Never???

One young couple couldn't believe something my and my boyfriend had never done.

When we were living together in the 80s, my boyfriend Wilson had his young employee and wife over for dinner. In the conversation it came up that neither Wilson nor I had ever done any drugs in our lives, not even smoked pot.

The young couple was flabbergasted. "Never?" They kept asking. "NEVER?"

We both kept shaking our heads.

That was even more of an anomaly for Wilson than for me. He was a teenager in the sixties. Once his father died of a heart attack when Wilson was five, and his mother ended up in a mental hospital a year later, Wilson was forced to travel from Maine to Colorado with his much older sister and brother-in-law. From there, he grew up in poverty and had every excuse to turn to drugs for solace. Instead, even though he wasn't particularly tall nor talented, he spent his spare time playing basketball. He credits that recreational sport with having kept him out of trouble throughout his youth. He became a high school coach while teaching later in life.

For me, I believed adults when they said drugs were bad for you. Therefore, I was perplexed when one particular adult -- my father -- was stumbling around the house, out of his head, a good part of a time. He was a medical doctor, so it was easy for him to get prescription drugs. I was disgusted by his behavior. Why was he doing something that everyone knew was wrong? Despite my intense unhappiness -- to the point of trying to kill myself when I was fifteen -- I never used drugs. I would rather be dead than out of my mind.

Ironically, both Wilson and I throughout our lives believed in the legalization of drugs, whether marijuana or otherwise. It just didn't/doesn't make sense to criminalize so many people for something that pretty much everyone (except each of us) was doing anyway.

Along with my disgust, thoughts of my father's addiction also brought gratitude. I've always appreciated having that exposure to what it was like being around someone doped up a good part of the time. I'm grateful that I've never wanted anything to do with that scene. I didn't go through any of the addictions that plague so many, and my life is a lot happier than most.