swilow, I sure do remember your struggles, in fact it was how I first met you on here. It's impressive you got through that. It pains me to hear of your opiate struggles these days but you did recently not take any for weeks, right? Your thoughts on the duality of suffering are really beautiful. From pain often comes the most poignant beauty. Without suffering, pleasure would be meaningless. And vice versa. I've said it before but you're one of my favorite dudes, keep up the struggle.
I don't know why so many psychedelic enthusiasts have opiate addiction problems. Maybe because they're very soothing and when shit gets real, it can be hard to come to terms with the way the world is. That's why I really strongly advocate to anyone who will listen not to try opiates. It's not in any way worth it, unless you have a legitimate severe pain condition. Best case scenario with recreational use, you'll feel good for a few hours, and never start doing them with regularity, and gain nothing in your life. But the chance is so high that you'll slip down the slope of addiction and all of your problems will be exacerbated hugely eventually. When I was deep in my opiate addiction, the peak of my best high was a thousand times worse than my normal moments now that I'm past it. It turned my life into absolute shit, a dark and hopeless hell. No one starts out intending to get addicted, everyone says, hey it won't happen to me, I'm not an idiot. Well, you're not an idiot, but it is all too likely it will happen to you anyway. Opiates are a horrible seductress, tantalizing with her charms, deadly in her embrace. If anyone reading this is thinking about trying them, thinking it'll be fun and harmless, I implore you not to even go there, not even once. Shit is serious, deadly serious. So many lives are ruined temporarily or permanently by them. A dear friend of mine overdosed and died recently. I almost went off the path forever. Many BLers have died from overdoses. People are dropping like flies. But before you ever try them, you have an easy choice to make, you can avoid it all with no struggle because you won't have it pulling you in quietly and insistently.
I'm feeling kind of dark this morning. My girlfriend is experiencing waves of depression, well she has been her whole life but lately it's been getting more intense. It's related to the ever-present issue of not knowing what to do with her life, feeling purposeless, mostly due to childhood PTSD and a controlling dad who forced her into an area of study she can't use and hated. It was pretty bad this morning (PMS makes it worse, obviously) and it sent me into a negative mood. I hate having to see her struggle so hard. I love her so much and she's a beautiful person but she really isn't happy a lot of the time and she turns it all on herself. The fact that she's flawlessly wonderful to me despite her internal struggle makes it hurt even more.
In addition, I found out quite recently a co-worker of mine got diagnosed with ALS (which my dad also has and it's horrific to witness). My co-worker didn't know what it was until relatively recently, until he was already having trouble breathing and moving and it was close to the end. He went on leave a week ago, and yesterday my boss told us that he had died the night before. He caught pneumonia and due to the already existing difficulty breathing, he passed away. I didn't know the guy well but it shook me up, especially on top of pharmakos' news that was already swimming around my head.
Then this morning in the car on the way back to my house, I listened to NPR news on the radio. I wish I hadn't. My wonderful little city, which is growing rapidly, hasn't had a republican on the city council in a long time. We're dominated hugely by liberal people interested in public welfare and managing growth to maintain the city's relative lack of big box, whitewashed suburban bullshit and external corporate interests. Well, increasingly, lots of wealthy republican retirees have been moving here, mostly from Florida. They mostly live in the south part of town, which is basically suburbia now. But they still never get elected to city council because our city has chosen to not divide into districts for the purpose of voting. The city council members have been doing a great job of managing growth to best keep the unique spirit of this place that we love so much. However, the forces of the south side have been pushing to divide into districts so they can get someone elected. Recently the republican-controlled state has decided to override our decision as a city to not go the voting district route, despite the fact that state law has said for many years that each city has the right to make its own decision regarding districting, and so now we've got districts. Basically they said, well, yeah it's the law, but we're making an exception for your city because it's not fair. I mean it will still only result in 1 out of 6 council seats opposed, but in general city elections the people overwhelmingly vote against this stuff. We don't want it, except for an extreme minority plus all the wealthy people relocating here recently.
I'm scared to see it begin to erode, I don't want this wealthy influence coming into my home in droves to slowly shift this place into another fucking suburban wasteland of shit. I live in a republican state and my country is controlled by them now more or less. I don't fucking get why people vote for these clowns unless they're wealthy, their goal is so obviously to make themselves more money (and even if you're wealthy and the policies benefit you monetarily, look past your fucking nose for once). I mean for fuck's sake, they're trying to repeal the affordable care act (the health care bill from Obama) because they're lowering taxes on the wealthy and corporations. To make up the lost revenue, they're trying to pass a bill to repeal and replace it that an independent, nonpartisan commission has reported will result in
22 million less Americans having health coverage over the next 10 years and 16 or 18 million in a year (can't remember the exact number), and will raise costs hugely for the people who need it the most, the elderly and people with pre-existing conditions. They're reducing medicaid, increasing military spending, giving more power to big money interests. They're making life harder for the average person so they can get a few more percentage points of their wealth untaxed. People who they are supposed to be serving are suffering even more than they already were, and fuck, even if we raised their taxes a lot instead of lowering them, they'd still have way more than enough money to have everything they could possibly need to be secure and comfortable. Meanwhile, 22 million people are going to have no way to pay for their medical bills, old people and children with life-threatening diseases are going to be out of luck. It's sick and disgusting, and the scariest part is that the people, in general, who most support their regime are the ones who are hurt by it the most. Makes me want to vomit. I am really proud to live in a place that doesn't buy into that in the midst of a very conservative state, and it makes me so angry to see those fuckers shitting on this beautiful place and culture. It's like, you guys have everywhere else, we don't want you here, get the fuck out, go retire somewhere else. You want to live in a pile of shit with sparkly diamonds for you that you forged out of the tears of those less fortunate? Stay where you are then, you already did it there. Leave us alone.
I need to stop listening to the news again... I hate how pissed off it makes me.
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
My CD player broke in my car and I find myself listening to the news now whenever there isn't good music on the radio
