I love drugs, all drugs. They're wonderful stuff. I've been high on drugs, one kind or another, for most of my adult life. The problem is that it's not sustainable for most stuff. Ganja is one exception. When I was young ganja was my drug of choice, along with some alcohol and psychedelics, whatever else I could find. I had a lot of fun, lots of other stoners to do stuff with that removed much of the loneliness. I learned valuable hobbies like brewing and gardening. I could smoke so many bong hits, big ones!
The trick is to keep busy and keep looking forward optimistically. Having things to look forward to is important. By getting deep into ganja I always had the best stuff, kept myself and my friends well toasted. Money wasn't a big concern. I figured my future was secure because they'd never legalize the stuff. My retirement plan was to get a nice sunny place in the country and grow all I needed.
How wrong that turned out to be. The state sabotaged the ma and pa small scale growers in favor of massive industrial corporate type operations to drive the price so cheap it's not worth it. It's sad to see people I knew that loved my special heirloom ganja buying boring run of the mill stuff at the government store. It's not close to as good as mine was but it's convienent and 'fun' to buy from a store front. I guess. I never buy anything from those stores unless I find a specific grower I like with a strain I'm interested in.
I was rolling along until I had a couple years when things got weird. I got distracted by girlfriends. Got a bit paranoid without a good reason. Thought a year off from growing was a good idea since I'd saved money. This meant I had too much time on my hands. Too much time to chase skirts and too much time to fool with drugs I shouldn't have. I had savings to buy them cheap. Started going out at night and messing around with coke and opiates. I knew better but I used the skirts as one of my excuses to abuse the stuff. There was also boredom and too much free time. Idle hands do the devil's work.
When I was a child, maybe 5 or 7 years old, things weren't good at school or home. When I was 7 my mom married my stepfather who raised me as his son. I've only met my 'genetic' father a couple of times. My mother is crazy and was spoiled growing up. She didn't want me around my dad, their breakup hadn't been on good terms. He was worried she'd sue for child support so he stayed away.
She didn't think she needed the extra money because of my stepdad. A muscely big nosed, well-hung hard working Dutchmen country boy. The nose was good at locating and horrking coke and meth, too much at times. These were things I mom enjoyed as well. It was how they met. I didn't understand all this. I fantasized about my father saving me from my crazy mother and my ugly Dutch daddy. We actually lived in the same town. His family, my half brothers, went to church a couple blocks from where we lived.
My mother had told me, in a bid to make my dad seem like a scary bad guy, that he had used heroin. Smuggled some out of Canada with her in the car. Instead of making me fear or dislike him I was fascinated. After all, they were high too so who is she to put him down? This gave me one of the most vivid dreams of my childhood.
I must have been about 5. Or 6 or maybe 8. My dad and I were in an apartment in Pioneer Square in Seattle near the Viaduct. I'd rode past the apartment a thousand times in a car, they had a distinct grungy look. (the OK Hotel, where Nirvana and many other great bands played, was on the ground level. It would be over a decade before I knew about that)
He shot me up with heroin. It was the best rush ever. Later in life when I did heroin it felt almost the same only not quite as good. The dream raises so many questions. How did I know about shooting up? How did I know what a heroin rush would feel like? Or the needle and spoon? I was nodding off in my dream, how did I understand that effect? I've had many strange dreams, some of them mystify me.
I had no desire to get addicted to opiates, especially heroin. I dabbled once in a while but I was careful. I'd seen it destroy and kill friends. By a series of strange events I ended up with a decent stash of 80 mg of oxycontin. Before I could get rid of them I had an emotional crisis. Spent a week snorking them down one by one. Then I had a habit. I knew I should quit, I knew it would ruin my friendships and my life, but I remembered the dream. Murphy's law struck and I suddenly had a dope hook, much cheaper than oxy. Then I figured out if I used a point it was even cheaper. It seemed to all be working according to destiny, I didn't feel like I had a choice.
So I went with the flow. Chasing opiates is the perfect cure for boredom. Until you get a habit. Opiate highs are great but when you have a habit it sucks away all the fun. You don't really get high, mostly you get 'well' so you can take care of yourself and function. It turns into a job that's a lot of work. One side effect was that it got me off the ganja, I don't think anything else would have.
The mystical side of opiates, the visions I had, the prescience, were fascinating. I knew the future, I knew the stuff wasn't going to kill me but I knew it would fuck up my body. It changed how I look at society, men and women, sex, power structures, law enforcement, courts, everything. It enlightened me and taught me as much as any drug. Opiates give you visions with more clarity than psychedelics. They are very real.
I came to understood my past traumas and mistakes. Why this disaster had happened to me, why I was unsatisfied with life, where I went wrong. I could see the relationships I had and the ones I could have had. Special people that would have been life-long friends, partners, lovers, wives even. If I'd only paid attention to them and followed my heart.
My personality changed. I became more easy going, lost much of my social anxiety, stopped giving a fuck about the small stuff. I felt like I got what I needed, the damage was done, the heat was onto me, and I was happy to quit. Methadone saved me otherwise I'd have gone through hell. The damage to me, my social relations, the harm I'd done to my friends and family, was horrible. It left me very lonely, jobless, physically weak, it nearly destroyed me. I'm tough though, I came back. I love the stuff and I'm very greatful to opium but I never intend to be addicted to it again.
The irony is that opium is ridiculously cheap and easy to grow. More so than ganja, beer, any other substance. People could be addicted to it, not use needles, not steal or commit crimes, just drink the stuff to keep from getting sick. Very little health risk if they stay at a stable dose. In the old days, in the Wild West, opiates were always cheaper than booze. You could go to a bar and get a shot of laudanum for 8 cents. Whiskey cost from 12-25 cents. The primary effect of the drug war has been to make drugs more expensive, more addictive, and more dangerous. Why there will always be a supply. The enforcers, counselors, chemists, courts, treatment centers, can't ever let it end. They depend on it for their existance.
That was 20 years ago. Now I use what my doctor prescribes me including some ganja. Psychedelics have always been a favorite. I've explored stims more than I did in the past. They do a wonderful job of countering many of the age-related problems like fatigue and aches and pain. I don't like the havoc they wreck on neurotransmitters. They do weird things to the body and nervous system. Not a strong physical addiction but your mind thinks it really wants them. It pouts and gets depressed if it doesn't get it's own way.
Kind of like an open bag of potato chips. It's very difficult but if you try hard you say no. They also make benzo use necessary and that's the family of substances I fear. I've had weak withdrawls a couple of times and I don't like it. The effects aren't worth it. I learned my lesson, I have no interest in addiction. Alcohol is an old ally I've never been addicted to. Important to use in moderation and some people destroy themselves with it.
The hard part is moderation. One trick I learned from methadone is to choose a stable dose and stay with it. Never alternate or experiment. This is true for all addictive drugs, I wish I'd known when I was messing with dope. If you bump up your dose it's nearly impossible to go back down, it will haunt you. It's hard for me because I'm a junkhog that wants to get high every day and wants to go higher and higher.
As I get older there's a side of me that's getting stronger. It says why bother with drugs? It's too much work, too much hassle, being sober is easier and certainly cheaper. I've gone years mostly sober with this feeling. Then I find something new that is just too interesting not to experience.
Isn't that why we're were in this life? To experience things we can't experiment as spirits or angels or devils or dust clouds or whatever we were before? Research, harm prevention, using stuff without getting addicted so we never lose the magic is the way to go. There's so much great stuff out there and there's more great stuff coming all the time. I'm looking forward to the rest of my life. But I have to do a better job of finding things to keep me interested when I'm sober. For one because all drugs build tolerance. Some drugs like ganja I like having some tolerance to but for most tolerance is a big problem. It causes the God or Goddess existing in the drug to get annoyed and they go away or punish you taking away the magic or changing the magic to a curse. None of us want that.
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. And I agree on the labels. 
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