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Column: Try getting high on life
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Written by Natalie Rice, Editor-in-Chief
The new norm, it seems, is to go out every weekend, binge drink, possibly use a type of illegal drug and maybe wake up the next morning not remembering what all happened the night before.
Why does it now seem necessary to escape reality in order to be happy?
What other explanation is there to using drugs and alcohol to get high and wasted? Does that mean that life isn’t good enough by itself? Do we need things to distort our awful realities in order to make our lives better?
What many don’t realize is that the use of drugs isn’t what will fix our problems nor help us cope with the effects of those problems. We turn to drugs because it’s much easier to turn to a temporary “feel good” and much harder to admit our faults and turn to an actual person for help.
Regardless of the reason for using drugs and abusing alcohol, the outcome is almost always the same. Running away from your problems or from the reality of life doesn’t solve anything or make anyone happy in the long run.
It is becoming harder for people to become happy. The little things in life that are supposed to make us happy have begun to dissipate and more materialistic things have come to replace them.
For many of us, in order to be happy we now have to earn six figure salaries or go to a drug-infested party every weekend. But in the end, are we even happy then?
Happiness should come from relationships with the people around us, religion, family, nature, etc.
Granted, there are things in life that make us unhappy, but that’s what people around you are for; that’s what God is for. There are so many people around us that are willing to share our burdens, and instead we would rather turn to drugs or become introverted and depressed because that’s easier to us than being open.
Just being alive is no longer good enough to make someone happy, if it ever was.
A beautiful day, time spent with someone, a loved one or a great accomplishment all have the ability to make us happy people. Who cares if the bad outweighs the good in life? At least there’s some good, and often times we see less positive than there actually is.
If we just took a moment each day to appreciate what we have both material and immaterial, maybe we wouldn’t try as hard to escape our lives. Contentment comes from being happy with what we have, not being concerned with what we don’t.
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