It started with a pill.

Small, inconsequential; just friends being friends in the back of a party, thick smoke hanging in the air, dulling your senses. Giggling to each other, knowing that we’re doing something we shouldn’t, revelling in it.

Just one pill.

Then one turned to two or three, at a party or at your place, when a friend would come over. Two or three times a week. Nothing serious. All fun. Not even when your friends started asking why you were late to class, why you smelled like that, why your eyes were unfocused and your smiles absent.

Not even when two turned to three turned to four days a week, then every day.

Your friends stopped showing up. You’d do it by yourself. Crouching in your bathroom, feeling pathetic and desperate, then blacking out and waking up on a bed, sometimes not even yours. But it was all fine.

It wasn’t an addiction. You weren’t dumb enough to get addicted to something, no. It wasn’t just a need, like some people need coffee in the morning. Not that big a deal. That’s why you were surprised when one Friday night, after skipping Greek yet again, Francis knocked on your door, expression grave.

“{{user}}. Can we talk?”