Enough.

"Yeah, they found him this morning. It was Xanax."

That haunting, bone-chilling, literal death sentence has smeared its nasty signature on too many text message strings, email chains, Facebook posts, phone calls, and coroner's reports.

The only part of the sentence that changes is the narcotic that does the deed and the victim that succumbs to its paralyzing mind-body domination.

A drug-induced death toll is rising in coordinated syncopation with each toss of a tassled graduation cap and naive bender of a fledgling graduate eager to christen his metamorphosis from kid to young adult with a shot of tequila and a line of cocaine. The Black Death is once more upon us--but this time it masquerades in the "innocent" form of snowy white powder, bars, and tiny rainbow colored pills.

The sad truth of this post is that I bet every single person reading it knows someone who has died from a drug overdose. Most people know more than one. I know of 3.

Is that the world we live in now? Graduating high school knowing that half of our friends probably won't live to see their 21st birthday?

Enough.

Not ANOTHER mother lowers her son into the ground. Not ANOTHER father lays eyes on his blue-lipped daughter sprawled motionless in a hospital bed.

We need to wake up and realize that we have a drug epidemic on our hands and we can't just sit back and keep smoking it. We need to be the person that drags our wasted friend from the party before he can pop another pill. We need to actually call to make sure he got home safely and if he didn't, we need to scour the streets until we find him.

We are not going to let this happen again.

May those spirited, bright, wonderful people who perished at the hands of their dementors rest peacefully, but may they also inspire the soldiers within us to rise and fight. Fight against death and temptation and pull our generation out of its drugged-out stupor.

Enough is enough.