Paths

I think back to when I was a teenager, and I cannot believe some of the things I got away with. I was a pretty good kid, for the most part, but every good kid has the potential of slipping. Some slips became slides, which may be the way I was able to make mistakes and learn from them.

I started smoking when I was 12. Not the, take a drag, pretend to inhale, and blow it out kind of smoking. The real thing. The deep inhale kind of smoking. The addicted to nicotine, tobacco, and the habit itself kind of smoking. I smoked Lucky Strikes first, and then moved to whatever I could get. Mostly it was Marlboro Reds because my dad smoked those, Kool because my mom smoked those, or Parliament because my grandfather smoked those. I wasn't too picky when it came to my cigarettes.

I smoked regularly for about a year, and then one day, I just decided to quit. I had a real bad upper respiratory infection that lasted for a couple of weeks. I tried smoking through the pain initially, but after a while, the habit didn't even taste good. Nothing tasted good, really. I stopped, and never went back until I was in college.

12-13 was around the time I smoked pot for the first time, and drank Jack Daniels and Sloe Gin (not together) for the first time. I started down a destructive path. One that could have possibly taken me to very dark places. One that could have determined the path my life would take; in a bad way. Someone or something helped move me away from that direction. Maybe it was just my conscious. Maybe not.