You mean he has other songs besides "Werewolves in London"? Who knew?
don't needle me, MAE. warren zevon is amazing. actually, I saw him in a tiny venue once, and he also turned up at the local AA meeting so my step-mother got his autograph for me. he had many, many years of sobriety, but when he found out he had terminal cancer, he said, fuck it, I may as well get drunk. I am torn between admiration for his dedication to getting wasted and sadness that he and his family had to live through his dying months with an active alcoholic.
rightly so!! it's an excellent song. I just took the remark to imply it was the only good one, or something. I'll just wait around here for sifu to tell me my taste in music sucks.
It's interesting that the persona in so many of his songs is basically a young George W. Bush, especially as he was a friend of Hunter Thompson in the mid 70s and therefore may well have had to dodge the cow-eyed dullard cokemonkey at parties.
I saw him consistently on the downward slide part of his career, so that each time I saw him it was at a smaller venue than the one before -- like Spinal Tap. Part of Zevon's appeal was that he would make jokes about it. In one concert, he joked about how his career was in shambles and he had to go into heroin rehab. He said "So I need you to all go out and buy my new album. My career really needs the shot in the arm... Maybe that wasn't the best choice of words."
3: I pretty much can't stand "Werewolves in London", which is a shame, not because I wished I liked that song, but because that song is the one song of his that tends to get played on classic rock stations, and so I assumed the rest of his songs would be similar to that one, as a result I was never tempted to check out anything else by him . . .
2: . . . which is indeed a shame, because it looks like I'd like his other stuff much more, and so I'll probably check it out. Seriously, until now I only knew him as the guy who wrote "Werewolves" and whose records were in the bin after the Yes records I was much more interested in back when record stores actually had records. I had no idea he was dead, much less that he'd died of cancer in a state of alcoholic relapse. Anyhow, thanks for letting me know that there's much more to the guy than that song.
I am honestly not sure I've ever heard Zevon, although if his more popular songs get any play at all on classic rock FM radio then I'm sure I have without knowing what I was listening to. However, since alameida has, as far as I've been able to tell from musical discussions over the years, taste in music that is more similar to my own (i.e., more objectively better) than anyone else on the planet, I'm going to buy these two albums now.
Don't they play "Lawyers, Guns, and Money" constantly on classic rock stations? I'm pretty sure I heard that with some frequency, and both "Excitable Boy" and "Play It All Night Long" occasionally.
the roster of musicians playing backup on the album "warren zevon" is amazing: jackson browne; glenn frey and don henley (not in the process of sucking at the time), bonnie raitt, like I said, lindsay buckingham and stevie nicks. I can only imagine the quantity of drugs ingested in that studio.
Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner was always my favourite. Because it was true. Also underrated, Gorilla You're a Desperado.
8: I WIN THE INTERNETS! thanks urple, and enjoy.
afaik lawyers, guns and money is not a classic rock radio standard, but maybe someone in the classic rock department got a little excited one time. I have only ever heard "werewolves of london" on the air.
Zevon is to singer-songwriters what Tom Robbins is to novelists. His fans span a wide range of superficially incompatible types of people. Both the crass and the erudite.
Both the cynical and the sentimental.
11: yes! "bad luck streak in dancing school" has some great tracks. I have also hurled myself against the wall at the louvre museum only to find out that it ain't that pretty at all. I did it inside an end of the row bathroom stall, so has not to seem crazy.
12: I have heard "Werewolves of London," "LG&M," and "Excitable Boy" on standard-issue radio.
I was always nervous about lighting the gas ring as a kid. My solution was to light the match first, let its flame steady and then turn on the gas.
I did it inside an end of the row bathroom stall, so has not to seem crazy.
Didn't that rather defeat the purpose?
Also, Warren's glasses there are very much back in.
Put me down on the list of fans. (Although I havent listened to every album tons.)
I love Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner, LG &M, and Excitable Boy.
Zevon is nice, very tasteful. But what about guilty pleasures? Robin Trower, Nazareth, Ricky Lee Jones, Todd Rundgren, Zapp. I have the same smell association with the last Led Zep album, whose tracks I still listen to sometimes. One of the older guys, like 17 or something, had an apartment a block from the place we worked, almost no furniture but a huge record collection.
I started getting stoned all the time when I got a job at 11. My 10-year old doesn't even know that lunch money shakedowns are possible, gets wide-eyed when he confides about the kids who shoplift. Distrusts authority outside of the ability to build excellent buildings. I'd worry that he's too fragile, but he shows some heart when it counts.
re: 8 and 12
I thought it was a proven fact that Apo had the best taste in music?
22: No, it's that apo's music tastes best.
I'm finding it quite weird having a just-turned 15 year old, who, whilst she is one of the most independent and least mollycoddled 15 year olds I know, doesn't seem to have done as much stupid shit as I had by 15. And I was a 'good' child, I'm thinking about anything too outrageous, just getting drunk on cheap cider and spending untold Sunday afternoons in the park with "10 B&H and a packet of Polos, please". Possibly she does all her stupid shit on the internet.
Whether or not apo likes Chali 2na is left as an exercise for the reader.
re: 21
I like Rundgren, and don't even really place him in the guilty pleasure section. Guy wrote a fuckload of great songs and had a really soulful voice for a nerdy white bloke. He has the same problem as Prince, though. Really prolific, plays every instrument really well, and has really shitty quality control. The 'Runt' through to 'Todd' album run is pretty great, though.
Also, seems like Lady Gaga ripped off his clothing and eye makeup:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsezr0qiFIc
25: That is odd, isn't it -- both the not-being-exactly-sure-what-they're-getting-up-to, and not being sure what level of 'bad behavior' is to be expected and not to worry about. My twelve-year-old is just now going out and about on her own in the afternoons, so could be getting up to shenanigans, but I don't think she is.
Also, re: 21 [And tangential mention of Led Zeppelin]
I was listening to a load of Sabbath, and Led Zeppelin on the commute last week, and jesus, by comparison with BS, LZ are such an over-rated band. Even the 'Mothership' hits package has, arguably, half a dozen or so killers. The rest is filler.
re: 25 and 29
Yeah. The few teenagers I know now seem both quite mature for their age, and yet really backward in other ways compared to my own experiences. We started drinking (when we could nick beer or wine) at about 12, and were in pubs from 14 or so. By 15 out drinking most weekend. That doesn't seem the norm so much any more among 'nice' kids.
"Nice" kids have so much more to lose now. I think the type of kid who takes risks at all is a specific psychological profile.
re: 33
"Nice" kids have so much more to lose now.
I don't think that's the case here.
I was listening to some faculty members talk about the extensive drug use at Heebie U and I thought it was the dumbest, most naive discussion ever. I really think that drug use hear is much lower than most colleges currently or over the past 50 years. Drug use qua drug use is not something to get a hernia over.
yeah, they'll turn 17 eventually, and then where will I be? it's really not very useful to tell people they have a strong genetic propensity to addiction. I mean, I knew that shit in my bones and where did it get me? and would I really say, "don't try any drugs, ever"? that would be stupid; drugs are fun.
I can tell them about my experiences, but the moral could be construed as "you can use heroin all the time, and graduate summa cum laude from an ivy! just quit right before you get hep c." but maybe not being horribly abused will have a good impact on their personalities as grown people? that's the fucking plan.
they have nursery suppers with their yaya (nanny) and only eat with us at the big table sometimes; they have a cute chinese girl from beijing come tutor them twice a week; everything is orderly and clean and happens at the right time; they get baths and then show up to me all delicious-smelling, with the tracks of the comb in their hair; we read books together. I don't know that it's entirely a good idea to recreate on them my fantasy enid blyton childhood, but we're in pretty deep already. fuck it. I'm all in. let's go bird-watching and then have sandwiches made from fresh bread and butter and potted meat, shall we? food always tastes so much better when it is eaten out-of-doors! and finish with tinned pineapples! fuck knowing how to use a lighter. fuck knowing how to shoot a gun. extra double fuck "knowing how to please a man." NARNIA 4 LIFE.
The lines I'm taking are that certain behavior is out of bounds, and I want to hear about the kids in school who do it; casual drugs at 10 or 11 are a bad idea, suggest problems at home for the kids that are doing it already. I am explaining to my son now that these are not cool kids more grown up than anyone else, though they will try to act that way.
The other thing that I believe is important is to maintain enough respect for my judgement so that he will feel safe in telling me about real problems, without having parent freakout be part of the problem. No way to tell if that works, unfortunately.
I still do not know what I'll do when he is 14 or 15, old enough for recreational use that a responsible parent would forbid. I guess set bounds so that I can see signs of trouble early, watch for matches or seeds in clothes pockets. The thing with drugs or booze and adolescence is that poor impulse control and bad planning make a slide into addiction pretty easy.
my stepfather suggested a number of times that if me and my friends were going to trip, it should be in a safe space, and he said it was totally fine for us all to dose up and he would babysit us. sometimes I think he was not the most self-aware person ever.
Neither myself or Jammies have a family history of addiction, so this isn't intended as generalizable. Nor do I have any parenting experience with kids who can wipe their own asses, so this is not tried and true.
But I plan on treating drugs and drug use just like sex or any other adult topics: here is what it means to do it responsibly. Here is what happens when people do it irresponsibly. Here are some typical gray situations where people sometimes get into trouble.
I like the south park approach to when it's ok to have sex, too.
Stan: But Chef, when is the right age for us to start having sex?
Chef: It's very simple, children. The right time to start having sex is 17.
Kyle: Seventeen?
Chef: Seventeen.
Sheila: So you mean 17 as long as you're in love?
Chef: Nope, just 17.
Gerald: But, what if you're not ready at 17?
Chef: Seventeen! You're ready.
Somewhere the kids of Unfoggeders have their own blog where they discuss how naive we are and how much crazy stuff they are doing.
(Back on thread): For My Next Trick I'll Need a Volunteer..., which I didn't know, is awesome.
30: I was recently relistening to a lot of Sabbath for the first time in a long while and while I sort of vaguely knew they were an influence on Joy Division, this time I was struck by how many of their songs wouldn't sound out of place at all on a Joy Division album, or vice versa, if you just switched out the singers.
here is what it means to do it responsibly. Here is what happens when people do it irresponsibly.
You should use a frying pan and egg to really bring the message home.
Here is what it means to do it deliciously.
You know, I just had a short vacation, Roy
Spent it getting a root canal
"Oh, how'd you like it?"
Well, it ain't that pretty at all
So I'm going to hurl myself against the wall
'Cause I'd rather feel bad than not feel anything at all
I've been to Paris
And it ain't that pretty at all
I've been to Rome
Guess what?
I'd like to go back to Paris someday
and visit the Louvre Museum
Get a good running start and hurl myself at the wall
Going to hurl myself against the wall
I worry more about alcohol than drugs. I got hammered more than would have been a good idea in high school and college (and occasionally after), and in retrospect, while anything sexual I did under the influence was my own bad idea, I certainly wasn't cautious or safe. I'm planning to give them both a talk about how if you're stumbling or nauseated, UR DOIN IT RONG; don't get impaired anyplace you're not safe; what does safe mean (multiple people around all of whom you trust) and so on.
My reaction to the scent of the heathen devil weed is almost always "People inhale that stuff on purpose? It smells terrible."
I am not very hip.
41 - so true. Although I do know where my 15 and 13 year olds' tumblrs are (doh, they both used their real first names and so googling tumblr name thing-they're-most-likely-to-be-talking-about found them really easily).
48: Weird. A part of my brain lights up whenever a few molecules of the stuff pass by my nose. Tobacco, on the other hand, is foul.
48 - oh god, if I walk past someone in the street and get a whiff of it, my reaction is "oooooooh, that would be nice".
50, 51: Go back to Woodstock, hippies.
You know what else is odd? I'm finding I'm more prudish about entertainment than I thought I was going to be. Not so much that it bothers me if they're exposed to sexual innuendo or whatever, but I kind of rule out great swaths of TV and movies as 'too adult for them to be interested in', when I was looking at similar stuff at the same age.
I just showed them the Monty Python TV show -- it's on Netflix streaming and the Ministry of Silly Walks came up in conversation, and I thought it would amuse them. It did, they were enthralled, but (a) I'd forgotten that basically all the jokes were about men in drag, effeminate gay men, or prostitutes and (b) they completely failed to understand why men in drag were funny ("Um, back in the 70's, people were really uptight about homosexuality and about anyone doing anything gender-noncomformist, so it was funny to talk about it, kinda... Oh, the British are just like that.")
My small nephew, having been subjected in utero to series 1 of The Wire and immediately post birth to series 2-4, is regularly sung to sleep by his father with "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner". It's too early yet to see what the consequences will be.
||
Suppose I want to read overly detailed legal analyses of whether Chris Paul, the Rockets, or the Lakers can successfully sue the NBA. Where on the internet am I likely to be able to find that?
|>
47: The first time I really drank alcohol (I'd had part of a beer and a glass of wine previously) was at a party of a room of good friends sophomore year of college. I picked someone whose judgement I trusted and who had more experience drinking and every time she had a drink I had the same drink. The result was getting just the right amount of drunk and having a good time. I'd happily recommend that strategy to anyone.
I'm planning to give them both a talk about how if you're stumbling or nauseated, UR DOIN IT RONG; don't get impaired anyplace you're not safe; what does safe mean (multiple people around all of whom you trust) and so on.
I like this. I also want to throw in there something like "the goal is not to get as drunk as possible. The goal is to maintain a light-medium buzz over the evening, where you're more sociable and talkative and you enjoy everyone's company a little extra. Here's the quantities involved in the former vs. the latter."
"If you're feeling weird, stop drinking, drink water, and eat something. You don't have to go home or stop having fun, but eat."
56: This only works if you're well-matched for body-weight and prior drinking habits (and natural tolerance). Not any more, but someone trying to match me drink for drink in high-school/college would have hurt themselves badly unless they were either quite heavy or as far out on the tolerance bellcurve as I was.
It's also crucial to know that all "official" literature uses completely idiotic definitions of a "drink." Accurately keeping track of how much alcohol you've actually had is important: don't let nonprofessionals mix your drinks, pour the hard liquor before the ice or the mixers, etc. If you don't know the strength of what you're drinking (pre made mixed drinks) err on the less drinking end.
59: Choosing someone smaller than me and female was definitely part of that plan. Certainly I could have gotten in trouble if she had way higher tolerance from practice, but that seemed unlikely to me.
(multiple people around all of whom you trust)
I think "multiple people around whom you trust" is good enough.
On the same note, be suspicious of sweet, refreshing-tasting drinks. Vodka and fruit juice will fuck you up -- brown liquor tastes like you're drinking something, so you tend not to lose track quite so easily.
re: 43
Yeah, there's a deep melancholy and a total absence of swagger about their songs -- none of their songs are about how they are going sex you up, or squeeze their fucking lemon, or any such shit -- which make them really different from a lot of other 70s rock bands. I expect that's why they've resonated so much with bands that aren't stereotypical rock or metal. Iommi's riff writing is so good for a period that they have riffs that he just throws away [outros, middle-8s or whatever] that other rock bands would have based an entire career on.
62: True. I can think of two situations in college where I was very drunk and some guy was hitting on me disturbingly, and both were fine because I was in my co-op with a couple of dozen people in yelling distance who were on my side. You don't need to trust everyone, but you do need to trust at least a significant percentage (party where you only know the one or two people you came with? Stay fairly sober.)
But I plan on treating drugs and drug use just like sex or any other adult topics: here is what it means to do it responsibly.
How many illegal drugs make your list of drugs that teenagers are capable of using responsibly?
re: 59
Yeah. I have average alcohol tolerance now, but when I was in my teens I could out drink all my peers.* We'd go to parties or clubs, and by the end of the night they'd be throwing up, or asleep, and I'd be talking to girls in the kitchen none the worse for wear, having matched them drink for drink.
* this _still_ bites me on the arse. I still think I should be able to drink X pints and get up for work feeling fresh in the morning, when in fact I've been a gibbering idiot the night before, and the next morning I feel like death would be a release.
"the goal is not to get as drunk as possible. The goal is to maintain a light-medium buzz over the evening, where you're more sociable and talkative and you enjoy everyone's company a little extra.
The trouble can be that once you achieve that buzz, another drink, and then another and another, starts sounding increasingly awesome and appealing due to impaired judgment and inhibition. Next thing you know, you're in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, heading west . . .
68: That was me -- mopping up the party after everyone else had passed out. I'd get drunk, but I'd stabilize at 'stupidly exuberant but still fairly physically coordinated and awake'. Now I'm three drinks to sleepy.
How many illegal drugs make your list of drugs that teenagers are capable of using responsibly?
Good question. It's incredibly easy to get into sexual situations that are out of hand on ecstasy. What constitutes responsible use is pretty drug-specific. It's likely that there will be drugs I've never tried by the time it comes up.
56, 61: "if you're at a party, find someone smaller than you and female who's drinking alcohol, and watch her closely all evening" might not be the best advice in all circumstances.
I still think I should be able to drink X pints and get up for work feeling fresh in the morning
Yes. I was about 30 when I realized that there were certain things I couldn't do on days when I had to hit work the next day.
Choosing someone smaller than me and female was definitely part of that plan.
Did the end of the plan involve a bucket with some lotion?
re: 73
I'm 40 in about 3 months, and I still make that mistake.
74: if I remember that film, the point was to choose someone the same size as you, and female.
73, 75: I made that exact mistake at a Die Antwoord concert not too long ago.
71: but, is it possible for a teenager to huff paint responsibly? Is it possible for a teenager to use meth responsibly? Is it possible for a teenager to use heroin responsibly? Is it possible for a teenager to use cocaine responsibly? Is it possible for a teenager to use LSD responsibly? Maybe there could be reasonable differences of opinion on some of these questions. I don't know.
What I was trying to get at is whether what you were really saying is: "there are certain relatively benign illicit drugs that I wouldn't really mind you using (here's the list), but you have to be intelligent enough to do it in a way that won't put you in dangerous situations or get you into legal trouble."
75: Me also, but now I'm not making mistakes out of ignorance.
78: Huffing paint is the worst.
There is probably a list. Nothing addictive. Some things should not be done frequently. Your paraphrasing at the end of 78 is basically right.
I made that exact mistake at a Die Antwoord concert not too long ago.
Over a year ago!
Does anyone here think their parents gave THEM good advice on these topics? I never really got any advice since I never broke any rules as a kid.
re: 82
Sure. Re: drinking/smoking with my parents, yeah.
I think I got decent advice. Not enough on alcohol. But my parents successfully kept me from ever trying a cigarrette, and it was very specifically due to what they said.
Cryptic ned and I were the same person through high school.
No. I got implicit approval of underage drinking, that probably would have been explicit if I'd asked (well, it was explicit in that I could sip a little Sambuca or brandy with my parents, but I wouldn't have had a beer or a glass of wine at home). But no discussion at all of other drugs or sex. Dr. Oops got the sex talk when she went to college ("I think you know the values we've raised you with. If you're going to do something we wouldn't approve of, please keep it from us.") I didn't even get that.
If you're going to do something we wouldn't approve of, please keep it from us.
I'm going to borrow that in a few years. Thanks.
Huffing paint is the worst.
Not quite.
re: 86
Yeah. My parents knew I was drinking (from about 13) as the police came to the house once. I'd done nothing, a friend's parents has phoned the police on him when they smelled alcohol and he looked a bit drunk, and he'd grassed me up. As soon as I was going to the pub they took the view that I could do what I wanted but if bad things happened, tough shit.* But there was good advice about staying safe when out, watching how much I drank, and so on.
Drugs, there was the occasional joint around the house (hippy parents, etc), but I didn't start smoking it at home until I was about 17. The only thing I remember is scorn for my joint-rolling skills. But there was good advice re: speed, LDS, heroin, etc. Both at an 'avoid that shit' level re: heroin, and also more concrete practical advice.
Generally, there was practical advice about staying safe and out of trouble, but little or no attempt to forbid me from doing things.*
* this was the general attitude about most things.
But there was good advice re: speed, LDS, heroin, etc.
"Stay off the speed, stay off the smack, and keep clear of those Mormons, young ttaM."
Gosh. At some point in high school a couple of my cousins who lived nearby invited me to go to a movie with them, I told my mom what I was doing, etc. Once we were out of they house, they quickly pulled over to a local known hangout spot (a dirt road stub), and pulled out a case of cheap beer and packs of cigarettes, which had been the plan all along, and we stayed there for about the duration of a movie. I'm mostly flabbergasted in retrospect that they thought I knew that that was the plan, but it was shockingly Not What I Did and awkward.
re: 90
I think Mormons were to be played with, like a cat would play with a mouse.
91: I used to tell my dad we were going fishing. He made jokes that assumed, correctly, we were really just going to drink beer by the river.
I do remember my Dad bursting into my room, and my mates [who didn't know him] scrabbling to hide beer and spliffs.
[Picks up my beer, drinks.]
[Takes joint from my hand, inhales]
"Do you know Monty Python is on the telly?"
It's kind of fantastic that 91 starts with "Gosh".
Dr. Oops got the sex talk when she went to college ("I think you know the values we've raised you with. If you're going to do something we wouldn't approve of, please keep it from us.")
I'm not even sure I really know what this quote would mean in the context of a sex talk, unless it was coming from a conservative/religious family, which yours wasn't. Don't call and tell mom and dad if you had a fun time at the frat house orgy?
I for one scorn your Mormon-rolling skills, ttaM.
I didn't smoke pot until almost the end of my senior year of high school. I drank in high school, but not really that much in the scheme of things. On the other hand, I used to get in a ton of trouble for staying out super late playing role-playing games in a friend's basement. I'm fairly sure that my mom thought that I was out drinking and doing drugs, which is why she got so mad. God only knows that would have been a better excuse for the shittiness of my grades than "oh, well, I spend all my time dicking around with computers and playing Cyberpunk 2020".
I used to tell my dad we were going fishing. He made jokes that assumed, correctly, we were really just going to drink beer by the river.
Well, to be fair, that's 98% of fishing.
98: But did your player character drink and do drugs?
100: certainly not, no. He was too busy building robots.
Funnily enough, the first time I didn't come home my Mum was furious. At the time I thought she was making a big fuss about nothing. I was 16, I was at a party, ffs. In retrospect it doesn't seem quite so unreasonable.
96: My parents were politically liberal, but astonishingly uptight about pretty much everything but drinking. They're the youngest pre-Boomers. Non-alcohol drugs are things that normal people don't interact with (oh, they knew pot-smokers and tried it once, but it's not a people-like-us thing) and premarital sex is not mentioned. Post-marital sex is also not mentioned. And by 'not mentioned' I don't mean we don't discuss sexual positions, I mean nothing that implies the existence of a sexual relationship is mentioned, except in the sense that, e.g., childbearing implies sex must have happened sometime.
Given that we literally never talked about it at all, I'm not actually sure what their moral beliefs were about sex, other than 'do not communicate in any way that you're having it.'
96: Also, that quote wasn't in the context of a sex talk, it was the entire sex talk. We think it was a sex talk, but we could be wrong.
104: They were probably really talking about wearing white after Labor Day.
My family's extended relationship with drugs can be summed up by saying "X is fun but it hurt my sinuses/lungs/made me cough/gave me a headache/made me fat/made my stomach hurt." In other words, we're the type (of Jew?) that just doesn't have the composition to abuse anything.
103: That's pretty much my family also. Except my mom is uptight about drinking.
Given that we literally never talked about it at all, I'm not actually sure what their moral beliefs were about sex, other than 'do not communicate in any way that you're having it.'
So, I guess the correct response to "I think you know the values we've raised you with" would have been, "I'm not actually sure that I do, unless the only important value is 'do not communicate in any way that I'm having sex'."
This was 12 people in one small room, no following was necessary. Also, hosts often offer to pour other people drinks when they go to pour themself a drink. Anyway, obviously wouldn't work at all parties. But I think the general moral of the way you learn to do things reasonably is by watching other people do things reasonably.
Same party one of my other good friends with slightly more drinking experience, but still not much, ended up projective vomitting all over his room. So I still stand by my successful strategy.
That is the not mentioning it part. Moral beliefs on sex were never stated but Catholicism made that unnecessary.
My parents didn't give me any advice on sex/drugs/smoking/alcohol etc. My dad made my brother and I promise never to buy a motorbike, and he also wouldn't let us read "Kinflicks". That's the extent of the banning, and I guess there was just generally a "be sensible" message coming across. I remember some point during university when my mum seemed to be worried about my drug use, and I basically told her, look, you raised me well, you're going to have to trust me not to do anything idiotic. I doubt that was much reassurance, but at the time I thought I was being very mature!
84 - heebs, didn't your parents pay you never to have a cigarette?
Oh, 104 is explanatory. I wouldn't have guessed it was a sex talk, but obivously I don't know your family.
84 - heebs, didn't your parents pay you never to have a cigarette?
Nope, that's someone else.
My mom said "I've always loved the smell of a freshly lit cigarette or pipe, and I love to fidget, and I'm always worried about my weight, so I knew if I ever tried a cigarette I'd love it. And then I'd have to eventually quit, and that would be really hard and permanent. So I never tried one."
For whatever reason, that resonated incredibly well with me and I took it as my own stance, too.
I don't know your family.
It's a challenging process. Forty years in, I'm not dead sure I do.
113: That's why I never tried cocaine. I would *love* cocaine.
so I knew if I ever tried a cigarette I'd love it.
She's right. They're great.
115: I dunno. It doesn't really live up to the hype, in funness or in dangerousness.
The thread has moved on but I have strong opinions (positive) about Warren Zevon, so here are a couple links:
Awesome performance of "Boom Boom Mancini" which I tried to convince Stanley to post a while back.
(If you don't know the song, here's a clip of him performing it on Letterman eight years earlier which is an interesting contrast in styles).
I can recommend the post-humous collection of demos. "Empty Hearted Town" is one of my favorite Zevon songs, and the collection as a whole does a good job of demonstrating his range as a songwriter and I think comes across well in it.
I the VH1 documentary about his final album was interesting. Nothing unexpected but I thought it did a good job of showing the tension between the ways in which having a project and goal to work on helped keep him from giving in to illness but, at the same time, it also took his energy and attention away from his loved ones -- that makes it sound depressing, which it isn't, but it was thought provoking and watching somebody deal with their own mortality is never simple. Though it is very respectful of his privacy and mostly allows him to present himself, and to make his decision about what he wants to reveal.
From a couple of codeine experiences mentioned here, I'm never never never trying anything that could be described as a opiate recreationally. Doped up on codeine is the best I've ever felt in my life. My mom had a terrible kidney infection about a decade ago, where she was in really awful pain, and said the same -- that the pain was almost worth it for the morphine.
115: I think the danger level is incredibly individual. I've never tried coke -- never sought it out and no one ever offered me any -- but from gossip, it doesn't sound all that dangerous to most people. But if you happen to be one of the people who really likes it, you've got a problem.
I also want to throw in there something like "the goal is not to get as drunk as possible.
I literally did not realize this until I was about 25. (And after my first few in-retrospect-quite-embarrassing parties in a professional context.) Before then, that actually was my goal. Or at least, that was my goal in high school, full stop. In college, the goal shifted to becoming as drunk as possible without puking, which was a very difficult line to walk successfully (and one on which I often failed). For the record, that's also not the correct goal.
113: That's why I never tried cocaine. I would *love* cocaine.
In my experience, it's a lot of fun but it hurts my sinuses.
I am way more conservative about drugs and alcohol than my parents -- which is notable since they're really pretty conservative (particularly for being folkies who came of age in the late sixties), and I'm just absurdly tightly-wound.
84 - heebs, didn't your parents pay you never to have a cigarette?
Nope, that's someone else.
Was that anyone here? Did I read it in a book or dream it and think it was real?
It rings a vague bell -- I do think it's a story from here.
I never really got any advice since I never broke any rules as a kid.
Me too, Cryptic Ned and Eggplant. Of course, the overarching family rule was "Get straight A's and no one will give you any trouble for anything." My sister understood that better than I did, and maintained straight A's while partying. I kept high grades while being sqeaky clean, so I didn't get the best out of that situation.
I was going to say that there weren't other rules, but my Mom used to say "No AIDS, no babies." as we left the house, which we had to repeat back to her. Not a terrible rule for teens in the late 80's.
124: unless we read the same book (possible) or had the same dream (unlikely), it was someone here.
And here I thought we were organizing a meetup.
Both Zevon and Sabbath are, in their way, outsider music whereas Zeppelin is insider music -- the first two help with you being onthe outside in high school, the latter suggest that if you're an insider, it's glorious. Or something like that. Actually I like but don't love WZ, because of the irony and distance. I genuinely love Sabbath.
I spent about a year and a half of high school stoned on pot every day. In retrospect it wasn't that bad at all for academics but sucked for emotional/social development. Ditto college, but replace "stoned on pot" with "drunk.". I don't have the foggiest clue about how to talk to my kid about this or when I will; right now I have some vague hope that I can either bolster her confidence levels or control the social environment enough so that history doesn't repeat itself.
Mom used to say "No AIDS, no babies."
Was she inciting mass murder or just warning you about condoms?
I was at a party (or rather, there was a party at my house) where a truly legendarily heavy drinker (he later stopped, happily, and is now an english professor) tried acid for the first time. "OH MAN," he yelled, a couple of hours in, "THIS STUFF IS AWESOME: I CAN JUST KEEP DRINKING FOREVER!"
While this is true, and I know people who leveraged that to great effect (a couple I knew in SF would drop half a tab each, put on tuxes, and go out to the piano bar to sing torch songs and down martinis all night with no external sign of intoxication), it did not work so well for this guy. At some point near the end of the night, he discovered the plastic vodka bottle that the house residents had discovered after a previous party, half filled of something oddly colored and smelling of ammonia. Curious about what would happen -- and about what the mystery liquid might be -- the housemates sealed the bottle with wax and put it on top of the TV. And then this guy drank it. And then he puked on the stairs. And then he slipped in his own puke. And broke the stairs.
At the same time, I've also had a really deep visceral fear of the harder drugs my whole life that's proven useful. Not really sure where that comes from.
Actually I like but don't love WZ, because of the irony and distance.
For what it's worth, I feel this way about many of Zevon's songs, but there's a substantial minority that I truly love.
Also, as someone who was squeaky clean, and blessed with nerd friends who were also squeaky clean but still down to go explore LA and do stuff, it seems entirely possible to me that LB and asilon's kids are out having a good time without alcohol or recreational drugs. (I am counting rigorously safe sex as part of "squeaky clean", although I mean that for older teens.)
just warning you about condoms?
Telling us the standards for having sex, I think. She started that mantra without knowing whether we were having sex, and before we were. Didn't save me from having emotionally dangerous sex, but I think she figured that I/we could work our way back from anything that didn't re-direct my life (or end it).
134: Just as long as she wasn't asking you to kill people with AIDS and babies.
Reading 135, I thought "using AIDS to kill people I can understand, but how do you use babies to kill people? Throw them?"
My favorite version of Warren Zevon's great death song, "Don't Let Us Get Sick".
I'm not sure about the balance between keeping your kids away from drugs and teaching them to use drugs responsibly. Wine is a significant part of my life -- I collect it and drink it regularly with dinner -- so I'm thinking the message has to be about responsible use. This is tricky especially when it comes to things like pot though. It's a tricky drug, mild and even potentially beneficial in some ways but if you're a pothead type you can definitely develop psychological dependence and use basically continuously. That would be very bad as a teenager especially.
re: 119
Heh. I'm the opposite. Codeine and morphine are the only two opiates I've had and I hate both. I'll just about take a codeine containing pain killer if I'm in really really bad pain, but I don't seem predisposed to that family of things.
Alcohol and joints are the only things I enjoy much, and I don't do the latter any more and haven't for years. Most other things except heroin I've tried, but not liked enough to make a huge effort to repeat.
Actually pot is even trickier -- I have met potheads where I thought it helped them to be stoned most of the time. It sort of seemed to make them happier and less tense without noticeably affecting their performance on everyday tasks. But really heavy use is a nervous-making thing to see.
Pot would have to go on the "responsible use is possible" list I think, though.
I think it's a lot easier to pull back out of being a pothead than most other forms of drug abuse. I mean, I'm sure you can wreck your life with pot, you can wreck your life with anything if you try hard enough, but people I know who had a severe period of being a heavy heavy potsmoker just sort of stopped, and were mostly fine afterwards. You can lose a couple of years that way, but not in a wildly damaging way.
140: Agreed, at least for me. Nicotine was much more difficult. It was not as easy for the X but still not bad.
149 is probably right, but heavy pot use is no joke and IMO and E can be really destructive for a lot of people (in addition to making them really boring). Not as bad as being a methhead or a hardcore alcoholic does not mean "not bad."
Also, people are often self-medicating when they overuse pot and other drugs that aren't instantly addictive. Obviously you can't prevent your kids from having problems that they may self-medicate for, but you can reduce the stigma of better ways of getting help.
re: heavy pot use
I've a good few friends who are -- to all intents and purposes -- dumb confused arseholes, through a decade or two of getting wasted every day. Most of my teenage mates who, like me, were heavy smokers at the time gradually drifted away, but the few that didn't, the results aren't great.
I'd like to smoke pot a little more often. But I've never actually purchased or possessed, and I'm not very comfortable with the idea of buying pot in a city on the east coast. It's not like being in California where your friends uncle grows it on a commune in Mendicino. My impression is that the supply chains are longer, and I really don't want to be supporting the drug wars in Mexico.
But I do like a little pot and a little alcohol in combination better than either alone.
141: It took me years on the patch and gum before I could actually stop the nicotine. I stopped smoking fairly easily with the patch.
Eating grains is really the best thing for your health.
143: This, certainly. Potheads I've known have generally been, IMO, self-medicating for something: situational stress mostly (a friend spent the last eighteen-months of a bad marriage stoned all the time), but sometimes depression.
I have a bar of pot-infused chocolate in my freezer that was a gift from about six months ago. I'm not much of a pot person, but I'd like to try it - I'm just never sure what would be a good opportunity. I assume not a night before a workday, much like the drinking issues mentioned previously?
Nah, pot doesn't leave a hangover. You'd be fine the next day. Enjoy.
I've never been much of a potsmoker, but I don't think a hangover is much to worry about. I think the worry is more dosage; eat a piece and then give it a half hour or so before you have any more. You don't want to eat the whole thing and then find out in retrospect it was way too much.
I am just the most knowledgeable person ever.
I'm also convinced that pot makes people stupider (or at least less sharp) than all but the most extreme alcoholism. I realize that medical science isn't very supportive about the truth of this claim, but it just feels so obviously true to my experience.
Pot can leave you a little mindless the next day. And food can be deceptively strong. But... go for it! It'll be fun.
I taught my son to drink sensibly while in HS but he said that in college the local culture was stupid binge drinking and he wouldn't have been part of the fun if he had not honored it.
My drug speech was "Everyone I've ever known who used opiates or amphetamines had serious problems, up to and including death". It seemed to be effective. I was pretty laissez-faire, but in the case of two of his friends who were dabbling with speed I made my opinion known, and one of them listened.
To me LSD is potentially high payoff / high risk, but on the positive side. Marijuana is benign for someone whpo's at all active but can lead to torpor. Cocaine and designer drugs have never been a factor in my world.
155: Again, anecdotally, this is right but it gets better. Someone who's a heavy smoker is a distractible nitwit while they're in the heavy-smoking period, but they seem to come all the way back after they stop. But you're right that a heavy drinker (before serious brain damage) is mostly as sharp as ever if you catch them sober, while a pothead isn't necessarily.
he said that in college the local culture was stupid binge drinking and he wouldn't have been part of the fun if he had not honored it.
I identify with this statement.
he said that in college the local culture was stupid binge drinking and he wouldn't have been part of the fun if he had not honored it.
I agree with 159, but more earnestly, I would love to have had a parent to whom I felt like I could say something like this.
re: 155
The few friends who didn't start cutting back after a few years are all, as I said, idiots. Credulous, self-obsessed, and dumb. They weren't before. Smoking moderate amounts seems to be the sort of thing lots of people do quite happily, for decades, but getting _seriously_ stoned, daily, for years? Yeah.
but getting _seriously_ stoned, daily, for years?
Dunno. I would argue quite strongly that you can back out of that simply by stopping smoking pot all day for a while.
I have a friend who's been smoking pot moderately every day, more or less, since 1960. He's been active, productive, and politically very engaged the whole time. He's got arthritis type problems and some respiratory problems slowing him down at age 70, but he provides support for his wife who's a local antiglobalist leader.
Back when people were unaware (1967 or so) my MD father tried to get me to take time-release dexadrine / barbiturate for depression, which he had also prescribed for himself. I'd already had a bad meth experience by then so I wasn't interested.
... I mean, which is not to imply that I'm not currently credulous, self-obsessed and dumb.
161: Yeah, I'd think that'd do it.
163: My point was going to be that he's a naturally restless, active guy who can't stand to be idle. When he retired he started building wooden canoes and boats for fun. Someone who's more into staring at the wall would be more likely to have problems.
I mean, one thing that I think can happen if you smoke pot every day is that you don't learn much of anything, you don't really go anywhere, and you get vaguely paranoid. That can give you a pretty limited worldview even after you stop smoking as much. But I don't think it has much to do with any, like, neurophysiological effects. You just haven't spent your time very productively.
It's probably hard to isolate the effects of heavy marijuana use anecdotally. As has been mentioned, heavy, long-term users likely have other problems, and are likely using other substances.
162: All my experience here is secondhand, but I want to both kind of agree with you, but say that if you're smoking yourself stupid for decades, even if you stop smoking you're still a person who's been stupid for decades. You might recover on some level, but you still spent the last fifteen years being a stupid person, and at some point that sticks.
People I know who seem fine after a period of too-heavy smoking lost a year or two, not decades.
you don't learn much of anything, you don't really go anywhere, and you get vaguely paranoid.
You're talking about me, aren't you. You bastard.
And like Emerson says, there are people who can be habitual long-term smokers and not get noticeably stupid.
166 has definitely been my experience as well, though at this point I've been out of touch for years with the old friends who stayed on the wake and bake plan.
The heaviest pot smoker I've ever known still smokes a fair bit of pot, and is a lawyer with kids now. And very smart, if not terribly motivated.
I'm trying to think of all the really heavy-duty potheads that I've known, and what they're up to now. Mostly they're quite successful, although some of them have ended up with problems with other drugs. None of them have been rendered credulous, self-obsessed, or dumb. I certainly know people with those qualities, some of whom smoke or smoked a ton of pot, but I wouldn't blame the pot. I think they just seemed more interesting to me when I was higher.
I dunno. A good friend lost basically a decade of his life smoking himself exactly as stupid as you describe, and a few years ago I had honestly written him off as basically permanently dumbed by it. I'd also mostly lost interest in him, because it was all so boring. But he quit about 2 years ago and is now more or less exactly the same intelligent and interesting person I remember from before he went off into the fog.
Most people get more boring with age, moderate success/failure, and realistic thinking.
A dude with whom I was friendly in high school has been using meth daily for years and years and years. He looks shockingly good. Mentally he is non compos. (It's pretty sad -- he's a smart guy, but his brain is pretty much shot now, his parents won't see him, and his done significant bits of time in various California prisons.)
Yeah meth you really want to ease up on after a year or two.
How damaging and how addictive is ecstasy?
A PhD / MD student I know researched the literature and found that the long-term medical effects of using heroin of high quality and known strength are not very serious -- a moderately serious lung disease after several decades. Also, as tolerance increases the lethal dose stays the same while the effective dose rises, so you have to be more careful as the years go on.
180: plausibly it's a big damaging if you do a shitload, but you really have to do a shitload, and even then it's hard to know how much people recover from the long-term effects. It's not addictive.
How damaging and how addictive is ecstasy?
I somehow believe it's pretty damaging but not very addictive - ie okay for occasional use but no more.
From observing a sibling & his stoner friends, I think the key with pot is that you can basically spend most of every day stoned and still muddle along in a way that you really can't spend every day drunk. They would spend most of the day in school stoned, which you can't really pull of with alcohol.
The other issue, I think, is that if you do the stoned-all-the-time thing during adolescence, you miss out on a lot of important growing up, because the inevitable unpleasant bits can be kept at bay behind a haze of ganga.
The results of this are pretty evident in adulthood.
Keith Richards' new book: Responsible Heroin Use and Secrets of Aging.
185.2 I buy. I'm pretty sure that none of the people I know smoked a lot in high school. I could see that having a much greater effect (there is sort of an arrested development phenomenon, where you're basically the same age when you stop smoking pot that you were when you started).
Actually, hangovers on ecstasy were super awful for me. Like an emotional hangover, where the world is just hideous and sad, on top of a headache, for two days.
If it gets strong enough, heroin can be a chauffer.
173 to Ttam's point, though I agree with 166 as well. In general if you're naturally engaged, active, and psychologically well put together you'll have fewer problems with any drug, I guess, but there are certainly some folks who seemed that way to me at the start and for whom I'm pretty sure pot played a role in fucking up. I also know folks (like me) who are basically fine after stopping after a few years of heavy use. Even that time wasn't cost-free, though.
181: Yeah, I thought that was pretty well established. If you don't hurt yourself acquiring the heroin, you don't catch anything injecting it, you don't acutely overdose and you don't lose track of self-maintenance because you're high, heroin's not all that damaging to your health. Now, that's a lot of hurdles to clear, but people have done it.
I somehow believe it's pretty damaging but not very addictive
It really doesn't register on the addictiveness scale, because if you try to do it three days in a row, you basically won't feel anything at all by the third day that you wouldn't feel by drinking coffee. That is, it really self-enforces down time by requiring decent breaks between sessions to feel much of its effect. I've never experienced the next-day/third-day blues that others report, but I may just be wired better than average for the MDMA experience.
I've never tried MDMA, but I really have issues with Jerry Lewis even in the movies with Dean Martin.
I know/knew one person who died and two who were in intensive care from what was regarded as normal use of MDMA. I know/knew nobody who died or became serious sick (unless being pathologically boring counts) from heroin, although I also know/knew nobody who mainlined.
re: 162
Oh yeah, I didn't mean some sort of 'teh neurons are allz gone' thing. Just that the process, while ongoing, can have these effects. I'm sure if the person I have particularly in mind stopped getting wasted quite so constantly, he wouldn't manifest the symptoms of being constantly wasted.
And reading more through the thread, yeah, re: the arrested development thing. And I'm talking about pretty serious toking, not just a joint or two daily after dinner, and a bit of a heavy session on a Friday night, or whatever.
It really doesn't register on the addictiveness scale, because if you try to do it three days in a row, you basically won't feel anything at all by the third day that you wouldn't feel by drinking coffee.
LSD is supposedly the same, so that the guy who did LSD every day for a month or a year wasn't really doing anything. As I understand, an acid trip depletes some sort of neurotransmitter or blocker or receptor (vague enough?) which is required in order to have the LSD experience. So you have to recharge for a bit.
It's really hard to get addicted to a hallucinogen because of that effect. Yet some people do eat an amazing amount of the stuff.
If modern science could invent a form of LSD that only lasted about three hours, that would be like the greatest invention ever. Dropping acid was a lot of fun, for a while, but by about the 6th hour it got pretty wearing, especially knowing that it wasn't going to end anytime soon.
202 gets it right. Who has that kind of energy? Shrooms were a little better.
DMT (from yage) was supposed to be the quicky LSD. The Wiki is surprisingly helpful.
Only dropped acid once, but boy that was fun.
Yage tea is legal in the state of Oregon in a specific religious context. Almost nowhere else, though.
204: I've never been able to get any. There are a lot of shorter acting, weird hallucinogens (like the mostly legal salvia).
I've never been able to get any.
208: Not badly enough to trust my lab skills.
it's really not very useful to tell people they have a strong genetic propensity to addiction. I mean, I knew that shit in my bones and where did it get me? and would I really say, "don't try any drugs, ever"? that would be stupid;
I've never tried any illegal drugs for that exact reason and I'm pretty sure it was the right move. I drink but that's it. The post surgical shot of morphine I had years ago felt so damn good that I'm positive opiates are not safe for me to try recreationally. Ditto tobacco and weed. They smell just too delicious. Coffee and booze will have to do.
A dude with whom I was friendly in high school has been using meth daily for years and years and years. He looks shockingly good.
Sometimes the ugly is under the clothing. A not uncommon response to "why the hell haven't you had this felony warrant resolved?" is "the jail won't take me" along with lifting a shirt, pant leg, whatever to show some huge open meaty MRSA infected wound or abscess.
I'm another year into this job and so far this is still my advice regarding drugs.
along with lifting a shirt, pant leg, whatever to show some huge open meaty MRSA infected wound or abscess.
GSwift, not that I'm soliciting a felony or anything, but do you know anyone on the street who could make something like this happen to David Stern?
202, 203: IME the difference between horse doctor's doses of shrooms and moderate doses of LSD is negligible except for duration. And the taste. And the shroom-hunter hippies are cooler than the chemistry lab hippies.
Hallucinogens seem to attract, in uneven proportions, the imaginative, the unimaginative and the just-like-to-get-high. Other drugs seem to have less diverse customer bases, but, and I know that my information is incomplete and faulty, the opiates in particular seem to attract people who are unhappy and miserable and then make them more so.
Speaking of drugs, since when do goddamned ceramic dental fillings have to be goddamned replaced goddamned regularly? It's not like I'm chewing gravel and rusty nails. Anymore.
Halford, you're a lawyer and a Laker's fan... Satisfy my curiosity about whether there's any likelihood of a lawsuit here.
The link in 212 is extremely wise. it might even get through, after a fashion.
218: After a fashion make-over? Say one involving an egg and a frying pan???
217 -- my first guess would be that it's difficult unless the Lakers go the full antitrust route, which would be a full declaration of war and probably prohibited for other contractual reasons. But I'd need to dig into the documents, many of which are nonpublic, to give a reasonable answer. I have a line out to a knowledgeable friend with that question.
There's also some rumblings that CP3 might be being punished for his role in the labor negotiations, which sounds like it would be illegal if true.
Never had anybody steal my shit. All the coolest, kindest people I know did drugs. Felonies, sure, well, definitely don't get caught for those.
218: The druggie description suffers from a selection bias.
Also, people are often self-medicating when they overuse pot and other drugs that aren't instantly addictive.
I think when it comes to pot at least self-medication may get a bad name. Medicine would be unable to accept it for social reasons even if it were effective anyway. Side-effects are significant but so are the side-effects for clinical anti-depressants, some of which are really strong. A major side effect of pot -- getting you high -- actually has useful anti-depressant effects, in that it makes some people happier. Also, I have seen pot improve focus ability for people with ADD. It seems incredible but it really does seem to work for some people. There's a lot of variance in how people respond to that stuff.
I think limited use of psychedelics is actively beneficial for well-balanced adults and everyone should take them once as part of a well rounded education. The Good Friday and Johns Hopkins experiments are useful here.
I recall reading an essay in some atrocious right-wing student fishwrap arguing that the use of illegal drugs is immoral because the happiness that comes from being high is neither earned nor, if I recall the writer's terminology correctly, "worthy of being earned."
224: I think you're missing the point. The point is that when someone appears to be abusing pot, there's often a larger underlying problem, and if you treat the drug abuse as though it's the cause of their problems, you're not going to get anywhere.
I have seen pot improve focus ability for people with ADD. It seems incredible but it really does seem to work for some people.
I've definitely seen it help people really really look at their hand.
The druggie description suffers from a selection bias.
I can't stress enough that addicts are not to be trusted. Generally we're talking crack, heroin, and meth here. Doubtless when people bail out of jail they're telling their buddies how the cop leaned on them to rat them out and he totally was strong and silent. The truth is that sitting in the back of a cop car facing withdrawal in jail it's par for the course to break down into a gibbering mess and start desperately throwing any info at the cop you can. Friends, relatives, no one's safe. The other big source of easy tips is vindictive exes.
I'm skeptical that it can help someone with ADD. There may be people who, as a result of habitual use, have better concentration when they're high than when they a coming down.
I can't stress enough that addicts are not to be trusted.
Stories one recalls about one's longtime-painkiller-addicted grandparent make this clear.
152, 153: The two times I tried it were the 3rd and 4th worst hangover of my life. And I was just hanging out with friends, watching movies, not doing anything particularly crazy. So YMMV.
The worst hangover was after the first night of the big end-of-year party my freshman year of college. I was shaking and seeing things and had trouble keeping down water the next day. Fortunately, one of my more habitually drunk peers had some good advice to offer, and helped me avoid requiring a trip to the hospital.
The 2nd worst was when I ate a late dinner with some friends, drank a bottle of wine pretty much on my own plus at least one martini, got about 3 hours of sleep, and then had to fly across the country the next day.
Tobacco gives me hangovers too, but at least I enjoy the nicotine.
Well, if you replace "druggie" with "crack, heroin, or meth addict" then your statement works a lot better. I still suspect you don't arrest an unbiased sample of those, either.
I still suspect you don't arrest an unbiased sample of those, either.
I see it in people from all walks of life. Seen it in family as well as on the job. When an addict is using they're not the same person. Trust them at your peril.
You see people from all walks of life who are interacting with a cop.
235: I believe this was also the message of Panic at Needle Park.
236: This. Once you're doing things that involve the police, that's a very select group of drug users.
Is there anyone with an experience of serious crack/cocaine/heroin/meth/painkiller/alcoholics who says "oh yeah totally trust them." Come on, serious addiction makes you kind of definitionally untrustworthy.
235: Everybody I know who has dealt with addiction to the point of joining a 12-step group (and I know a *lot* of people who have) would agree with this.
If you wouldn't tell lies to get a drug, you probably aren't addicted to it.
Sure -- someone who's seriously addicted to anything is going to be a mess. But that doesn't speak to whether whatever it is can be used responsibly. If 'druggies' is understood to mean only addicts rather than all users, I have no argument with gswift.
I'm addicted to my Thursday night TV shows!
Anybody whose family has a serious history of psychotic type illnesses should warn their kids that marijuana is much more dangerous for them and could precipitate psychosis. I think it's fine for a ton of people. But people with a vulnerability to psychosis should probably avoid it.
I'd totally sell heebie down the river for another season of Community.
I'm willing to sign on to the statement "Don't trust an addict: they will steal your drugs.".
Of course all drug use is not the same. But as a general rule there's drugs and forms of drugs that the odds don't favor casual or recreational use. Weed, LSD, shrooms, X, etc., meh. Powdered coke, less meh, but still fairly common as recreation if you've got money.
But once syringes in any form come out, watch out. Ditto to crystal meth, heroin, crack. Yes, someone's going to pop up with their story of their friend the recreational heroin user. Fantastic. But once certain drugs come into play the smart thing to do is get the fuck out of there and be wary of those people using them.
It probably is overinclusive and unfair to some, but I'd say "don't trust anyone who you know uses crack, meth, heroin, or cocaine on a regular basis" seems like a pretty reasonable heuristic to me.
248: Agreed. Those definitely aren't paleo.
I'm off to go inject some jolly holiday cheer!
Ding! Dang! Dong! goes the trolley!
Try the decaffienated cocaine, heebie.
You drove her to try crystal meth, heroin, and crack, just to prove gswift wrong. You monsters!
I'm skeptical that it can help someone with ADD. There may be people who, as a result of habitual use, have better concentration when they're high than when they a coming down.
Have you ever had a period in your life when you smoked pot semi-regularly? (Maybe good stuff more than once a week?). If so, think about how you felt coming down from the high and also the next morning (the 'hangover'). With me, I felt like I was no longer high but everything seemed slower and I felt more calm. I could totally see this helpful with ADD. It eventually became my favorite aspect of pot, the high got boring.
I'm willing to sign on to 247.2, oddly enough.
Who you really have to watch out for is the nog addicts.
I felt like I was no longer high but everything seemed slower and I felt more calm.
Everything seemed about 2x slower than normal, but I moved about 4x slower than normal.
Nog! (And what is it with people and their non-alcoholic pseudo-nogs? Don't they know they're debasing the very name?)
244:Now she tells me. Snap. I discovered this morning that I no longer have any desire to even talk about drugs or getting high.
||
*Spoiler*
Diablo Cody!! makes yet another anti-abortion movie
Movies with jerks/losers protagonists who don't improve:Rachel Getting Married, Ototo, Sherrybaby, Down to the Bone...others upon request. Naked. Yes, with female leads, this ain't new. Someone said Young Adult was for hipsters only. I buy that.
I like movies about losers. There but for fortune, and Life's good not fair, sometimes you can't fix it and make it all better, and Soren K's double bass note of love. Stuff like that.
|>
260: I'm willing to endorse that too. It doesn't seem that much has really changed in the 50 years I've been following what's going on with mind-altering stuff except the escalation in firepower and prison populations.
Warren Zevon was a horrible person, BTW. Have we covered that? I know I'm 240 comments late with this.
http://www.archive.org/download/wz1978-05-13.fm.102161.sbeok.flac16/wz1978-05-13d1t06_vbr.mp3
I have heard "Werewolves of London," "LG&M," and "Excitable Boy" on standard-issue radio.
Um, yeah, now that I've had a chance to check youtube, so have I. In the case of "Werewolves of London," probably a thousand times. All good.
I'm not sure I'd heard the French Inhaler song in the OP before, though, and it's great.
This thread needs a troll.
So what, your 22-yr-old falls off K-2 or gets killed by guerrillas at that clinic in the Congo, and you, whew, at least she wasn't doing cocaine.
What is the Romantic anyway, and is it something to be stomped burned and buried?
The Romantic is Self. Destruction.
And only the young and old understand why it is the best. Classicism and conformism are self-enhancement, grasping square conservative 3 bd 2b 2 car 2.3 degrees of 2.3 children.
So are some kinds of self-destruction better than others, like in service to the vaderland others community high ideals?
Well, that's what the classicists want you to believe.
It's a lie. By your self, for your self, get rid of your self and achieve satori. Or second-best, a fucking rush.
Try the decaffienated cocaine, heebie.
Oh this is so timely. M/tch, mashing together your Die Antwoord hangover with your addiction to Community, you should totally get tickets to go see Childish Gambino with us.
April the 5th. It's a Thursday.
It may be the Thursday before Geebie Family Day, so you'd get to see us on multiple occasions, should your schedule permit.
With what example do we instruct our children?
What would Byron do?
Or what would Ward Cleaver do?
Great! Well, I'm so glad we could arrange this.
I've seen some crazy reactions to huffing.
We got a call of an erratic driver who did a couple hit and run traffic accidents who was being followed by the caller. I find the guy stopped in his vehicle in the middle of a residential street. As I drive past to swing in behind his car he stares me down and flips me off with both hands. Not a promising start.
My backup isn't there yet but I don't want him driving around again maybe hurting someone in another accident so I approach his door and ask him to step out. Just gives the mad dog stare and after I open the driver door he jumps out and comes straight at me swinging. I avoid the first swing and boot this guy square in the chest which backs him up a bit. Dude balls up his fists and I kick him in the midsection a second time, backing him up again.
We're in the middle of the street and his car rolled off onto a front lawn into a tree because it's still in drive. Dude is still eager for the fight. I step into this guy and hit him with a right hand so hard that it takes him clean off of his feet and puts him on his back. I move in and as I'm yanking him over onto his belly he comes up and tries to grab my legs. I end up pounding the hell out of him until the other unit gets there. Still took some wrestling even with two of us just to get his hands behind his back.
Tox screen basically blank. But it's totally normal to keep canned air in your cupholder, right?
We're in the middle of the street and his car rolled off onto a front lawn into a tree because it's still in drive. Dude is still eager for the fight.... Posted by: Teddy Roosevelt
Man, who knew being police commissioner of New York City in 1895 was full of such tense situations?
Also, I am deeply impressed by your planning skillz, heebie. I mean, it's hardly gangsta to already know what you'll be doing on a specific night in April 2012, but then again I guess it's kind of criminalmastermind, so it's all good.
Also, back on the topic of Black Sabbath, and awesomeness, I've been trying to find a Poor Man post on them on the Wayback Machine but am having no luck.
Does anyone else remember the post I'm referring to (basically The Editors talk about how BS's main point of pride is playing slower than anybody else, and if you try making fun of them for that, they'll play even slower just to piss you off, or something like that, but hilarious and awesome because it's written by The Editors)? And can anyone find it on the Wayback Machine, or anywhere else? I'm generally a decent searcher of fucking archives, but I don't have much experience with the WBM and am not getting anywhere so far.
284 - I assume the Editors wrote that before listening to Dopesmoker (although possibly not before smoking dope).
281: I've seen one take a few hits from an aerosol whipped cream can he grabbed in the supermarket. Messy. I don't think his pulmomologist would approve but this guy's body language was pure aggression and no one wanted any part of trying to stop him.
247.2: Yep, that's about the size of it.
259: I've certainly seen plenty of anecdotal evidence for this. The two fellows I know whose use of mota most resembles "addiction" both have some real problems functioning when they're not getting high. One of them was absolutely, 123% ADD. Like, to a hilarious degree. Weed was the only thing that slowed his brain down enough to function well.
On the bus today, a fellow behind me was talking to his dealer on the phone, and the dealer told him they were holding "mangoes". Pace Urban Dictionary, this could refer to a specific strain of BC bud or, more likely around here I would think, something resembling that but with a less storied provenance. Never heard it as drug slang before though. Interesting.
OT: Found bwo Yggles:
Patent laws a-coming to medicine.
Halford v. the sensible world, FIGHT!
Also, back on the topic of Black Sabbath, and awesomeness
I'm kind of embarrassed to admit that it's only within the past couple of weeks that I've finally heard "War Pigs" for the first time. And yes, it's awesome.
288: I'm not a patent lawyer and don't know that area, but am happy to agree that the extension of patent rights to medical treatment decisions seems nuts. [although, patent law has already come to "medicine" and has been there for 200 years] Patent and copyright and trademark are very different (something often lost on Yglesias, but that's another story). Sorry for not fighting!
|| Somehow, the game is on the internet. Tied at the end of the first quarter, gorgeous winter night.|>
290: Largely an overreaction to my classic-rock phase in high school/college, I guess. This is more embarrassing than finally discovering Michelle Shocked, isn't it?
286: The stuff in the whipped cream is much safer* and has medical uses (dental) when not mixed with dairy products. The solvent in paint and the like is pure poison.
*not that it is safe snorted from the can directly. People have died doing that, but maybe only with the restaurant-sized dispensers.
as you all know, I favor decriminalizing everything. there would be more heroin addicts, and they would be annoying, but there would be fewer alcoholics, because many of the people who become alcoholics now do so merely because it's legal and easy to find. there would be a zillion percent fewer people in jail (hi black americans 18-25!), people wouldn't be fighting over corners like they really do in real life, not merely on the wire. gswift could be chasing people around who drive impaired, sure, but he could spend the rest of his time pursuing assault charges or actually ever trying to find some shit that got stolen, activities the cops don't really have the time or money for now.
you don't know any high-functioning heroin addicts because those people don't tell you what they're up to. I've known quite a few. is it likely to get you in the end? yes. do most people who use heroin recreationally, say on weekends for a time as a young person, become junkies? actually, no. when I was in my 20s all my circle of friends did drugs with me because otherwise they couldn't really hang out with me so why not (I was an asshole, obviously). many of them were using 4 nights a week for a year or more. very few of them ended up getting fucked hard. only one went to jail. only 2 are dead.
also people, you should try coke just one time, it's great, don't listen to sifu. no, well, crack is great. the first time I ever smoked it I thought, "oh fucking A I see what some people are talking about here!" likewise mainlining coke is great (when tempered with heroin which is, plus ecstasy, as you know, my chemical formula for happiness.)
people shouldn't do drugs all the time because they'll become boring assholes, but you know who's a bunch of lying, cheating, thieving, boring, violent assholes? alcoholics, that's who. I've seen more people do more evil, stupid, fucked up shit drunk than on any other substance. could be because so many people are drinking; could be that alcohol is a uniquely terrible drug. if someone came to our planet from mars it would honestly be hard to explain why teaching your kids to drink responsibly seems reasonable but teaching your kids to use heroin responsibly seems self-evidently delusional and insane. really.
my dad has been getting stoned 8-12 times a day since 1967; I don't think that has had a great effect on him, because he's so paranoid. otoh he might well have become schizophrenic by this time otherwise, so maybe it's good on balance. ain't like he gets out there and bothers people. if every alcoholic in the world turned into a heavy stoner, crime rates would plummet.
291: Ah, alas. I thought this was potent fodder for the blog anyway, but we'll see if anyone takes it up. This is the problem with transitioning from lurkerism: I'm here because I love reading everyone's comments, not because I feel the need to comment.
Anyway, say more about the differences between patent and copyright and trademark, and how there are differences between these as applies to licensing processes.
This is drugs, not patent law. You want room 12A, just along the corridor.
say more about the differences between patent and copyright and trademark
I'm on the way out the door, but very briefly, generally, and incompletely, patents protect an invention i.e., a process that you can use in many different ways to do useful things. Copyright protects only a particular expression, generally an artistic expression like a completed novel or something that can be closely analogized to it. Put another way, a patent is a property right in "how to do something"; a copyright is a right exclusively to limit copying, display, or distribution of a finished product.
This has big differences in some areas. For example, software patents seem often to be bad ideas [so it is argued], because there are property rights imposed in "how to do" things that people do ordinarily and all the time more or less as a natural result of being a software engineer. But if there was no copyright protection for software, you could literally just take someone's finished software product, make a digital copy of it, and distribute it for free. So lots of people don't like software patents at all, but very few people (Trapnel might be one) think that there should be no copyright in software, even if there's a lot of disagreement about what the scope and duration of those rights should be.
295.4 is also totally correct.
l'esprit de l'escalier: A long time ago, when Vern0n B3llecourt died, I was arguing with people online who were trashing him because he'd allegedly sold LSD and weed and maybe other stuff for awhile back in the 1980s. I don't think I got to respond that blaming Vernon for drug use in the Native community was like me blaming the clerk at S0uth Lyndal3 Liquors for my dad's alcoholism.
the thing is, if you're the right kind of person you can get addicted to anything. I see people addicted to tramadol here and I'm like, motherfucker, you don't even get high off that shit? where's your nickel in it, srsly? people who are willing even to try hard drugs are self-selected for risk-taking and a really profound desire to get obliterated, so it's no wonder things often turn out badly. but the idea that everyone should be able to drink in public while taking acid is for wacky hippies is nonsensical. 1960s era scare stories aside, people who are tripping most often have the bad experience of...tripping for longer than they wanted. that's as bad as it gets. if we got out some rational utilitarian calculus, booze would be in there with coke. the feeling you get when you have had 2 glasses of (good!) champagne in quick succession, but no more...? you've already tried coke, people! people chase that high into the grave.
natilo: sure, everybody hates their dealer (a la clash song "hateful"), but everybody hates the landlord, too. somebody's gotta sell the remy martin and soda pop, somebody's got to sell crack, somebody needs to collect the rent check. god forbid it should be me, but there it is. (actually I am sort of a landlord now for the people renting my gdad's house while we pray for it to sell. but they're friends of my aunts AND too rich to feel sorry for.$
Actually, it's my dealer's brother that I can't stand. The dealer himself is okay.
many of them were using 4 nights a week for a year or more. very few of them ended up getting fucked hard. only one went to jail. only 2 are dead
Only? I'm no drug warrior but following the rule of 247.2 people's answer to those questions is often "0".
295.3: Thank God I never tried crack. Leaners and/or primos were more than enough. Interesting experience for two or three years but honestly my life could have done just fine without it.
Yes, alcohol is a "legit" drug mostly by social convention. On the other hand, it's also the most damaging drug ever mostly by the ubiquity of that social convention. I would not prefer a planetful of baseheads or even heroin addicts on the whole, though if you put a gun to my head I'd prefer the latter to the former.
(Also, mainlining cocaine killed a disproportionate number of my friends who tried it, so purely anecdatally: don't mainline cocaine, kids.)
if every alcoholic in the world turned into a heavy stoner, crime rates would plummet.
There's pretty good evidence pot substitutes for alcohol use. This recent paper presents a very strong case that legalizing marijuana reduces drunk driving fatalities.
if every alcoholic in the world turned into a heavy stoner, crime rates would plummet.
There's pretty good evidence pot substitutes for alcohol use. This recent paper presents a very strong case that legalizing marijuana reduces drunk driving fatalities.
I only knew one person who died from using heroin. Well, "knew"; she died in the house I had recently moved out of. So there you go.
very few people (Trapnel might be one) think that there should be no copyright in software
Count me in, yo. And I say this despite the fact that I worked in the software industry for years. Bill Gates's worst idea, and that's saying something.
Now, I'm not saying there shouldn't be some kind of mechanism for people to be paid for working on software. But it never will effectively be -- and shouldn't be -- copyright.
OK, on reflection, "only" 2 dead is not the greatest. but don't you all know someone killed in a drunk driving accident? I sure as hell know 2 I can think of offhand and I bet there would be more if I thought harder.
don't you all know someone killed in a drunk driving accident
No.
There was the one girl who OD'd on heroin, and then there was the guy who threw himself in front of a bus a few weeks after he dropped acid and (it seems, but we'll never know) had some kind of a breakdown related to realizing he was gay.
Everybody else lived, thus far.
311: don't you all know someone killed in a drunk driving accident?
More than one someone, and several people who died mixing alcohol and prescription drugs. But the proportion of people who died or met horrific fates on crack or heroin (or generally by the needle) is way, way higher.
(Not that alcoholism is any picnic.)
... I was just thinking earlier today about the guy I knew who had liver failure in I guess his late thirties. I lost track of him; I wonder how he's held up. He certainly failed quite dramatically to stop drinking after that happened.
I know more people who have died due to drunk driving crashes than ODing, by far.
Man I just have not known enough people who died to hang in this conversation. I keep coming up with people I merely heard about. What I get for growing up someplace walkable.
315: Not uncommon. I used to see guys with metastatic lung cancer tottering out to smoke at the hospital where my mom worked.
For that matter, I have a friend who was diagnosed with pancreatitis several years ago, which theoretically should have cut off all consumption of red meat and alcohol, but not so much. His concession these days is that he (mostly) only does three shots a night when at the bar and drinks a glass of water periodically during the proceeds. It's mostly me pushing these concessions, such as they are, so I'm torn between thinking I'm a shitty enabler and thinking about what-all would happen if I wasn't there. I'm leaning toward the former and hang out less with him now as a result, but who knows. (He's a million times more restrained than his dad was at the same age, granted, but that's really not saying very much even with the word "million" involved.)
It's kind of hard to know, sometimes, how much responsibility a specific drug has in someone's death. I mean, the bassist in a punk band that I used to smoke dope with: when he jumped off a bridge during a period of mainlining cocaine (which I know he was), was it just the cocaine that killed him? Was it something else, and if so, what weight did the something else have? There are any number of deaths in my cohort in the past four to five years of which I could ask the same kinds of questions, including one guy (a known user, but of what and in what proportions I can't be 100% sure) who killed himself, somehow, with a helium tank.
I don't know that many dd deaths. But I know zero people who have ODed, so.
317: Walkable places are often death. My city's most infamous drug-death locale, the Cecil: totally walkable.
It's surprisingly easy to kill yourself with helium.
Don't... make your voice sound stupid, kids! It's not worth it!
320: I... good try, I guess?
Nobody died from drunk driving because nobody drove anywhere.
Somebody OD'd because after I moved out my house got filled up with goths.
Goth kills.
Remember that.
But it's so fun! Look, I'm Pee-Wee Herman! What's today's secret word, kids?
322: AHAHAHAHA! Awesome.
It's all that shit in the eyeliner. It'll get you every time.
That was the best explanation we could come up with. House full of slacker pothead nerds who played Nintendo: zero deaths. House full of kinda jerky goths who had an early career Marilyn Manson over and also did things like trying to make super-bitchy polyamorous relationships work and sleeping in coffins: one death.
Actually, what happened is that a big shipment of super pure heroin got dumped on the market in Boston for reasons I don't think anybody ever fully understood. I don't think she was the only person who died.
None of the pothead slackers did no junk, though, thank you. We were too precious to our suburban parents for that sort of thing.
Yowch, the ultra-miserable "polyamorous" relationships. I'm trekking back into Goth-land right now.
(No, that's a sad trek. I'm not doing that. I'm just going to listen to some KMFDM and think of something other than Goths, if that's possible.)
312: I know all too many. It was a requirement in Alabama that every high school have at least one car-load of kids killed each year.
But I don't know how anyone stands the dopey-day-after effect of pot for very long. It makes the pleasure not worth it. I'd be happy to smoke the stuff if I could take something that neutralized the effects overnight.
But I don't know how anyone stands the dopey-day-after effect of pot for very long.
Never noticed it, but then I always drank when I was smoking pot so the nested effects are probably indistinguishable.
But "get off my lawn" moment: pot seems a gajillion times stronger now than when I was a kid, and I don't think it's just a difference of perspective. Hydro is commonplace now, and most of the pot in Calgary is something I would actually have to plan an evening out to smoke. Too much effort for something that's canonically supposed to be a slacker drug.
329: pot seems a gajillion times stronger now than when I was a kid
I'm always very suspicious of these reports, whether they're coming from High Times or the DEA.
Certainly some weed is stronger nowadays, compared to 30 or 40 years ago. But a lot of those Ed Rosenthal tips have been around almost that long. I'm sure that Woody Harrelson gets some bud that would knock me back on my heels and have me seeing angels and demons, but for regular shit? I bet that the majority of what's available nowadays is no more than 10 or 20% stronger than what your grandparents smoked.
weed is wicked strong now. my dad still rolls like it was SC homegrown and it's killer hydro; try to keep up and shit gets real.
330: I'm always very suspicious of these reports
I would be, too, if it hadn't been me in the proverbial wheelchair on New Year's '08 sagely opining Ngaaannnggghhhh... after three tokes.
Understand that prior to this I once hang with a practising actual Rastafarian who used to pass massive crucifix blunts both ways around the circle. I'm not comparing this to some ratty shavings I was smoking in the garage with my buddies at the age of fourteen.
IOW, 331 gets it exactly right.
Also, because now I'm feeling sentimental, much love to Steve Gillespie, thin edge of the wedge. I still miss that fucking guy.
(Shoulda Google-proofed that, but screw it.)
Casting around looking for various Zevon recordings came across this little 1977 documentary (four parts on YouTube) from the Dutch public broadcasting association VARA, featuring Zevon, Ronstadt, Raitt & Jackson Browne. A slice of a portion of that time. A favorite quote so far from Bonnie Raitt who chose to bring the interviewers to Frederick's of Hollywood: When everyone looks like David Bowie, this store won't exist anymore. ... He probably shops here.
The pot here in Cali is not necessarily *stronger* than what I used to smoke 20 years ago--what's amazing is the *variety.* Body highs, head highs, anti-pain, anti-depression, creative, relaxing. Sure, some of it is BS, but I have two different varieties in my stash right now that offer distinctly different highs.