suicide and depression were a lot lower. So when someone says that it’s because when they grew up they didn’t have time to be a wimp, they didn’t have time to be ‘cool’. Back then you avoided stuff like that or your dad could legally belt you for it. Now, kids just get depressed all the time, turn to drugs, and think they’re invincible.

Societal decline perhaps? Families and marriages aren’t as strong as they used to be. People are trying harder than ever to pursue their happiness, even selfishly at the cost of harm to others, and yet they are depressed and aren’t truly happy. And a sad number of people don’t have close, good friendships, but pin all of their hopes on having one dating relationship. Not that dating is a bad thing. Far from it, dating and then marriage can be quite amazing, but the chance of a successful lifelong relationship for a person who dates without having good friendships are very slim. Perhaps also a hard work ethic has diminished among my generation. Or so it seems to me. I grew up in what used to be a third-world country where community was more important than the individual, so the individualism of the U.S. was a shock at first. And from what I understand of Europe, it’s somewhat similar.

The societal decline may be part of the reason why people are willing to try drugs and destroy their lives. A lot of people feel lost, and want joy and peace, so they take what they can get and try to cling to what they think has a chance of working, no matter how dangerous or short-term. They’ve heard religions are evil and hypocritical, so that’s not an option. And they’re growing up in a cold culture where people aren’t as used to socializing and making friends, perhaps because of a mentality of individualism and new technologies that remove face-to-face contact a lot, so they can’t pursue friendships either. And some people think that dating is the cure for everything and seek to date at such young ages to fill the emptiness in their hearts, but it isn’t enough. People lose their interests because they don’t have friends to encourage them. Families are weaker than ever, so they don’t have as many people to turn to for support or love. So what else can they do? I’ve read testimonies of people who used to be in gangs, and most of them said they joined gangs out of loneliness and a feeling of wanting to belong. And because that desire was so strong, they’d willingly put up with painful initiation rites into the gangs. Drugs could be a small price to pay for them to have a group of people who seemingly accepts them.

Or perhaps taking drugs is just part of a pursuit of pleasure to try to fill the emptiness in their hearts. And of course, it doesn’t work, so they try more and more drugs, till it gets to a point they die. I’d cry for my generation if I wasn’t already cold from years of seeing this. Perhaps the older people are similarly getting steeled against this, and they’ve come to expect it. I’m just 20, and I’ve only lived in this country for 8 years now, so I can’t imagine what it would be like to see all of this go on for longer than I’ve been alive. When I open a door for an 80-year-old man with a cane he is surprised. I guess a lot of them have given up on the majority of us. I know I would have given up a long time ago in their place. There is a way to fight this, but it won’t happen =/