Dedicated To Jeff

So it’s red ribbon week.
Please, enter the cart, and put on your seatbelt.
Get on, hear the preach about drugs.
Get off; don’t give one more hoot for another year.
It’s been twelve years of this shit, we’ve seen this ride over by now haven’t we?
Welcome to the present.
Marijuana isn’t a roadblock, it’s a hitchhiker.

This is the 21^st century, we no longer see a death sentence in the smoke we breath in.

We can control it.
Understand it.
Market it if you play your cards write.
So what’s to fear now?

…
So here we are once again in red ribbon week.
Where the banners get put up, and for 7 days, you try and act like you’re going to use the free pencils they hand out.
Like you’re going to remember what they have to say.
Like you’re going to make an active effort to live a healthy lifestyle.
But let’s be honest: Nobody is making this decision for you.
People can yell.
People can scream.
People can wave propaganda under your nose, and order you to swear by an oath that holds as much significance to you as it does the next bored sleepy teenager one desk over.

We absorb anti drug knowledge like a sponge.

And by sponge, I mean that one that’s been used for 16 years in the same kitchen.
The one that’s been soaked and rung out so many times it’s crusty to the point of crumbling.
The one that’s not going to do shit because you overused it.
Am I not getting the point across here?
Let’s be blatant:

DRUGS ARE BAD.
BAD STUFF HAPPENS.
DON’T BE BAD.
 Now here, take a pencil.

…

Trust me, I’m as tired of this as you are.

And up until quite recently, this held as much meaning to me as it did you.
But something has happened in the past couple weeks. 
And I’ve been thrown into world where the strong base I use to sit on has been replaced with a teeter totter that rocks every time I move an inch.

So if you’ve got a second, I’d like to take the chance to throw one more sermon on top of the ones you’ve already heard.

One more speech to line up along the number you’ve already listened to from teachers, police officers, parents, and the other mass amount of concerned parties.
…

I’m not here to tell you the requirements to live your life.
The path that your addiction will take.
What your habit will become.
And don’t get me wrong, I don’t know shit about drugs.
But I’ll tell you what I do know.

When/ if everything comes crashing down, and I find you in some reclined position that you might not sit back up from.
I will miss you.

…
There’s this world in front of you.
And it’s a dry sort of understanding that you have to begin with, but take a trip with me, and you will find that the very earth you step upon has enough stories to tell for dozens of years to come.
Explore a moment with me.

And understand that while you can’t feel the liquid joy running through your veins, you can feel the warmth of a lovers touch on your sober skin.

Experience reality with me.

Because if you go and trap yourself in that other set of universal laws,

I’m going to miss you.

Because when you isolate yourself from the love I have for you, I’m going to miss you.
And when you leave this world, dead on some hotel floor with nothing left for me but a bloodied, dirty needle, I’m going to miss you.
And I will forgive you.
That is who I am, that is what I do.
And it is not fair for me to judge a man whose struggles I knew not.
But this is the end of what you’ve become.
And now I get to know that you didn’t leave me with the love I would have hoped to have left you.
But instead the remains of the heroin your body couldn’t finish off.
…
So it’s red ribbon week.
Twelfth time around, twelfth year of drug free messages, twelfth year of “survivor stories”.
So just know that while I was forgetting to give a shit just as much as you were, I ended up with a dead cousin.

And that’s something that I will never be able to get back.
No matter how hard I try.
How fast I run.
How loudly I speak.
No matter how many red posters they put up.

And now I have to find purpose in a death I never wanted to see.
And I never thought there could be anything harder.

So I’m giving a shit this year.
Because I found something I think is worth sticking around for.
Something I really don’t want to lose.   
One subject I refuse to forget.
One person I want to speak with once more before they leave me.
Because it’s Red Ribbon Week.
And it’s been twelve years, and I haven’t told you yet.
But it’s each and every one of you.
So take a chance, and give a shit with me for a week.
And maybe we can both give meaning to the cousin I’ll never get to see again.