Hi, how's it going?
Good. How about you?
When it comes to charitable or philanthropic causes, I don't really have one that really stands out to me. I mean I want to donate money and stuff, but I don't have like a specific cause that I really want to donate to.
Same for me. I feel like I just support all charities. Although, seeing poor people makes me sad so probably something with that would make me the most passionate.
I mean all chairites are good, but their is not one that I'm like WOW! Now that's a charity. I want to give all my money to that one.
Yeah that's true. I think most people feel that way
Ya, seeing poor people makes me sad. What really makes me sad though is poor people who don't have a desire to improve. I saw it all the time in Colombia. They are alcoholics or drug addicts, and they don't want to improve their life, so they stay poor.
Yeah that is sad.
I guess I have just never understood why someone would be happy living in such a difficult situtation. I understand that improving their life would be hard, but it would be better than their current circumstances.
Maybe they just don't really understand how bad their circumstance is or what it would be like if they had more money. They might not be able to fathom such an improvement.
A lot of the guys I talked to in Colombia would talk all about how they wanted to improve, and leave alchohol, but then when you would try to help them, they just didn't want to.
Addictions also cause people to not think rationally.
Ya, it's true. Which is sad. Like drugs honestly are so scary because once you're on them, then you may never think rationally enough to get off of them.
I have some close friends who have gotten mixed up into drugs and bad situations and I have tried to help them quit and get out of those situations, but they feel like it is impossible.
Ya I honestly think if i got mixed up in that I would feel like it would be impossible to get out. I think a tricky part about it is that you make friends with people that are doing drugs to, so you know that the only way to get off of drugs is distance yourself from your friends, and that can be scary even when you can think rationally, but when you cannot think rationally, I bet it is even scarier.
Oh yeah, one of my closest friends is in that situation. His girlfriend is the one who got him into all these bad things and to get free of all those bad things he will probably have to break it off with her which he doesn't really want to do.
Ya, it's sad because the people that really want to help them, are the ones that they have distanced themselves the most from. The people who they spend the most time with are the ones who are pulling them down. My uncle got into drugs in highschool, then he got clean and got married, was living a happy life with an awesome wife, and great kids. A couple years later he relapsed, got into the wrong crowd and his life fell apart, because he distanced himself from his family, and they would have actually helped him, and instead joined a group that was not doing great things.
Yeah, friends have more of an impact than most people realize.
They are a big deal. I got lucky because I surrounded myself with some good friends in high school and they honestly are super helpful. They definitely help you form goals.
That's the same for me. Some of my best friends from elementary and middle school went down some pretty bad path later down the road, but the friends I ended up with in high school were all good influences.
I can think of a ton of kids that I was friends with in elementary school that at one point in like 7th grade, broke off from the group of friends, and made some other friends that were not good influences. These influences introduced them to worse influences and then they went off the deep end. It's just crazy how slowly but subtly it happens.
Yeah there are so many examples of it. It is so sad. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I they had stayed with my friend group or if I had followed them to their friend groups.
Ya, I love how this conversation went from favorite charities to the darker subject of drug addictions and its consequences:)
Well there are probably charities for helping people overcome addictions.
Haha, I guess that's true. There are probably actually a lot of those. Drug addiction is a big problem in the United States
It's a big problem everywhere, even in poor countries like you said earlier.
Ya, that's true,  a lot of the teenagers in colombia would get started on weed, and then move over to harder drugs until they were into it deep.
When I was in Europe, I saw the same thing. There were kids who were only about 12 or 13 smoking and no one seemed to be concerned about it.