PURE PRESSURE, fo reals. Options

[banana_jamma]

Lately i have been hanging with the wrong people i think... they are bangin', have drugs, and weapons, and they treat girls like objects. but when they are just chill they are cool, but now i am starting to realize that being associated with them might get me in trouble. Cuz when they are routy we usually have police lookin' constantly or people telling us to calm down. and i have no part in anything they are doing. i mean they are my friends, but they can get me in serious trouble? i dont want to ditch them tho because they are really chill people sometimes. and i get can't tell them to stop because they would probably do something to me!
what should i do with them?

[ceara cecilyrose]

You can still be friends with these people, but just... Be careful. Don't get in situations where there's likely to be a conflict. You could just stay around them during the day when they're just hanging out, but not join in on their night life for example (if thats when they're doing these things that you're not comfortable)
When I was a teen, some of my friends got into alcohol and drugs and sleeping around etc. It didn't mean that I abandoned them as friends. What it meant was that I didn't go out with them at night if I knew that they'd be doing things that I wouldn't be ok with. I accepted them as human beings and told them I was concerned about them, but I didn't join in with them or was present when they were doing things they shouldn't.

The funny thing is that one of my friends from that group (probably my closest friend in that crowd) got pregnant when she was 16 as a result of a drunken one night stand. Most of her friends in the same crowd (doing the same things that she had been!) really shunned her and completely abandoned her. She lost a lot of friendships over it, especially when she decided to keep her baby and not have an abortion.
She's told me since then that I was one of her only friends that still stood by her even then, when so many of her friends from the fast crowd didn't want anything to do with her.

This friend of mine has since gotten out of that bad lifestyle. Her baby is gorgeous (now nearly 3!) and she's engaged to a lovely, gentle and moral man and has another baby on the way with him. We're still good friends to this day, although I don't see her very often (I live in a different city now, had to move to attend university)

Anyways, the point of all this is that if these people are really your friends, don't abandon them. Just don't get involved in the things they do that you know are wrong. In the long run, you may be a better friend for it.