Last night she called me all drunk (maybe high on something too) asking for accommodation for the night as she couldn’t go home that way. She told her parents she would be staying with her friends to work on a group assignment. This wasn’t the first time she called. Well, this wasn’t the first time someone drunk and high called me either.

Parties these days simply translate to drinks, smoke, shisha or other drugs. Any kind of celebration seems incomplete without these forms of ‘amusements’. Stay-overs for assignments pose just as camouflages to late night parties. Parents are misled. And when people immediately close to you are in darkness about where you are, in case of any unfortunate happening they have no clue where to look for you.

No proper laws govern anything. Kids as young as thirteen are allowed in discotheques, bars or bhattis and have unlimited access to alcohol and smoke. Forget the advisory statements about harm to health these are all signs of a deteriorating society. In a society where kids barely in their teens can drink and smoke without threat, all hopes for a nation to improve are almost dead.

Such activities are transmittable and communicable. Young people see other young people involved in certain such activities not at all considered appropriate for their age. So these wrongdoings by some make it acceptable in minds of many young and vulnerable on-looking minds. The next time the innocent passerby turns into the same action doer thinking it is no longer a wrong thing as someone else did the same in the open formerly. This is how the moral police themselves become wrongdoers. And also when someone openly shows their disappointment, the young vigor and hot bloodedness takes it as a provocation to disagree, to get offended, to argue, to fight and to prove their strength. A bit sensible kids ward them off as nosy adults who need to desperately get their own lives.

All this is true; these situations and this attitude. I have seen and heard countless such happenings, and closely experienced them sometimes too. Very well aware about the not-so-applicable legal consequences which can be warded off after paying ‘fines’ to the police and about the embarrassments brought along to everyone, family in particular, young people waste everything they have, time, money and energy, on such things. As involved from a very young age, this damages all insides for a healthy physical and mental life later on. Not only about health but this will continue as a habit.

Every family knows one who has come down from riches to rags, selling all property to keep up with their amusements. Such stories need to be time and again communicated by family members to the children so they know when to stop while tracking down the wrong path. Kids that communicate to their parents are proved to be less involved in any such acts. They should understand why it is bad for them, why they need to know how to set their limits and why they must be careful about every move they make when close to drinks and drugs.

It all starts with showing off. For some reason, I can never understand drinking, smoking and doing drugs is ‘cool’. Doing so makes you place yourself on the top of the table and everyone below you. Slowly this turns into a habit and there are less chances of backing out of getting away. Then some two-three years later, this once very cool habit becomes an embarrassment – for you, for your family and friends. Slowly everyone stops to care or counsel. They try and get as less involved with you as they can. And you’re blamed as the anti-social addict. Then you’re left alone, and that is the possible end. Recovering is not easy. What is easy is not getting involved into anything that may ruin our lives that could be perfect otherwise. These are issues we need to carefully assess before entering into this realm. It is better to be safe than sorry, and that is the happiest we can make ourselves.