The fact that this is my 420th post has nothing to do with this: I’m going to quit doing drugs at the request of my girlfriend. Due to a Freudian slip yesterday, she found out what I was doing Monday night and felt betrayed. She’s seen too many loved ones destroyed by drugs and alcoholism. So I’m doing this not just for her, but for me, too. I’ve realized in speaking to her about this that drugs aren’t as harmless as I thought, not even light stuff like marijuana. I’ve also realized something else: the withdrawal isn’t the absence of the drug. It’s the absence of what you lost because of the drug.
So, I’ve been sober for two days now and man was I jonesin’ for a cigarette this afternoon.
No matter how much my life sucks, one thing I’ve been fortunate about is not having any addictions (err…besides this message board). That said, I’m not without sympathy for those who have drug, tobacco, food or other addictions. I don’t have to suffer from a like problem to have sympathy.
Doing it for a loved one, by the way, is as good a reason as any (except doing it for yourself).
I wish you well, and hope you’ll report on your progress.
I Want To Be Straight
By Ian Dury and the Blockheads
I want to be straight, I want to be straight,
I’m sick and tired of taking drugs and staying up late.
I want to confirm, I want to conform,
I want to be safe and I want to be snug and I want to be warm.
I want to be straight, I want to be straight,
I want to create a place of my own in the welfare state.
We’re gonna be good, we’re gonna be kind,
It might be a wrench, but think of the stench I’m leaving behind!
I want to be straight, I want to be straight,
Come out of the cold and do what I’m told and don’t deviate.
I want to give I want to give I want to give my consent,
I’m learning to hate all the things that were great when I used to be bent.
Could be that straightness might lead to greatness,
Owing to lateness, my chance has only just arrived.
I want to be straight, I want to be straight,
I’m sick and tired of taking drugs and staying up late.
I know that you’re right, I know I was wrong,
So thanks very much and please keep in touch, I’ll be running along.
I want to be straight, I want to be straight, I want to be straight, I want to be straight…
While I feel they certainly had a bad effect on me because I’m an addict, stuff like marijuana is far from being more or less dangerous than many other things taken for granted.
There’s nothing that says you’re going to have a problem because you indulge once in a while. I’ve had girlfriends like yours and I made this very clear to them. Of course, I DID have a problem, but that’s another story
All I can say is do it if YOU feel you have to do it. Otherwise run the risk of relapsing after the break up and becoming more cynical about quitting than ever. I’ve seen people go there.
You can’t be an old-school punk rocker without loving Ian Dury, no matter WHERE you live. Alas, you have to say he rockED since he died recently, as you probably know.
Anyway, sorry for the hijack, and I caught spritle’s remark, are we not supposed to post song lyrics? Jeez, I might even have enticed a few people into buying his albums with that post, that can’t be a bad thing, can it?
Bah, reality is for people who can’t handle their drugs. Just kidding of course, good luck on quitting. I just think this thread is funny considering the first sentence I heard this morning when I arrived at school was “wanna go in on a vial [of acid]?” I answered yes :). We really need a stoned smiley! Dang.
Well, what kind of new-ager would I be if I didn’t occasionally explore myself through self-induced altered states? Considering the fact that American Indians can legally process and consume Peyote buttons because it’s part of their religion, shouldn’t new-agers be allowed to drop acid and buttons? Well, we still have semi-legal shrooms, but you have to find them wild, which is hard to do in Texas. ::sigh:: Oh well.
First off, shut the fuck up, poster formerly known as Marxboy. If you are in anyway serious in anything you have just posted, if you do anything more than browse the Vaults, smoke an eigth in the space of a month, and occasionally browse through High Times at the newstand, then I seriously think you need help. I’ve seen too many kids like you (myself almost included) that have just absolutely burnt out everything in their lives on drugs, with strange fetishes like yours, complete teenage wastelands. I’ve still got so many friends who are on that road and I truly hope none of the Teeming Millions are on that track (but I’m almost sure that Homer is…).
Last Saturday, I saw some of my old dopesmoking friends get into a car wreck. I can’t believe what I did next, but I stashed their paraphernelia away before the cops came. I mean, one of these guys I couldn’t stand before we started toking up together, and I fucking covered up for these guys. They were smoking the white clouds of opium last week during study hall for cryin’ out loud!
To everyone else, thanks a lot. Spritle: woke up on the floor that night. Soda cans everywhere. My friend passed out on the futon. The static t.v. still on, movie stopped. And that’s before it got ugly.
Well, my girlfriend is still a little peeved at me right now. She is feeling better (I think it was actually PMS…). I snuck out last night, destroyed my bong, the Fantastic Mr. Albert, and burnt what weed I had left along with a catalogue filled with drugs so edgy they don’t even have street names yet. I’m glad I did it, too. Stole the catalogue off a friend (I gave it to him). For his own good. I haven’t seen him yet, he hasn’t been in school and I’m worried; there’s no answer when I call him. Please don’t let anything happen to him…
Relax dude, not EVERYONE has a problem with drugs. If he can take it or leave it, it’s his business. If you have friends who are opium addicts, that’s their personal problem, it doesn’t reflect on casual drug users.
I quit, because I couldn’t handle it. Many of my friends could handle it, and they still indulge on occasion. What’s wrong with that?
I’ve been thinking about this thread, and it reminded me of something, the best thing I ever heard about drug users, from the most unlikely place of all.
I was driving through some long-forgotten empty stretch in the deep south once, late at night with only an AM radio in the car, and I could only pick up one station, featuring a rabidly fanatical southern baptist preacher. I was just getting fed up with his ranting about fornication when he started talking about drugs. And then he spit out something so bizzarely ludicrous but so incisive that I have never forgotten it in the 25 years since. He said, “you got no food in the fridge so you do some drugs to forget about your hunger, and while you’re passed out, someone breaks in and steals your refrigerator!”
Anyway, I have been thinking of this problem ever since I was at my Mom’s house and my little brother came to town to visit. He’s been having problems with his son, which is ironic because he was a punk rocker and he’d always proclaimed things like “boy, if you thought WE were punks, I can’t WAIT to see how OUR generation of kids turn out!” He’d just moved to a city about 250 miles away, and his first words to me were “hey, I can’t find any dealers in my town, do you know anywhere I can get so pot?” I said I didn’t know, and then he started begging my mom for some Vicodin tabs she had left over from a recent back injury. And then to my astonishment, he started lamenting how he was at his wit’s end about his high-school age son, who had been busted for the second time for posession of pot and was probably going to end up in reform school. He said he didn’t know what to do about it. I had to leave before I started yelling at him, “well you might try to STOP USING DRUGS YOURSELF.”
He told him one day: “I don’t want you to keep any god damned pot in this house!” Later that evening he got out his bong and started to toke his own stash in front of the TV.
Oh, and he stole pot from his son all the time too, he even caught him smoking it out of his bong once!
But the thing is, most of my friends can’t handle it, and they don’t know it. I mean, one of them, his father is a lawyer, his brother was valedictorian. He’s got nothing and I don’t like the life ahead for him. I really think I should talk to him.
Oh, yeah, I figured out what happened him, after I stole his catalogue. He went to his other brother’s graduation from Dental school! Whew! I’m glad he’s ok now.
Spinne, calm down man. I understand that you have had bad experiences with drugs, and you’ve seen them mess with people before. I honestly don’t believe they have that much of an effect on my life. I am a B student, I get along well with my family, my teachers and friends like me, I live a pretty standard life, and I happen to think that drugs are a good way to get away from yourself and think if you can handle it.
I wish you luck in quitting yourself, but don’t mess with me about it, k? I know a bunch of straight edge people who say that they live healthier than everyone else, but they tend to be the angriest people I know. That’s unhealthy too.
Lucky Charms is a 16 year old kid, he hasn’t grown up yet. Common sense & empathy are not the domain of kids; he’ll figure it out eventually.
Spinne…Good luck. I fondly remember my druggie years. But would I be a loser if I hadn’t quit by now! (I’m 43.) One thing that made me stop using was seeing many of the wasted older crowd I hung out with in those days. Men & women in their late twenties/early thirties leading shallow, aimless lives…blech.
I’m glad I tried it all, and gladder still I quit while I still had unfried brain cells & my good health. It’s part of growing up for many people.
I send my congrats, hope it goes well. I kinda have the opposite thing going on, my gf is into drugs a little too much, I hope she sees the problem and follows your ways.
