On December 6, 2018, I, Maya Millner, purchased my very first Pali cookie. I heard about them all semester. I witnessed my friends arriving late to lunch holding small, chocolate-stained plastic bags. I listened to debates over the brand-switching controversy. On that fateful morning when I got a 53 percent on my chemistry test and desperately needed some comfort food, I decided it was time to try a cookie.

This isn’t your average cookie. For only $1.00, you can be the lucky owner of two warm, soft, oozing perfections. They’re firm on the edges but chewy and delicate on the inside. When you taste the brown sugar and feel the warmth overcome you, nothing else matters.

Those chocolate chip circles of heaven got me through the school day without crying. Well, not including seventh period, but they’re miracle cookies nonetheless.

While in my cookie coma I walked straight into a support beam. When my face hit the cold, white chunk of metal and I snapped out of my daze, I had only one thought: Don’t drop the cookies. The cookies survived. My dignity did not.

Die-hard cookie fans follow @palihighbatchreview, an Instagram account that, with consistency, reviews the quality of the cookies every day. Some would argue that it is the only news that matters.

Cafeteria Ringleader Cecilia Ramirez said they sell “about a thousand cookies every day.” When I tried to get the recipe from another worker, she told me that if anyone ever found the recipe she would bake them into the cookies in order to preserve Pali’s best kept secret.

I’m a tad concerned about Pali students’ love for these cookies, because now I understand. I’ve tasted the forbidden fruit, I’ve seen the light and — honestly — these cookies are a gateway drug. These cookies provide a sensation that some of our school’s more innocent students have never experienced. After eating cookies every day they become desensitized and desperate to feel that incredible high again and the natural next step is PCP.

If you thought football games brought in the most money for the school, you were mistaken. Booster Club who? Everything you see at this school was paid for by the cookies. They’ve probably sold enough cookies to make the buses free. How do you think Dr. Magee pays for her Tesla? That’s right, cookie money. How do you think Mr. Kung affords to wear a different pair of glasses every day? Cookie money.

Why is our outspoken student body staying silent in this time of crisis? I know our students are incredibly selfless. I’ve witnessed their generosity first hand. I’ve seen them risk their grade to help a friend cheat. I’ve seen them offer the last shmack of their Juul to an of-age classmate in need. But an anonymous source explained to me that the cookie epidemic is not a crisis. I didn’t understand how such a clearly addictive substance could be pushed on our campus but was convinced by my source’s comment, “Hey, it’s better than cocaine.”