Crystal Meth -- Is it really surprising? — Page 4

yep, all ya have to do is open your mouth and put your lips on it, plumsy...

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First off, TheaterDiva, I'm thinking you didn't read my whole post. If you look at it, I was paraphrasing what was told to me by a scientific researcher who has devoted YEARS AND YEARS of her life to understanding the impact of club drugs specifically on young men who have sex with men.

Second off, I was not criticizing YOU for being a schoolmarm or taking a condescending tone. At the time I wrote it, I was thinking specifically of Ms. Rathnait, 42 year old school librarian (food addiction brought on by unhappy homelife where love was a conditional thing), and Mr. Redhotinnyc, 40 something career counselor (unhappy homelife that he's put behind him, along with a bad job, so as to focus on what is good, among which stands Light in the Piazza, like a beacon of hope).

Let's face it, one person just never understood the appeal of drugs or even drinking, so it should be the same for everybody else right? They were just raised right by badly skilled parents (somehow) and well, that puts them in a different category than those who do.

And when I talked about the folks who didn't experiment sounding like they really have no idea what they're talking about when they advocate that others don't either, I ask you to look no further than Rathnait's never-quite-funny-but-OH-how-she-tries response, "Really? I, and most people I know, missed that memo."

Nobody ever gave you ANY memos, Rath. Take it from me.

Also, TD, absolutely no offense is intended by this, but clearly you are a guy for whom the abstinence-only structure like that of a recovery program has become your life structure. And that's fine. I am very very glad you got out of the grips of crystal addiction. As you can SEE in my post, I wrote that crystal and heroin are the big ones and the BAD ones and that nobody should do them.

Plum, if I could, I would just like to finally say for once and for all that your fence jumping, "she's an adult/she's an adolescent" and your stupid eye rolling icons are working my last nerve. Just pick adolescent and STICK WITH IT.

If you think people can't POSSIBLY have an understanding of adolescence, that somehow they never passed through it themselves on the way to adulthood, that they don't UNDERSTAND human psychology, here's an adolescent word for you: WHATEVER.

What's hilarious to me is that marijuana, which has become prohibitively expensive thanks to the "war on drugs" (HEROIN is a much cheaper drug today), never gets discussed in the same breath as alcohol, which many of you coming down on me, (but especially you, Rath) seem to be able to consume with impunity (except for your poor liver) while pot, a much more benign drug, is now impossible to find, incredibly high priced, and posession of which (if caught and prosecuted) destroys lives. All the while doing nowhere NEAR the damage that alcohol does.

By the way, I'm not a pot smoker, it doesn't agree with me.

My point is that DARE is a fraud and doesn't work, that people try drugs for all sorts of different reasons, that some drugs are MUCH worse than others, and that all or nothing discussions like the one is this fricking thread lack not only nuance (I SO should not be surprised by this considering some of the people who post in this thread) but any roots in the real world and a lack of empathy for how people come to be addicted and how they get out of it.

TD, don't know where you live, but the number of beds in treatment programs is trimmed by huge amounts every year. Glad you know where you can get what you need just for the asking. Would that it were true for everybody.

And finally, I have no idea WHAT you are talking about in the Bruce Vilanch reference, but the way it springs up there in the middle of your disagreement with me about what I posted about drugs, um, I would have to guess that that's been coiled up and waiting to launch for quite some time.

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I CONTINUE TO PORTRAY YOU AS A DRINKER?

I don't portray you at all, Rathnait. And that wasn't the POINT of my post. However, your one drink does make you much more superior than drug users. Cuz it's only one. And it's legal. And you don't like the taste. (If you smoked pot, you wouldn't inhale either.) Granted, the effect even one drink has on someone is similar to several drugs, but that's DIFFERENT. Because you never did drugs.

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Because they are much less likely to do "bad" drugs if you just don't get all prohibitive on them than if you set them up as forbidden fruit. If you advise them to research and be prepared, they are much more likely to engage in HARM REDUCTION.

This is a prevention strategy which is the only one that works for all kinds of people. Abstinence based recovery programs work for about 5% of the population. That's why.

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Oh Rath, dear lonely, lonely Rath. Why couldn't YOU let TheaterDiva make his point to me about my post without piling on?

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Because I had something to say. This is a message board, and you are not the one who decides when the rest of us get to post.

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Ah yes, your fall back "cuz yer not the boss of me response."

Well, let's fall back to another of your statements. The one the other day where you said you wouldn't engage with me anymore. I'll support you completely in that. Now try to stick with something for once in your life, Rath.

And if possible, can we stop this thread from being another one of your personal backs and forths like you started with Plum a few posts back? The way you always do? I have even less interest in that with you than, well, just about anybody else on this planet.

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The shudder that just went up my spine when reading that Rath made a "PLAY with" me reference rivals anything that has hit California in the past week. Ugggggggh. And now I will move back to chatting with sentient beings.

Dgrant, one thing that young people are often aware of is that people tell them not to do things that feel good. Even though they often know full well that the people telling them not to do something are doing it themselves. I included at the end of the post where I wrote "Do what you want, kids" (and really, I was being colloquial, not chatting with seven year olds) the link to Dance Safe with straight forward information about all sorts of drugs and how to reduce harm IF you choose to do them.

As I said, I had a lot to say and not much time to say it.

There aren't many people willing to GIVE young people the straight dope, if you will. Just edicts. And programs that have been proven to not only do what they say, but to do the opposite of what they say, like the ill-advised DARE. DARE graduates are WAY more likely to experiment with drugs than their non-DARE counterparts. That should really tell people something.

Do I wish people could enjoy recreational drugs without doing themselves or anybody around them any harm (including addiction)? ABSOLUTELY. But how can that happen in a world that does not value pleasure in an uprfront way, that places anti-drug ads between beer and coffee commercials and ads for sleep medicine, and that thinks NOT giving young people information "protects them" rather than keeps them ignorant.

Need I point you to the CDC website that has been scrubbed of condom references during W's tenure? That will LIE about the long term effects of drugs in spite of scientific research that proves otherwise? That our culture has a figurehead who was a cokehead who now favors Draconian drug laws but for him, well, he made his peace with Jesus?

My whole point is to argue for REAL discussion. Not statements. And I think the strongest negative responses to what I wrote have come from The Big Statement Makers, some of whom came about their Statements through experience, (TD), and some of whom are like Rath. []

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Interestingly enough, the studies say the burgeoning use of crystal is not among "kids" but among gay men in their 30s and 40s (and 50s!), weary of the pressures of staying HIV negative or healthy (if HIV positive) and two decades of the "guilt of the survivor."

It's these adults in a second (or third) adolescence who are getting hooked on meth, eschewing the safer-sex guidelines they have clung to for 20 years and seroconverting.

Neither harm reduction nor abstinence seems to reach these men. Another prevention model is needed, one that has not yet been thought of.

In the meanwhile, gross pictures of rotting teeth and stories of my friend Steven's burst boils will have to suffice.

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Updated On: 6/22/05 at 12:06 AM

Oh, cripes. Namo, I'm 20. I don't consider myself an adult, but I've gotten past my middle school phase of perpetual angst and absolute emotional dependence on my peers. To me, your post sounded like you were lecturing on adolescence when you're far more removed from it than some of the other posters on this thread. I found that a bit strange, but it's a bit extraneous to what you're really arguing anyway.

Is abstinence-only possible? No, of course not. Every person in my age group that I know, myself included, has taken in an illegal substance at some point. I'm not smart enough to come up with any kind of superior solution except the usual abstract "teach kids responsibility," blah blah blah. But I don't think a policy of "just stay away from the hard stuff" is beneficial, either. People get hurt that way.

Namo....you are just about the most unintelligent and misguided individual I have ever seen on a message board anywhere........

my time is too valuable to waste reading anymore of your nonsense....as they say.....you are ignored

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I don't let any of my friend use drugs. I had a very close friend who used meth, among other drugs, and alcohol, and she died and it was sad.

And I've also lost another really close friend in a car accident. Her boyfriend was high on coke and crashed the car into a pond.

I don't **** with drugs.