In the neighborhood I grew up in, the drug of choice was simply beer. We did have one old drunk that drank cherry vodka but mostly the kids had access to 3.2 beer and it was not uncommon to have been drunk on it prior to reaching the legal age of 18. With me, the effects were to cause me to puke a long time before reaching the lethal amount of alcohol. There is a cute story about peanuts and beer but I will skip it here and use it as a start point in a later story. Now, where was I? Oh yes, Marijuana.
The sad thing about this post is that I can not tell your personally about the drug as I have never smoked it and don't plan on doing so. My treatise here is to tell you the effects of it on my friends and people in my life I have met that did smoke it. Smoke, 'em if you gott'em. I have not smoked for about 20 years so I won't try MJ in that form for that reason.
In high school, a friend of mine started his drug use by huffing. I don't remember the exact stuff he used. It escapes me, but soon he was the pied piper of MJ in our school. I watched this guy go from a pretty nice guy to a guy that lacked what I thought was any direction in his life. He admitted to smoking MJ on his way to school and he always had that silly smile on his face so many of us thought he went out to his car at lunch and smoked. In college, this guy came to me and wanted me to help finance a drug deal. He was a Chemistry student at WSU and had a friend that wanted to cook up a batch of something. He promised a return of 500% on an investment of $200. I didn't have that kind of money as a college student. I saw Joe on a trip through Wichita about 10 years after we graduated from College and he was working as an Engineer at Boeing so I guess the hype about MJ leading to a life in prison and a life wasted was a myth.
The next true druggie I met was a soldier at Fort Irwin, California. This was a pretty typical soldier on duty but it was wildly reported that he spent a lot of time in his VW bus after duty and he was reported to smoke there. It made little difference to me until I was given orders to serve on a Courts Martial Board. I was by far the most junior officer on the board and I spent most of my time watching and learning. It seems that this young soldier was sent to the hospital for counseling. He was not sleeping because of his fear of getting killed in Vietnam. At one of his counseling session, they went to the Hospital cafeteria. To emphasize a point, he slammed down his coffee cup and it broke a 15 cent saucer. Might seem like a lot of expense for such a minor offense, but who know what was going on in the mind of his commander. What was really surprising that it went clear to a courts martial. He should have just simply asked to sign a statement of charges for 15 cents. Then there could have been a letter of reprimand. The next step was an Article 15 or simple misdemeanor kind of process. The most aggressive charge was a courts martial. That's what he got. He was found Guilty and sentenced to the Confinement facility for 30 days. I am sure there are institutions all over the place filled with this kind of offender. He did his 30 days and when we were given Christmas Leave he didn't return. The next time I saw him, we were standing at the railing of the USNS Geiger and saw a couple of MP's escort him aboard where he spent most of the trip in the Brig. I don't have a clue what happened to him after that. Much was made of a simple problem.
Now, we are seeing the penalties against MJ use being made in to tax revenue and decriminalization is here for small amounts, so long as it has a tax stamp. I wonder what will happen to the large number of dealers in Prisons for years over selling what is now a legal drug. I would hope that the cost will be examined and the space used for people that do violent things.
Is there a point here? I guess I am trying to make the point that illegal use of drugs could have put me in a passel of trouble. The drug of my choice was alcohol and I abused it for years. In fact, I have been sober for about 25 years now. I wonder if MJ use is the just the drug of choice. I was told the other day on talk radio that if California would legalize the use of MJ and tax it, they could go a long way to curing their financial crisis.
OH well, end of message. In the old days I would just go have a beer but now a cuppa coffee will have to do.
MUD - Sober... I would say clean but I probably could use a shower.
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