Social Story of Drug Addict – AT A GUNPOINT
Photo credit: wintersixfour from morguefile.com
How does a person react in a situation? We humans are provided with a brain so that we can think over it and then decide. But sometimes there is no time for all the thinking process, especially if it is a life or death situation. Every animal is provided with an instinct to respond quickly. It is known as ‘Fight or Flight’. But come-on! We humans are better than this. We have intellect and deeper emotional understanding to respond correctly in such a situation. These emotions are action triggering electric signal sent by the brain to the entire body to respond depending upon the kind of situation we are in. Basically there are four of these, namely: Happiness, Sadness, Anger and Fear. Blah! Blah! This is just theory. We realize true importance of these when we are practically in such a situation. For me this was the situation where I had to make a quick decision.
Right now I am at a fairly public place. There are people around me. But not closes enough that they can interfere in what is or will happen. A man is standing in front of me, looking at me. In his right hand he has a gun pointing at me. What do I do?
This is not a movie scene or just pretending to shoot by an actor. This is very real. I saw the bullets while he loaded them in the revolver. So the gun is real enough that if he shoots, it is going to do more than just bruise. I see anger on his face which means that his intentions are clear. There might be no doubt in his mind as what he is wants to do. Here the triggering emotion is fear. So what I am going to do is. I will turn and duck quickly. Then run zigzag like a crazy person hoping that this guy will miss the target, i.e. me.
But wait! This man holding the gun is smaller than me. His hands are shaking and the grip is not firm. Probably he never even used a gun before. If I be swift enough, I might be able to take the gun from his hand. Also, how can this tiny man threaten me at a gunpoint? How could he even think that he can take me down with just a gun? This makes me very angry and so I need to teach him a lesson. What I have to do is snatch the gun and make sure that he does not do such a thing to me ever again.
Stop! Why is this man pointing a gun at me in the first place? What did I ever do, for him to take such drastic measures? I know this man. He is studying with me in my college. Just like me he is in the third year of engineering. He is an average scoring student, has a girlfriend, and lives comfortably with his parents and a brother. A happy picture of life as it appears. This was until I put a complaint about him in the college which got him suspended for a month. I turned his girlfriend against him making sure that she leaves him. I also was the reason why he got yelling and beating from his parents, especially his father who is a police officer. Probably that is how he got a gun. I ruined his happy stable life. So I deserve to be shot at. This makes me sad, so I will turn around and walk away. Let him decide what to do. Pray to god that he doesn’t shoot.
No! That is all wrong. This man, I don’t just know him from college. He is my best friend and we have been friends for a very long time. Though I am the one responsible for messing up his life presently but I did it for a reason. A couple of months ago this friend of mine got into drugs. Some, batch mate gave him a taste of it and within a week he was addicted to it. Since then he was bunking classes, avoiding friends, always liked to be distant and isolated. Who ever tried to talk to him, he would just get irritated, yell at them and then walk away. When I found out about his addiction, I tried to talk to him, get him out of all this. But he wouldn’t listen. I was left with no other option but to disclose his addiction secret to the people around him. Now, I am happy that the person holding the gun is my friend. If somehow I manage to show him his mistake and convince him out of the situation. Everything can be back to normal again.
And so I did. Now that his secret was out, there would be no more encouragement for him to have drugs. While he was in his right sense we all were able to convince him out of all this mess. So that he can continue with his happy life as it was a couple of months ago before his addiction of drugs.
Though it took me a lot of words to explain the thinking process and decision making, thanks to my brain, all this was done in a flash of second and I was able to get the situation in control before anything bad happened.
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