UK Teen Drug Culture in 2018

Part 1. Drugs 

The rapid introduction of simulacra into a postmodern world has lead to a lost reality, we seem to be living in some sort of matrix, a virtual world, so skewed and far from the truth. We have completely lost our concept of self and any self consciousness we may once have owned. Our perceptions of ourselves are now based around a series of edited Instagram pictures, the clothes that we wear and opinions of others. Our very basis of understanding our very self has been lost and this has created an innate tendency for an increasing number of individuals to 'seek out' this self by attempting to escape this futile materialistic self, (often through a belief that if they smoke DMT off the dark web out of their mates pipe they'll have some kind of spiritual awakening and be cleansed of their Western consumerist ways, or by dropping a half tab of acid in the local kids park will really help them 'find themselves') and after discovering that this doesn't work, proceed to aim to simply completely escape and numb themselves from the overwhelming array of simulacra and postmodern culture that we have been submerged in. 

The drug problem we face in today's society is to me something I find particularly overwhelming, especially in teens. Whether it be an aid to escape or simply a vice to power a futile ego there seems to be an instrumental role that drugs are playing in today's society amongst the younger generations, and no matter how detrimental and devastating it is, no one seems to want to take the blame.

The concept of the self has become so skewed and many people now feel a need to fill a 'void', or as if something is missing, an emptiness that cannot be fulfilled. I think this can largely be attributed to our dependence on a virtual reality- one that is not real, is not tangible. Take Instagram, for example. Many impressionable young teens have started to value their self worth off of their follower count, but those millions of followers are not friends, they are not tangible, in fact they are as far away from people as could be and merely numbers and profiles on a screen. Nothing is real and everything is futile. Once people begin to realise this they realise something is missing, and they become greatly unfulfilled. With a recent rise in painkiller and prescription drug abuse like Xanax, Valium and Codeine, it is interesting to see that today's generation wish to enter a realm that is no longer about a discovery of the self, but rather one of complete numbness and vacancy. Quite literally, young people would rather be sedated than actually succumb to the hellish atmosphere the world appears to be dissolving into, as technology accelerates along with global warming and all other things harmful at an alarming rate, and a certain kind of innocence is lost. People become unfulfilled by how readily available things now become, things are there at the click of a finger tip, we no longer have to work for things we once did, and kids become bored. From what I have seen throughout the years, drugs are becoming far less of a sociable experience, and merely an escape from reality, where the ecstasy rave revolution of the 90's has been lost to a culture of 'how many teens can k hole in one scatty drum and bass club in the space of one night?'. 

The problem lies not within the drug taking at all, and I have never been one to be anti drugs in the slightest as to have a society without drugs would be to have a world without pain and no need for escape. However, the problem lies within the failure of those responsible to protect a generation that has been entirely lost to a rapid acceleration of globalisation accompanied with an increase in simulacra that now controls our lives that has lead to a era of mass confusion and a huge identity crisis. I cannot stress enough how important it is, and how uplifting it is, to delete just one of those toxic apps off your phone for at least a day. See how much you pay attention to whats actually going on around you, go outside, look up at the sky instead of down at your phone and find comfort in something actually tangible, some small beauty left in the world rather than a couple vallies or a k bag. I know it is easier said than done, and I still fail to completely abandon my phone altogether as I have attempted to do so many times. I just feel like the very art of communication has been completely lost to a generation of social media text addicts, and this has created a lonely and unfulfilled world where drugs become some peoples only salvation. Conversations are not real anymore. 'Chatting' to people is now a thing instead of actually dating someone, how fucking sad. How sad that people feel the need to constantly be in touch with someone over text continuing a pointless and irrelevant conversation just to feel a meaningless and futile connection with someone, that again, is not real. It just seems to me from as little experience as I have had at only 19, that an increasingly postmodern world is bringing about an increasingly pained generation of teens who are struggling to escape, and thus are actually sedating themselves as a means of temporary escape, that more often than not becomes a coping mechanism. I cannot begin to explain the amount of people I see every day my age and even younger who can't go a day without things like K, xans or vallies and it is really, really worrying. I just wonder how much worse it can get, or is going to get, and to be honest its extremely daunting to say the least.