The True Story of a Shake Shack Addict

I agreed to write this article because other students need to hear my dark, dark tale of misfortune. Perhaps my trials and tribulations can serve as a warning for future generations of things never to do during your time at Stuyvesant. It’s too late for me, anyway—I’ve got no future left.

It all began a few weeks ago, when I got back my report card and discovered that my five extracurriculars (robotics, SING!, debate, track, and SciOly) and 10 missed days of school due to said extracurriculars had dragged my average down by a number that embarasses me to this day… 1.337 percent. I was a complete disappointment to my parents, their parents, and probably every Homo sapiens in my family tree. I’d spent the days leading up to report card day begging, pleading, and cajoling my teachers to give me a slightly better grade, and to ignore that I’d fallen asleep in two periods of their class during the entire seven-week marking period.

But Stuyvesant is not a forgiving school, and I knew that when I came here. I was unable to salvage my grades in time, and even if these grades were just “letter grades” and “not on your transcript yet,” they launched me into a spiral of depression that eventually lead to serious substance abuse. And I’m not talking about JUULs, or Adderall, or any of those tame drugs the normies are doing. No, when I fell, I started indulging in the worst of the worst.

They say “bake sales” are a gateway drug, but I didn’t know how true that was until I was buying my seventh ice cream sandwich at the robotics bake sale and campaigning within the robotics team to adopt a biweekly bake sale schedule, then a weekly schedule. When my requests failed, I began embezzling from the bake sale goods: a rock-hard cookie here, an over-sugary slice of cake there, until I was caught sticky-handed. At this point, my guidance counselor tried to put me into AT Rehab, but since it wasn’t an AP course, I refused to take it, and my addiction only grew worse.

However, bake sales can only keep a person going for so long. I got in touch with the wrong crowd before long, including the people who became my new dealers: the Shake Shack cashiers. They even started knowing my name (the few times they didn’t misspell it as “Hellen” or “Helina”)!

For the few of you who don’t know about Shake Shack, it’s a premium version of the popular McDonald’s drug. It costs a good deal more, but it’s all organic and I thought it would be “healthier” than becoming a McDonald’s addict. That, however, was where I was wrong: Shake Shack’s $5 milkshakes ($6 with tax, and $7 for the Game of Thrones Dragonglass Shake with an exclusive limited-edition cup) became my brief trip to a more peaceful world, where I didn’t have a subpar average. It wasn’t long before I was going through life with a Shack Stack (the normal Shackburger not being enough to feed my addiction) in one hand and a black-and-white shake in the other. The Student Union’s 10 percent discount on Shake Shack only made it worse: before long, I was staring at the bottom of one too many shakes, along with the bottom of my wallet.

I overdosed one night, and woke up in the place most Stuy students see only when their blue cards go missing: the nurse’s office. Yes, this place does exist, tucked into a tiny alcove near the third-floor gym. And while it would take a full-on heart attack, an escalator-related toe mishap, and a case of hypothermia from the outdoor 11th-floor pool for any student to admit they “might need a visit to the nurse’s office” (excluding second-term seniors, of course), I was in this mystery place because I’d drunk 19 shakes in a row while attempting to forget my 87.5 on a math test. I’ve been banned from both Shake Shacks in the Stuy area and have had to resort to the cheaper, less effective drug called Checkers.

Still, maybe some of you innocent children can learn something from my story. Don’t trust these reports on how drugs like “Jupioca” are harmless fun. They will destroy your grades and make you a wreck. Remember, kids: it only takes one black-and-white shake (with whipped cream) to ruin your life.