Virtual Reality

It seems like every time I think about blogging, something comes up to distract me from it and it never gets done. I really do like writing, but you couldn't tell from how often I do it. I actually do actively think about things to write about just about every day. One thing that has been on my mind lately is drug addicts. I'm not thinking about them in a negative way. I'm thinking about what happened in their lives to make them that way, and how great it must feel to leave all the pain behind if only for a few minutes or even seconds.

Many people look down on drug addicts because they think they a weak, or mean, or selfish, or overall bad people. But when I see a drug addict, I see a person who has felt so much pain in their life that the only way they can deal with it is to get high. Someone who is tortured by their very own thoughts and feelings. I see someone I can commiserate with.

Of course no one sets out to be a drug addict. They start out just wanting to have a little fun or forget their fears for a little while. But as life becomes harder to deal with, you want that escape more and more until you become physically dependent. I would be lying if I said I never wished for that pill that would take away all my worries and pain. To live in a drug-induced bliss might not be so bad.

The problem with that, of course, is that it never lasts. The drugs wear off, reality hits, and you are even worse off than you were before. But what if there were a blissful reality that never wore off? In the movie, The Matrix, people live in a virtual perfect world while their physical bodies are in a coma-like state. Some people don't like this because they want to experience "reality", no matter how harsh it may be. But what does it matter what is "real" or not if reality is only misery and torture? I don't know about you, but I would take a pleasurable virtual reality that feels "real" any day over a harsh "real" reality.

All of this virtual reality stuff may be getting confusing, but all I really want to say is that I have sympathy for drug addicts, and I don't blame them one one bit for wanting to escape a reality that can be all to miserable. Whether or not they can deal with reality enough to get clean is up to them. And if they never can quite get clean......I still don't blame them.