Wednesday, March 29, 2006
SMOKIN'
I had maybe smoked some 20 times when I was in my early 20's. More than likely even less. It always made me feel like I was dreaming while I was awake then, so I used it minimally. I drank, mostly beer and occasionally hard liquor. I've been drunk about a dozen times. At one time I thought it would be a good idea (like an idiot) to become an alcoholic because all of the coolest Indians I knew had been alcoholics. I decided to go on a three day drunk. I woke up in the hallway of my apartment in a puddle of my own puke. I could not even be in the same room with an open can of beer for two weeks, let alone drink one. I was a failure at alcoholism.
My father was an alcoholic. He preferred the slower suicide methods. When he drank the most heavily, it was three quarts of beer for breakfast, three quarts for lunch, and three for dinner. Sometimes one or two for a snack. A few years ago I found out from my sister, Roxanna, that her and my mom would search the garage and find hidden whiskey bottles. His death started (it took a little over two years) one evening when I was sitting watching television in my dads favorite chair, and he was asleep on the sofa, his bed for the last several years of his life as he could no longer stand sleeping with my mother. Suddenly, he sat up, and then projectile vomit of blood. I was 14. After vomitting blood all over the living room, down the hallway, and ALL OVER the bathroom, all I could muster was to get up and take a few steps into the living room where I stood for I have no idea how long. When he finally stopped puking, he walked down the hallway to his bedroom and laid on the bed and waited to die. I have no idea what happened after that other than suddenly my mom was there and screaming. She couldn't get my dad to go to the hospital. Then my sisters showed up (I was the only kid living at home, I have three sisters). I remember my sister Ferrol actually hitting my father to force him to get his body off of the bed and out to the car where they drove him to St. Vincent's Hospital. I remember somebody, I think my mother, ask if I wanted to go as they rushed my father out the door. "I'll stay here and clean up," I told her. And out the door they went and I remember that was the first steps I took since the vomitting actually started. A few days later at the hospital after much chasing down of the doctor, my mom requested that the doctor tell my father to quit drinking. He REFUSED! "Why?" my mom asked. "Because he's just another alcoholic Indian?" "Yes," the white peckerwood piece of shit with a Ph.D said, "because he's just another drunk Indian." Thus, not only starting several years of crazy life wondering when my father was going to die, but also starting a thus far life long hatred of western medicine doctors which I still carry to this day. [on a lighter note, just found a lady bug crawling around on this keyboard, so I took it outside and placed it in the wonderful flowering tree just outside this station]
Dad didn't quit drinking, and several months later at our annual white family side picnic, dad again had a blood puking session. This time, he went to OHSU, where, doctors told my mother dad had only 3 to 6 months to live (he lived about 2 and a half years). They said the arteries veins and other blood vessels around his esophagus had become paper thin and had been torn open. They would have to cauterize (sp?) them. His liver was irreversibly damaged to 5% of its original working order.
For the next few years, I would leave school before noon to come home and hang out with my dad and watch Perry Mason. We used to cheer Perry on (we had seen all the episodes already) like people do football games on TV. Somedays he wouldn't be there when I got home, and I would be fucking scared. Was he at the beach? the store? dead? dead? in the hospital? dead? driving around? visiting family or friends? dead? in the hospital?
He passed away on December 31, 1981 at around 4:30am.
Now here is the clincher. If dad was a pot smoker and didn't drink, he would still be alive and healthy and we'd be struggling to get EVERYTHING BACK TOGETHER! However, dad drank alcohol, a legal and deadly substance. Most importantly, NOBODY BUT HIS FAMILY GAVE A FUCK THAT MY DAD WAS AN ALCOHOLIC! Why? Because dad had a fucking JOB! It wasn't like he was begging on the streets for money to drink, where people fein concern and superiority over their fellow human beings who suffer from various issues that no one REALLY GIVES A FUCK ABOUT, otherwise they would do something about it.
For a couple of months this summer, I was drinking a beer every day. I was starting to worry that I may actually be heading down that path and expressed my concern to my friend, Leigh Anne, who said she would keep an eye on me and be honest should I take that path. I smoked pot everyday as well. I stopped drinking a beer a day in November after I went to a Tipi Meeting, also known as a Peyote ceremony. These ceremonies I was told were "the easy way" by people who hadn't done them. When I did it, I discovered it aint easy. It was good to sit and pray and use that medicine. That ceremony changed my life. I've been to one more since, and plan on attending more as time wears on.
When I was in my early 20's, I experimented with cocaine and crank. I never paid for the stuff myself, I always had friends who were generous with this unhealthy and occasionally deadly substance. It made me feel tense. It made me more open. It can be compared to something like drinking 3 or 4 pots of coffee in a matter of a few minutes. When my friends all moved out of area that did the stuff, I figured it was creators way of telling me to knock it off, so I did.
I've done mushrooms a couple of times. The first time I did mushrooms with my ex wife, I reverted back to the age of 5 and had flashbacks to being raped. My ex thought it was a good idea to beat the living fuck out of me in my EXTREMELY vulnerable state. She stated it was to help "bring me out of it." Instead, I had hallucinations I was a woman in 1936 being beaten to death by her husband, and she was my husband. Domestic violence is another issue that society at large doesn't really give a fuck about either, otherwise they would do something REAL about it.
Stepping aside from the use of marijuana, the wonderful creator earth mother given gift to humanity, I am taking the time to look at how the wonderful herb has helped me in my life.
I started smoking some 6 years ago. I've read "Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts," after I started smoking. I've read many books on the "Drug War." The drug war, one realizes after educating oneself, is a form of "population control." You get cheap prison slave labor. You get a populace that feels under threat because they use illegal substances for recreation or health. If you are a member of "high society," you can do all the drugs you want, illegal or otherwise, and get away with it. Ethnic groups are SPECIFICALLY targeted in order to keep them under control. CONTROL CONTROL CONTROL CONTROL. This has nothing to do with the health and safety of the people and everything to do with a government that dosen't want the privilege of extremely wealthy white men to lose even a modicum (sp?) of said privilege. This...is alleged to be "freedom."
Smoking pot gives me the feeling very similar to that of how one feels after a wonderful rousting bout of glorious sex. It is more paralell to that feeling than actually like it. That is the best comparison I can give to the effect it gives me.
Not smoking the wonderful creator earth mother given herb at the moment, I can see more clearly the benefits it has given me. It helped me survive a horrifically verbally abusive relationship where I was SCREAMED at daily by my now ex-wife, humiliated, dominated, controlled, etc. Marijuana helped me to deal with the issues that surround being a survivor of childhood rape. (great book to read, "The Courage to Heal." One of the editors is a pot smoker.)
When I started dealing with my rape, I cried for months (this was shortly after starting to smoke on a regular basis some six years ago). I'd walk down the street and start crying a hard to breathe hurting my stomache muscles cry. Marijuana carried me through that pain. I could have used legal pharmaceuticals to suppress those feelings, but marijuana helped me move through them. It helped me heal from them. If I had used pharmaceuticals, I would have health damage from their side effects and probably still be suffering greatly because they only act as suppressants and NOT AS HEALERS, which is why I refuse to use them.
In the last four months, I have gone through a lot of healing. Healing from my abusive marriages, healing from my childhood rape, healing from self-hatred, healing healing healing. I probably could have done it without the use of marijuana, peyote, and mushrooms, but I GUARANTEE you I would still be in the midst of some serious damage. Marijuana has helped me as a medicine and the ONLY damage that comes from the use of this creator-earth-mother given medicine is the punitive DAMAGES caused by the U.S. Government for making a PLANT illegal. Now, in the alleged land of freedom, my current workplace has control over my personal life. THIS, BY THE WAY, IS A VIOLATION OF MY HUMAN RIGHTS! (the right to self-determination). A violation of the law as well.
Again, nobody really gives a fuck about my health in all of this. Whoever sent that letter to my workplace did so knowing that only punitive control would be exercised or my life would be damaged by the sudden lack of income. It was an act of cruelty, because, like I said, the only damage that comes from smoking marijuana are the punitive controls given to my workplace by the U.S. government.
One last thing about alcohol. Alcohol was introduced to the Indigenous population of the Great Turtle Island (North and South America) because it is useful in our continued genocide. You know, like smallpox blankets, except not quite as effective. Genocide is a crime. Genocide was/is enacted upon the indigenous nations of the Great Turtle Island by the criminal organization known as the lethal and deadly U.S. government which is under the control of a handful of WEALTHY WHITE MALES! People tell me smoking marijuana is a crime and therefore they have to be concerned about my personal use of it. Genocide is a crime, too. But no one other than those who are survivors of and in it seem to give a shit about that UNHEALTHY crime. So my smoking pot really has little to do with the law. It would be much preferred that I drink myself to death like my father because it is unhealthy and legal. I use an herb that has no potential to kill me. Unlike alcohol, sterioids, PCP, many over the counter drugs, some perscriptions, etc., marijuana doesn't make people prone to violence. It doesn't motivate us to kill ourselves or others. Maybe that's the root, really, of why marijuana is illegal?
My father was an alcoholic. He preferred the slower suicide methods. When he drank the most heavily, it was three quarts of beer for breakfast, three quarts for lunch, and three for dinner. Sometimes one or two for a snack. A few years ago I found out from my sister, Roxanna, that her and my mom would search the garage and find hidden whiskey bottles. His death started (it took a little over two years) one evening when I was sitting watching television in my dads favorite chair, and he was asleep on the sofa, his bed for the last several years of his life as he could no longer stand sleeping with my mother. Suddenly, he sat up, and then projectile vomit of blood. I was 14. After vomitting blood all over the living room, down the hallway, and ALL OVER the bathroom, all I could muster was to get up and take a few steps into the living room where I stood for I have no idea how long. When he finally stopped puking, he walked down the hallway to his bedroom and laid on the bed and waited to die. I have no idea what happened after that other than suddenly my mom was there and screaming. She couldn't get my dad to go to the hospital. Then my sisters showed up (I was the only kid living at home, I have three sisters). I remember my sister Ferrol actually hitting my father to force him to get his body off of the bed and out to the car where they drove him to St. Vincent's Hospital. I remember somebody, I think my mother, ask if I wanted to go as they rushed my father out the door. "I'll stay here and clean up," I told her. And out the door they went and I remember that was the first steps I took since the vomitting actually started. A few days later at the hospital after much chasing down of the doctor, my mom requested that the doctor tell my father to quit drinking. He REFUSED! "Why?" my mom asked. "Because he's just another alcoholic Indian?" "Yes," the white peckerwood piece of shit with a Ph.D said, "because he's just another drunk Indian." Thus, not only starting several years of crazy life wondering when my father was going to die, but also starting a thus far life long hatred of western medicine doctors which I still carry to this day. [on a lighter note, just found a lady bug crawling around on this keyboard, so I took it outside and placed it in the wonderful flowering tree just outside this station]
Dad didn't quit drinking, and several months later at our annual white family side picnic, dad again had a blood puking session. This time, he went to OHSU, where, doctors told my mother dad had only 3 to 6 months to live (he lived about 2 and a half years). They said the arteries veins and other blood vessels around his esophagus had become paper thin and had been torn open. They would have to cauterize (sp?) them. His liver was irreversibly damaged to 5% of its original working order.
For the next few years, I would leave school before noon to come home and hang out with my dad and watch Perry Mason. We used to cheer Perry on (we had seen all the episodes already) like people do football games on TV. Somedays he wouldn't be there when I got home, and I would be fucking scared. Was he at the beach? the store? dead? dead? in the hospital? dead? driving around? visiting family or friends? dead? in the hospital?
He passed away on December 31, 1981 at around 4:30am.
Now here is the clincher. If dad was a pot smoker and didn't drink, he would still be alive and healthy and we'd be struggling to get EVERYTHING BACK TOGETHER! However, dad drank alcohol, a legal and deadly substance. Most importantly, NOBODY BUT HIS FAMILY GAVE A FUCK THAT MY DAD WAS AN ALCOHOLIC! Why? Because dad had a fucking JOB! It wasn't like he was begging on the streets for money to drink, where people fein concern and superiority over their fellow human beings who suffer from various issues that no one REALLY GIVES A FUCK ABOUT, otherwise they would do something about it.
For a couple of months this summer, I was drinking a beer every day. I was starting to worry that I may actually be heading down that path and expressed my concern to my friend, Leigh Anne, who said she would keep an eye on me and be honest should I take that path. I smoked pot everyday as well. I stopped drinking a beer a day in November after I went to a Tipi Meeting, also known as a Peyote ceremony. These ceremonies I was told were "the easy way" by people who hadn't done them. When I did it, I discovered it aint easy. It was good to sit and pray and use that medicine. That ceremony changed my life. I've been to one more since, and plan on attending more as time wears on.
When I was in my early 20's, I experimented with cocaine and crank. I never paid for the stuff myself, I always had friends who were generous with this unhealthy and occasionally deadly substance. It made me feel tense. It made me more open. It can be compared to something like drinking 3 or 4 pots of coffee in a matter of a few minutes. When my friends all moved out of area that did the stuff, I figured it was creators way of telling me to knock it off, so I did.
I've done mushrooms a couple of times. The first time I did mushrooms with my ex wife, I reverted back to the age of 5 and had flashbacks to being raped. My ex thought it was a good idea to beat the living fuck out of me in my EXTREMELY vulnerable state. She stated it was to help "bring me out of it." Instead, I had hallucinations I was a woman in 1936 being beaten to death by her husband, and she was my husband. Domestic violence is another issue that society at large doesn't really give a fuck about either, otherwise they would do something REAL about it.
Stepping aside from the use of marijuana, the wonderful creator earth mother given gift to humanity, I am taking the time to look at how the wonderful herb has helped me in my life.
I started smoking some 6 years ago. I've read "Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts," after I started smoking. I've read many books on the "Drug War." The drug war, one realizes after educating oneself, is a form of "population control." You get cheap prison slave labor. You get a populace that feels under threat because they use illegal substances for recreation or health. If you are a member of "high society," you can do all the drugs you want, illegal or otherwise, and get away with it. Ethnic groups are SPECIFICALLY targeted in order to keep them under control. CONTROL CONTROL CONTROL CONTROL. This has nothing to do with the health and safety of the people and everything to do with a government that dosen't want the privilege of extremely wealthy white men to lose even a modicum (sp?) of said privilege. This...is alleged to be "freedom."
Smoking pot gives me the feeling very similar to that of how one feels after a wonderful rousting bout of glorious sex. It is more paralell to that feeling than actually like it. That is the best comparison I can give to the effect it gives me.
Not smoking the wonderful creator earth mother given herb at the moment, I can see more clearly the benefits it has given me. It helped me survive a horrifically verbally abusive relationship where I was SCREAMED at daily by my now ex-wife, humiliated, dominated, controlled, etc. Marijuana helped me to deal with the issues that surround being a survivor of childhood rape. (great book to read, "The Courage to Heal." One of the editors is a pot smoker.)
When I started dealing with my rape, I cried for months (this was shortly after starting to smoke on a regular basis some six years ago). I'd walk down the street and start crying a hard to breathe hurting my stomache muscles cry. Marijuana carried me through that pain. I could have used legal pharmaceuticals to suppress those feelings, but marijuana helped me move through them. It helped me heal from them. If I had used pharmaceuticals, I would have health damage from their side effects and probably still be suffering greatly because they only act as suppressants and NOT AS HEALERS, which is why I refuse to use them.
In the last four months, I have gone through a lot of healing. Healing from my abusive marriages, healing from my childhood rape, healing from self-hatred, healing healing healing. I probably could have done it without the use of marijuana, peyote, and mushrooms, but I GUARANTEE you I would still be in the midst of some serious damage. Marijuana has helped me as a medicine and the ONLY damage that comes from the use of this creator-earth-mother given medicine is the punitive DAMAGES caused by the U.S. Government for making a PLANT illegal. Now, in the alleged land of freedom, my current workplace has control over my personal life. THIS, BY THE WAY, IS A VIOLATION OF MY HUMAN RIGHTS! (the right to self-determination). A violation of the law as well.
Again, nobody really gives a fuck about my health in all of this. Whoever sent that letter to my workplace did so knowing that only punitive control would be exercised or my life would be damaged by the sudden lack of income. It was an act of cruelty, because, like I said, the only damage that comes from smoking marijuana are the punitive controls given to my workplace by the U.S. government.
One last thing about alcohol. Alcohol was introduced to the Indigenous population of the Great Turtle Island (North and South America) because it is useful in our continued genocide. You know, like smallpox blankets, except not quite as effective. Genocide is a crime. Genocide was/is enacted upon the indigenous nations of the Great Turtle Island by the criminal organization known as the lethal and deadly U.S. government which is under the control of a handful of WEALTHY WHITE MALES! People tell me smoking marijuana is a crime and therefore they have to be concerned about my personal use of it. Genocide is a crime, too. But no one other than those who are survivors of and in it seem to give a shit about that UNHEALTHY crime. So my smoking pot really has little to do with the law. It would be much preferred that I drink myself to death like my father because it is unhealthy and legal. I use an herb that has no potential to kill me. Unlike alcohol, sterioids, PCP, many over the counter drugs, some perscriptions, etc., marijuana doesn't make people prone to violence. It doesn't motivate us to kill ourselves or others. Maybe that's the root, really, of why marijuana is illegal?
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