So I was eating, last night, and I opened the paper... and bam! A smack right across the face... a picture of a guy I taught when I was in college... in the obituaries. I had taught him on three separate occasions... two times in a classroom setting and once in one-on-one tutoring sessions for a quarter... We got to be pretty decent acquaintances from the classroom stuff, which is why he asked me to do his tutoring, later on... So, I've known the guy for ten-plus years, now... seen him around here and there... he always stopped and talked when we would run into each other... and all this time, I never realized that he was half-brother with a guy I've been friends with since I moved back from Colorado...

Anyhow, in the tutoring, it was always more laid back and stuff as opposed to the classroom... among other things, he used to talk about his drug use, which was no biggie... I didn't really care a whole lot about how much he spent on drugs and blah blah blah... I mean, at the time, he was 20-21 and that's just how people like him thought they were supposed to behave... it's just "cool," or whatever... I remember what it was like... I wasn't that much different... well, I was with the choice of substances, but... whatever... no biggie... but that was a completely different time and "era of recreation..." even then, though, you could see it creeping up, coming around the bend. When I saw in the paper that in lieu of flowers, donations be sent to one of the big rehab centers around here, I kinda got a sick feeling... sure enough, I called his brother earlier and sick feeling, confirmed... fucking cocaine and oxy overdose...

It has to be, like, at least twenty people since I've come back from Colorado... three friends in the last month... watching the line of potentials growing; the next could be any of them and I shudder to think which one it will be... because it will be one of them... Picking a dead pool and sitting back and watching... because I've figured out, in all my trying to help the friends that have died from this shit... I can't. I may have a short-term effect, much like the shit they can't stop doing... but I could never help like they needed. Who am I or anyone else that's sick of watching friends fall compared to that hour or two of... what the fuck ever you wanna call that kind of "high?"

I can't stand the whole concept, anymore... humans are tools. I keep giving them way too much credit. That much more of a reason I need to be gone. I'm too tired to keep watching friends die... just too fucking tired.

As for the former friend and student... lesson learned, I suppose.