The Story of you, me and everyone else

Maybe you smoke cigarettes, maybe you don't. Maybe you like exercise, maybe you don't. Maybe you drink the odd glass of wine with dinner, maybe you down vodkas at the weekend. Maybe you do none. Maybe you drive your car faster than the speed limit, maybe you don't. Maybe you take drugs at the weekends. Maybe you smoke a spliff at parties, maybe you once did magic mushrooms at a festival, maybe you can't dance without a line of coke. Maybe all it takes for you to do the funky chicken is a glass of lemonade, maybe it isn't. Maybe you eat more calories than your daily allowance, maybe you count them and obsess when you go over. Maybe you wear sunscreen, maybe you don't. Maybe you've jumped out of a plane, maybe you never would. Maybe you've gone surfing when a sharks been spotted, maybe you wouldn't go near the sea just in case. Maybe you've gone on a boat without a life jacket even though you can't swim. Maybe you've jumped in a pool on holiday when drunk. Maybe you've tried drugs just once. Maybe you try drugs some weekends. Maybe you wake up and before you brush your teeth smoke a cigarette. Maybe you wake up and before you brush your teeth you have to have a drink. Maybe you wake up and turn the needle through your arm again to stop the pain. Maybe you take anti depressants and sleeping pills. Maybe the worse of your excess is the odd bit of chocolate. Maybe you cross the road without looking when in a rush. Maybe you drive your car up to the back of another until they move out of your way.

What's my point? My point is that there isn't a single one of us that doesn't go through life making utterly stupid decisions. I cannot even count on my hands how many times I've come close to being run over because I walked into the road without looking, on the vague confidence that I'd hear if there is a car there. Yeah, good one Hannah in a city of constant noise, relying on you hearing the sound of the bus bearing down as you step in front of it, again, has worked well in the past hasn't it? Well, no. What will stop people saying 'She should have bloody looked where she was going' to my family after I'm smashed into by a bus (which is top of the top five ways I predict I will go) as I ignore road safety once again? The fact of the tragedy, that we all know we've been careless with road safety probably more than once? So what makes us smugly say 'Shouldn't have made the choice to try it' when an addict loses their life? As if we'd never do something as wreckless with our bodies as try that first cigarette, alcoholic beverage and maybe even line of coke...Oh wait. Hang on a minute. We already did, didn't we?

I look at those people quick to judge and their own life style choices and I think where do we think we are immune to this disease? I binge drink like most of my generation if we are to believe the reports and in all honesty what we witness every weekend with our own eyes and livers. I also do the glass with dinner sometimes, or crack open a bottle to enjoy whilst reading a book as a treat. I can tell you that if I still drink the amount I do now in my 20's when I am in my 50's then I will already have a drink problem. That's a fact. I might feel I am in control now but whose to say I am? Life is full of surprises and nuances that take us by surprise and when the shit hits the fan I am lying if I don't admit that in the past and to this day I often choose to distract myself with a night out. Most people I know does or has done this at one time or another. Be it with cigarettes, alcohol, fatty food and for some drugs. I also know a number of people who do 'recreational' drugs at the weekends or occasionally. Some of these people have been the quickest to judge an addicts death as their own fault. Can we not see the irony here? They made the same choice as you did fool, only they got caught. Because you haven't yet or don't know you have doesn't make your choices better than an addicts. And I don't do drugs but I know that I'm not drinking within government recommended limits and other than the odd tee total or the French friends, I don't know anyone who does. We dice with this devil every time we have that one glass with dinner, or the saturday in the pub with 'Oh go on then I will have a shot' said at least once. It doesn't matter what your vice is, even if it's just being one of them total dickheads licking a cars bum on the motorway, you make decisions that are reckless with your life. It does not mean your death if it follows will not be tragic, a loss, a waste, worthy of sympathy. It will be.

I have watched two people die of addictions and there are five others in my life who are either within the throes of or are fighting the same fate. I haven't made the exact same choices somewhere along the line as one or another of them but I have made some of their choices. Namely to drink that first ever drink. I chose not to add drugs to that list unless you include my steroid inhaler and contraceptive pill, both of which have consequences on my health (the pill increases my risk of breast cancer and steroids are an addictive substance that affect your heart even when used medically, I have heart disease in my family on the female and male side). I don't smoke but I did when I was 13 through to my 20's. What stopped me was my asthma and vanity, I didn't want wrinkles. Vanity also stops me eating too much, gets me exercising and has me wearing sunscreen.

I have also sped, got in a car with someone whose had one more than they should have, been in a car without my seatbelt, gone through a 12 hour day without food because I was too busy to eat, run a half marathon despite not having my inhaler with me and subsequently ended up at A and E to name but a few of the stupid decisions I've made that don't involve a substance. There are many more but my short term memory seems to get worse with every weekend...why is that I wonder? Sorry, what was I saying? Another drink? Oh Go on then...why not.

'Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much. Or berate yourself too much or anyone else. Your choices are only half chance'.

Ladies and gentleman of the class of '99, wear sunscreen. And then wake up and instead of feeding the ignorance that gives both victims of and society as a whole a much smaller chance of tackling this disease. If we've learnt nothing in the last 100 years about ignorance being the biggest evil then what has it all been for? Wake up. You are at risk and if you don't fall victim to a stupid choice you've made don't laugh at those who do. When it catches you it's people like you who will keep you in that net.

There but for the grace of God go I.