It makes sense to let people smoke, eat, and grow cannabis. How can we act like it does not, any longer? Less people would drink. Less people would die of alcohol related illnesses like heart disease and diabetes. The number one and number six killer in America. There would be less deaths related to drunk driving. There have been studies that suggest drivers are more cautious after smoking cannabis. I'd like it to be legal so that statistic could be studied further. Drunk driving is a risk to others, not just the person choosing to drink. We have proven this time and time again. Alcohol and cars don't mix. Where are the speed trains? There would be less people exposed to far more dangerous things, like heroin, crack, and guns if they weren't in the same place they get their weed. This is insanity.
We could be healing the environment by cutting the CO2 in the atmosphere dramatically with annual cannabis crops. It takes 12-16 weeks for cannabis to go from seed to maturity. 1 acre of hemp produces as much paper as 4 acres of trees. Instead of using the last of our rain forests and other ancient trees to fill our ink and paper addiction we could be using hemp.
I write this on paper now. Why? It still feels like a privilege to me. My own ink and paper to say whatever I might. We could all be using tablets and technology for everything. Not to mention making devices that are universal and last, maybe customizable, but definitely not consumable. Our systems of communication are weak compared to what the world is currently capable of. Our internet speeds rank 29th globally.
We have an addiction to paper records as if they are more tangible than technology. Someone programs and keeps track of them both. Paper can get wet, torn, or just deteriorate over time. None of us are leaving a permanent mark. Computer memory can be so small, you can take the most valuable information you own with you. Not to mention we are capable of creating water resistant electronic devices just like digital watches, we just don't. If it was a matter of sense instead of profit, the limits of what we could achieve now are much higher than people realize.
We think paper makes it real. Paper made of ancient trees instead of hemp, Cannabis Sativa. The one that induces calmness and introspection, not numbness and paranoia. The numbness makes you laugh. You let go of what things are and what they should be, and just feel the goodness and the flow of life. Keeping it illegal means no one has a choice of what effects they want. They just take what they can get, and they don't know what kind of chemicals were used when it was grown.
For me, everything in life is a spiritual experience. I may have lost my religion, but I have always been looking for something in life. A way to contribute more than from where I stand as a 27 year old mom in suburbia. A way to connect with people and work together to learn why we're all here. It can't just be driving to work. Living to work. I just want to live. I have lost and am losing people to pain pill, alcohol, and other opiate addiction. We need to come clean with people and children about the truth. Those things kill.
Whether your addiction is killing you slowly or quickly, once addiction sets in happiness can be hard to find. I believe cannabis can be used as medicine to treat PTSD and a whole host of other psychological disorders. I'd like it to be legal so that that it can be studied further. I know cannabis is often blamed for creating mental illness. I believe people who smoke pot, drink, or taking opiates are self medicating instead of seeking treatment. It is more socially acceptable to break the law than to go seek help for a mental health problem. Why do we stigmatize mental illness? We don't get mad at people for having heart disease. Well some people do, but none of those people would be reading what I have to say.
People make choices every day, sometimes the choice is between two not awesome things. We are all going to fuck up from time to time. Everything could be going great but we have high cortisol levels, the stress hormone, and low serotonin, the happy hormone and we do need help to recover. I think the answer to a lot of our current problems is to learn the truth about cannabis, why it was made illegal, and who actually puts drugs like heroin and crack on the streets.
We have an epidemic. In my home town, people are dying in record numbers from heroin and other opiate addictions. More people have died so far this year than in all of 2012.
I come from quite a long history of alcoholism, the most harmful, socially acceptable, normal substance to partake in. Study cannabis. No one has died. Keep cannabis at a medical facility or just set it at 7-11 like cigarettes and let people decide for themselves. Why should someone who wants to buy cannabis have to be somewhere they sell heroin and guns as well? Obviously they shouldn't.
How can we call people doctors when they can hook you on opiates and leave you with no solution for the lack of serotonin they have created within your mind? When you can't get anymore pills because you have to take so many for them to work maybe you turn to snorting heroin because it's cheaper. Snorting is rumored to be less addictive than injecting. It isn't true. Maybe you'll turn to injecting it once that's not enough. Now you're a drug seeker. Now you're a criminal and not seen as someone with a chemical and mental disease. Opiate addicts are in actual pain. It feels real. It is like any other pain caused by injury, this injury is to your brain. We have all see drugs ravage our loved ones and turn them into cold beings, not the light we once knew.
People need more time off. We need to get back to wages where one parent could stay home or work part time and still be able to afford vacations and organic food. We need to be able to live without Over Time unless it's by choice. If we do not to see this epidemic of our children's future and choose to act, nothing will prevent it. 1 in 10 American adults are openly admitting to depression. Almost 15 million people right now. I am sure there are many more undiagnosed or in severe denial. Those who are willing to admit it do so in spite of being shunned and misunderstood because of their illness. Things really are that bad and cold in this shit world and that is not our fault.
Life creates the chemical reactions in your brain. Your brain is your entire being, you are what you perceive. Whatever you perceive is what is real to you. Alcohol is a depressant and I believe the number one killer of our time because of availability and social acceptance. Number two is heroin because of how cheap it is compared to prescriptions for oxycodone which mimics the love hormone, oxytocin. If you have nothing to spur the release of oxytocin, the love hormone, in your life, of course you will seek a synthetic replacement. What family has less than ten people? Every family has at least one person suffering from depression or addiction. In my opinion these numbers are largely underestimated because of the many people suffering without officially being diagnosed.
Why do we lie to our children and let them see alcohol at every family party and engrossed in popular culture? We know alcohol is not safe. We teach children cigarettes kill and are addictive but it hasn't been long enough since the culture where it was cool came to pass and many still fall victim to addiction before they are fully developed. All life term smokers started as teenagers or younger. Hopefully our kids will smoke less. We shall see if we can convince them in spite of advertisers.
Humans seem to enjoy the act of inhaling strange air to get us high. Tobacco, pot, chemical inhalants even. Our memories and perception are intertwined with smells. Do some of our physical ailments exist in our minds perception of what is happening? Sometimes we think we can't breathe. We puff a drug that makes our bronchial tubes open. Maybe some poison in our environment causes us all to have allergies.
To breathe is to live. To die is to say, he took his last breath. We are ever flowing, ever moving, ever changing being. We have to look around and see what we would use and what we could do without oil or coal energy. What is important? Plants and the sun. Animals as well, we can't have plants without bugs.
But we ignore all this obvious injustice because it is a hard pill to swallow. It is hard having to admit being brainwashed by TV, religion, your parents, and education. I was a Catholic, so I know a little something about being wrong, and I know something is wrong. The Catholic Church is the largest most powerful religious institution on the planet. Where women are held down to a subservient imaginary marriage to Jesus, instead of God. They are two different things, you see. Jesus is just another idol and mentor but inside you is the one with whom you should trust above all else. Stop trying to perceive and live up to what other people think. You will never know what other people think. You can be the only one who perceives for you.
We can be blinded by false reality. Alone, man knows nothing. Only through collective knowledge and trusting the sincerity of others' results can science and the quest for answers continue.
Religion asks us to take half truths and look the other way as if not everyone is worthy. Our drug policy does the same in essence. I'm tired of people acting like drug addiction or depression aren't real diseases. If your brain is sick, why should you be further shamed? When your heart or your lungs are sick, we don't question it. So why, when a mind is sick, do we make it worse through shame and degradation?
These are social constructs and norms that once trapped in, are hard to break free from. You need to eat food with no dyes or chemicals. Preferably vegetables or beans, anything that grows from the ground from water and sunlight. You need to move and stretch. Put your hands on your hips and reach for the sky.
It is hard to admit to ourselves that we were wrong. It is hard to admit some of these choices society made, before we were born, are making us sick. It is hard to go against the system that works out abundantly well for a few, leaves the rest of us down here with our houses under water, and our beautiful sensitive artistic friends dying in the streets. Not to mention our fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters. The way this happens will predict the future. We need to take the plants back from the hands of the corporation.
We need to legalize hemp gardens and crops to save the air and clean the water. Cannabinoids are found in our mother's breast milk. There are special receptors in the brain for them. The fit perfectly within us. That can be no accident. They heal the synapses in our brain. Those same things killed by alcohol and opiate addiction. I honestly think alcohol and opiates do have a role in our society. Alcohol for letting people let go of social anxiety and dance, and opiates for people legitimately suffering from pain due to improper body chemistry or injury. These things did not evolve for no reason.
We need to remove the stigma from all drug use, and treat those people with the same respect and compassion you'd give a child with cancer. They are both symptoms of the same sick society, ecology, chemistry, biology, physics, or whatever you want to call it. Whatever metaphors and words you choose to describe life, that which binds us together, is being poisoned. We need the water, the land, the air, and each other far more than we will ever need money.
Let's take a moment to consider all those who are suffering through invisible illness, whether it be addiction, depression, heart, cancer, food, or immune related. When we add all of these things together there are very few of us who are not suffering. When we include those suffering with a sick loved one, everyone is affected. Have compassion for strangers you meet because you never know what they may be going through, and everyone is going through something.
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