There are a lot of special interest groups investing a lot of their time in trying to convince people, especially young people, to abstain from drinking and doing drugs. Parents, mentors, and well meaning adults who have never done any form of drinking or drugs have a lot of well meaning advice and aggressive alarmist approaches to convincing you to avoid the pitfalls and snares of the wicked ways of chemicals. While I agree with them, I am a bit put off by their approach since they usually have no real valuable information for their captive audiences.
At one time I aspired to be a literary phenomenon, a writer of high caliber both famous and rich. I don't want that anymore, but I once pursued that ambition with a fierceness. My role models were Jack Kerouac, Hunter Thompson, and Timothy Leary and I aspired to experience everything possible in order to write accurately about those experiences. That was a pretty messy process, both traumatic and interesting. Interesting in the way surviving a bad car wreck is interesting, a good story to tell one day but not all that fun at the time.
About drinking alchohol:
Let's start out by saying I enjoy the physical sensation of drinking alchohol. I always have since the first time I took a drink. That being said, I don't drink any more for a myriad of reasons. One, I tend to get pretty fat if I drink regularly. When I regularly drank in my past I lost all real motivation to work out, practice martial arts, and to regulate my nutrition. I prefered to sit on the couch or in front of the computer playing video games, watching movies, and generally doing nothing but taking up space when I drink alchohol.
Second, I've had some pretty messed up things happen to me in my life that have left some emotional and psychological scars. When I drink those issues tend to resurface and manifest themselves in some ugly ways. I can go from happy to abusive without warning. It didn't used to be like that early on in my life, but most of the messed up things that occured in my life were while I was drunk so it's entirely possible that being under the influence of alchohol sets the stage for some nasty memories and behavior.
I have been beaten half to death on a beach in Colombia. I have been attacked on two seperate occasions by angry knife weilding criminals who were giving killing me a serious go. I've had a gay ex-convict slip something in my drink and then try and talk me into coming into his bedroom to watch movies. By the way, I told him sure but let me smoke a cigarette first then I went out of the apartment and ran as fast as I could down the streets (not very fast since I kept stumbling and falling all over the place) of Great Lakes, Illinois until some good samaratin gave me a ride back to the Naval base. I've been knocked off a 2nd story balcony at a hotel on the beach in Virginia by an enraged drunk midget trying to kill a friend of mine. He wasn't really a midget, he was just five feet tall. I once tried to rip the throat out of an aquaintance who called me a bad name. My grip around his trachea slipped and when I was going for a second try a group of my shipmates grabbed me and carried me away, talking to me about the pros and cons of Maine lobster during the Rockport Lobster Festival.
Sure, you may think these experiences (which aren't all of them) aren't really relevant to your own life because we're different. To that I respond, I have also worked 3 years at a drug & alchohol rehab center. Of all the addicts, the alchoholics were the saddest and most traumatized I worked with in my job.
I'm not a teatoltaler, a prohibitionist, nor do I champion abstinence when it comes to alchohol. I just don't see any point to it outside of limited social drinking. I don't see any pros and do see a bunch of cons in my experiences.
About Drugs:
Well, what can I really say about drugs? Let's just say I know everything I need to know about them and more. While alchohol made me lazy drugs made me crazy. I don't see any reason or value in giving details to any experiences, especially since there might be a few people all across the country suddenly sitting up and reading real careful to see if their name comes up. For anyone who is concerned I don't remember anything clearly and I especially don't remember names.
When people tell you drugs are bad, that's a really subjective approach. They are not saying drugs feel bad. They are saying there is no positive result from taking them in your life. I'm not going to get into all of that because it's a crazy, twisting, winding road full of gray areas.
The bottom line is illegal drugs are illegal, and while you may not be a hardened criminal with violent tendancies you sure are going to run into them while you experience the drug culture. The whole process of buying, using, transporting, storing, and everything else concerning illegal drugs is extremely high-risk. Not only is it possible for you to get your throat cut in a dark alley but it's also possible you will get swarmed by dozens of policemen that aren't very gentle or compassionate when doing drug busts. There's a war or drugs and has been one for thirty something years now. You can be the nices person in the world with no real evil tendancies and still go to jail for a million years for being involved in anything to do with drugs.
In my life experience I've hung out with drug dealers and junkies. They are generally really nice people except when they think you'd be better off buried in the desert than walking around in the streets. It is really weird how nice violent criminals can be when you aren't the person they are targetting for violence. Surreal, really.
I've also almost died 5 seperate times from accidental drug overdoses. And I'm pretty sure I'm a bit crazy from altered brain chemistry due to past drug use. Not Michael Meyers or Jason Vorhees crazy, but I just don't think and feel the same way I used to and I sure don't think and feel the way "normal" people do. It makes it an interesting experience to fit in with the general population of society.
All things considered, I really, really wish I had never touched a drug in my life. I am 35 years old and I am a delivery driver. I've been working on my bachelors degree for 15 years. And every once in a while I kinda flip out and have a mild panic attack if the wrong combination of sounds and images pop up in a movie or t.v. show. Oh, and once in a while I have some super terrifying nightmares that take hours to really wake up from and believe they weren't real.
Drugs are bad, mmmkay?
A lot of people first try drugs because they are curious. I am curious as to what it feels like to get bit by a shark. That doesn't mean I should go out of my way to experience the sensation. By the way, I did once strip naked and swim out into the ocean at two in the morning trying to taunt sharks to come and bite me because I was curious about what getting attacked by a shark would be like. That's what drugs will do to you, son. Don't laugh! It could have been your kid instead of me.
For the parents of the world, don't just tell your kids not to drink and to not do drugs. You ever tell a two year old not to stick their finger up their nose? They immediately stick their finger up their nose. You have to actually have a real dialogue with your kids about drugs and why they shouldn't do them. Focus on consequences, not morals.
And for every person who think you can handle whatever and bad things won't happen to you. Well... have you ever stubbed your toe, tripped and fell down, or had a little unintended accident that was a little painful and embarassing? Yeah, stuff happens. It's just when it comes to many illegal drugs, that stubbing your toe event translates into your heart explodes while your sitting on the toilet and your mom is the one who finds your dead body in the bathroom. Figure out something else to do with your time that involves less risk and potential heartbreak to those who love you.
I never used drugs or alcohol for two reasons.
ReplyDelete1. For whatever reasons, my body has a natural defense, mental or just physiological, against undue influences. If something is going into the extreme, it shuts it off via a number of methods. It is less of a choice I made, and more of a thing that just happens. When people ask folks why their instinct for self-preservation just kicked in, they can answer only that they were in a life threatening situation. And I can only answer that I was being unduly influenced by external stimuli, whether that be food, liquids, favorite candies, ice cream, alcohol, or hypnotic suggestion/songs.
2. I really dislike losing control of my body to some outside force. I became aware of potential threats to my life even before I had actual experience with violence. I knew, almost instinctively though it was still consciously, that certain behavior were risky. And that they would ultimately lead to a failure in life support. And the experiences of other people, proved that out. Cause it happened to them, but never to me. And maybe that was never a coincidence.
The way of the warrior requires true focus. One cannot be focused when distracted by entertainment or recreational drugs.
Besides, I get all the recreational drug I need from adrenaline and endorphines. I never found it necessary to look outside myself for such things.