As I have stated many times on my blog, I am an alcoholic and a manic-depressive. I have not had a drink of alcohol since 1975. I have never been involved in drugs except for washing down my prescription drugs with alcohol. I never thought much about the drugs laws until 1987 when the Reagan spin-meisters began the War on Drugs to avoid the negative public reaction from the Iran-Contra scam. While Ronnie slept, Nancy began the “Just Say No to Drugs” campaign. To me, that’s about like saying to the homeless, “Just buy a house.”
As the spin grew, every politician in the USA had a sugar tit. The legislative outcome was a three-tiered administrative nightmare: Education, Interdiction and Treatment. I am going to explain each from my experience. I was born in central Kentucky shortly after the end of prohibition. Of course during this era, most manufacturers of moonshine were gone, but the bootleggers (the illegal resellers of taxed whiskey) were everywhere. My mother was very anti-alcohol and often explained to me the evils of the devil’s brew. We lived far out in the country on a tobacco farm, and I was allowed access to the family automobile when I turned 15. I was told if I ever drank alcohol that the car would be taken away from me. I knew the threat was genuine. I had my first drink of alcohol soon after my 19th birthday. Moments after I took that first drink, a feeling came over me that I had never felt before. It was a general feeling of well-being, and I couldn’t help but think that my mother had been lying to me about alcohol for all these years. This was where the addiction began for me.
Our schools receive grants from the administrative agency (DEA) to bring misinformation to our children. They tell our kids things like you will not become an addict if you do not use the specific drugs they have outlawed. While this may sound correct, it is entirely untrue. The addict is an addict before he takes his first drink or has his first hit. Addiction is caused by an unknown brain disorder, and it’s really just a question of how the addict will choose to cope with their disorder. The addict will eventually learn that the use of psychoactive drugs provides them with relief from their disorder. To the addict, these substances are godsends. After the initial experiences with the substance, everything the addict has ever heard from authority figures about these drugs becomes lies. The addict’s brain focuses only on the relief that these substances bring.
People are trapped into thinking that the addict is a bad person because he would not be an addict if had not have used the drug, but everyone ignores the fact that thousands of people use these substances everyday and don’t become addicts. The blame is placed on the drug and not the brain disorder that causes the addiction. Here our use of educational system actually does harm by dividing the addict from others. The addict has a poisoned mind that makes him believe he is using a psychoactive drug for fun; when in fact, he cannot stop under normal conditions. He may promise to quit when asked but will later continue for no apparent reason. The addict’s family cannot understand, and they will do anything to get him to stop. They may help him out of legal troubles (most that should not exist), which might cause them to form resentments towards the addict. No education can lend help to addiction because we know so little about it. In the following section on interdiction, I will show more about the laws attempting to prevent drug use and how they cause more harm to the addict and their families.
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Author: harold