Drugs are liked by that... forum member.
I want to clear something up here. I apologise for the length, but this is important. (If a moderator wants to move this post to a new thread, I'll understand.)
Yes, I have an unusual relationship with drugs. (I'm actually writing a memoir called
The Girl Who Said Yes which tells the whole story, going back to me at age 4, living with what would be considered a perfectly normal, non-abusive, law-abiding upper-middle class Southern California suburban family.) My parents are dead now, but I always loved them, and did not do Bad Things to "rebel" against them. I had other reasons. I'd call it "instinctive love", because I knew I wanted to use certain drugs before I even knew what "drugs" were.
But now at age 47, let me make it clear that experience, both by self and by watching others for almost thirty years, that this love does not apply to ALL drugs.
There are three I actually HATE: heroin, cocaine - particularly crack - and perhaps most of all, alcohol. I never enjoyed drinking, save for maybe three or four occasions in four and a half years of college. I hate the taste, smell and gastric affects of alcohol. As time went on, I noticed the combination of alcohol and crack created people I literally would do anything to avoid spending five minutes with. (And since the music genre "crunk" apparently is created by and for people taking crack and getting drunk, I'm pretty unfond of THAT, too.)
Speed is one drug I have
very mixed feelings about. When new laws were passed which brought manufacture of this admittedly addictive drug (though not as permanently or damagingly as heroin) to begin using other ingredients to create it, and with so much panic-focus centered on it, the unprofessional meth-lab was born, creating flawed and poisonous speed that was not only worse for you than the real thing, it took away most of the positive elements of the drug, and created environmental hazards that the hippie in me recoils from.
Few people realise how many people they know that are meth users: people who don't fit the profile, who don't have hillbilly teeth and wrinkles, that don't go psychotic. Many people started using it, often against their own true wishes, solely because when the economy went bad, they needed to work ridiculous hours to feed themselves and/or their families. Now, though, the stuff's so bad the money a user would put into it is taking away from the extra money they make because they're staying awake too many hours. (This would also happen in the pre-meth-lab days to people who just could not control their use, and who chose to smoke it or Gods forbid use the needle rather than just snort the powder.) And if they become discovered to be users, they end up losing their jobs, families and all that anyway. Eventually, those people generally end up in jail, and begin to "fit the profile". Thus we have a fairly venomous hate for this substance running in most folks' minds.
Before all this happened the drug could sometimes control weight, help students keep up with their studies, and help writers with their craft (AS LONG AS they or someone else remembered to edit their work while sober!) But even in those better times, the after-effects of 'good' speed were still nasty and could interrupt Circadian rhythms enough to mess up health anyway, and so those who did control their use (a few still can, and do) HAVE to take long vacations from it to prevent their health from circling the drain.
So at this point, I can't really say I like it anymore. I once did...for a short while.
But it was marijuana and psychedelics which truly
gave me my life - in one instance, I would say quite literally - and it was pot that cured me of a rare eating disorder now identified as 'cibophobia' which I had in childhood up until age 17. All my doctors and my family were puzzled and worried by my inability to eat nutritious food, or much of anything else, since I was only three. Even my mother had to change her mind about marijuana when she saw what it did for me, and later on, at least cautiously accepted LSD when she heard the whole story of what it did for me, and learned its inventor Albert Hoffman lived to be over 100 years old.
These drugs, like any, licit or illicit, can be abused too, but
they do not addict, and psychedelics even have a built-in anti-abuse quality, causing them to simply not work at all if a person continues to take them every day or even every week; they simply stop working and it's as if the user took nothing at all.
To say you like or hate drugs is like saying you like or hate animals, or plants, or places on Earth. They are completely different. The US-based anti-drug offices are to blame for creating the idea that "medicine" is good, and "drugs" are bad - and that the former is good for you, but doesn't make you FEEL euphoric, and that the latter is automatically bad for you because "drugs" all have desireability in that they do produce some form of euphoria.
People who truly love their drugs of choice treat them with respect, and this means maintaining awareness of how much they use, why they use, and how much it costs them to use, both financially and physically...and then, using this knowledge to avoid abusing them, so they can go on enjoying that euphoria, but do so without harming themselves or others, at least as much as possible. They have to avoid making excuses for what they know in their hearts is improper use for them. And yes, it took me years to learn this, and some more to learn to practice it properly.
I
love pot and LSD. I have also gone years without using either. The former, because I hadn't the money for it, and the latter for lack of availability. I look forward to those situations changing, and am glad I have the sober time under my belt because if they do, you can bet I'll be better off for it because of my unwanted abstinence.
I had an unusual situation, living in near autistic condition as a child, though no-one had labels like "Aspergers" and the like. (This one was not my problem - I think they call what I had/have "schizoaffectivity".) I don't know if all that means anything, and I don't trust licit drugs made to cure this, or cure depression, being that they ALL have side-effect lists reading exactly like lists of "Why To Avoid Taking Illegal Drugs". It should be known that SSRI antidepressants, while seldom producing actual relief of depression, are THEMSELVES physically addictive. It is eerie, seeming almost like a conspiracy. I avoid Paxil and Prozac and Zoloft like the plague.
But I'll close this with the following: if you're fortunate enough to truly enjoy life with no extraneous chemical assistance, thank who or whatever forces you believe in that this is the case, and continue to live your life clean and sober. Like a diabetic who can't make insulin, it seems that some chemical in my own noggin didn't ever do what it was supposed to, and so for my whole life I was drawn to what cured that, or seemed to. I doubt there are many like me, but those who are need to stop hating themselves FIRST and remember to run TO a drug's effect, not FROM life's ass-pains into the comfort they might offer. That's when we begin to get in trouble, I think.
Topic: LoC 65: Top 50 Urban Legends (Read 32928 times)
