By Sunnove Carlson
Everyone knows the run-of-the-mill consequences of smoking in school: flunking out and/or getting suspended. Yes, these are very real outcomes, but most people aren’t aware of the everyday consequences you have to deal with.
Starting off with one of the biggest worries you have to handle–the constant anxiety of getting caught. Every time the classroom phone rings, you feel your heart drop into your stomach, wondering if it’s about you. If it is a call for you, walking to the office feels like your death. Not because you’re getting in trouble, but because your parents and school will know, and you will no longer be able to get your drugs. Once you’re addicted, getting it taken away from you is just about the worst thing you can imagine. Every single day feels like a day of reckoning.
Another big issue that tags along with you is being unable to focus. All you can think about is when your next smoke break will be, and whether or not you’ll be caught during it. Addiction is a nasty thing that will make you lose everything you had. Whether it be grades, friends, trust, it takes it all away. Every bit of your focus is on your high.
Addiction gets bad quickly. Once you start taking your vape or your pen to school, you’re stuck. You can’t imagine going to school without it anymore, and throughout the days you’ll want to take more and more ‘bathroom breaks’. If there is a day you’ve forgotten it, or perhaps it died at the last minute, without a doubt, you’ll ask everyone you know if you can hit theirs. You know it’ll increase the chance of getting caught, but it seems worth it. Smoking in your adolescence is the number one worst time to do it because it can physically change your brain, just like another disease could. Most people across the world get addicted after one or two highs, whether it be a nicotine high, a weed high, or any other drug out there.
You will completely change as a person without even noticing it. None of your hobbies will bring you happiness or pleasure anymore. You’ll become extremely greedy. You’ll become irritable and angry. You will become a husk of the person you used to be. Once you continue to chase the euphoria drugs bring you, it changes your dopamine perception. If something brought you happiness, it will not compare to the changes drugs make to your brain chemistry. You’ll stop doing everything that ever brought you joy because you can no longer find joy in it. The worst part is that you don’t realize you’ve changed until you’ve stopped smoking and have to revisit the way you used to live your life.
Does it seem worth it to you? Does it sound like a good way to live your life? Drug usage is a slippery slope that can ruin everything you have for good. They are made out to be a bad thing for a good reason.