She could have been anyone you know, this doll-eyed girl with a shy smile and gleaming hair, head tilted for a selfie. She could have been that office colleague you casually greet as you bump into each other at the vending machine, or the neighbor leaving at the same time you do on the way to work. She could have been a member of your high school batch, your “friend of a friend,” even some distant relative. Until she was reported dead on prime-time television.
Her death was clouded with scandal and mystery, a tragedy taking place in a premium hotel. The narratives of that night soon unraveled, revealing that she took ecstasy before her death. And the girl you could have known became a character in the stories about young people’s mysterious deaths, and the involvement of drugs in their stories.
Growing up in a community where almost everyone is connected to everyone else is an avenue for gossip to spread like forest fire. And in my childhood, it wasn’t very rare to hear stories told in hushed tones about a young person found dead, and the grieving family announcing a reasonable cause of death of their child, godson or grandchild. But the supposed cause was quickly shrugged off as the adults gathered to whisper that the young person had been on drugs before expiring: “Naka-drugs yun bago namatay.”
So rampant were those stories that came off the gossip mills back then that the word “drugs” became an insidious face to me, common among misguided youth and in college parties: The daughter of so and so is a lost cause, her brain gone haywire beyond comprehension. The son of so and so is dead, supposedly because of an accident, but it was substance abuse that did it.
In these times, with the landscape of youthful recreation having changed, that insidious face of drugs has also taken a different form—one more familiar, less secretive. Substance abuse persists in dark corners, but the scene is no longer underground drug dens disguised as disheveled teenage rooms and parked sedans. Drugs now make their rounds in some schools, in big bass-thumping parties in the city or in some distant island somewhere, in the Internet or through text messaging. The neighborhood secret is out in the light of day, exposed in the media and in mainstream music—a commodity for a broad market. That drugs are used exclusively by dark-eyed young men reduced to skin and bones is now an eclipsed notion; users have become as inconspicuous as the substance itself.
Green lumps of marijuana and innocent-looking pills of ecstasy are the common drugs of choice, camouflaged in raucous crowds chilling to loud music. “Shabu,” or the so-called “poor man’s cocaine,” has become unbelievably cheap, such that it can be had by anyone, even by a student on an allowance. And as high-society gossip of years past put it, cocaine in signature bags and designer jeans was marketed in high-end clubs for the high-end economic bracket.
Even those deemed not at risk for drug use have found their product of choice, in the form of ethyl chloride. It was originally intended for pain relief but is now alternatively used for intoxicating side effects, no matter how fleeting. And there are several others, including even simple nonprescription medicine taken in high dosages. Taken in context, these substances are insidious indeed, promising some hip psychedelic experience despite being the bane of families and other social units. In the context of faded lights and in the rhapsodies of a young and fast life, they are like fairy dust snaking their way underneath VIP tables in the clubs or in brownies at schools and house parties.
Drugs have evolved over the years from my innocent childhood to my more fluid youth. There are still stories heard, but they are no longer told in hushed tones.
It is ironic that these substances are called “recreational drugs,” as if they were just used for a brief idle moment, or only resorted to when one is bored. For some, drug use is just a phase, a part of the passage through that portal from mindless youth to responsible adulthood. They get over it as quickly as they climbed over the wagon. But for many, drug use has become a roller-coaster ride from which they cannot jump. For the unfortunate few, such as the characters in the stories we hear and the faces we see in the evening news, the roller coaster has stopped its run.
Fortunately, according to the 2013 Young Adult Fertility and Sexuality Study, the percentage of drug use among the youth severely dropped from 11 percent in 2002 to 4 percent as of the time the research was accomplished. But that 4 percent is still far from 0. And that is why we still see and hear stories on TV.
It can be anyone you know, whether in school, in the neighborhood, or in the office. It can be that girl with the dreamy eyes and glowing skin, that boy with the wide grin and firm handshake. She could be standing beside you in the elevator, he could be holding the door open for you. Or it could be you.
When George Bernard Shaw said that youth is wasted on the young, he probably meant that young people are unappreciative of the tender years afforded them, and that they are naturally ignorant of certain realities that adulthood can bring. But the times have changed, and so have we. Youth is wasted: It’s sometimes meant as an opportunity foregone, and often meant as a state of mind.
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michael.baylosis@gmail.com