Jermaine Lamarr Cole aka J.Cole, one of the top-selling rappers in the US dropped his album named KOD (Kids On Drugs) on 2018. The album was a hit and surely the songs were relevant ranging from drugs, hard truth, temptations, and many more controversial issues. But what caught my attention in this album was the song which is named after the album itself, KOD. This song made me realize one thing and that is, the strongest drug in the world is not illegal at all, nor is it regulated, nor is it even recognized as a drug and we don’t realize its effects until we open our eyes to the reality of it.
Maybe you’re all wondering, “What is this thing that’s so much more addictive than drugs, so much stronger than drugs, but is totally legal?”. We’re not talking about Marijuana, Cocaine, Heroin, not even Meth. It would even be a surprise that this substance is not physically manifested in any way, it is an abstract thing that we all have or do. Let the song lyrics itself reveal it to you.
“Power, greed. money, Molly, weed
Percs, Xannys, lean, fame
And the strongest drug of them all
And the strongest drug of them all
Love”
Yes, the substance stronger and more addictive than drugs, than alcohol, than nicotine, is Love. Power can be another thing, Greed can be another thing, but Love is the strongest drug of them all. Let me tell you why.
To give you both the positive and negative side of love, I extracted this verse from the bible, from 1 Corinthians 16:14 “Let all that you do be done in love” for me it simply means, everything that you do, do it for love. Now, love has made us realize things about ourselves. We realized that we can go beyond our capacity for our significant other or even our family or anyone whom we love. We realized that indeed, Love makes the world go round, we see acts of love even despite the chaos that we are in. Ironically, being addicted to drugs do the same thing. How? Addiction to drugs also make people realize (subconsciously) that they can go beyond their capacity as a human being.
Let’s then discuss how love and drugs are similar in terms of their effects but before that let us be clear that we are talking about obsessive love and drug addiction. For love, there are many instances where people killed because of jealousy and that jealousy is rooted from what? Love. Because a person loves someone so much and can’t accept that he/she isn’t with the person , or they broke up, or the other person cheated, or whatever reason the jealousy might come from, it is always rooted from love. On the other hand, for drugs, the drug user’s partner is the drug, and from the moment that person felt the urge to take a dose of that drug, he/she will do anything to get a grip of it. It is known to almost all of us that killings/murders are often drug-related. Either the user is looking to score his/her dose that’s why he/she robbed and killed another person for money or it can be between a dealer and the user. One way or another drug kills. It is the same as love, love kills. Another comparison between love and drugs is the way they make us feel. When a person uses drugs, he/she will feel the “high” or the light feeling, like you’re flying, you don’t have any problems, you don’t have to worry about anything, you are comfortable. And who doesn’t want to feel that, right? Same goes with love, when we are in love, we feel like we’re on top of the world, we are unstoppable, and there’s nothing we can’t do. I can easily say that, that feeling is equivalent to the “high” that drugs give. Being in love and receiving love is comforting, when we’re with someone we love, we feel light, we feel happy, we don’t worry about the outside world. Drugs are addictive, love is addictive.
One of the reasons why people do drugs is because of the high, the comfort, drug users are as problematic as we are, some of us turn to games, alcohol, sex, travelling, or any leisure we can get just to forget or somehow relieve ourselves from our problems. So we can’t really blame the drug users for that, it is the only way they know to relieve themselves from all the stress, the problems, and the chaos in their lives. Sadly, we might agree that it is the wrong solution for that, which should give us the motivation to help them, lead them to the proper, moral, and humane way of relieving themselves. For love, we all feel love, we all have different ways of loving but just like how drugs are dangerous when it’s too much, the same applies for love. As the great Freddie Mercury said, “Too much love will kill you every time”. Well, basically everything that is too much can kill you.
