Letters to the Editor
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Meth & Meth
Methamphetamine is the Methanol of our generations.
Thousands died or got blinded from methanol while alcohol was prohibited. No one would have been exposed to methanol had alcohol not been illegal.
Fast forward to the last third of the 20th century and on. The "war on drugs" which would be laughable weren't it the case that it is the source of immense crime and misery, resulted in a push towards creating mind altering substances whose main reason of existing is that it is easy to manufacture them in uncontrolled, small scale operations. No attention is paid to how bad those drugs are and the manufacturing process is necessarily shabby.
It would be hard to find a better example for the insufficiency of the average human IQ than the wide scale acceptance of the illegality of "substances". Alcohol was re-legalized when it became clear that its use continued anyway, that unsafe substitutes appeared causing death and disease, that it lead to the increase in crime because A, addicts had to become criminals by biological necessity and B, criminalization of a behavior attracts criminals.
There is not an iota of difference between the prohibition of alcohol and any other mind altering substances, considering their consequences. Yet, it goes on.
Sometimes one has to wonder: dolphins may be more intelligent than people after all.
If at least the "war" would go on effectively. Using drugs is not necessary for being alive and it is wrought with inherent dangers, so if they could be REALLY eliminated, it would be a good thing. But as long as there is an iota of freedom, people will make and use mind altering substances. Only in something like a subterranean salt mine could the "war" triumph.
Which brings up a question: WHY do people use drugs? Maybe because "they like it?"
Good luck getting a research grant on that.
The madness is further complicated by the fact that the drug warriors exaggerate, the pro-egalizers minimize the negative effects of drugs.
Even in this article, methamphetamine's effect on the brain was described in a hugely simplistic manner. There is no one single way meth affects brains. There are people who are severely hooked for good, others are hooked but can kick it with great effort, yet others get hooked but it burns out and they stop spontaneously, yet others feel so lousy from the first dose that they never touch it again, yet others can remain casual users for life.
You could say the same things about alcohol. Yet alcohol remains legal despite it being a factor in motor vehicle accidents, violence, chronic use can cause dementia, liver cirrhosis, cancer, psychosis.
I'll stay friendly with the dolphins, you never know when you need a friend.
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The Three C's
''You didn't cause it, you can't control it, and you can't cure it.''
Mr. Sheff mentioned that the only advice he would gravitate to was advice that re-inforced what he already wanted to do....
Hello?
Am I the only one who noticed this common thread to through his *entire* story?
On the other hand, he outright dismissed any adviced that seemed too cold or too mean.
Perhaps a little "tough love" would be a possible solution?
Sometimes, when we think with our hearts instead of our heads, we end up doing more harm than someone's worst enemy.
In other words, maybe it's time you should ask yourself if you are enabling your son?
However, this would run contrary to the Three C's... that being that you are actually causing, or at least helping, your son's addiction.
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Not Meth, Dude
hakim kutta said: 'A drug can either be a poison, a medicine, a means of transformation,a religious sacrament or a way of escape. It's all in the intention. Our kids are not stupid. They look around and see what we have'
Your point (IMO) would have been better made if you had left out Meth from your above quote about the different ways drugs can be beneficial/non-beneficial.
Meth is always bad. Listen to 'Amphetamine Annie' by Canned Heat for a 40 year old take on Meth. I don't even consider it a 'drug', it's more like a slow acting poison, one step up from huffing paint.
I also think that if your kid was able to get in to Berkeley, his HS troubles couldn't have been that bad. Maybe there was an overreaction at some point that made the son want to lash out & also be 'badder than his dad' (who sounded pretty bad, so you have to really start abusing serious shit to get to the 'badder than' point).
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THE "LIBERAL" POSITION ON THE SURVEILLANCE STATE
"The "liberal" position on the Surveillance State
That a belief in the FISA court represents the outermost "liberal" view allowed reveals how far to the Right our political establishment has shifted." --SALON ARTICLE
Howzabout how far SALON has shifted?
WHY did you delete my first letter and WHY won't you give me a reason?
Readers, I'm very sorry to grandstand here, but no one at SALON will write me back.
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xanadu
Maybe you should write a letter like Meangirl's, above, where she is looking for someone to take care of her (or, more liekly, to defraud). That one hasn't been deleted!
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My Beautiful, Brilliant Drug-Addicted Brother
The reality of addiction is so dark that people touched by it should be allowed to draw hope and inspiration from whatever sources work for them, even sappy stories of middle-class redemption.
There was no redemption, middle-class or otherwise, for my beautiful, brilliant brother who struggled with drug addiction for more than twenty years. His death by overdose destroyed my parents.
Although much of his life was often harrowing, none of it prepared us for his death. I think we still had hope.
I believe my brother very much wanted to change his life, but his addiction was very much like a slowly progressing terminal disease. There were (brief) periods of remission. But each inevitable relapse took him a little lower than he had been before.
Heartache and sorrow don't adequately express what it's like to lose someone this way. I suppose some people might think that his death at least brought a sense of relief, a small measure of comfort that he was no longer suffering.
But there was no relief and there was no comfort.