Opinion Piece

Drugs!?

Seamus is an Irish lad from Galway (the party capital of Ireland). He’s probably the craziest guy I’ve been with and also the one that was most involved into drugs.

Ok, let’s be honest: In Ireland it’s totally normal to be smoking pot if you are in your 20’s or a bit younger and if you like socializing. Here’s a conversation between an Irish guy from Dublin and a girl:
GIRL: Do you smoke?
GUY: No, do you?
GIRL: Depends on what!
GUY: Oh, I smoke that, of course!

Seamus was just like that. He would never smoke a cigarette. He never had the urge for tobacco. But he loved his joints and bongs. He had also tried nearly every other kind of drug. And of course, he drank like an Irish. When I once asked him if there is any drug he hasn’t tried yet, he replied without even having to think about it: “Heroin! I would never to that. But everything else I’ve done!” He started smoking marihuana at the age of 16, but he didn’t on a regular basis before the age of 20. He used to take crack and ecstasy, but stopped because crack in particular can make a person very aggressive and he is too much of a laid-back guy to get into fights. He spends most of his evenings smoking 2-3 joints of marihuana or cannabis. And as everybody can assume, his best vacations he spent in the Netherlands! He sometimes also bragged about taking acid after having had 2 joints – a combination which never made sense to me- but that would not happen more often than once a month.

For most of you Seamus now probably sounds like a dumb, scruffy, anti-social, and unemployed drug-addict who doesn’t have a future because he only lives for his drugs. But that’s not true at all. Seamus was extremely intelligent and very interested in history. He had a well-paying job in a big company, but hoped that one day he’d be able to make a living as a musician. He was a fabulous drummer and singer. I’ve never met a guy who would spend more time in the bathroom before going out on Friday night. So, why did so many of my friends shook their head and had a disapproving look into their faces when I told them about Seamus and his little experiments with drugs?

I think, for most Germans, even for people my generation, smoking pot is a big taboo. Lot’s of them think that smoking grass is the entrance into a life of heroin-addiction and prostitution. On TV we can often see German teenagers who are from the worst parts of Berlin or Cologne who only have one goal: to acquire money to buy more pot. Those teenagers usually haven’t finished school, don’t have a job, and don’t have any interests apart from drugs. But not all joint-smokers are like that!

At the moment Seamus is working and travelling in New Zealand (where the pot is supposed to be of a very good quality, he told me) and he has met lots of other travelers from very different countries and he told me that of all the different nations he met, it was always the Germans who said that they don’t smoke grass. I also don’t personally know any Germans who smoke pot. Or do they just not talk about it? Quite a few American or a Kiwi college students would have problems to name one of their friends who NEVER smoked joints or bongs. And when Seamus was looking for a place to live in New Zealand, he looked at a room in a house of three guys and the first question they asked him was: “Do you smoke pot?” Of course, he immediately got the room! So, in lots of countries the people speak openly about marihuana consumption, but in Germany it’s not possible. I guess that is because in Germany pot is considered a strong drug and taking drugs is something that usually only happens in the lower class and being part of the lower class normally means being uneducated, scruffy, and unemployed. And who would want that? But that is a phenomenon that seems to exist only in Germany, because in the USA, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia … people of all classes tend to enjoy their pot!

I’m not saying that smoking marihuana is a good thing because it does kill loads of brain cells, more than alcohol does. But I know a few American straight A college students who do smoke a bong once in a while, so it can’t kill that fast. Pot is not a good thing, but it’s also not as bad as Germans of the middle classes and my mom say it is. And I want to end with something Seamus always used to say: “But it’s just a plant!”