"People here do drugs because it's a small town and there's nothing else to do".

[Guitarmasterx7]

I think that people shouldn't have to make fucking excuses for the substances they willingly put in their body.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

I lived in a town of 750people for a time. The fucking State Police station was in this town, yet more people do drugs in that town then I had ever seen. That was the excuse they used, and you know what? Thats complete shit.

Again I say, it's not an excuse -- it's just a description of reality. Whatever their reason for starting initially, small towns with nothing to do, nowhere to go, and no jobs with any chance of advancement that aren't connected to the manufacture and sale of drugs, tend to have a huge drug problem. Individual users generally have their own reasons. They may get started on the lighter drugs due to boredom, but the heavier ones (which, let's be honest, is what we're talking about here) they get onto at a later date, for a different reason -- whether that be needing a stronger fix, peer pressure, or what have you. Boredom isn't the immediate cause of the addiction, but it ultimately led to it.

 

[Cavouku]

...In short, I agree, it's a terrible excuse, and this "nothing to do in a small town" thing baffles me, because I couldn't find jack shit to do when I was visiting Toronto. Yeah, you can walk around, but everything... and everyone is so... so goddamn fake.

Of course I don't really mean that, they just had on their 'city faces'. And I live in a... not a small town, I guess, what is there, 12'000? I actually prefer smaller towns, but I'm an outdoors guy. And... I'm just anti drug in general. We could debate it all night and no one would get any further than 'alright, so that guy doesn't like drugs', but that's it. Unless a doctor's telling me to, or it's a survival situation (and even then, I threw the ibuprofen out of my little med kit), I'm not for them.

So my opinion doesn't hold much. Most things are a bad excuse for me, but if nothing else, I can see how that excuse is terribly pathetic. Do you know how many people are in a small town? Not a lot. That means you could get to know them all! Does nobody but me try this? Just literally comment about the weather as you pass someone in the street? "See girls, this is what it's like being in a cloud." I said to the two elementary kids with their father this foggy morning. "That's a tonne of barbecued chicken!" I said to the guy barbecuing chicken at the church. I've found this a solid form of entertainment.

And yeah, I promote TV, Video games and movies, or internet over drugs any day. They... well they make you do something, no matter how little. They're making your sober mind try and figure out their mechanic, or story or characters. You know, you can look up little instructions on Yoga online? Or some Jiu-jitsu moves, if you're a fighta'. You and your friends could try and set up a backyard wrestling thing, my buddies've done it.

So... I really don't see how there's "nothing else to do". There's so much more to do. I've gone to shops and borrowed things from these small town people I knew so damn well. I've lived beside the same corner store for all my life, I can still run home and grab some money if I forgot the amou-

Okay, maybe I have a "small town bias", but I think that's what we're looking for here, some guy who likes what you can do in a small town. If all else fails, find some way to go camping. It's great... unless you're in the prairies or desert or something, then it's not nearly as fun...

...It's getting late. Night.


EDIT: Okay, one last one. I was in a town, visiting friends in BC. It had... 200 some people? Not a whole hell of a lot. And it was my favourite spot on the whole trip. Edmonton mall was boring, downtown Toronto and Oshawa was boring, Medicine Hat was boring, but this 200 person town? Fuckin' jackpot. They were right beside the mountains, man! You should've seen the view! And the lake was freezing cold in the best way. And I am actually a 5-year-old mind in a 16-year-old body, so I had a blast on those monkey bars. So what happens when you do all that? Walk around and breathe. It's the mountain air! And that park's always open. You can go rock climbing. There was a little museum.

...Okay, I gotta stop now. Night.

 

[Captain_Fantastic]

i don't do drugs and up until my highschool graduation i never drank either and i can honestly say if you replace the "do drugs" with "get drunk" you have described the town i live in.

before i started to accept drinking i didnt want anything to do with it nor did i want to be near anybody who did. this is mostly because up untill that point there were a few alcoholic family members in my life who screwed my life up various times and got away scot free. around my graduation karma caught up with them and i slowly started to get used to the idea.

i still rarely drink but i absolutely hate this town i want more than anything to leave but i have nowhere to go. leaving for college is my only good option and i have no current aspirations to do that. i can also get a $24 dollar an hour job as simple as snapping my fingers from having good connections here.

the main reasons i want to leave is because socialy i am at a loss i will most likely not get a girlfriend so long as i live here(long dist is out of the question). my current group of friends is far and between. and most of my closer friends have left for college or because of the recent economy

and secondly i have niche hobbies that i need to travel out of town to support and being an hour and a half from the nearest place with a mcdonalds kind of explains that.

 

[Teckdeth]

Well, this is interesting. I live in a small town, and am a casual drug user, as are a good number of my friends from this town, yet I've never heard this one before. In fact, I very rarely hear my friends having to justify our in-the-eyes-of-the-public "bad" habits. Maybe this is because our controlled use of the substances means it has had no great impact on our lives, or that we generally stick to the safer, less life-ruining drugs, maybe it's because our town and it's inhabitants are mostly pretty left wing and liberal about it all. Or maybe it's because we don't often get asked why we do drugs.

Listen, I'm not trying to be mean, I respect your opinions, but I do sense a significant air of arrogance coming from your posts. I agree with you that it is better to try and improve your life rather than hide from it under the blanket of narcotics, but it's the ways in which you suggested improving life that bothers me. Life, and what is important within it are subjective. Suggesting I could save the money I spend on drugs and use it to buy school textbooks is quite frankly, incredibly patronising.

Also, this excuse, "I do drugs because I live in a boring town and there's nothing else to do". Yeah, this is essentially ridiculous, teenagers making silly excuses for their habits when they haven't realised that they shouldn't really need one. I'm with you on that one. But it occurs to me that a comment like this would need to be prompted, from someone asking "Why do you do drugs?", or do people around you just feel that they need to justify themselves to you on a regular basis? Either way, you come off as judgemental. If you want to stop hearing silly excuses, stop asking for them. I'll clear it up for you right now. The drug users you know do drugs because they're fun.

"If you don't like the town, move." Yeah, because it's that simple. Honestly, if you are in a situation where you can just up and move whenever you want, wherever you want because of a little boredom, then you definitely have no right to judge people on their chosen pastimes.

 

[Berethond]

Well yeah, If you live in bumfuck nowhere and your trying to pass the time between your shitty job at McDonalds you get a few options
1.Have Sex [unlikely]
2.Watch porn
3.Do Drugs
4.Go to a Biker Bar
5.Get hammered on the front lawn[most common choice]

Or you can try to better your life and move somewhere else. By like, I dunno, studying in your freetime.

Or was that a joke I'm not getting?

Except there isn't any point in studying in your free time because no matter how good you did at your shitty public tiny-school town you'll never be able to get enough money to afford to go to college, if you can even get admitted.

I wouldn't say that. The people at the top of the class generally get enough scholarship money to get the heck out of there. The average students and the drop outs, on the other hand? They tend to get stuck in a boring town with a dead end job. They're the ones who wind up on drugs. The ones who can escape generally already have before it becomes an issue for their age group.

In my personal experience, the people who got out were A)Children of parents who could pay the remainder of their way or B) Minorities who got scholarships.

Several of the top students from my class are stuck here because they were white with lower-middle class parents.

 

[SovietPanda]

Sometimes there just really isn't much else to do in a small town. Growing up the nearest cinema was an hour and a half drive away. the nearest place to swim without worrying too much about crocodiles was half an hour away. So we sat around at my mates place and got high. We'd ***** that there was nothing else to do in our small town, play N64 and while away our weekends. There are times in life when your not in a position to leave your small shithole town, your still ticking all the boxes in highschool and worrying about "bettering your life" is something for when you grow up abit. Of the people i used to smoke with, im a chef, one of them just finished a law degree and one owns his own landscaping business. I guess if your talking about people in the mid to late twenties still sitting at home smoking cones i can see a point. But that hasnt really been made clear.

 

[bastardman25]

This has to be the most condescending prejudged anti-drugs bullshit I?ve come across outside of highschool.
People (myself included) take drugs because they want to, the same way they drink or smoke or eat KFC,because they want to.
I resent the implication that taking drugs means you automagically fail at life, I'm studying physics and almost everyone I know is into something illegal on a fairly regular basis and the vast majority do an alarming amount of binge drinking. that isn't how I?d pick to spend the weekend, but its none of my business.

Drugs are just as if not more prevalent in big cities.
It has nothing to do with the size of the town you live in surely (unless that affects what drugs are available) It is a bullshit excuse used by people who don?t understand the issue.

as far as your suggestion people should spend all their spare time studying to one day move away?
studying for what? a diploma in wikipedia?
in the states and in England education costs money and lots of it.
Also I find it hilariously unrealistic to think someone would routinely return from a full days work to then hit the books for a few hours before bed, people want to have FUN or relax sometimes

if its specifically hard drugs you want to talk about then my guess is people feel they really have nothing to loose, some of us have been more fortunate than others. You could prove this by going to any ghetto/council estate/trailer park and telling people about your idea where they study in their spare time (which if they happen to be unemployed is all the time) remember someone on death row can have a longer life expectancy than someone in some of these places, fear I?d wager also plays a part in driving people to hard drugs

People certainly don?t wake up one morning and say "what shall I do today in my small town/dodgy neighborhood, I guess I?ll form an emotionally crippling terminal addiction to a shitty drug, that'll be a great idea!"

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

i don't do drugs and up until my highschool graduation i never drank either and i can honestly say if you replace the "do drugs" with "get drunk" you have described the town i live in.

before i started to accept drinking i didnt want anything to do with it nor did i want to be near anybody who did. this is mostly because up untill that point there were a few alcoholic family members in my life who screwed my life up various times and got away scot free. around my graduation karma caught up with them and i slowly started to get used to the idea.

i still rarely drink but i absolutely hate this town i want more than anything to leave but i have nowhere to go. leaving for college is my only good option and i have no current aspirations to do that. i can also get a $24 dollar an hour job as simple as snapping my fingers from having good connections here.

the main reasons i want to leave is because socialy i am at a loss i will most likely not get a girlfriend so long as i live here(long dist is out of the question). my current group of friends is far and between. and most of my closer friends have left for college or because of the recent economy

and secondly i have niche hobbies that i need to travel out of town to support and being an hour and a half from the nearest place with a mcdonalds kind of explains that.

About getting a girlfriend in a small town: I feel ya, bro. After a certain point, you've gone through all the ones with any mutual attraction, and you're left with people who you're either incompatible with, or who you've known for so long (like, since kindergarten) that it's just not going to happen. Granted, I haven't had much luck since going off to college, either, but at least I'm meeting people and going on the occasional date.

Heck, back home, chances are if I met someone who I didn't know, we'd wind up both saying "hi" to someone neither of us knew the other knew. In a small town like that, it's less 6 degrees of separation, and more like 2.

 

[babinro]

Well yeah, If you live in bumfuck nowhere and your trying to pass the time between your shitty job at McDonalds you get a few options
1.Have Sex [unlikely]
2.Watch porn
3.Do Drugs
4.Go to a Biker Bar
5.Get hammered on the front lawn[most common choice]

Out of curiosity, what options would a major city provide to you in order to pass the time that are still within a McDonald's budget (besides more bar options)?

Also, there's a ton of cheap hobbies that can be done regardless of city size such as tennis, sports in general, D&D, cycling, gaming, etc. But I understand the 5 parts are hardly a completely list.

On topic, I've never been curious enough to try drugs...so I really don't understand what the big draw is and why it's something I'd do as a result of boredom.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

This has to be the most condescending prejudged anti-drugs bullshit I?ve come across outside of highschool.
People (myself included) take drugs because they want to, the same way they drink or smoke or eat KFC,because they want to.
I resent the implication that taking drugs means you automagically fail at life, I'm studying physics and almost everyone I know is into something illegal on a fairly regular basis and the vast majority do an alarming amount of binge drinking. that isn't how I?d pick to spend the weekend, but its none of my business.

Drugs are just as if not more prevalent in big cities.
It has nothing to do with the size of the town you live in surely (unless that affects what drugs are available) It is a bullshit excuse used by people who don?t understand the issue.

as far as your suggestion people should spend all their spare time studying to one day move away?
studying for what? a diploma in wikipedia?
in the states and in England education costs money and lots of it.
Also I find it hilariously unrealistic to think someone would routinely return from a full days work to then hit the books for a few hours before bed, people want to have FUN or relax sometimes

if its specifically hard drugs you want to talk about then my guess is people feel they really have nothing to loose, some of us have been more fortunate than others. You could prove this by going to any ghetto/council estate/trailer park and telling people about your idea where they study in their spare time (which if they happen to be unemployed is all the time) remember someone on death row can have a longer life expectancy than someone in some of these places, fear I?d wager also plays a part in driving people to hard drugs

People certainly don?t wake up one morning and say "what shall I do today in my small town/dodgy neighborhood, I guess I?ll form an emotionally crippling terminal addiction to a shitty drug, that'll be a great idea!"

Big cities get better and less dangerous drugs. In cities, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it's mostly pot, prescription drugs, cocaine, and heroin -- with heroin users being in a small minority. In small towns, it's mostly pot and meth, with pot being a casual thing mostly done by middle class and rich highschool students, and meth being incredibly widespread among poor people over the age of about 25. Basically, small towns have more people on the hard stuff, and the hard stuff they're on is more dangerous and damaging than the hard stuff you find in cities.

Really, though, it's more a socioeconomic thing than a rural/big city thing; the people who wind up wasting away on hard drugs are the ones who just don't have the opportunity to better themselves, whether they live in a tiny po-dunk town, or an inner city ghetto.

 

[lacktheknack]

THINGS TO DO IN A SMALL TOWN THAT DON'T INVOLVE DRUGS
-Read a book
-Do some homework
-Dig a hole
-Climb a tree
-Start a secret society with the goal of scaring people
-Start a secret society with the goal of composing the perfect piece of music
-Write the perfect piece of music
-Hang out at the local tavern/bar/town hall/whatever
-Write a story
-Write a small collection of stories
-Get ripped using your surroundings
-Host a party
-Troll people on the internet
-Be nice to people on the internet
-Pick up litter
-Get a second job
-Mentor a child
-Raise a child
-Go hunting
-Have an airsoft war
-Learn to whittle a piece of wood into a knife
-Learn to whittle a piece of wood into a statue
-Pick flowers, find out their medicinal properties
-Grow a garden
-Learn to cook
-Learn to bake
-Paint a mural
-Paint a canvas
-Fingerpaint
-Mow your lawn
-Mow someone else's lawn
-Master the cinnamon challenge
-Learn to dance
-Learn to breakdance
-Organize a sports team
-Leap from rooftop to rooftop while screaming "PARKOUR" and alarming everyone nearby

Am I just that old-fashioned?

 

[biggskanz]

I'm originally from Iowa, USA (the meth capitol of the world btw), and there's tons of small farming towns there. I've heard that exact excuse before: "Its a small town, nothing else to do."

My anecdotal evidence from living there is that drug usage is prevalent in smaller towns although I doubt any more than in large cities.

Unlike the OP though I don't necessarily see it as a bad thing or something we need to try and correct. People have free choice, and what they choose to consume is their business. If someone decides to "waste" their life and work a shitty job in a small town and spend all their free time and money doing a drug of their choice, I don't see a problem with that.

 

[Thaius]

I live in a small town in the mountains, and though there are plenty of druggies up here, I've mainly see two things happen because of the "nothing to do" issue.

1) They become outdoorsmen and women. They enjoy backpacking, rock climbing, and other various outdoor activities and sports that the surrounding environment allows them to easily do with friends. The extreme cases are straight-up rednecks.

2) They become nerds. Since they can enjoy things like television, video games, and other nerdly pursuits in their own homes and with friends, there is no need to "things to do." The extreme cases of this exist too, of course.

Honestly though, the whole "nothing to do" thing is kind of stupid. It only, only, only refers to locations for social gathering. There's nothing else it means. So the idea that people do drugs because there aren't enough special places to hang out is, honestly, more than a little insipid.

 

[TheAceTheOne]

That's why, when describing my home town, I say, "well, half the town does drugs and the other half stays at home playing video games, since there is nothing else to do."

I'm... I'm not making a joke for this thread. That is literally how I have been describing my town for years. Although, many here just do both. Still. It is an accurate description of this town.

I don't disapprove, mind you. I'm simply stating a fact about where I live.

Somewhere rural-ish, I would bet?

In my town, it's the same way.

 

[Soluncreed]

Only boring people get bored.

I like this statement.

Basically, a really good alternative is to just go out and do stuff. Whatever you want. Because of this, I have discovered that kites are awesome and there is a clearing along a pathway that is hidden from view. Exploration is kind of awesome.

 

[Del-Toro]

Well first off I don't think doing substances out of boredom and wanting to go someplace else are mutually exclusive things.

And I have to ask, have you ever actually lived in a small, boring, town? Because even though I don't agree with doing meth out of boredom, I think the drinking/reasonable drugs habit is perfectly understandable.

I agree, having spent the bulk of my formative years in a small town with a prolific party scene myself. I think, fundamentally, it's just a result of how the nature of the town has changed since the industrial revolution.

Hear me out, Escapist. Permament settlement only became viable (and desirable) as nomadic hunter gatherers developed the know how to grow plants and domesticate animals in such a way that would let them use a single "stretch" of land (stretch being intentionally ambiguous, since it could refer to a variety of lengths and widths) indefinitely, so they didn't have to keep roaming. Eventually, larger settlements begin to develop as centres of commerce and de facto government for the surrounding farming communities, sometimes from the most successful of these. These settlements tended to be where what would develop into an artisan class plied their trades, and where people from group A would exchange their surplus cumquats for group B's extra pumpkins.

This is, albeit in a markedly changed way, still in effect today, except now, at least in the industrialized world, it's centralized in large, industrial cities, where the vast majority of manufacturing takes place, a role once played locally in the towns served by the surrounding farmlands.If you live in a small town and had a hard time finding work there, even before the recession, that's more or less the reason. Towns don't have the same general or even local relevance they once had before industry centralized manufacturing in big cities. Manufacturing left long ago for many small towns, with a small, sharply reduced cottage industry sometimes being present. With that shift, and the accompanying shift in population as cities, commerce became focussed largely in cities, leaving towns in the dust.

So what exactly do towns do anymore? They provide some services to rural surroundings and the villages that (in the case of my little town) popped up at one point or another, being a severely limited outlet to the centres of commerce they themselves provide for. Some serve largely as a supply of manpower to large urban centres, hence the "bedroom community", but generally speaking even these won't have anything like the commerce (which for this bit includes "things to do", as it were) or activity of a city, there being generally a small number of merchants serving the town. The result is that there really isn't anything for the town's youth to do.

Why would there be? It's a significantly smaller population with less commercial activity. Culture, for whatever reason, is centralized in cities, so if youths wants to be involved in that in some capacity, they have to leave. Even if it's just to see a concert, that requires a trip to a city. There isn't an abundance of job oppourtinities either, and not just becase of the recession. Less commercial activities means there are fewer people inclined to hire people. Where I grew up, only one of the many convenience store owners had hired one of the locals to work in his stores. The rest were family operations, and there wasn't any real reason to expand either.

So yeah, crack open a brewski and light up, you've already watched television and played videogames ad nausium. What else are you supposed to do, read?

 

[Aetera]

That's why, when describing my home town, I say, "well, half the town does drugs and the other half stays at home playing video games, since there is nothing else to do."

I'm... I'm not making a joke for this thread. That is literally how I have been describing my town for years. Although, many here just do both. Still. It is an accurate description of this town.

I don't disapprove, mind you. I'm simply stating a fact about where I live.

Somewhere rural-ish, I would bet?

In my town, it's the same way.

Yep. A lot of farmland and absolutely nothing recreation-wise here. The only hangout in town is the gas station. Close enough to a(65,000 pop) city to have a semi-decent drug flow, though. At least it's not a meth town.

 

[chaosyoshimage]

Thankfully, I have video games, TV, and the internet to use as my drug-like escape from the small town where there's nothing to do. Yeah, I hate this place and I want nothing more than to get the hell out of here. But, I can't, no car, no job, no money, I can see why people as hopeless as me might turn to drugs.