The Halo Effect
The second you sell drugs to your friends, they become your clients. I’ve had a handful of drug dealers back in my day, of whom I’ve felt obligated to hang around with during the illicit transaction. I once invited my ‘guy’ to a public yoga class and told him to bring his friends.
“I’m a drug dealer.” He laughed. “I don’t have any friends… but I get invited to all the parties.”
Sure enough, I saw this dude a week later in a corner at a rave, looking my way trying to make out the girl on the dance floor with pigtails. When I noticed him, I suddenly turned away because what was I to say? “Oh hey, thanks for making this warehouse party a bearable place to let loose as I roll on your MDMA…”
When the state of Missouri legalized pot for medical patients, I saved a butt load of time driving across town to buy bud, relieved that I no longer had to bother anyone when my stash was low. But what I saved in time I paid for in painful ways, buying one pre-roll a day, literally burning through my cash as I maintained a limited stash. Otherwise, I would be smoking much more than my allotted daily gram.
I think a part of me wanted to spiral so I could face my insanity and demand change. Because spending more money on weed than rent was a tagline I used to shock myself into kick starting this road of sobriety. Oh, the look of people’s faces when I told them about my financial dismay! Some folks assured me I was being “too hard on myself” when I shamefully shared this daunting fact from a girl who pays her bills with tips. We can be hard on ourselves when we worry about what we did or didn’t say, but when we throw our money and time down the drain on our addictions… we need help.
Drug addicts hang out with other drug addicts. Whether these addicts are active in their use or recovering, I know this much is true. While in active addiction, I never thought twice about my friends being druggies, because I was in full support of whatever we were doing as long as we were getting high. I thought that because they didn’t smoke like me or binge eat like me, their regular consumption of psychedelic alphabet soup (MDMA, MDA, and LSD) was benign. Preaching “everything in moderation” while they maintained a healthy physique, I failed to consider how this moderate but consistent use of substances was effecting us all mentally.
I’ve surrounded myself with people who eat so clean, avoiding seed oils and always roasting something green. Despite my dysmorphia, being bigger in comparison to my friends didn’t negatively trigger insecurities around my body. I looked up to them as being healthy and in control of their eating. But something I know well about addiction and disease - is that we’re not in control of anything.
I thought that because they ate well, drank little, and didn’t go completely crazy when partying, that they had everything in balance. Because they weren’t self destructing, I didn’t think twice when they took LSD during hikes or a small dose of mushrooms before a yoga class. But now that I think about it, psychedelics is a part of their routine… a part of their identity.
I’ve rarely paid for psychedelics and when I did, the cute dealer down my street cut me a deal on his psilocybin chocolates I saved for when I ran out of weed. My friends - my dealers - would hand me mushrooms without charging me anything.
“They’re healing.” They said, justifying everything.
No longer do I want to heal on my own terms, turning to substances as my “medicine.” I know that my healing takes a community. It takes getting on my knees and praying. The real medicine resides in sobriety - listening to stories of others who are in recovery. I have learned so much from people who don’t look like or haven’t been raised like me. Angels fill the rooms of the meetings I attend, as God’s message speaks through them as they share their reflections.
These angles don’t have halos. They don’t have wings. They don’t fly high for the sake of escaping or manipulating or controlling reality. Pretty people who push drugs wear halos of light that avoid looking at the darkness, flying high with synthetic feathers attached by strings.
I used to listen to my friends blindly, turning my eyes away from all of our abuse. For me, my drug of choice has been weed and food. But everyone’s vice looks differently. It’s harder to accept that someone so beautiful and graceful and talented could be a negative influence, especially when these people have supported me and my dreams. However, they’re not around to support my sobriety. I’ve spent too much time with people dealing drugs, so I’m seeking new friends as I pull the plug. I’m not saying that dealing is wrong and that I am right, but that drugs are no good for me and darlings, you’re committing a crime.