Letters to the Editor
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That kid riles me...
As someone with horrendous back pain myself, if I knew of anything that would turn it down by even 50% without making a zombie of me, something I could obtain in a reasonably convenient way and afford, I'd be using that something. Any self-righteous, mouthy adolescent who got in my way about it would very soon find himself regretting his choices, possibly from boarding school on the opposite coast. Or maybe he'd be perfectly content in a distant boarding school, where he wouldn't be exposed to Mom's habit and could pontificate to his heart's content.
As a person with a recalcitrant chronic pain problem, my sympathy for this kid is right down there between slim and none. If I were his "aunt," I'd tell him to use the next time he gets a bad sprain as a learning experience: he should imagine what it would be like to have that pain day in and day out, year in and year out, and to regard a night of decent sleep as a piece of golden good luck. Also, Auntie should remind him of the likely consequences of ratting Mom out to the police: probably being put into a foster home, where no one will give a flip about any of his fine opinions, and he will get to spend his extra energy fighting off the sexual advances of some older, stronger foster boy.
Unfortunately, I don't know of anything that helps back pain without making a zombie of me except exercise, and that only to a modest extent and not always. The one time I smoked pot, all it did to me was make me sleepy. But that's not true for everyone. It makes some people feel a lot better. That lady may have chosen it for that reason over the "legitimate options," narcotics and muscle relaxants, which are intensely sedating for some people. And that kid hasn't seen a zombie until he's seen someone strung out on Vicodin and Flexaril. Let him count his blessings, button his lip, and mind his business.
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to manyctnj
So you now write that you are for legalizing pot and yet, in your earlier post you called Cary a pothead and said the kid should turn his mother into the authorities. Getting the police invoved via the son was your initial response.
Which is it? You can't have it both ways.
In "your book" as you say, have you lost your mind or just your memory?
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For fuck's sake
My knee-jerk reaction is to be irritated by all parties involved in this problem- the neo-hippie pot enthusiast, the ultimatum-yielding kid, the concerned "aunt" (why does she go into such detail about how they're not friends; they're family!?), and fucking Tennis, with his/her speech about how neglectful Mommy is being. There really isn't enough information in the letter for me to have an opinion on this case (didn't stop Tennis, obviously). Maybe pot enthusiast mother walks around stoned all the time, neglecting responsibilities, in which case I don't blame her kid at all for making threats. Or maybe the kid is just being a judgmental prick. I know that I, from the time I was a very little kid, was bothered by my parents' pot smoking (at age 7 or so, I negotiated with my father for him to confine his toking to one day a week). Perpetually stoned parents are indeed a drag, for reasons you might not even be able to fully articulate when you're a kid. But then, so are drunk parents, and parents with any number of other weaknesses, none of which are generally grounds for the loss of parental rights. You can't neglect the back pain angle, either. Pot is a vastly preferable pain killer than vicodin or oxycontin.
More than anything, I feel that there's not enough information in the letter (perhaps because the LW spent so much time talking about they're family, not friends?), to make a judgment, and I think Tennis was a douchebag for doing so, unless there's more information in the letter that he/she isn't making public. Until there's further evidence, my sympathies lie with the mother. Maybe her kid DOES need to move out, so he can see the rest of the world isn't the model of non-dependency he's so enamored with.
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pot head parents blow
I was raised in a family of jazz musicians that all smoked copious amounts of pot while they seemed to be high functioning and responsible people. When I was 8 years old, I came home from school after seeing one of those "scare-the-shit-out-of-the-kids" programs re: drugs, including the flashing of pipes and rolling papers around as SCARY-EVIL- BAD! When I confronted my folks about my fears, they came up w/ the brilliant story, "Oh, that's just the special tobacco we get from the health food store!" And the underlying lies started there.
My parents marriage was a sham, filled w/ resentment and torment. They physically and emotionally abused my sister and me under the strain of their contempt for each other, but continued to bury their personal problems with their continous pot smoking rather than seek mature counsel. By the time my dad bailed and abandoned his two young girls, my mother was dying from breast cancer. Again, nobody really stepped up because they were always high, which kept them in a constant state of immaturity and unreality.
By the time I became an adult, I had become addicted to pot simply because it was what I learned at home to be the easiest way to feel better and just let life's bigger problems solve themselves. By the time I was in my mid-thirties, I continually struggled to get sober since I knew in the back of my mind that I was participating in substance abuse and my life wasn't all that I had hoped; even though I looked great on the outside, my inner life was fairly fucked up as I lived in a false reality rather than ever take responsibility for effective change. As for the mom described by the LW who hasn't really had a job and has never really known who the hell she is without pot, she can't quit until she admits she's an addict. Sorry. That's just the f'n way it is!
And I am now over a decade sober because I got it together just enough to start attending Marijuana Anonymous meetings. Oh, and I had major back surgery, too. I have a partially ruptured disc lodged in my sciatic nerve, so pot for back pain? Bullshit. If you want to quit, get real and get sober. Sure, pot is wonderful for escape. I LOVED POT. And it should be legalized. But that's not the point of this kid's problem. This kid is rightly pissed off because his mom isn't really there for him. He deserves to be a whiney teenage boy since this is his last chance at having parental guidance. In another 3 yrs, he'll be on his own with whatever tools he has gained at home...or not. He's fifteen and finally old enough to speak his mind that is mature enough to tell him that his mom is a wasted stoner, and that he wants and deserves a self actualized, emotionally present parent. No excuses, mom. Grow up!