Grad talks about the world of high school

The smell of marijuana in the hallways; the dazed look on most kids faces; it’s hard to watch talented kids lose control and lose their way.

I recall back to my elementary school days when our teachers made us promise that we would refrain from doing drugs. I see those same kids who made that promise coming to school under the influence. They have lost all motivation to be successful and productive. In a sense, I consider it a blessing that I am around these kids every day because they show me what will happen if I am affiliated with drugs. Thanks to them, I will never do any type of drug that will bring me down and lower my potential to succeed.

I hear of huge parties that go on. Usually, my friends attend and can’t remember what happened. Recently, kids in my grade did horrible things at these parties and ended up spending time in jail. Only four years ago, I can remember these same people and the intelligence that they demonstrated. As the four years passed, the light in their eyes faded. Recently, I could tell that they were lost and disoriented about what goes on around them. They were experiencing a different reality. I don’t want that to become my reality and their experience to become mine. My goal in life is true happiness and success and I know the path to it isn’t a path involving drugs.

I had a group of friends who stuck with me until my junior year of high school. I began to notice that they were losing touch and dazing off. I later found out that they had begun to smoke and drink. Very worried, I asked them why they felt like they had to do it. They all told me that it was very fun and everyone was doing it.

It occurred to me that they just wanted to fit in. Well, they did fit in; most of the teens in my school were and are active drug users and they immediately fit in with the crowd. I began to look at drugs in a more serious way after that. I noticed that the people around me began to depend on drugs as the only fun activity available.

The only way I found to resist the temptation to do these drugs was to pride myself in not doing them. If my friends didn’t have any substance, they knew to hang out with me because I could still think of ideas that were fun not involving drugs. Now, in my school, I am known as the rare person who doesn’t do drugs.

I see and hear everything around me and know that I will become a better individual if I live my reality and not a superficial one. I believe in being true to myself. In a sense, the youth of this nation are in a war against drugs. As a group, we are sadly losing the battle, but I feel obligated to not give in. I want to be able to look my kids in the eye when they are going through the same thing and tell them truthfully that I stayed true. I want to be the firm role model that my kids deserve. Therefore, I plan to be a true student and a positive individual in my current society. I once heard a quote by Nido Qubein that said, “Your present circumstanced don’t determine where you can go; they merely determine where you start.” I plan to start where I can succeed and becoming involved with drugs is never a place to start.

Levi Speakman recently graduated Sandpoint High School and is on a church mission.