Feel like using drugs on your vacation to Bali? Think again.

If you were about to have a holiday in Bali and you’re thinking about taking some ecstasy, cannabis, or even a little-higher-than-regular-dose of alcohol, well I’d probably offer one quick advice: DON’T. I may be an amateur in using drugs and related, but I dealt with people stuck in their holiday destination due to drug problems, and gotta say, it looked pretty ugly. So here’re some reasons for not getting into drug problems on your holiday:

One, holiday means, you’re only gonna be there for some short time.

Of course, when time is short, you might feel like making the most out of it. You might want exciting experiences, something from this short period that you wish to remember for a lifetime, or maybe even change your life. You need to make sure, however, that this life-changing experience is in the form of something awesome (e.g. swimming in the coolest beach you've even seen) instead of something awful (e.g . being arrested for carrying drugs in your bag). Simple, isn't it?

Two, holiday means being bugged with bureaucracy shouldn't be your priority

Again, in the name of making-the-most-of-the-short-holiday-time, isn't it a better plan to just be safe? If you’re thinking about finding excitements by doing risky things, go bungee jumping. Or surf the highest wave under the rain. Or even do one-night-stands with cute guys/girls in town—you name it. But taking the risk for dealing with the bureaucracy? Why making it one of your top priorities? Just in case you don’t notice, Bali is a place where officers could easily said “I don’t know” without bothering to proceed further even when they seem to be in charge. Added with the (significant) language barrier and the inherently complicated Indonesian bureaucracy, then BOOM! You’re screwed. Totally damn screwed, to be exact. And your holiday? Forget it, you can no longer call it holiday. But you might wanna call it hell-on-earth, by the way.

Three, holiday means you’re a stranger with limited resources for back up.

This thing is something that i subjectively feel that people tend to take for granted due to the overwhelming excitements of holiday. Of course you might have your ID –KTP, passport, SIM– you name it. However, when it’s holiday, do you take the whole documents of your health insurance coverage with you? Not unless you’re cautious, I guess. And when you’re the person who brings drugs, either regularly, occasionally, or conditionally; unless you’re a super professional seller (or dealer? I don’t know what ‘bandar’ is called), no offense, but I kinda doubt you have enough of that ‘cautious bone’ inside you.

You might also come with friends or partners who has been very supportive during your whole lifetime, but still, they’re also strangers to the place. There weren’t much to know when you’re about to use a help. You’re thinking about making an elaborate phone call to a reliable party in your hometown or home country? Well, once you’re in prison or in a psychiatric ward, trust me, you would no longer have your phone. Either it’s stolen when you were ‘high’ or the officer took it and only let you access it occasionally, you can’t do the elaborate phone call anyway.

Four, when you were on drugs, you’re no longer that ‘relevant’.

Either the effect had passed or it still remained, taking drugs is quite likely to make you a much less believable and/or reliable person to listen to. You might have slurred speech or strange behavior due to the drug effect, hence people don’t listen to you. You might be well articulated and properly behaved, but you’re considered as ‘careless’ enough to use drugs, then people don’t listen as well. When people don’t listen to you when you need help, doesn't it feel awful?

Well. Since drugs or drugs-related problems have notoriously been a complex and long standing issue since only-God-knows-when, of course what I wrote above is only a very super tiny part of it. Plus it’s nothing evidence based; it was only based on what I saw, so it’s highly debatable. Either it induces some degree of reconsidering or anything else, I’d just let you be the decision maker for that while hoping for the best. Have a good day.