Smoking marijuana

[cube_rat]

Yep, I think I had my first panic attack on pot. My brain could not interput the tachycardia as a side effect from the pot. Sooo, major PA ensued. Needless to say, that experience resulted in subsequent panic attacks (brain mis-wired?) in my life without drugs as a trigger.

 

[Shredder]

I had not smoking mj in more than twenty years. Then last year I'm camping with friends on a fly fishing trip. After a few beers, a young guy comes around with some pot, like a fool I help him with it, not realizing that mj has improved by a lot in twenty years or so. Soon after a ranger came around to check our camp registrations, wouldn't you know it mine was filled out wrong, it had wrong dates or something. I was torn between laughing at the absurdity of it and the thought I could get in real trouble. To make a long story short, I now refrain from temptation, at least the herb kind.....Shredder

 

[Nords]

When you reflect on the damage inflicted on users and their families, there's not much humor in drug and alcohol use/abuse. It is often hard for the user to discern the difference between use and abuse.
Best friend in youth - mental hospital permanent brain damage from drug abuse.
Casual friends from high school - became prostitutes for drug habit.
Many friends from youth still in drug haze thirty years later.
Family member indulging in drugs and ignoring children - both young parents involved, horrible situation for the children.
Close friend - lost his college age son to an overdose.
I've seen too much for it to be funny.

During Prohibition people used to be hurt or killed by amateur distillers. Until the FDA & FCC started enforcing the rules, the cigarette industry was regularly in trouble for putting dangerous "filler" in their "firm, fully-packed" products. I wonder how many drug overdoses and other dangerous situations were caused by inadequate quality control. I don't think addicts can be responsible for their own behavior without a lot of help & support, but they have no chance when they're simultaneously being poisoned.

I don't think that legalization would make crystal meth or crack cocaine any safer to use, but it'd certainly remove much of the danger and its attendant "forbidden fruit" attraction. I think marijuana should be as regulated as alcohol...

Personally I think it should be legalised and licensed for sale in the same way alcohol is. But then again I think that all drug use should be de-criminalised with regulated production and distribution.

... and taxed as much as cigarettes or gasoline!

Here's another side of the "drug wars" that you don't hear much about. You would think that after 20 years of participating in & directing submarine operations that my most frightening stories would be about Cold War surveillance, Arctic deployments, DESERT STORM, or ordnance-related incidents.

Not so. My scariest time ever was following a sailboat through the Philippine archipelago in water so shallow that more than a few degrees up bubble would put the rudder in the mud. We spent a month in one small body of water (supposedly with PI's concurrence, I was never cleared to know) where we were forced to watch the San Miguel beer barge drive by twice a day so close that we could pull alongside and ask for a bulk discount. I still don't understand how we transited one strait at night, submerged with the scope on night vision, without hitting another vessel. Today I can't believe how close we came-- on a daily basis-- to inadvertently colliding with merchants and even grounding in an area of the world that would have highly embarrassed the military and the administration. In retrospect we would have made GREENEVILLE's collision with the EHIME MARU look like a fender-bender.

The sailboat's heinous offense? Carrying a load of hashish. We tracked them all the way to the Straits of Juan de Fuca before the USCG cutter's approach panicked them into burning the boat. When we added up the cost of one submarine, its crew, the nuclear fuel, the six weeks of trail surveillance, and the danger, we should've just surfaced and bought the #$%^ hash. It's a good thing that we never screwed up, were never detected, and also worked through so much crew training and did so well on our nuclear inspection-- because otherwise the rewards in no way justified the risks.

Later in my career one of my COs was CAPT Neil Byrne. He makes John Birch, Attila the Hun, John Wayne, and the Klingon Empire look like a bunch of liberal pinko bleeding-heart wussies. He enlisted during Vietnam and he survived earning the Legion of Merit as a young O-3 so I guess he's entitled to his opinions.

As the PACOM "drug czar" in the late 1980s he used to coordinate military forces in the Pacific drug war. One of his first tasks was the court-martial of a retired USAF E-8 who'd been scanning the air controller traffic at Tinker AFB. When one particular USAF radar aircraft with a certain call sign started to taxi down the runway, he'd call a phone number and say "Bad flying weather today." When the dealers gave him up he was returned to active duty, court-martialed, stripped of his pension & benefits, and sent to Leavenworth for a decade. Essentially he sold his family, his $40K/year COLA pension, & his lifetime healthcare for less than $100K.

After another group of arrests, Neil saw a photograph of two marijuana smugglers in their "office"-- the livingroom of a small apartment. They had posed surrounded by piles of cash, and they were literally up to their necks in a room that was filled to a depth of five feet by the money. They had more trouble processing the money than the marijuana.

Neil had attended PACOM's daily briefings on our submarine's ops and he said there was a vicious staff war over "giving up" a submarine to such a waste of time on a low-priority non-military mission. It was finally "sold" to SECDEF as a unique surveillance training opportunity (boy, I'll say) but several other areas of the Pacific were left uncovered for over a month. You can't do all your surveillance with a satellite.

It took Neil about two weeks at PACOM to decide that legalizing & taxing marijuana & cocaine would pay off the national debt in less than a decade. As long as the govt, the military, and industry kept doing urinalysis for critical jobs, he didn't think it'd affect much. He thought alcohol was a much nastier threat to his sailors, and I can't disagree with that.

So, MD, I'm sorry about your family & friends, and I'm not making fun of a serious situation, but alcohol & tobacco abuse is much reduced by legalization & control. I suspect that many drug abusers would be helped by the same system.

 

[riskadverse]

I lost a year back in my college days, and I still can't remember which year it was. That and the paranoia thankfully kept me from ever trying anything stronger.

 

[Rustic23]

This is a tough subject, because so many people have personal feelings about MJ. I have debated both sides of legalization. As I get older I have mellowed a bit. My brother was director of a children’s home. He has many first hand stories of the effects of illegal drugs on kids, and also the effects of parents whose sale and use effected their kids. My current position is closer to:

Set a legal age. 21? 25? 30? Not 18

Over that age you can smoke, toke, crack or anything else you want to. I am not your keeper. What an adult chooses to do to himself is his business, and I should stay out to the max extent possible.If you choose to, and you can’t handle it, I don’t want to pay your bills!
Of course you might surmise from some of my earlier post, I don’t want to pay your bills anyway, but that is another story. Yea, if you want to pay mine…. Be my guest.

 

[MJ]

I pretty much spent the decade of the 70's stoned.

I betcha they didn't call you grumpy during the 70's.

 

[OldAgePensioner]

MJ,
were you into biking back then? Seems like cycling could be difficult after a joint made from resin coated tops.

 

[HFWR]

Songs about that there maryjewanna...

Don’t Bogart That Joint – The Byrds
Roll Another Number For The Road – Neil Young
The Smoke-Off – Shel Silverstein
Don’t Step On The Grass – Steppenwolf
Granny Won’t You Smoke Some – John Hartford
Two Hits And The Joint Turned Brown – John Hartford
Smoke Two Joints – The Toys
Hey Nineteen – Steely Dan (the Cuervo Gold, the fine Colombian…)
Last Dance With Mary Jane – Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
You Don’t Know How It Feels – Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
I Got Stoned And I missed It - Shel Silverstein/Dr. Hook
Freaker's Ball - Shel Silverstein
Rocky Mountain High - John Denver
Light Up And Leave Us Alone - Traffic

 

[JB]

Great list Have Funds. Love John Hartford.

Don't forget my favorite:
Legalize It -- Peter Tosh

Also:
Rainy Day Women #12 and 35 -- Bob Dylan
Sweet Leaf -- Black Sabbath
Panama Red -- New Riders of the Purple Sage
Homegrown -- Neil Young

 

[F-One]

Smoked excessively from 13 - 19, a few other chemicals along the way but only semi-recreational. Was poisoned with PCP (angel dust) mixed in with some pot when I was 14, not fun, scared the crap out of me, stopped smoking for about 4 months. Okay peer pressure got me back smoking, but the paranoia really started kicking in when I was 18. Stopped at 19, panic attacks 

 

[MJ]

MJ,
were you into biking back then? Seems like cycling could be difficult after a joint made from resin coated tops.

Yes, I did a lot of biking both recreational and commuting.
This reminds me a funny story. I was at a party on Manhattan westside and of course, joints were being passed around. When I finally left the party at about 3 AM, I was feeling rather mellow (yellow). I got on my bicycle and headed towards Central Park. Biking and being high (on anything just doesn't mix). I didn't like my lack of concern about the passing cars. When I entered the park, I started feeling a bit paranoid as the park was empty and closed with only imaged boogie men lurking about. In order to bring me down from my high, I began to scream like a raving lunatic. I figured that the screaming would increase my adrenaline as well as scare off any hidden mugger. Just imagine a 6' guy riding a bike, doing 15+ mph and screaming. Glad there were no cops around. When I finally exited the park, the screaming apparently worked. I was paying a lot more attention to the limited passing traffic. I missed the high though. Some nice memories.

MJ

 

[HFWR]

Took acid once, and got very small, and was sucked up by the vacuum cleaner.

Then the drugs wore off..

paraphrased Steve Martin

 

[ladelfina]

Funny/sad/ridiculous drug story:

Early 80's. I smoke a bit only a couple times a year when it's going around at a party; never really got into the kind of high it gave.. kind of oppressive.

BF and I plan a camping trip up to Canada. BF is a kind of more-nervous, less-obscene version of Howard Stern, i.e., smart, fast-talking, snotty. We get to the über-polite über-straight Canadian border guard: "What's the purpose of your trip?"... BF: "to Visit your Beautiful Country!" 

=> Start getting seriously peeved at BF..

Border guard sizes up this borderline flippancy and decides to investigate. "would you mind opening up your glove compartment?" So he looks through the glove compartment and finds.. a little wooden marijuana pipe (BF's) that he has "forgotten" there for weeks/months..

=> Start getting seriously pi**ed off at BF

So.. they obviously go through ALL our stuff, everything in the trunk, inspect the car and take us into the little office. I get female agents; he gets male ones in another room. They understandably ask a ton of questions and I am happy/relieved to answer them all honestly in the negative. I have no pot. (I've never even had pot in my house or on my person, ever..).  I have no other drugs, never been arrested, yada, yada, yada.. Then comes the good part, 'cause they make me take off all my clothes, bend over, and spread 'em.    The severe, yet polite, lady agents seem almost as embarrassed and uncomfortable as I am.. almost.

=> At this point I am really f**ing pi**ed at BF.

I wait around for 30-40 minutes and an agent comes over to me and says "you are free to go, but we are holding your BF because he had a controlled substance hidden in his shoe". WTF?!?!??!    Turns out it was a tab of acid. He had never taken LSD. I had never taken LSD.. He'd decided unilaterally that it would be a good idea to do so out in the Canadian wilderness without telling me anything about it.

=> There are not obscenities enough for me to describe BF at this point.

So, I am stuck in a small town in Canada with no car (impounded). A border agent is kind enough to drive me to a motel. BF has a hearing scheduled but it's Thursday or Friday and he has to wait until after the holiday weekend until the next day that the magistrate is slated to roll into town (Wed., I think), since they only have one magistrate for the area and he makes the rounds of different towns on different days. Okaayy...

I spend the better part of my 'vacation' holed up in a no-frills motel with nothing to  do. There's no bookstore, no real restaurants to speak of, the "mall" is basically a supermarket on the outskirts of town with maybe a sporting goods store attached. At the supermarket I get what magazines there are, and am able to sample the range of unique Canadian potato chips flavors, like "beef" and "ketchup".  The highlight of each day is when I walk to a Pizza-Hut-type restaurant for dinner.

Each day I visit the BF in jail, bringing him magazines and newspapers. I had never pictured my life as including visits to someone in jail, but there I am. The "jail" is a couple of cells in a police station on a suburban street in the midst of all the houses, not "downtown". The cells are very clean and everyone is scrupulously polite. BF has had the occasional drunken cellmate sleeping it off, but otherwise nothing to report.

One odd thing I notice while walking "downtown" is a scruffy paraplegic guy who is always 'stationed' at the same place every day on the sidewalk. He's wearing a green military overshirt and is quite obviously THE DRUG CONNECTION FOR THE TOWN! People are always sidling up to him and making little, poorly-masked, 'transactions'!

Wednesday arrives and the BF is told to pay a few-hundred-dollar fine. (Needless to say, I have to go to the ATM and use my cash for this.. can't remember that he ever paid me back.) Then we are FREEE to continue our journey in the land of lawn ornaments (New Brunswick) which was odd/discouraging in other ways that have nothing to do with drugs, so I'll end the story here.

KIDS: JUST SAY "NO"!    .. to idiot boyfriends (girlfriends).

And.. P.S... don't carry around a pot pipe if you don't have any pot to go with it!

 

[justin]

KIDS: JUST SAY "NO"! .. to idiot boyfriends (girlfriends).

And.. P.S... don't carry around a pot pipe if you don't have any pot to go with it!

How about "Don't cross international borders with drugs and/or drug paraphernalia."

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Nah, thats too easy.

Beef potato chips. Heh heh heh.

We needed one of those...

 

[ladelfina]

"Don't cross international borders with drugs and/or drug paraphernalia."

I didn't. See my rule, above.