Doing drugs is not just illegal, it is very dangerous and can harm you in ways you couldn't even imagine. There are plenty of reasons why some people use drugs, but none of them are good enough to do that to my body. For example: "Everybody else is doing it", "I want to be cool and fit in" or "I want to relax and feel good." While being open to new ideas, many teens have parents that tell them not to use drugs. When in reality we're not going to listen to them and we try the drugs anyway.

My story is a familiar one to many.

I fell victim to peer pressure and succumbed to drug use. Some terrifying reactions I experienced were temporary blindness, loss of hearing, unconsciousness, paranoia, memory loss and shaking. I felt like I was in a different world and had no control of my body. What scared me was I didn't care about myself or anyone else. My mind was in a deadly fog. My "friend" said I was being ridiculous and needed to calm down. However, after this, I knew this wasn't normal. I thought to myself, "why would people do this if it makes you feel this way?"

I continued hanging around these people for a while until one day I decided I didn't want to be a part of this anymore. At this point, I was so frustrated with my friends I couldn't even speak to them. It made me so mad. It wasn't the fact that they weren't good people. It was that they wanted to get high every single day and not have a care in the world. They weren't even the same people anymore just because of the choices they were making. Deep down inside something was telling me to stay away, but I thought they were my friends and I didn't want to be separated from them.

Refusing drugs made things very complicated between me and the rest of my friend group. I felt like I was being mean, but I got tired of being around that stuff and talking about it. At this point, I was really just an outcast. After telling them I didn't want to be around it, they continued pressuring me to do it with them all the time. It was like they had no respect for my feelings, just their own. As I continued to decline their drugs, we got into fights and they didn't really care to hang out with me anymore. I stood strong and blocked all of them from my life. It was hard, but it was the best decision for me.

Eleanor Roosevelt once said, "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

My advice is, do what is best for you. A true friend should raise you up not bring you down. If you lose friends because you don't want to participate in destructive behaviors then you probably needed to be free of those relationships anyway. Real friends would respect your feelings, whether they agree with them or not. You need to surround yourself with good habits and positive role models.

You only have one life. Choose carefully who influences it.