Escape from reality....?

There comes a time when one begins to doubt whether one’s fellow beings, one’s species is deserving of the appellation of ‘civilized’ in contrast with wild beings in the forests and the seas. A time when one’s empathy for one’s compatriots, for one’s comrades, is shaken because they somehow seem unworthy of such compassion, of such generosity.

The news that nearly 300 individuals, including students and IT professionals, were apprehended while indulging in a rave party, is shocking, to say the least. The word ‘rave’, if one was to check the dictionary, means to speak in a loud or angry way suggestive of lack of rationality or loss of self-control. And this rings true in the behaviour that these people were indulging in during this debauchery of theirs, what with the quanta of drugs that were reportedly consumed, and the amount awaiting consumption. And all this in such clandestine manner, so cloak-and-dagger, as if the perpetrators wished to acknowledge that they are seeking to partake of forbidden fruits, that they are guilty of a heinous crime.

And an occasion too to resort to such depravity! A day when the entire nation celebrates the victory of good over evil, of noble intentions over base instincts. What a way to celebrate, I say?

To resort to the usage of drugs as a source of recreation is a sign of a deranged mind, incapable of reason, which would accept walking down a path of sure death as a means of entertaining oneself. The attitude of ‘one has but one life; one may as well live it well’ often gets misquoted here. I mean, how can being in an intoxicated state, in a state of mental inebriation, mean living a pleasurable life? I am no moralist; on the contrary, I accept the right of an individual to do what pleases him, but surely, we, as members of a responsible civil society, bear the duty of preventing an individual from indulging in acts that would appear to be suicidal. Just because a person possesses the right to liberty doesn’t preempt or prevent society from stopping the person concerned from committing acts which would in the long run lead to his own ruin. (Disclaimer: I am using the masculine pronoun only for convenience. I do not wish to state that women are any less prone to such acts.)

Those who would defend their participation in this act by pointing fingers at their peers are even bigger fools than their peers. I mean, resorting to drug usage just because of peer pressure would mean that you are amenable to cutting your wrists merely because your peers also seem to love doing it. Don’t you have brains of your own?

Drugs are perhaps the worst that an individual can resort to for merely escaping the stress and tensions of his daily routine. There are surely much better ways in which one can escape from the troubles of reality for a while, ways which would enrich your life to a greater extent, ways which wouldn't culminate in your ending up dead. You would ask me then, are not cigarettes and alcohol also equally harmful? True and I wouldn’t want to be seen as supporting them. But in the liturgy of damnable substances, drugs are the most condemnable.

I am not a fatalist, nor a pessimist. But what I see saddens me. That people should so gamble away their future for the sake of a few moments of ecstasy (and what a rotten ecstasy at that too) is distressing. That the efforts of one’s forebears in raising us in a manner befitting a civilized species are so nullified by our resorting to such animal instincts is a shame.

And yet, we cannot abandon them, can we? We need to assist them in controlling their urges, to find means to relieve their pains which are less demonic. We need to make them realize that their lives are too precious to be whittled away in a puff of smoke, or in a pinprick of a needle. Escape from reality, but let us not escape from reason, shall we?