Somebody HELP me; I can't STOP!

The path that I have chosen now has led me to a wall, and with each passing day I feel a little more
like something dear was lost. It rises now before me, a dark and silent barrier between all I am, and
all I would ever want to be. -Kansas, The Wall

Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in our own sunshine.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fear is the lock and laughter the key to your heart. -Crosby, Stills, and Nash, Suite: Judy Blue Eyes

No matter what you do, you'll never run away from you. -Paul Revere and the Raiders, Kicks

So often in time it happens, we all live our life in chains, and we never even know we have the key.
-The Eagles, Already Gone

Where am I to go, now that I've gone too far? -Golden Earring, Twilight Zone

You rise as high as your dominant aspiration, you descend to the level of your lowest concept of
yourself. Free your mind and your ass will follow. - Funkadelic, Good Thoughts, Bad Thoughts

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All prunes and no pulp makes Jack shit.
All hand and no bush makes Jack off.
All play and no work makes Jack a jerk.
All play and no work makes Jack a jerk.
All play and no work makes Jack a jerk.
All play and no work makes Jack a jerk.
All play and no work makes Jack a jerk

Vampires are lucky; they can feed on others. We got to eat away at ourselves. We gotta eat our legs so we got the energy to walk. We gotta come so we can go. We gotta suck ourselves off. We gotta eat away at our souls until there's nothing left but appetite. We give and give and give crazy because the gifts that make sense ain't worth it. Jesus said 70 times 7. No one will ever understand why; why you did it, we just forget about you tomorrow; but you gotta do it.
--The Bad Lieutenant

Doesn't this page make you want to go out and get fucked up? It's a crying shame cocaine makes you feel so damn good...
and then it tries to kill you.

Don't get me wrong; I love drugs. But this shit almost killed me. The problem with drugs is, what goes up must come down.
Since feeling good is relative, drugs take you higher than "normal," so then normal isn't normal anymore, it's subnormal,
and pretty soon so are you. If you live that long. Relativity is built inherently into choice and nature, both physically and metaphysically.
There's only one way to escape the merciless grip of reality.

Cocaine will kill you while you aren't breathing unless you stop NOW. One day soon for no reason you will have a heart attack (sooner than you think), and even if you make it to the hospital they may not be able to save you.
Cocaine will fuck you right up the ass and laugh at you the whole time.
Bleed, mother fuckers! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ah ha!
And Cocaine's brother Speed and sister Crystal are waiting to break your heart too.

There are lines on the mirror
Lines on your face
You're pretending not to notice
You're caught up in the race
Life in the fast lane
surely make you lose your mind.
--The Eagles

Give me liberty or give me death.
--Thomas Jefferson

While you're down on your knees
looking for specs in the carpet
thank God you're still alive.

Stay stoned I mean tuned for some cool buds and a whole bunch more shit about beer and tobacco.

Stuff Medical Use of MJ in your pipe and smoke it.

Don't you wish these people who want to legalize pot would just shut up about medical uses for marijuana? If this was some other herb or weed that was effective but not approved for medical use they wouldn't give a flying fuck. If you want pot legalized, just say so, don't try to sneak it in by promoting something you wouldn't give a damn about otherwise.

Weed is not some perfect drug that won't hurt you. Mary Jane is as bad for your brain as booze is for your body. (Or did you forget?) People are always saying that pot is a "natural high," but of course just because something is natural doesn't mean it's good for you. If you believe that, I can make you a really delicious nightshade and mushroom pie and you can wash it down with a nice cup of hemlock juice. But ganga would almost certainly cause less damage than alcohol. It seems to make sense that if alcohol is legal, so should MJ be. The only problem is that it's a lot harder to make something illegal than it is to keep something illegal, because once people get used to something they get really pissed off when you take it away. So I think that's part of why the hesitancy. That and the huge corporate conglomerate big business of the war on drugs. The war on drugs is a bust. The crooks and the cops are all making money! Meanwhile our kids bleed and starve to death in the streets. They starve for love and knowledge and all they get is beaten over the head with a big stick.

Legalize it?

The benefits of legalization outweigh the costs. This deserves serious consideration. Legalizing drugs would almost certainly cause more usage and more problems (compare to alcohol). Or was there really that much less alcohol use during prohibition... but certainly a HELL of a lot more crime? And that's the point: the incredibly enormous amount of money that is spent fighting the drug wars and all the crime and punishment resulting from the expense of the drugs, the lost taxes that could be reaped from sales, the deaths from poor quality, the police that could be spending their time on solving other crimes, the jail space taken up by drug dealers, not to mention the secrecy and ignorance involved because no official organization can ever really talk about responsible use since they are illegal, and the huge profits made by the drug growers, manufacturers, distributers and "retailers" - the cost of all of these things is so astronomical that it simply must dwarf any costs that would be incurred from increased usage. The costs associated with the additional abuse of alcohol that occur over what would occur if it was illegal are nothing compared to the costs of the organized crime created by prohibition. I'll try to find reliable statistics to prove this wait I mean evaluate it objectively. I'll find some good links to the facts but in the meantime if you know where to get them off-hand (the facts, not the drugs, mm-kay?), please let me know.

Or Not
However, I should point out that the Natural Law Party disagrees with me and states: "Although the legalization of drugs would substantially cut drug-related crimes, only about 20% of total drug-abuse costs are crime related. The remaining 80% of costs are tied to health, absenteeism, lost productivity, etc. Therefore, the legalization of drugs, even if it increased drug use slightly, could result in increased costs that would overwhelm any crime-related savings."

Substance control

Just use the model some states, such as Pennsylvania, use for alcohol now. That is, the state regulates and controls the sale of alcohol. You can only buy beer at a licensed distributor, and you can only buy liquor during the week from 9-5 at a state-owned liquor control board (LCB) outlet. All the income (if there's any left over after administrative costs) could be used to pay for education and treatment. It's that simple. Do you want to put drug dealers out of business instead of paying for them to live in prison? Legalize it! Republicans, do you believe in personal responsibility? Here's your chance to prove it! And you will save money to boot. If that doesn't convince you, you're a dope. How can you beat that deal? Of course speed and cocaine are just a little fucking bit more insane than marijuana, and heroine is more insane than all of it. But the same arguments still hold, althought the stakes are higher on both sides. So don't freak out; let's just legalize MJ as a harmless, money-saving experiment and leave cocaine for another day. Mm-kay?

Tobacco Companies: Scapegoat for cowards.

The tobacco companies have the same right to do whatever they can to sell their product as Coca-Cola has to make you think their tooth-rotting, diabetes-aggravating, immitation sugar/acid/water is actually worth a fuck, and McDonald's has to make you think their crap is actually food. Welcome to capitalism and democracy. If you don't like it, leave. Picking on the tobacco companies for doing what they are supposed to is cowardly. Don't forget those companies employ hundreds of thousands of people and support distribution networks and farmers, all of whom have families to support, and that they are doing all of this for their shareholders. Tobacco is you and me. Don't use the tobacco companies as a scapegoat for your weakness. If the tobacco companies are breaking the law, they should be prosecuted by the law. If they aren't breaking the law, then it's completely the smokers' fault. We are personally responsible for the effects of anything we put in our bodies. It is our responsibility to know what we are ingesting; what pesticides and hormones are being used on our food, how it is being processed and packaged. Anything that happens to us as a result of an action we take is our responsibility. Since individuals are powerless to demand information from corporations on their own, we require our government to set up and enforce regulations that ensure access to this information. We even required tobacco pushers to put warning labels on their products and limited their right to advertise and promote it. I think the states should be suing the smokers for damages.

Smoking doesn't cause cancer, people do.

If you want to prove that smoking tobacco causes cancer, you have to prove it's the tobacco and not some other selective factor. Have they proven there isn't a factor that smokers have, that non-smokers don't, such as a compulsive "gene" or tendency (like the one I have that causes me to masturbate all the time; oh wait that's my Y chromosome), or something else that could also tend to cause cancer (mutations) by itself? There are plenty of people who get lung cancer who have never smoked or even breathed much second-hand smoke, and plenty of people who smoke their whole lives and don't get cancer or heart disease. You have eliminate the possibility of a personality, genetic or other factor causing both before you can really show smoking is the cause. This is what the tobacco company representatives are saying when they deny it has been proven that smoking causes cancer. Of course common sense really tells you there's some relation after you've seen the black, rotted lung of a smoker [hack] or ex-smoker like myself, but if you haven't proved it, you haven't proved it.

The gene pool needs some chlorine.

The more I live, the more I know some of us have a gene that prevents us from feeling true pleasure or true satisfaction from anything, so that we must frantically search for something to make us feel even normal, and nothing works! Certainly as humans we all have something that keeps us striving for the next thing, probably that is a natural inclination that is built is to keep us from lying down right here and dying, the way atoms need electrons. And certainly there are some environmental factors involved in the extent of this characteristic. But it's pretty obvious that we're not all equal in this respect. Try and imagine what it would be like if nothing you ever did gave you any satisfaction. Not that this should be used as an excuse for certain types of behaviour, just that it helps you to understand why you're not like some other people and should make it easier to deal with. I think some research has begun to point to this possibility, without any real conclusions yet.

Can't help it doesn't mean you shouldn't be punished.

Even if they do prove that people have a genetic predisposition, and that someone who drove drunk and killed someone couldn't help drinking, that doesn't mean we can't punish them. Society can set up rules and say that you have to obey them or be punished, even if you couldn't help it. Society is already that way now, anyway. If you don't have the skill of organization, of time management, or of remembering thousands of unrelated minute details, you're fucked. Those are the skills that are valued these days and if you can't learn them, screw you. If you're creative you're screwed unless you make it big and then you are controlled by all the idiots who can't do it themselves so they have to try and control those who can.

Smoking may be saving you money.

Are we sure that smoking causes us all this big expense? What if smoking is keeping all these addicts from becoming addicted to other things, such as drugs and gambling? What if without cigarettes, we would be much worse off? What if smoking is actually saving us all money? How do you know? Hey, got a light?

Toothpaste?

(And speaking of rotting teeth, note that all toothpastes have one of the same two active ingredients (even the "tartar control" and "anti-plaque" ones - read the boxes), which means they are all equally effective. Don't quote me, but I think Consumer Reports noted that the only difference was that some toothpastes that were slightly more abrasive were a negligible bit more effective. So when you buy toothpaste, if you don't get the cheapest one, you are wasting your money. Think of all the drugs you could be buying instead. All toothpaste commercials are just new and improved bullshit. For awhile in college I didn't brush my teeth because I thought, hey my mouth is going to smell and taste like the last thing I ate anyway.

Links

Andrew's Depression Page, including Voices Of Depression, such as A Letter To Parents and Welcome To My Nightmare
Association for Medical Education and Research in Substance Abuse
Center for Education and Drug Abuse Research
Hope And Healing Web Chronicles
Internet Mental Health
National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)
National Clearinghouse for Alcohol and Drug Information (NCADI)
National Council On Alcohol And Drug Dependence, Inc.
Partnership For A Drug-Free America
Positively HIV
SAVE (Suicide Awareness\Voices of Education)
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
Web of Addiction
The Wounded Healer

AA Recovery Resources Online
Al-Anon/Alateen
Cocaine Anonymous
Narcotics Anonymous World Services
Overeaters Anonymous
Sex Addicts Anonymous
Sexaholics Anonymous

Thank you for visiting. Feel free to come back again and again and again because it feels SO good. And it feels like shit when you stop. So come back with increasing frequency until you die. And remember: Alcohol kills. Drugs kill. Sex kills. Hell, life kills... so fuck it!