Recreational Drugs @ MindSay

Every once in a while I get into a philosophical mood and type up these things that no one reads :P. At least they are recorded and stored though for later reference. I'm doing 2 today, here's the first. 

Guns. Cigarettes. Alcohol. Knives. Tasers. Bull riding. Racecar driving. All things that can harm you and/or be dangerous if in the wrong hands, yet all which are perfectly legal. Where do we draw the line between doing something legal that can be damaging, and drugs? What makes it different?

You can say addiction. Well cigarettes and alcohol cause addiction. They kill thousands of people a year. But yet they are not illegal because not EVERYONE gets addicted. Most people don't drink everyday, or even every weekend. There are some out there who only smoke in social settings. But are these not potentially harmful substances? If you smoke or drink it is not socially unacceptable. Most people do not classify you as a "bad" person. But if you do drugs, call the police. You are scum of the earth and need to be locked up in a cell. Heaven forbid you alter your conciousness by a means that the government does not endorse. Even if you're not hurting anyone or causing any trouble. Which brings me to my next topic: Recreational drug use.

I define it as using them for one sole reason: Enjoyment. Not to relieve stress, not to cope with anything, not because someone else wants you to, or to fit in with a group. Purely because you like it. And in moderation of course, meaning that if it were taken away from you for an extended period of time, you would be mad but your life would still go on. You don't need it, but you want it because it is there. If you use drugs for any other purpose than that, or you would not be able to stop if you abolutely had to, then you are an abuser or an addict, not a recreational user as I am describing.

What about health? Let me tell you something about the human body. It is designed and continues to evolve to eliminate toxins and protect itself from damage. This is why you don't die if you inhale fumes for a short amount of time, or how we can stand to eat food with all the chemicals and preservatives. The things they put in food nowadays is rediculous, but that's another issue, you can go research that on your own. Bottom line is, we do a ton of things that are more unhealthy for our bodies than drugs, such as allowing yourself to become 400 pounds, working in an environment with unclean air, not doing a lick of exercise, or having unprotected sex. Yet these things are not persecuted.

I'm a firm believer in "Do what makes you happy as long as you're not hurting anyone else." Why must you scrutinize people who do things YOU don't agree with? Is what they do affecting your progress in life? Are they putting you in danger? Does what they do affect your life in any way? If the answer is no, then you need to mind your business. I'm speaking in general, this can go for anything, like homosexuality for example. People are too involved in others' endeavors. No one worries about what they are doing, always someone else.

So when you take out addiction, health, and harm to others, how are drugs bad? If a person who is not causing any trouble, not an addict, healthy, and being productive in society, how are they wrong for using drugs recreationally? Why is it immoral to alter your consiousness? No one can answer this because they always vomit up one of those other reasons and skip over the main question. We are not talking about a drug addict bum gunman, we are talking about ordinary people, ones who you would never suspect because they lead a perfectly "normal" life. Now tell me how it's bad? If I'm not driving, or OD'ing, or doing it every day, how is there something wrong with that?

I challenge anyone to give me a reason why it is wrong to take drugs without saying that you coud become an addict, hurt someone, or that it's unhealthy. I bet you can't. I bet you'll try, and STILL you will end up with "So and so did drugs and they ruined their life." What about people who don't? I am not saying that it is not potentially harmful, all I'm saying is that it is not wrong, it does not make you an evil or sick person.

This evening Saturday I experienced something odd.

I had a very strange and negative experience with drugs. Drugs have been a part of me and a part of my life and activities...artistic, recreational, things of the sort...for...ages. For as long as I clearly remember being as coherent of the world as I am now. I have, through and with drugs, expeirenced planes of being not within the reach of my sober mind...have experienced people in ways unbeleiveable to me...have intensified experiences tenfold...yes, drugs are a very interesting and deeply woven aspect of my life.

And this is not to say I havent had really awful experiences with drugs. I have...I certianly have...but not really like this. No, never really like this. I had not done anything really intense, save a bowl or two with friends in the woods....and perhaps it was something about the steady use of anphetimines...or the lack of sleep...or the forgetting to eat that day...but...I began to loose total control. I'm accustomed to being at times semi-out of control, but I've usually still some grasp on my functionings...but not this time. I could not control the way I moved, nor the way words escaped my mouth and slid down my front, nor the way I screamed and cried and was so increadibly afraid. I was sure. I was sure that the time had come for me to die. I was sliding down a bathroom wall beside a room filled with people and there was tile that was cold beneath me, and that was all I could know, save that total and inevitable feeling of my impending end.

And I was afraid.  I was so afraid. The fear of death is so confusing to me, and I feel so completely childish and irrational when I think of it, and when it sends tremors and shivers down my spine and stomough, why do we fear what is inevitably coming to us all? Why do we expend energy on worrying about how afraid we are of something that will come reguardless of our petty fears? Is it instinct, and if so, is instinct a fighteable force? Are we so well ingrained with this primal fear and need to perpetuate and to procreate that we must burden ourselves with this completely useless fear?

I was brought to an upstairs bed and drowned myself in blankets, forcing the one who was with me to swear she would not let me close my eyes or slip, to swear that she would not let me die, crying, screaming, pulling my clothes off and pleading with her to save me, not to let me go. Telling her how fucking afraid I was.

And then, all of a sudden, it began to ebb down slowly. The boy came by me and I was still afraid, but in a more diluted way. My heart was still racing, but in a more mechanical fashion. He was there, and I was next to him, and I could feel him by me and there was solidity in that past my fear. Everything was conqured by the warmth and ultimite connection of skin upon skin, there is nothing more powerful on this earth then to connect.

It makes you wonder...it really fucking makes you wonder....this was not like any clumped carpeted seizure with a furrowed forhead and forced fingers manipulating muscles down the workings of my mouth. This was not any loss of time and space and reason through forests with blood flowing in streams and with branches morphing and swaying into limp and languid corpses, no, this was no late night hospital visit with my father and no need for charcoal, having vomited out all the toxins volunterilly, all the while watching him laugh nervously and not extend information to the doctor. This was diffrent.

Just....diffrent. I have no idea about much on this earth, but all I can know is that I am so in love with all of you.