She Thought I Did Drugs

I don't do drugs, never have, and hopefully never will, but apparently not everyone thought so, or at least that's what my mind tells me.

Before I gained admission into the university, I was an innocent kid who hardly ever got into trouble or did anything that even had the potential of getting me in trouble. But then I came to school and got exposed to a lot of things. Luckily, I knew good from bad and wasn't the type that was too shy to say no.

So inasmuch as I began to gather knowledge about these things, the first few months I spent here showed me how much of a newbie I was to the outside world.

There was a time I was sick. I had this serious cough at the time and had called my dad to ask for instructions on what to do. Don't blame me; I recently just left home and couldn't take care of myself on my own without asking my old man for help.

I had explained to him on the phone how I was feeling, and although I didn't have to say much, he could tell how serious the situation was due to how I was coughing over the phone. So he had asked me to go to a pharmacy and get a drug called codeine.

_{photo by Myriam Zilles}

Before that time, I'd always heard about codeine and how people could get high off it. But I've thought that was just the name of another drug in the same class as marijuana. Never in my life did I think that the cough syrup and the drugs to get high were the same thing; apparently the boys who get high off it tend to add certain things to it before consuming it.

Well, I had innocently gone to this pharmacy when I had met a young female nurse and told her I wanted to buy codeine. Just as the words left my mouth, I began to cough heavily for a minute before it stopped. While I was coughing, I could see the lady looking at me, almost like she felt I was faking it, but I didn't think much about it because I had no reason to think why she would think that I was faking it.

She just looked at me, handed me the drugs, and I left. Thankfully, I got better even before I was done taking the entire syrup and had to stop because it was making me sleep a lot.

Fast-forward to about a few years later, and while having a conversation with my friends, I got to find out that the codeine to get high and the codeine for cough were the same thing. That was when it hit me; that was when I finally understood why that lady, all those years ago, had looked at me that way.

She had thought I was faking the whole thing and had only wanted the drug to get high off it. At that moment, all I wanted to do was to go back to that shop and explain to her that I truly needed the drugs back then for the cough and not for anything else. Unfortunately, it was too late.

And although she might not remember this entire thing, if she does, she probably still thinks I'm a kid who gets high off of cough syrup.