Falling

I mentioned somewhere along the line that my sister and brother both told me to watch “Breaking Bad” on Netflix, as it was a great series.  I had never seen it because I don’t watch much television.  And I don’t get that station.  I watched the first two episodes and wasn’t sure I wanted to continue because I thought the message was to glamourize drug use, but they both said no, keep watching.  I did, and it is an incredible series which will be ending this summer.  I think it’s a good idea because having watched it all except for what they haven’t shown yet, I don’t think it has anywhere to go.

Anyway, I got curious about methamphetamine and started watching a National Geographic special on the drug.  Here’s what I don’t understand.  It is an upper.  Way upper, like 6 to 12 hours of high.   It makes you anxious, jittery, sometimes violent and a bunch of other things that I associate with a panic attack.   And because I need to take a bunch of horrible things for pain control, I do know firsthand what addiction is like.  In my case, it’s physical addiction only.  Getting off the methadone (not the same thing) was hell, but I am not the least bit interested in starting it again.  It never made me high.  For a while, it controlled the pain.  And that’s the major difference that people in the DEA (whose agents don’t hold medical degrees to my knowledge) don’t want you to know about.  When used for pain control, none of this stuff makes you high, including marijuana and hashish.  They control the pain, period.

It’s because we are tricated slowly up the ladder until we get some relief.  Then we stay there.  Then we come slowly down the ladder when it ceases to be effective.  It’s that tricating that keeps us from getting high.  The first time I used methadone, a very small dose I might add, I had hallucinations.  It scared the hell out of me.  I talked to my doctor, cut the dose in half, and continued to move up until I got relief.  So initially, there’s a buzz, I guess, but when you are in agony, that is not the goal.  The goal is relief.

How much of the documentary is accurate I don’t know.  The “before” and “after” pictures of meth users are daunting, but I don’t know how true those are either.  I will assume they are, rotting teeth and all.  But it makes me angry as hell that people with perfectly healthy bodies would do that to themselves.  Did I smoke weed when I was younger?  Yes, very occasionally.  Now I smoke it for a different reason and I pray to G-d every day that I not have to do so.  I would give anything not to need it.  But angry as it makes me, more than that, it scares me.

I mean, is there such little hope in our (mostly) youth that they would choose this over tackling life head on?  Has MY generation ruined it for our children with our politics. I’ve started watching Netflix’s movie “House of Cards” which is a remake of the BBC version and I kind of wonder why I’m bothering….all I have to do is go on Huffington Post or watch the news….it’s art imitating life, not the other way around.  How sad, that people feel there are so little choices why not kill themselves with drugs that they do not need, should not take.

And isn’t that the kicker?  Those that REALLY have no choice would, in almost every case, throw the demonic drugs in with the cat litter, while people who are healthy and have a choice, snort, smoke and shoot their way out of their bodies.  Well I want out of my body as well.  And I have a choice to make every day.  I can choose to cry and curse or to listen to my drumming, read and watch movies (or documentaries on drug abuse…lol).  I can call a friend and talk, or talk to G-d and ask for help.   Sometimes I get it, sometimes I don’t recognize what I get.

And sometimes, I just keep falling.