day 3 - substances.

(full list) - 03 - what are your views on drugs and alcohol?

my friend sent me this via MMS on my birthday, isn't it beautiful?

i remember trying to have a conversation with my mom about pot one day and the only thing i remember her saying to me was, “only certain types of people should smoke marijuana; musicians, and people who have cancer.” “what? musicians?” “yea, you know – like rockstars. they do drugs, but they’re supposed to.” so, what i took away from that conversation was that she was okay with pot smoking. so i did, in her house. one late night on a visit to chicago. to which she busts into the room and calmly says, “ok, for as long as the law says it’s illegal, that stuff is not allowed in my house.” fair enough.

in an ideal world, i would like to think that all drugs that grow naturally, should be decriminalized. not picked, packaged and sold/taxed legally like cigarettes and alcohol, but if you wanted to wander into the desert and suck on peyote – it should be in the realm of one’s free will to do so. but to counteract all the stupidity, when we’re in school learning about fallopian tubes and urethras, throw in a drug education class as opposed to a “say no to drugs” lecture. ie: “here are the consequences of what happens when you ingest, inject, inhale, or snort this, this and this… do with that information as you wish.”

in high school i guess you could say i was pretty “straight-edged,” the most i could’ve gotten into trouble for would have been zero-tolerance (underaged drinking) or breaking curfew (the ones by illinois state law, not my parents – which, has actually happened to me once when i was fifteen, but that’s another story.) i have lived on a college campus at one point in my life, so – i have tried a handful of narcotics here and there… most of them only once — and if i had enough faith in humanity, i would say that everyone who’s curious enough, should try whatever they want – at least once. (with the exception of heroin – i have this thing about the evils of heroin, but again, another story.) but i should add a disclaimer here: if in the event i ever have children, hypocrisy will ensue – and i will deny ever saying any of this, until they have grown.

here’s my bottom line: i never understood, nor will i ever, how alcohol and cigarettes remain legal — but everything else is such taboo. they can make a shit load of prescription drugs that doctors and therapists (sorry, i know therapists like to think of themselves as real doctors – joke!) prescribe to people who are “chemically imbalanced” but what the fuck? one day you have a friend on antidepressants… and the next thing you know, they’ve added some sort of amphetamine so they can counteract the lack of energy/motivation, along with some kind of diazepam to take off the edge… and don’t forget the benzodiazepine to help them fall sleep… and then as the years go on, they stop working, so they up the dosages — and then one day you realize your friend has completely transformed into a zombie because s/he has completely forgotten what emotions are, let alone how to deal with them.

suffice it to say that i agree and disagree with a lot of points in our current system – just the same, i don’t have any answers or substantial ideas to better it. all i know, is that it’s such a backwards world we live in.