My Feelings About Drugs

When you ingest, inhale, or inject any mind-altering drug, you are unconsciously submitting the control of your will to the drug. You will then behave out of character and possibly become violent or delusional. Some drugs control people even when they aren't high by making the user physiologically dependent upon them, punishing their bodies with pain and weakness when they miss a dose. These addicts are then forced to steal to pay for their drugs, which they now need to merely survive, instead of giving them the euphoria they once enjoyed. That is why drug habits are immoral.

So many people turn to drugs to relieve them from their feelings of hopelessness. In today's culture of quick solutions, drugs seem more and more a legitimate solution to life's problems. But they aren't. The relief is brief. If you have a spiritual, emotional, or psychological problem, you must turn to Jesus for help. Only He can give you the strength and peace you need. Only He can help you conquer all the problems that you are hiding from.

MARIJUANA

Just in case you didn't know, marijuana is the name of a plant, Cannabis sativa. The plant is dioiceous, that is, there are female and male plants. The female plant is the source of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), a resin which is a relaxant, psychedelic, and hallucinogenic drug. The resin is taken into the body mostly by inhalation (in other words, you smoke it). The sap of Cannabis sativa is loaded with resin and the resin oozes out of the flower buds of the female plant. Either the grower collects the buds and smokes them directly, or he processes the resin using alcohol to get hash oil, or he lets fungus grow on the buds to extract, purify, and possibly change the chemical structure of the THC. Called marijuana, pot, grass, weed, skunk, reefer, bhang, ganja... the drug has many forms but they all snare the user with a chemically-induced peace that is very habit forming.

If you want peace, turn to Jesus. He's the Prince of Peace.

I'm not perfect (nobody is!). I smoked pot. I liked it. I got stoned. I admit it, unlike a certain ex-president, who won't admit that he too found pleasure inhaling the fumes from a certain member of the mulberry family.

I started smoking pot almost 10 years ago. I was hanging with the partying crowd because I didn't want to stay by myself in my room back at the resort I worked at. But I won't blame peer pressure. They had the weed, but I chose to smoke it. It was simply curiosity.

I had always wondered what a marijuana high felt like. I watched enough Cheech and Chong when I was a kid that I learned weed was cool. I envied the other guys who were blissing out on the spicy rhubarb scented smoke.

So I accepted that reefer, and became a raving pothead. I looked forward to the nights before my days off work, when my friends and I would light up the green herb and encounter the peaceful, mellow feelings that THC produced in our messed up brains.

After working at the resort, I kept in contact with one friend for a few years, but the supply of marijuana in my hometown wasn't as good. It was mostly 'shake' - dried-up and often moldy cannabis leaves and a few sticks. My buddy didn't like the stuff, but shake fried my brains pretty good. I never liked hashish, which doesn't do anything for me at all (but my associate liked it).

I spent an average of $120 a month on weed, which I would smoke in 'buckets' with my friend from the resort, and later in a brass pipe I bought at a cigar shop.

One night I got into a nasty argument with my father. I got so upset that I put on my 'smoking jacket' (a brown leather trenchcoat I bought off a pusher) and walked down to the lake, where I smoked five bowlfuls of marijuana. I walked calmly down my street in the darkness to the highway. I was so stoned that it seemed to take forever to get there. I stumbled back to my house and I almost didn't make it up the hill because my legs were tired from all the walking. I was just about to go back in the house when the hallucinations started.

I listened to the owls. They were funny owls. Hoo hoo hoo HOO! I laughed at them, but then the hooting changed into a techno song. Paroxysms of laughter shook me, forced out of my wheezing, tar-laden lungs. Walking further down my street, I got a visual hallucination of a car's headlights behind me casting the shadows of five people walking behind me. Looking back, I saw nothing, but looking to the sides I kept seeing the lights and shadows. Then the shadows stood up beside me and walked with me down the rest of the road. I talked to the shadows. They didn't talk back.

I continued smoking weed on and off for 8 years straight. It never occurred to me then that smoking drugs was morally wrong. After all, I need to spend $120 a month on tranquilizers anyways to treat my illness. Marijuana was just another medicine to me. I felt the government owed me the right to smoke marijuana so I could be a happy and productive citizen (any of you who have schizophrenia or anything like that know how disabling mental illness can be).

In college, drugs were even more accessible. I found a buddy in my class that smoked marijuana, and we would go out into the woods together to light up and zone out. Typical of all stoners, we'd listen to the birds for about an hour, then take a walk, and finally satisfy the 'munchies' with a trip to the college cafeteria.

Well, those happy days were numbered. I got into an argument with my friend while we were stoned. He was never relaxed when he was stoned, and that day he was insisting that I work for him after finishing school. I told him that I had other plans. Then he insisted that I go to the bar with him, but I had a church obligation that day. I told him no, that I had a service to go to, and he coerced me to follow him to the bar. I sneaked into the bathroom and got away from him. On my way to church, I threw my weed pipe into the garbage at the mall. That was the end of my pot-smoking era.

The point of my story is that weed doesn't cure mental problems or schoolwork problems, and it doesn't always make a person nicer to be around. The entire 'peace, have a joint' thing is a farce. Weed isn't the potent life-changing force people credit it to be.

If I wanted to be a successful Christian, I had to deny myself for Christ. Believe me, marijuana was one of hardest things to give up, but I managed to do it. I denied myself and brought closer to God.

Don't be stupid like me and hide from your problems behind a fruity-flavored fog. Just because you're too high to see your problems when you're stoned doesn't mean they've gone away. You'll have spent $10 on a big joint, soiled your lungs, shrunk your testicles, and fried your brains for nothing.

Smoking weed looks cool, and the temptation to light up is severe. I know.  I still have cravings for some high-quality skunk. But I resist those cravings. There are better things to do for recreation than smoke ganja. I know, everyone says that, but its true. If you get filled with the Holy Spirit, He'll keep you busy working for Him, and you'll enjoy it.

ALCOHOL

Alcohol is the most dangerous drug you can try, primarily because many drunks are idiots and think that they can drive a vehicle skillfully when sloshed.

Alcohol will change your personality for the worse. Many people have volatile tempers when they are drunk. After drinking for several years, an alcoholic's personality becomes surly and careless.

Alcohol will cause cirrhosis of the liver, a disease where the liver cells which detoxify the blood die and are replaced by fatty tissue.

Overdosing on alcohol is easier than you think. All you need to do is drink about one shot every 5 minutes and you will vomit repeatedly. I made that mistake once at a party. I drank a full bottle (the private-investigator-sized ones, not the little ones attached to the caps) of Crown Royal Canadian Whiskey and a full bottle of Bacardi White Rum, plus a little of that stuff with the elephant on the label.

Good thing I'm a happy drunk. I spent the first half of the night trying to drag race my brother down the street. Luckily the vehicles were electronic (we were playing a video game), or I would have crashed gleefully into a streetlight over and over again. I spent the next half of the night barfing, hugging people and saying I loved them, barfing, sleeping, and getting up to barf.

After that experience, I developed an allergy to alcohol and I've never been able to drink more than a shot glass of it ever again. Maybe that's good, because I must embarrass myself when I'm intoxicated.

EPILOGUE

So there you have it. I've bravely told you my drug stories in public. They are not there to encourage you to experiment with drugs, nor are they there for you to use as ammunition to assail my good character. I've communicated this with you so that either you will stay away from drugs, or if you are a user, you will see that I am not just another goody-two-shoes denouncing something I've never experienced.

Unless your doctor prescribes them, don't take them.

And even then, get a second opinion if what he prescribes could be bad for you.

Drugs really are bad.

Love you. God Bless.

Molatar Seth Pyrargent.
Dragon, Evangelist, Ranger.

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