My Views on Alcohol and Drugs - DWC Day 2

My views on alcohol are few. Its a waste of money unless it keeps you from doing more harmful things to yourself. It's fun to go to a party and dance or socialize, its no fun to spend the 24 hours following the party throwing up, feeling like crap, or trying to figure out where your car is or how it got blood on it. This is not to say that I never drink. I enjoy the flavors of a good whiskey sour, a Kahlua and cream, or a Margarita. And I like to drink at parties because I'm not very comfortable in crowds of people, but it is more harmful to be a hermit and isolate oneself. Where I live now there are kegs at the baby showers, child's parties, and any other large get together. Its a way of life. I can't stand beer, but in general, the people drinking would probably get in fewer fights, fewer arguments with their loves, enjoy their child's life events more, and live longer if they weren't drinking. Alcohol is also effective for erasing the pains of life on a temporary basis. But life just comes back to slap you the next day along with the hangover. So wouldn't it be better to take up jogging instead. Both make you hot and sweaty, both eliminate stress, and jogging is more likely than alcohol to get you sex regularly.

Cigarettes are one thing I just don't understand. They make your life smell funny. They cost too much money that could be spent on better things. They destroy your body. There is no point in them unless you are looking for a long, slow, painful suicide.

Drugs... I understand that there are people out there with legitimate problems that can only be answered with some form of heavy medication.  This isn't about them.  This is about people who choose drugs over all the other choices.  There are so many types of drugs that I don't really want to examine each of them. I will admit that I have vague regrets of not getting to try LSD because I was pregnant when they were offered to me. I haven't had much personal experience with taking drugs, so my opinion may not mean much. But watching an addict is heartrendingly painful. I've seen addicts choose their drugs over those that they claim to love...wife, children, parents. I've seen addicts steal from those same people that are close to them and from others that they don't know. I've seen addicts risk their lives for one more taste, one more hit. I comprehend that physical and mental pain must be addressed, but drugs should not be the first choice for dealing with them. I understand wanting to escape the pains of reality or of your past and to live in a fog, but that doesn't make your life better, it makes you miss your life. Living clean isn't easy, but its what has to be done to be present and alive everyday in real life. If your life is not worth living, then its time to explore your mind and find a new direction, not to find a new pill or powder or plant. Our medical system needs to rethink pain therapy so that pain killers are not the norm for our society. On the same topic, but from another direction, marijuana needs to be openly explored by medical science for the many health, healing, and pain alleviating benefits. Some one smart should explore (and probably already has explored) how different methods of ingestion of THC (the active chemical in marijuana) truly effect the human body and how it helps (or possible hurts) it. I don't know how to solve the problem of so many addicts or users. Many different countries do different things to try to solve the “drug problem” or to stop people from using. But people like to escape their lives. Until we find another way to live, a better way, as all of mankind, the problem will continue.