“Honey, can you get me?” i get in the app group with the name I was chatting sent. I scroll my archived chats from top to bottom and back again. I doubt, the choice is ample. Will I go for ‘Rachid Snow’, ‘K Gappie’ or ‘Tikkie Benny’ today? I choose dealer number two. I scan the options on his menu list, but actually I already know what I want. “Hey are you at work? Can I have 2k and 1c?” I submit. A few hours later I sit with my I was chattinggirlfriends at the kitchen table, thinking about where we’ll go tonight. Even before we’re out, I take the first sniff.
Using drugs on a weekly basis was very common for me. Around me I saw many people eating the same amounts as me. That was not a little, but we only did it on weekends. The question of whether I was addicted didn’t even cross my mind.
But I started getting more and more drug downers during the week, which I then took for granted. Research shows that drug use is increasingly becoming normal among young people. It got me thinking: weren’t we kidding ourselves by insisting that our weekend drug use wasn’t a problem? Where exactly is the line between enthusiastic recreational use and a harmful habit?
“It’s a complicated question,” says Eva Kalis, prevention expert at Jellinek. “And I can already tell you that there is no clear answer.” Within addiction care, a distinction is made between several phases of drug use. The first stage is the introduction to drugs. “That is, for example, when you smell the smell of weed for the first time or you see someone standing tight at a party.” The second stage is the experiment, in which you explore drug curiosity. You use a drug once or twice. Kalis: “If you like it, you often switch to recreational use: using it in a controlled manner during social occasions. Incidental. Recreation has no effect on your further daily activities. You are in control.”
Recreational users, for example, are people who go to a festival a few times a year and choose that as an opportunity to use drugs, says Kalis. “But if you use drugs because you like it and you do it almost every weekend, then it is difficult to call it recreational. Then we speak of habitual use.”
According to Kalis, habitual use need not be problematic. However, there are a number of signs that may indicate that a habit is slowly turning into an addiction. “Someone who only uses on the weekends and has no further problems does not fall under the most severe addiction category in black and white. But can you still have fun at a party without that snuff or that pill? The more often you use, the greater the chance that you will use more and more. You build up a tolerance for the drug, so you need more to experience the same effect.”
Regrets after using – when you decide in advance not to use and do it anyway – and physical withdrawal symptoms are signs that your use is getting out of hand. But even if your mind wanders during the week to the drugs you’re going to use on the weekend – which is called mental dependence – it means that drugs are affecting your daily life, even if you use only on the weekends. If you use drugs to suppress feelings or if you think you need drugs to feel better, you’ve entered the problematic phase. “Those are signals to take seriously,” says Kalis.
I clearly entered that phase at some point. For years it was fun – as a DJ in the Amsterdam nightlife, a world opened up for me full of guest list spots, free drinks behind the booth and a lot of attention. From the age of twenty, the weekly use of coke and keta crept in. In the backstage of the countless parties I went to, there was open sniffing. Drugs were a means to make fun evenings even more fun. But when the corona measures were in force, there was little fun left. For weekends in a row I was in the same living room with people I actually hated, but I kept coming over and over and was the last to leave – simply because that’s where the drugs were. “I want to disappear”, it kept echoing in my head. During the week too, that little voice and the urge to stun became louder and louder. It got so bad that I knew: I have to change something about my drug use.
But where I clearly got into trouble, I see countless people around me who use almost every weekend and don’t seem to be bothered by dark thoughts at all. What about them?
“The fact that you ended up in a split because your drug use got in your way but everyone around you seemed to be doing the same and seemed to have no problem with it, because in your environment there is a certain norm of common drug use. What is considered common depends on your frame of reference. The group you belong to determines the norm of what is accepted and what goes too far,” explains Arne van den Bos. He is a researcher at the Addiction Studies research group at the Hanze University of Applied Sciences in Groningen and conducts research into the normalization of drugs.
In the environment in which I found myself, it was indeed extremely normal to use coke, speed or ketamine every weekend, for example, but the line was drawn with weekly GHB use. People were therefore held accountable for the use of GHB. “But in that case, the fact that sniffing takes place every weekend is ignored. In your group, problem drug use is already the norm, and it is seen as normal,” says Van den Bos.
Within the phases of use, use is only labeled as problematic if it is at the expense of further daily activities, says prevention expert Kalis. But what if you plan your life in such a way that you factor in “being broke” in advance (as was the case with me)? Canceling appointments, having trouble getting out of bed and not being focused on work were things that I saw as an insurmountable side effect of my use. In addition, I had my life “just in order”, on the outside there didn’t seem much wrong with me. As long as you don’t see obstacles in your daily life as such, it is more difficult to label use as problematic.
“That also has to do with the normalization of drugs,” says Van den Bos. His research into this social trend shows that drug use has become more accessible – it is easier to get drugs than ten years ago, a dealer is at your door after one app and sends menu lists via WhatsApp. “This is also very normal, it is not even exciting to meet with a dealer anymore,” says Van den Bos.
Drugs are also easier to talk about. Van den Bos: “Ten to twenty years ago, drugs were only used in niche groups such as the dance scene. Now you see it happening all over society. Among students, for example, drugs are openly used and talked about normally. According to Van den Bos, there are so-called bounded normality: “Students realize that it is normal within their own group, but they do not just talk about it with everyone, such as with parents or teachers.”
It is difficult to make statements about the actual increase in drug use among young people in the Netherlands. We don’t know how many people are weekend users and there are no figures yet for drug use after the corona pandemic. According to Van den Bos, there is a shift from what we see as common drug use. “Because we consider drugs to be a lot more normal across the board, it is only noticed at a later stage that the amount and frequency of use may not be as normal as we think.”
According to Van den Bos, it differs per person how much drugs you can handle in addition to your normal activities. Not everyone who uses weekly therefore automatically falls into the category of ‘problematic user’. “Some people can handle a drug downer better, they can separate that emotional feeling you can get from drugs from reality and see that it’s chemical. But many people can’t and are more sensitive to it. You see that people who score high on emotional instability, such as neuroticism, are more likely to use drugs as a coping style. Or that people who are socially anxious take drugs because they otherwise find it difficult to talk to others. People with ADHD or poor impulse control are also more likely to turn to drugs as a coping mechanism to deal with themselves.”
Van den Bos notes that we can very easily fool ourselves. “Many people tell themselves that they use drugs because they do it for fun, but subconsciously use it as a coping style. Then we speak of a cognitive dissonance: people say one thing, but do another. We like to justify our behavior, which helps to maintain self-confidence.”
Much drug use among young people is mainly related to the stage of life and the context in which they find themselves. “Most people outgrow that,” says Van den Bos. “However, there is always a small group that does go wrong and continues to use it.”
Nevertheless, he emphasizes that it is important to be aware of your use during this crucial phase of life. When you are young, your brain is still developing. Van den Bos: “Getting to know yourself without alcohol and drugs is important. The danger of habitual use is that you can become detached from yourself, because you don’t fully know what your own reaction is to situations and what is influenced by the chemical processes going on in your body – even days after using drugs. ”
I didn’t really know myself without alcohol or drugs. Even though I only used on weekends, during the week I found myself scrolling through my archived chats often enough, past the menu lists of the thirty dealers I have on my phone. I have now been successfully treated by Jellinek for several months. It I was chatting will have to do without me for a while.
The use of drugs is never without risk. In Belgium, for all questions about alcohol, drugs, pills, gaming and gambling, contact the Druglijn or call 078 15 10 20. In the Netherlands you can contact the Trimbos Institute for the same subjects, via the website or the telephone number 0900-1995. On the Jellinek site you can test your use and find more information about addiction care.