drugsense.org
“Letter of the Week”
By Kirk Muse
Dear Editor,
While Nebraska and many other states are trying to figure out how to close their massive budget shortfalls, the Dutch are trying to figure out what to do with their (unused, unfilled) prisons.
While the Netherlands has a total population of about 16.5 million, it has only about 12,000 prisoners. On the other hand, the United States has greater than 2,300,000 total prisoners.
If my math is correct, we in the U. S. have 18.2 fold the Dutch general population and 191.6 fold their prison population.
Why the glaring disparity? I suggest it's our drug policies.
In the Netherlands, adult citizens can use, buy and possess small amounts of marijuana without criminal sanctions. In the United States, adult citizens are subject to arrest, and jail or prison for buying, selling or possessing various amounts of marijuana.
Kirk Muse, Mesa, Arizona
Pubdate: Wed, 20 Jan 2010
Source: McCook Daily Gazette (NE)
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Monday, February 1, 2010
The Hole In My Floor Beckons All Eavesdroppers
WARNING!!! THIS POST WILL MOST DEFINITELY CAUSE A RECOVERING METH ADDICT TO RELAPSE!!!!!!
He was down there, again, hustling, dealing, smoking, laughing . . . . I could hear him from where I sat in our bedroom, facing the computer. I knew he was plotting against me while he passed the pipe to one of the “legends” within the circles of drug dealing here in Alabama.
Though the “Legend” had come to me in the middle of the night hysterical, begging me to help him cover his track marks from banging Cocaine before he went home to his understandably angry wife, we clashed and stayed at odds for years. He was everything I didn’t want to become, and more like me than I ever realized then.
I had drilled a hole in the floor of our bedroom while my husband had been away one day, to better hear the planning and plotting that I was convinced was being carried out down there. On some days, it happened more than once or twice a day. “Just overdose her, Dude,” I heard one fiend whisper. Of course, when confronted with this revelation, my husband looked not only confused, but even fearful (which I instantly decided was due to the realization that he must have had then: “She knows!”). His attempts at an explanation had been immediately met with more suspicion. He had explained that the man’s mother-in-law had overdosed the previous night, and was unclear as to exactly which part of the conversation I had misunderstood, being that he had been counting and weighing, thus only half-listening to the man’s story.
That and other confusing instances of knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that my husband wanted me dead so he could be with someone else (though we were together almost twenty-four hours a day) is what pulled me to the small hole. I had sliced the carpet and padding in an obscure area, so I carefully pulled this back and lay down, turning my ear to the floor.
I am of the belief that if one whispers something to someone else, they intend for only that person to hear what they have to say. Furthermore, they intend on others to not hear whatever it may be they have to say. Someone was whispering down there, and the frustration, anger, and hurt welled up in me, causing my eyes to water as my mind swept through the thousands of possible scenarios. For a split second, a shuffling was heard, a piece of paper moved about, or perhaps money sliding against other bills, and I had a clear, rational thought: maybe no one is whispering, after all. Maybe it’s the usual, covert sounds of a drug transaction. As quickly as that thought dawned on me, it was replaced by outlandish notions of pending death, a memorized inventory on signs of adultery, and the mental check notes I had been keeping. They contained memories of my husband’s actions and reactions, body language clues, and the all-too-famous mental list: “If He Thought This About Me, I Would React Differently Than He Does, In the Following Ways.”
Tearfully, I forced myself away from the hole in the floor, believing that whatever they were saying was definitely not going to be discovered that day. I needed to get high, anyway. On the desk lay a small, clear bag, a heavy duty torch-type lighter, and a glass pipe. I pulled the digital postal scales from a drawer and turned them on, the setting already on a “gram” measurement, hit the “tare” button to make sure the display read “0.00,” and dropped the baggie in the center of the holding tray. Had I really smoked that much? I remembered there being almost four grams! I picked up the baggie, replaced it with a nickel to test the accuracy of my scales, noted that the scales did not need to be calibrated, and weighed the dope again. 2.2? There was no way! Why was he taking from my bag?
Laughter erupted from the basement. The “Legend” had brought his newest fling with him, another “Chickenhead,” as we called them. She must have said something bland and stupid, but the guys laughed anyway because she was female . . . and because she was a “Chickenhead.”
I had seen her kind too many times at other people’s places of business, which was generally their homes. It was widely known that her kind was not allowed at our place, but this was the Chickenhead of a powerful man. She had looked willing to do anything for drugs, and probably had. I never understood that, though pain and the frustration of filling a void had been felt in my own life, as well. I had always said I would withdraw from a drug before doing anything for it. I guess that was easy to say when you hardly ever ran out of the drug, though.
I was certain the conversation was something about me, perhaps different ways my husband could have a secret affair and get it past me finding out, and the laughter created from it had betrayed my very soul. I loaded the bowl at the end of the clear, clean, glass pipe with enough uncut, imported Methamphetamine to jump-start five of Hitler’s largest Nazi soldiers. Igniting the torch-lighter and turning down the small wheel that controlled the valve allowing butane fuel to increase or decrease the amount of heat needed, I melted down the icy chunks and continued crying. Then all the world paused. Nothing else existed for the few moments that I concentrated on inhaling, heating, rolling the pipe in short, quick movements so the melted crystals would not get too hot in one place, feeling the door to my euphoric place of fulfillment opening, beckoning, always calling.
Through that door was everything wonderful and positive and peaceful that my life was not. Though the choices I had made were the only contributors to the hell I had endured and thus felt self-pity over, my euphoric place was an escape from the knowledge that I had made a mess of too many lives. I am a firm believer that guilt which is not dealt with appropriately can ultimately kill you, even without the selfish lure of suicide. Through that door was a world as I wanted it, where one could have it both ways, where a person, if they so fancied, could have their cake and eat it, too. There were no neglected grandparents who passed away while a person was too busy seeking out their drug of choice to be bothered with telling them goodbye on their deathbed. There were no forgotten spans of time where one missed their children’s school play, or forgot that the groceries were dwindling in the kitchen. In that world, there was no terrorist threats to the nation’s security, no plane-dropping on any towers, no threats of any kind. As well, there were no beloved pets who went unfed all day because one was too busy “tweaking” on some useless, insane project like finding the listening device that perhaps a narcotics agent had snuck in one day and planted in the family vacuum cleaner. No, this world was one where the laws of physics allowed for everything to just come about as having been completed already. It was one which allowed good intention to be enough for an appropriate action to follow without someone actually seeing to the task. It was a world without Chickenheads, as well, because no one had an unfilled void. No one had a life of abusive treatment, no one had endured emotional damage. No one hated, cried, hungered, or ever even frowned. No one judged me as being only a despicable drug addict and nothing more, the way I thought of myself every single hour in the real world.
I placed the glass pipe down in an ashtray to cool enough to be hidden in a drawer without causing anything to scar from a burn by the hot bowl. Thinking better of it, lest the police run in and see it sitting on the desk, I placed the ashtray itself in the drawer, pipe resting upon it, and closed the drawer carefully, so as not to knock the pipe around. I never allowed the thought to carry further and deal with the knowledge that if the police came running in, they would be legally and intelligently prepared to open a drawer or anything else they so desired, to find whatever they could. I never dealt with that question because there was no answer that allowed me to keep using and also keep paraphernalia away from my home. So the drawer was the solution for the time being, and I turned on the monitor to an outside camera which perched on the awning above our cars, giving a view of the driveway entrance to our home.
Knowing I could see them coming gave me satisfaction, and again the thought was not carried further into the knowledge of “so, if you see them coming, then what?” The world in which I decided to stay did not allow cops to gain entrance to any place I inhabited. So, listening to the sounds coming through the monitor’s speaker from the surveillance equipment’s microphone outside, I ascertained that there was momentarily no threat from the tri-county vice squad that hunted down suspected Methamphetamine dealers. I turned back to the desk and pushed the power button on my computer, satisfied with how my world seemed intelligently constructed, pompous and conceited that I was momentarily outsmarting the authority figures set against me.
Feeling inspired due to the high, I rolled the mouse’s pointer to the word-processing program and double-clicked the left mouse button. I adjusted the margin placement, my mind racing ahead of me into nonessential ramblings, and found myself continuing to stare at the blank, white screen before me.
The door leading from the basement to the den downstairs opened, and simultaneously, the door leading to the driveway area did, also. Voices flowed through the surveillance microphone and into my room upstairs, and I turned to see if the “Legend” and his Chickenhead were leaving. No, they merely retrieved something from their car and then returned to the basement as my husband could be heard climbing the stairs to our bedroom. I turned back to the computer quickly as he entered so as not to have him aware that I was listening to his adventures. The sliced carpet had been adjusted, my secret listening post safely obscured from his awareness.
“Whatcha doin’, Baby?” He was so very cunning, my husband. He was so very talented at covering up his real thoughts, his true actions and intentions. I answered with a mumbled “Nothing,” and he came over to the desk and leaned against it. I was immediately reminded of the great colossal of a man that he was to me, his cologne permeating my heart and aching it with a desire for the couple that existed before drug addiction. I had come back through the door from my euphoric place then, because in the other world, we had never changed and grown apart. But in this world, I yearned for him though he was always before me already.
“You want to come smoke a bowl with us?” His eyes were still captivating, had been so even during the strung-out periods. They were the bluest and brightest of anyone I had ever seen before, until our oldest daughter was born. She had acquired them and this had made his even more beautiful to me.
“I don’t know. I haven’t even had a shower, yet,” I answered, curtly. He saw that something was amiss, and I knew he realized I may have heard the secret whispers of evil plotting. I feigned a happy smile, apologized for my shortness with him, and hoped he bought the counterfeit emotion I displayed. If I had allowed him to see that I knew what was really going on, my little baggie would have disappeared entirely, perhaps. Or maybe he would have sped up the search for a wife-killing assassin. “Just tell them I said ‘Hey,’ and that I’m not being rude, I just have to write something for a little while.”
“Aww, Baby,” he said, his Southern drawl being music to my soul that then pierced my whole being with pain from knowledge of the betrayal, “why don’t you get dressed and come down?” I suppose my absent look and the shake of my head when I declined the invitation hurt his feelings. I didn’t know that then. He made his way back across the room to the doorway, and again asked “Baby, why don’t you get dressed and come down?” I didn’t answer.
Why Don't You Get Dressed and Come Down?
Picking up pieces of myself after crashing, becoming new, and
The indication you endlessly display leaves me with only one truth.
The dilemma I always allow me to face gives rise to obsolete excuse:
Your problem's not a lack of concern, but that aroma, that will confuse.
Why don't you get dressed and come down here,
With these adversaries, these rivals, these foes, these
Merciless creatures, come here to hunt, come here to wrinkle your nose?
I can't understand why I just don't want their patronizing time!
They're legends, like us, who've been through the game,
Who've stretched the austere, fucking limits of their mind.
You'd think we'd put as much into healing the world as we put into the find!
But sure as Satan sits upon a throne, I will come down, in time.
Under the hour glass of ice again, and I eagerly bury the awareness.
A single truth reiterates fear, just reminds me, more or less,
That I've been here before, a deja' voo, an overexposed picture in time–
A blurry representation of who I once was, outlined in murderous rhyme.
Oh, why won't I get dressed and go down there? Each time has been so cruel.
Hardhearted trolls searching for substance that they then swathe like fools.
I can't imagine why I don't want to go down there, drawn to what is untrue, and
This constant lust for your freezing touch though every puff splits me in two.
So I put on my most elegant falsetto, and beat myself inward with each step.
When and where will I find myself then, and were you asleep as I slept?
Every day leaves me breathless from voicing the questions that always remain.
Every time I go down there, I wind up here, still sitting, still the same.
-Jeanne Sparks-Carreker
He was down there, again, hustling, dealing, smoking, laughing . . . . I could hear him from where I sat in our bedroom, facing the computer. I knew he was plotting against me while he passed the pipe to one of the “legends” within the circles of drug dealing here in Alabama.
Though the “Legend” had come to me in the middle of the night hysterical, begging me to help him cover his track marks from banging Cocaine before he went home to his understandably angry wife, we clashed and stayed at odds for years. He was everything I didn’t want to become, and more like me than I ever realized then.
I had drilled a hole in the floor of our bedroom while my husband had been away one day, to better hear the planning and plotting that I was convinced was being carried out down there. On some days, it happened more than once or twice a day. “Just overdose her, Dude,” I heard one fiend whisper. Of course, when confronted with this revelation, my husband looked not only confused, but even fearful (which I instantly decided was due to the realization that he must have had then: “She knows!”). His attempts at an explanation had been immediately met with more suspicion. He had explained that the man’s mother-in-law had overdosed the previous night, and was unclear as to exactly which part of the conversation I had misunderstood, being that he had been counting and weighing, thus only half-listening to the man’s story.
That and other confusing instances of knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that my husband wanted me dead so he could be with someone else (though we were together almost twenty-four hours a day) is what pulled me to the small hole. I had sliced the carpet and padding in an obscure area, so I carefully pulled this back and lay down, turning my ear to the floor.
I am of the belief that if one whispers something to someone else, they intend for only that person to hear what they have to say. Furthermore, they intend on others to not hear whatever it may be they have to say. Someone was whispering down there, and the frustration, anger, and hurt welled up in me, causing my eyes to water as my mind swept through the thousands of possible scenarios. For a split second, a shuffling was heard, a piece of paper moved about, or perhaps money sliding against other bills, and I had a clear, rational thought: maybe no one is whispering, after all. Maybe it’s the usual, covert sounds of a drug transaction. As quickly as that thought dawned on me, it was replaced by outlandish notions of pending death, a memorized inventory on signs of adultery, and the mental check notes I had been keeping. They contained memories of my husband’s actions and reactions, body language clues, and the all-too-famous mental list: “If He Thought This About Me, I Would React Differently Than He Does, In the Following Ways.”
Tearfully, I forced myself away from the hole in the floor, believing that whatever they were saying was definitely not going to be discovered that day. I needed to get high, anyway. On the desk lay a small, clear bag, a heavy duty torch-type lighter, and a glass pipe. I pulled the digital postal scales from a drawer and turned them on, the setting already on a “gram” measurement, hit the “tare” button to make sure the display read “0.00,” and dropped the baggie in the center of the holding tray. Had I really smoked that much? I remembered there being almost four grams! I picked up the baggie, replaced it with a nickel to test the accuracy of my scales, noted that the scales did not need to be calibrated, and weighed the dope again. 2.2? There was no way! Why was he taking from my bag?
Laughter erupted from the basement. The “Legend” had brought his newest fling with him, another “Chickenhead,” as we called them. She must have said something bland and stupid, but the guys laughed anyway because she was female . . . and because she was a “Chickenhead.”
I had seen her kind too many times at other people’s places of business, which was generally their homes. It was widely known that her kind was not allowed at our place, but this was the Chickenhead of a powerful man. She had looked willing to do anything for drugs, and probably had. I never understood that, though pain and the frustration of filling a void had been felt in my own life, as well. I had always said I would withdraw from a drug before doing anything for it. I guess that was easy to say when you hardly ever ran out of the drug, though.
I was certain the conversation was something about me, perhaps different ways my husband could have a secret affair and get it past me finding out, and the laughter created from it had betrayed my very soul. I loaded the bowl at the end of the clear, clean, glass pipe with enough uncut, imported Methamphetamine to jump-start five of Hitler’s largest Nazi soldiers. Igniting the torch-lighter and turning down the small wheel that controlled the valve allowing butane fuel to increase or decrease the amount of heat needed, I melted down the icy chunks and continued crying. Then all the world paused. Nothing else existed for the few moments that I concentrated on inhaling, heating, rolling the pipe in short, quick movements so the melted crystals would not get too hot in one place, feeling the door to my euphoric place of fulfillment opening, beckoning, always calling.
Through that door was everything wonderful and positive and peaceful that my life was not. Though the choices I had made were the only contributors to the hell I had endured and thus felt self-pity over, my euphoric place was an escape from the knowledge that I had made a mess of too many lives. I am a firm believer that guilt which is not dealt with appropriately can ultimately kill you, even without the selfish lure of suicide. Through that door was a world as I wanted it, where one could have it both ways, where a person, if they so fancied, could have their cake and eat it, too. There were no neglected grandparents who passed away while a person was too busy seeking out their drug of choice to be bothered with telling them goodbye on their deathbed. There were no forgotten spans of time where one missed their children’s school play, or forgot that the groceries were dwindling in the kitchen. In that world, there was no terrorist threats to the nation’s security, no plane-dropping on any towers, no threats of any kind. As well, there were no beloved pets who went unfed all day because one was too busy “tweaking” on some useless, insane project like finding the listening device that perhaps a narcotics agent had snuck in one day and planted in the family vacuum cleaner. No, this world was one where the laws of physics allowed for everything to just come about as having been completed already. It was one which allowed good intention to be enough for an appropriate action to follow without someone actually seeing to the task. It was a world without Chickenheads, as well, because no one had an unfilled void. No one had a life of abusive treatment, no one had endured emotional damage. No one hated, cried, hungered, or ever even frowned. No one judged me as being only a despicable drug addict and nothing more, the way I thought of myself every single hour in the real world.
I placed the glass pipe down in an ashtray to cool enough to be hidden in a drawer without causing anything to scar from a burn by the hot bowl. Thinking better of it, lest the police run in and see it sitting on the desk, I placed the ashtray itself in the drawer, pipe resting upon it, and closed the drawer carefully, so as not to knock the pipe around. I never allowed the thought to carry further and deal with the knowledge that if the police came running in, they would be legally and intelligently prepared to open a drawer or anything else they so desired, to find whatever they could. I never dealt with that question because there was no answer that allowed me to keep using and also keep paraphernalia away from my home. So the drawer was the solution for the time being, and I turned on the monitor to an outside camera which perched on the awning above our cars, giving a view of the driveway entrance to our home.
Knowing I could see them coming gave me satisfaction, and again the thought was not carried further into the knowledge of “so, if you see them coming, then what?” The world in which I decided to stay did not allow cops to gain entrance to any place I inhabited. So, listening to the sounds coming through the monitor’s speaker from the surveillance equipment’s microphone outside, I ascertained that there was momentarily no threat from the tri-county vice squad that hunted down suspected Methamphetamine dealers. I turned back to the desk and pushed the power button on my computer, satisfied with how my world seemed intelligently constructed, pompous and conceited that I was momentarily outsmarting the authority figures set against me.
Feeling inspired due to the high, I rolled the mouse’s pointer to the word-processing program and double-clicked the left mouse button. I adjusted the margin placement, my mind racing ahead of me into nonessential ramblings, and found myself continuing to stare at the blank, white screen before me.
The door leading from the basement to the den downstairs opened, and simultaneously, the door leading to the driveway area did, also. Voices flowed through the surveillance microphone and into my room upstairs, and I turned to see if the “Legend” and his Chickenhead were leaving. No, they merely retrieved something from their car and then returned to the basement as my husband could be heard climbing the stairs to our bedroom. I turned back to the computer quickly as he entered so as not to have him aware that I was listening to his adventures. The sliced carpet had been adjusted, my secret listening post safely obscured from his awareness.
“Whatcha doin’, Baby?” He was so very cunning, my husband. He was so very talented at covering up his real thoughts, his true actions and intentions. I answered with a mumbled “Nothing,” and he came over to the desk and leaned against it. I was immediately reminded of the great colossal of a man that he was to me, his cologne permeating my heart and aching it with a desire for the couple that existed before drug addiction. I had come back through the door from my euphoric place then, because in the other world, we had never changed and grown apart. But in this world, I yearned for him though he was always before me already.
“You want to come smoke a bowl with us?” His eyes were still captivating, had been so even during the strung-out periods. They were the bluest and brightest of anyone I had ever seen before, until our oldest daughter was born. She had acquired them and this had made his even more beautiful to me.
“I don’t know. I haven’t even had a shower, yet,” I answered, curtly. He saw that something was amiss, and I knew he realized I may have heard the secret whispers of evil plotting. I feigned a happy smile, apologized for my shortness with him, and hoped he bought the counterfeit emotion I displayed. If I had allowed him to see that I knew what was really going on, my little baggie would have disappeared entirely, perhaps. Or maybe he would have sped up the search for a wife-killing assassin. “Just tell them I said ‘Hey,’ and that I’m not being rude, I just have to write something for a little while.”
“Aww, Baby,” he said, his Southern drawl being music to my soul that then pierced my whole being with pain from knowledge of the betrayal, “why don’t you get dressed and come down?” I suppose my absent look and the shake of my head when I declined the invitation hurt his feelings. I didn’t know that then. He made his way back across the room to the doorway, and again asked “Baby, why don’t you get dressed and come down?” I didn’t answer.
Why Don't You Get Dressed and Come Down?
Picking up pieces of myself after crashing, becoming new, and
The indication you endlessly display leaves me with only one truth.
The dilemma I always allow me to face gives rise to obsolete excuse:
Your problem's not a lack of concern, but that aroma, that will confuse.
Why don't you get dressed and come down here,
With these adversaries, these rivals, these foes, these
Merciless creatures, come here to hunt, come here to wrinkle your nose?
I can't understand why I just don't want their patronizing time!
They're legends, like us, who've been through the game,
Who've stretched the austere, fucking limits of their mind.
You'd think we'd put as much into healing the world as we put into the find!
But sure as Satan sits upon a throne, I will come down, in time.
Under the hour glass of ice again, and I eagerly bury the awareness.
A single truth reiterates fear, just reminds me, more or less,
That I've been here before, a deja' voo, an overexposed picture in time–
A blurry representation of who I once was, outlined in murderous rhyme.
Oh, why won't I get dressed and go down there? Each time has been so cruel.
Hardhearted trolls searching for substance that they then swathe like fools.
I can't imagine why I don't want to go down there, drawn to what is untrue, and
This constant lust for your freezing touch though every puff splits me in two.
So I put on my most elegant falsetto, and beat myself inward with each step.
When and where will I find myself then, and were you asleep as I slept?
Every day leaves me breathless from voicing the questions that always remain.
Every time I go down there, I wind up here, still sitting, still the same.
-Jeanne Sparks-Carreker
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Just For Pot?!?
BROOKLYN-Michael Mineo took the stand yesterday in the State Supreme Court to tell in detail about the horrible event in a Brooklyn subway station in 2008, where he was held down by three New York City police officers and sodomized with a foreign object.
WHY?!? He was smoking pot.
Cops chased Michael into the subway station after they noticed him smoking marijuana. Michael said the cops tackled him and that one of the officers sodomized him with a baton. The cops then gave him a summons, and stated that they would go to his house and serve him with a felony charge if he went to the hospital for treatment or the police station to report what happened.
Michael’s claims are confirmed by eyewitnesses, one of whom is a transit police officer. The three officers charged in the attack are now on trial in a case that recalls that of Abner Louima, who was brutally sodomized by police in 1997.
The NYPD’s obsession with marijuana possession has led to tens of thousands of New Yorkers every year being caught up in the criminal justice system. Most spend a few days in jail. Some, like Michael, suffer greatly.
Entire Article HERE
WHY?!? He was smoking pot.
Cops chased Michael into the subway station after they noticed him smoking marijuana. Michael said the cops tackled him and that one of the officers sodomized him with a baton. The cops then gave him a summons, and stated that they would go to his house and serve him with a felony charge if he went to the hospital for treatment or the police station to report what happened.
Michael’s claims are confirmed by eyewitnesses, one of whom is a transit police officer. The three officers charged in the attack are now on trial in a case that recalls that of Abner Louima, who was brutally sodomized by police in 1997.
The NYPD’s obsession with marijuana possession has led to tens of thousands of New Yorkers every year being caught up in the criminal justice system. Most spend a few days in jail. Some, like Michael, suffer greatly.
Entire Article HERE
Thursday, January 28, 2010
I Won’t Be Set On Fire Anytime Soon
PORTLAND-A man set himself on fire Wednesday morning in front of Nicholas Ungar Furs in Portland, Oregon. KOMO 4 News, among others, reported on the incident and their story can be read on the KOMOnews.com site.
It is not clear if Daniel was protesting the use of animals in the making of fur coats, though according to KOMO 4 news, witnesses did hear the man screaming, “Animals are dying!” He screamed this as fire lapped around him and soared above his head.
He had doused himself with gasoline, and then set himself ablaze. Cops at the scene put out the flames with fire extinguishers. He later died from those injuries at the hospital.
I will protest with signs bouncing and scream right along with the others when it is a cause I believe in. Be it finding alternative measures than prison for helping drug addicts, saving animals, saving kids, saving undeveloped forest land, if I believe it worthy of my protests, I’m gung-ho and pack a lunch.
But setting myself on fire is something I would never even think of doing, much less follow through with.
I love small, furry, cute, ugly, and even smelly animals. To me, they are one of the blessings God has given us to enjoy on His planet. But lighting myself afire to save them is something I would never do.
Am I just not as committed as I should be? I’ll admit that being on fire scares me to no end. So am I a coward for not supporting Daniel’s efforts to save innocent animals?
I believe, sadly enough, Daniel may be a victim of some sort of mental disorder. He went to lengths most activists will not go, but certainly not for the saving of animals when there are issues on the table right now having to do with things so much more important.
And even those issues, I’ll admit, will not receive my charred support.
Am I wrong for believing I can do much more for a cause alive and healthy than burnt and dying?
I think not, but what are your thoughts?
Monday, January 25, 2010
Linking problems caused the spam
I am fairly ignorant, it seems, to the whole posting deal on a blog, in that I sometimes pull up the site to post, thinking along the lines of facebook or twitter. It won't happen again, though, I assure you, so forgive the "link post" a few minutes ago! I wish you a blessed, sober evening filled with Will Farrell or Jim Carrey movies and a nice big bowl of egg custard, a strawberry jam biscuit, and about a half cup of lasagne leftovers (Yes, that is really what I grabbed from the fridge for dinner and ate - in that order. It's a wonderful life, folks. Well, at any rate, smile tonight - we're almost home :)
Friday, January 22, 2010
A Comparison: The Fear of Being Without
Considering that when something is too good to be true, it normally is, compare this analogy of a girl's life before and after a witch's potion to an addict's life before and after substance abuse:
At first, of course, Nancy was skeptical, but the more the old woman spoke, the more intrigued Nancy became. Her curiosity won, and the old woman gave Nancy a small bottle of sweet liquid. Nancy tasted it, and immediately was changed. She felt like a superhero. She drank the liquid, and soared high above the tree tops, across her home town, above the clouds, flying without fear, dipping and diving and laughing as she never had before.
For a while, Nancy visited the old woman on a regular basis, and the old woman told her the liquid would be available forever. Nancy created her whole life around it, becoming another person entirely.
Then one day, Nancy could not find the old woman. She searched everywhere for her, going days without even stopping to rest, looking and calling out to her. She realized the woman was gone, and with her, the magical, beautiful liquid. She dropped to her knees in the forest and felt as if she would die.
What would life be like, now? Where was the joy? How could she fly so high and so far, then just sit in an existence that held nothingness? The comparison of how happy she had been with the liquid to the reality of lifelessness without it was just too much for her to bear. She lay there in the woods and died, choosing death as a far better alternative to facing a reality of bitter depression.
And when facing a life without drugs, an addict feels and experiences the same fears, the same loss of hope for the future. Of course, with enough clean time (the period of time an addict experiences without substances), a natural joy for life will return, and hope for the future will come again.
Drugs? Not even once.
Nancy was always afraid of heights, grew excited when holdidays approached, jumped over loud bumps or thuds in the night, and could remember being nervous when first obtaining her drivers' license. She was a normal, patriotic, happy girl. Her life was full of smiles and laughter, family and fun-filled summers year after year.
One day, however, Nancy met a strange, old woman while hiking through the woods. The woman smiled and was kind to Nancy, and told her that she could make her life extremely happy. She told Nancy she could give her a happiness that would last all day, every day, and that she would never be afraid of anything, ever again. She said she could teach her to fly without fear.
At first, of course, Nancy was skeptical, but the more the old woman spoke, the more intrigued Nancy became. Her curiosity won, and the old woman gave Nancy a small bottle of sweet liquid. Nancy tasted it, and immediately was changed. She felt like a superhero. She drank the liquid, and soared high above the tree tops, across her home town, above the clouds, flying without fear, dipping and diving and laughing as she never had before.This new happiness was something she never had known before, and had never even heard about. She never knew such happiness was possible before tasting the old woman's liquid.
For a while, Nancy visited the old woman on a regular basis, and the old woman told her the liquid would be available forever. Nancy created her whole life around it, becoming another person entirely.
Then one day, Nancy could not find the old woman. She searched everywhere for her, going days without even stopping to rest, looking and calling out to her. She realized the woman was gone, and with her, the magical, beautiful liquid. She dropped to her knees in the forest and felt as if she would die.
What would life be like, now? Where was the joy? How could she fly so high and so far, then just sit in an existence that held nothingness? The comparison of how happy she had been with the liquid to the reality of lifelessness without it was just too much for her to bear. She lay there in the woods and died, choosing death as a far better alternative to facing a reality of bitter depression.
And when facing a life without drugs, an addict feels and experiences the same fears, the same loss of hope for the future. Of course, with enough clean time (the period of time an addict experiences without substances), a natural joy for life will return, and hope for the future will come again.
Drugs? Not even once.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
"I'm Without" - Withdrawals From Ice
So, my connections hit a temporary "drought" of sorts, due to a huge bust that had been making its way into Alabama from Texas. We'd be down for about a week and a half, probably, they had said.
There was no ice to be found anywhere, and the gnawing in the pit of my stomach spelled out a fear that, for me, was every bit as frightful as the fear some people experience when faced with losing everything they own or even when first hearing that our nation is going to war.
Withdrawals were coming. I could taste them, smell them, and dread them in a way one dreads entering a courtroom in order to be sentenced after a guilty verdict. I didn’t want to go through it. I didn’t want to stop using.
The routine had become second nature to me. I was definitely a meth junkie, and though shameful of the fact many times, escaping into that little glass bowl at the end of my pipe wiped away all the guilt and anxiety of neglected parenthood.
But this time it wouldn’t matter how hard I searched. Everyone was out. A strange and complete drought had come to Alabama, and I had never been one who was able to “put back for a rainy day.” Oh, I had tried to before, just for times like this, but I always ended up smoking it, wanting to be higher, wanting more and more until finally I ruined relationships further due to meth psychosis and having been up way too many days without sleep.
The meth I had just ran out of was very strong, and it carried me throughout the night and into the next morning while I picked through the carpet in the floor of the room I had smoked in, searching for just another crumb, another decently sized shard of crystallized peace. The cravings for more had set in hard. If I didn’t crash soon, I would find myself hysterically crying and cursing, throwing a fit that could not be justifiably termed "emotional breakdown."
I searched for a pill, anything to placate the gnawing fear of being without. It’s so incredibly unbearable. I wanted to be knocked out, but my body was not tired yet. And there was a faint hope that someone somewhere would find some more for me to buy or deal out in order to have some of my own. I remained in this state for about half a day. Then I dropped.
When crashing after a four or five day stretch with no sleep, it’s as if I am in a coma. Nothing really wakes me at all. If I am aroused, it is only to a slightly coherent state where nothing makes sense to me. “Mama, the house is on fire,” would be answered with “Okay, sweetie, but not for too long because you have homework to finish.” That deep crashing sleep lasts, for me, about 12 to 15 hours.
After that, there is a period of normal sleep, lasting about 2 to 5 days. I can wake normally, eat, understand things during that 2 to 4 day sleep time, but I am so drained and drowsy that I want to do nothing more than sleep. And of course, faced with the knowledge that I have no dope, sleep is preferred to being awake.
About the fourth or fifth day without crystal meth, I abruptly awake in the middle of the night, my kidneys burning, perhaps because I am dehydrated, perhaps because I have laid on them for five days without getting up and moving around much. My spine is tingling with an uncomfortable twisting sensation and every hair on my body is standing on end. I just want to go back to sleep, but cannot. I’m awake. And nothing helps.
I need a sleep aid. I search the house for something, anything, and come up with a nighttime allergy medication that helps induce sleep. I take as many as I can find, about 6 or 7, and wait for the blissful waves of sleep to engulf me and save me from the twisting grip something has on my spine.
Cold sweats grip down into my bones, it seems, and I try not to think about anything because the anxiety and outright fear creates monsters of problems within my worrying mind out of anything I dwell upon for very long. Faces of people who love me and want me to love them again flood my mind and before I drift off to sleep to be free from this wave of withdrawals, I cry hard and long for my children.
I think about how they must feel. I think about the time I have wasted, the looks on their faces when they want me to spend time with them but I am too busy looking for my next high. After the long cry, I am off to dream about the same things, though now they are horribly twisted into unreal pictures in my dream world, pictures of my daughters drowning and me not being able to save them.
I have always believed in God. I have known Him from the very earliest memories I have in life. I have known Him in a personal, friendly, Fatherly way for as long as I can remember. And His enemy knows this. His enemy loves to plague me with things, and I suppose I make it easy for him to, considering the ways I choose to live my life.
So, interspersed with the “my kids are dying and I sit helpless” dreams, come the occasional “there’s something evil in the room it must be Satan he is here growling and holding you down” dreams.
About five hours into the allergy medication induced sleep, the dreams have made me wake up fully, and I cannot get back to sleep. Kidneys burning, no position comfortable, spine screaming and twisting, mind racing. Just a few more days, I pray. Just a few more.
What then - the depression? Will the cravings end? How long will this go on? I know enough about withdrawals to know that some doctors mark the length of post acute methamphetamine withdrawal for up to two years. Did I dream that? No, it is so, as crazy as it sounds.
My God, why did I ever start this horrible, frightfully terrible relationship with crystal meth? I would smoke more right now, even in the middle of this epiphany! But what on earth could I have been thinking with that first taste of hell?
I start to blame everyone from the President on down to the mayor of our little town for allowing such a horrible epidemic to find its way to our country. Still, I know I am the one to blame for having tried it. I know it is my fault that I am in the uncomfortable, strange, frightening, sad, hopeless, sick position I am in.
And I know it is going to get worse. I know that very soon, I will feel displaced, out of my own skin, and fully awake to enjoy every hideous moment.
And if the person who had originally handed me the straw to snort a try of it years and years ago could have instead shown me this day, I would have ran away screaming “No!" And I would have never searched for an escape from the beautifully welcoming small problems I once believed I could not handle sober.
There was no ice to be found anywhere, and the gnawing in the pit of my stomach spelled out a fear that, for me, was every bit as frightful as the fear some people experience when faced with losing everything they own or even when first hearing that our nation is going to war.
Withdrawals were coming. I could taste them, smell them, and dread them in a way one dreads entering a courtroom in order to be sentenced after a guilty verdict. I didn’t want to go through it. I didn’t want to stop using.
The routine had become second nature to me. I was definitely a meth junkie, and though shameful of the fact many times, escaping into that little glass bowl at the end of my pipe wiped away all the guilt and anxiety of neglected parenthood.
But this time it wouldn’t matter how hard I searched. Everyone was out. A strange and complete drought had come to Alabama, and I had never been one who was able to “put back for a rainy day.” Oh, I had tried to before, just for times like this, but I always ended up smoking it, wanting to be higher, wanting more and more until finally I ruined relationships further due to meth psychosis and having been up way too many days without sleep.
The meth I had just ran out of was very strong, and it carried me throughout the night and into the next morning while I picked through the carpet in the floor of the room I had smoked in, searching for just another crumb, another decently sized shard of crystallized peace. The cravings for more had set in hard. If I didn’t crash soon, I would find myself hysterically crying and cursing, throwing a fit that could not be justifiably termed "emotional breakdown."
I searched for a pill, anything to placate the gnawing fear of being without. It’s so incredibly unbearable. I wanted to be knocked out, but my body was not tired yet. And there was a faint hope that someone somewhere would find some more for me to buy or deal out in order to have some of my own. I remained in this state for about half a day. Then I dropped.
When crashing after a four or five day stretch with no sleep, it’s as if I am in a coma. Nothing really wakes me at all. If I am aroused, it is only to a slightly coherent state where nothing makes sense to me. “Mama, the house is on fire,” would be answered with “Okay, sweetie, but not for too long because you have homework to finish.” That deep crashing sleep lasts, for me, about 12 to 15 hours.
After that, there is a period of normal sleep, lasting about 2 to 5 days. I can wake normally, eat, understand things during that 2 to 4 day sleep time, but I am so drained and drowsy that I want to do nothing more than sleep. And of course, faced with the knowledge that I have no dope, sleep is preferred to being awake.
About the fourth or fifth day without crystal meth, I abruptly awake in the middle of the night, my kidneys burning, perhaps because I am dehydrated, perhaps because I have laid on them for five days without getting up and moving around much. My spine is tingling with an uncomfortable twisting sensation and every hair on my body is standing on end. I just want to go back to sleep, but cannot. I’m awake. And nothing helps.
I need a sleep aid. I search the house for something, anything, and come up with a nighttime allergy medication that helps induce sleep. I take as many as I can find, about 6 or 7, and wait for the blissful waves of sleep to engulf me and save me from the twisting grip something has on my spine.
Cold sweats grip down into my bones, it seems, and I try not to think about anything because the anxiety and outright fear creates monsters of problems within my worrying mind out of anything I dwell upon for very long. Faces of people who love me and want me to love them again flood my mind and before I drift off to sleep to be free from this wave of withdrawals, I cry hard and long for my children.
I think about how they must feel. I think about the time I have wasted, the looks on their faces when they want me to spend time with them but I am too busy looking for my next high. After the long cry, I am off to dream about the same things, though now they are horribly twisted into unreal pictures in my dream world, pictures of my daughters drowning and me not being able to save them.
I have always believed in God. I have known Him from the very earliest memories I have in life. I have known Him in a personal, friendly, Fatherly way for as long as I can remember. And His enemy knows this. His enemy loves to plague me with things, and I suppose I make it easy for him to, considering the ways I choose to live my life.
So, interspersed with the “my kids are dying and I sit helpless” dreams, come the occasional “there’s something evil in the room it must be Satan he is here growling and holding you down” dreams.
About five hours into the allergy medication induced sleep, the dreams have made me wake up fully, and I cannot get back to sleep. Kidneys burning, no position comfortable, spine screaming and twisting, mind racing. Just a few more days, I pray. Just a few more.
What then - the depression? Will the cravings end? How long will this go on? I know enough about withdrawals to know that some doctors mark the length of post acute methamphetamine withdrawal for up to two years. Did I dream that? No, it is so, as crazy as it sounds.
My God, why did I ever start this horrible, frightfully terrible relationship with crystal meth? I would smoke more right now, even in the middle of this epiphany! But what on earth could I have been thinking with that first taste of hell?
I start to blame everyone from the President on down to the mayor of our little town for allowing such a horrible epidemic to find its way to our country. Still, I know I am the one to blame for having tried it. I know it is my fault that I am in the uncomfortable, strange, frightening, sad, hopeless, sick position I am in.
And I know it is going to get worse. I know that very soon, I will feel displaced, out of my own skin, and fully awake to enjoy every hideous moment.
And if the person who had originally handed me the straw to snort a try of it years and years ago could have instead shown me this day, I would have ran away screaming “No!" And I would have never searched for an escape from the beautifully welcoming small problems I once believed I could not handle sober.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Drug Dealers Can Have Ethics, Too
I was closing the glass sliding door in our den and making sure it was locked before my husband and I retreated to the bedroom to smoke a bowl when he said the most interesting thing to me. He said, “I don’t know why you lock everything so tight, Jeanne. We are the bad ones. We are the dangerous ones everybody locks up for.”
Until that very moment, I had never truly considered myself a criminal. Even through years and years of dealing, trafficking, buying, and using drugs, I had not realized how civil, law-abiding Americans view us.
That was years ago, of course. I’ve come a long way since then, too. But there are still drug dealers, traffickers, buyers and users still out there, by the millions. And I think one reason I never really saw us as “bad” is because we maintained ethics and morality through it all. Concerning children, mainly.
If a girl became pregnant, she was cut off from purchasing drugs, and the word was spread that if anyone sold or gave to her, they would be too. I know it didn’t solve everything for that child or even make the mother go straight, but it helped, I witnessed that.
If someone’s utilities were being cut off and they had kids in the home, we cut them down to enough to keep from withdrawing and would not sell them anything until they brought us a receipt from the power company. 
If someone hurt their family physically, they were cut off and never were dealt with again. And usually, they got a visit from someone in our circle.
I’m writing this post because there are so very many dealers who are so very corrupt, so very bad. Are they reachable? I don’t know, I doubt it. But just maybe…. they will keep ethics about them until the light shines through and they recover. Until the light of understanding comes to you, brother, sister, be good to the children. Any way you can, do good for the kids.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Recovery Art: Tattoos
I’ve heard many people in group meetings say, “Do anything that will help you stay clean.”Personally, I don’t get in to the whole tattoo craze. I think anything permanent is a serious decision, and I’m just not good with serious decisions (grin).
No, the truth is, I guess I think of getting a tattoo and then think ahead thirty years, and envision myself being given a bath by some big, hairy nurse (which is bad enough), who looks at my sagging, wrinkled, faded tattoo and hollers, “What the hell is that?!?”
But for those of you who are in favor of a sagging, wrinkled, faded tattoo when you’re old, here’s a few “Recovery Tattoos” to getcha started. Oh yeah, and I guess you have to be an addict, recovering from either drug addiction or alcoholism.
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Crystal Meth: the Threshold for Corrupting America's Youth
Reason #1 to Stop Using Methamphetamine
