mibrane
Bluelighter
- Joined
- May 22, 2000
- Messages
- 226
When I was 13 I started smoking pot, just every couple of months at first. For my fourteenth birthday i was given a 3 gram block of hash which kept me and five mates stoned off our tits most days of the winter school holidays and then every weekend for nearly 3 months; we moved to the city and I started on a school acceleration program which skipped me through a years school. At 15 I started a relationship with a 21 year old, and left home later that year after being hospitalised for seizures which were eventually put down to "stress" related to Franc being told she had six months to live, and to my work as founding member of Seconday Students Agains t the Gulf War (the first one, that is) and was elected as one of the youngest ever members to the National Counsel of a major national youth activist organisation (Resistance); at 16 I had a relationship with someone who was 23, I smoked pot most days, started taking acid; 17 I was living in Perth with other activists, one of whom was in their mid-30s. My lover that year was 27 years old. I injected for the first time. By the time I turned 18 I had lived out of home for 2.5 years, in three different cities; I'd crossed the Nullabor a half dozen times by plane, train, mini-bus and riding pillon on a BMW touring bike; had served as a Resistance National Counsel member for over 2 years and worked as a full-time organiser for them at several times; started raving (Space Cadet 1), was in my fourth relationship, this time with a woman 3 years older than me - having been bonking activist, feminist women I had the sexual knowledge of someone in their mid-20s combined with the libido, stamina and flexibility of a teenager. I'd contracted a life-threatening illness (not as a direct result of my drug use or sexual activities), although I wasn't diagnosed until a couple of months after my 18th birthday. A year later I had an amphetamine dependence, had taken at least 100 trips, experienced NO2, MDMA, MDA, coke, heroin, ayahuasca and DMT, 2CB, aand mescaline. I had helped put on a half-dozen free parties for probably 10000 ravers total, was operating a specialist supply business turning over at least $5K weekly, was living in my fourth city since leaving home. One of my best friends that year is two years my junior(actually, he remains one of my oldest and dearest firnds, and also works full-time in a drug user organisation), he'd travelled the country from Perth, to Broome, to Darwin, Cairns and finally down to NSW, paying his way working on fishing boats. We'd met on a picket line in defence of an Aboriginal sacred site, and had started tripping and whacking speed together in Perth, when he was only just 15.
The key ingredients of the Mibrane muffin - activism aimed at building a world of equality and freedom of choice and expression, love of drug-use but based firmly on personal harm reduction strategies which I have always tried to instil in both my friends and in the user communityn more broadly through work with ravesafe (founded by me at 19) and drug user organisations, sexual expression based on equality and respect, a lifetiem love of beats and boogeying; these were all mixed and baked well before my twentieth birthday.
Many of my best friends were experienced with many drugs by the time they turned 18; a number of these are in important positions in the drug user activist movement or the "drug services" sector; others have done degrees or hold jobs in the straight world; others are happy (or not) on benefits, or doing art or other creative expressions.
I make no claims to being a paragon of sanity, certain aspects of my physical development probably were stunted or otherwise distorted by my use of substance during puberty, and do not have the formal qualifications or the overseas travel experience which might otherwise have been a feature of my late teens.
But, for 95% of the time, I love my life, and I'm proud of my achievements and contributions. Take the eggs out of the Mibrane muffin mixture and its not much more than a damper.
The feedom to determine what we do with our own minds and conciousness (it is Mibrane and I will fight for the right to do what I want with it) is the last great unfulfilled democratic right.
I believe it is a right that has no age limits. People mature at very different rates, and the rate at which one grows up can change significantly depending on class, nationality, place of residence, individual interests and intelligence. Don't use your experiences as a yardstick for what is right and wrong.
The experiences users have in their periods of early initiation have significant impacts on the way they use throughout their lives - instil personal harm reduction from the start and most people stick qwith it. The revesr is perhaps even more true. Don't let morals based on arbitrary figures stop you from passing on safe-using messages and techniques, or from supporting the right of all human beings to make their own, informed decisions.
The key ingredients of the Mibrane muffin - activism aimed at building a world of equality and freedom of choice and expression, love of drug-use but based firmly on personal harm reduction strategies which I have always tried to instil in both my friends and in the user communityn more broadly through work with ravesafe (founded by me at 19) and drug user organisations, sexual expression based on equality and respect, a lifetiem love of beats and boogeying; these were all mixed and baked well before my twentieth birthday.
Many of my best friends were experienced with many drugs by the time they turned 18; a number of these are in important positions in the drug user activist movement or the "drug services" sector; others have done degrees or hold jobs in the straight world; others are happy (or not) on benefits, or doing art or other creative expressions.
I make no claims to being a paragon of sanity, certain aspects of my physical development probably were stunted or otherwise distorted by my use of substance during puberty, and do not have the formal qualifications or the overseas travel experience which might otherwise have been a feature of my late teens.
But, for 95% of the time, I love my life, and I'm proud of my achievements and contributions. Take the eggs out of the Mibrane muffin mixture and its not much more than a damper.
The feedom to determine what we do with our own minds and conciousness (it is Mibrane and I will fight for the right to do what I want with it) is the last great unfulfilled democratic right.
I believe it is a right that has no age limits. People mature at very different rates, and the rate at which one grows up can change significantly depending on class, nationality, place of residence, individual interests and intelligence. Don't use your experiences as a yardstick for what is right and wrong.
The experiences users have in their periods of early initiation have significant impacts on the way they use throughout their lives - instil personal harm reduction from the start and most people stick qwith it. The revesr is perhaps even more true. Don't let morals based on arbitrary figures stop you from passing on safe-using messages and techniques, or from supporting the right of all human beings to make their own, informed decisions.
