The Perfect Drug

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The Perfect Drug

Is money the perfect drug, a cure all pill that will take away all misery,

anguish, and suffering; or is it an addictive depressant, sending us on the

downward spiral towards death? The truth of life is that money lures us in with

its appealing image, creates a dependency, and gradually rends us a soulless slave

to it.

“And I want you…”

Almost all of America today is consumed by a need to attain great wealth,

reputation, and worldly possessions. Everything is about what job can be attained,

who can be impressed, or what possessions we are about to surround ourselves with.

To this end, we are enraptured by a need for as much money as possible. This can

come by the means of anything from playing the lottery to investing to working at

a job that we hate. Torturing ourselves to gain wealth and power, we willingly

accept the pains of the 8AM - 5PM day to feel a small amount of happiness from

6PM-10PM. The high that is gained by this small increase in wealth is just enough

to keep us coming back for more, the addiction just enough to create a dependency

that is both strong and invisible. We are so captivated by the false happiness of

wealth that we fail to recognize the shallow truth of it all: that we are slaves

to our money. Just like addicts to heroin, we cannot live without money, and we

always crave more. However, just because we have more money doesn’t mean that

we’ll have more to spend. We almost immediately will take any gained wealth and

put it towards an increase in living style, such that our spending money remains

virtually the same as it was whenever we had less money overall. These changes

in living style are usually some material possession like a car that we see

ourselves as needing to have. Take the example of the suburban yuppies driving

around in SUV’s and worse, Hummers. Are such robust vehicles really necessary

for tackling the rough streets of suburbia? The obvious answer here is no, but it

mustn’t be too obvious, because these types of vehicles can be seen everyday out

of their intended setting. This brings up the point of their use, which is to

make sure that the drivers look more powerful than anyone else around them. What’s

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