Tag Archives: drugs

Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly Fond Of Each Other

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I saw this news item from thinkprogress.org:

 

“Republican House Leader Vows To Use ‘Power Of Humiliation’ To Undermine LGBT Program”

My first reaction was a knee-jerk one of course. “What is it to you?” What is it about gay people that gets these particular people all worked up? I’ve always wanted to know that. My curiosity of course is somewhat rhetorical as it’s pretty much obvious that much of this comes straight (ouch, pun) out of the pulpit and is certainly reinforced by the mirror maze of political self-convincing talk.

What would these people do if they were faced with the reality of what they say? The subject of their ire is the Mental Health Services Administration’s book titled “Provider’s Introduction to Substance Abuse Treatment for Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay and Transgender Individuals.” So, what about this document? The title is really quite plain and explanatory and being a gay man, and knowing my particular niche culture gives me a unique viewpoint on this particular issue. Is it important? Do you think that people who are sick should be cared for, that people who are despondent and without hope should be helped? What are your thoughts on suicide? This gets right to the heart of it. I bet a lot of these people are upright god-fearing Christian types, they hail from Oklahoma and there is a stereotype, lets face it, about that region being rather salt-to-the-earth and quite red when it comes to politics. Sit back and let’s think for a moment about what your self-professed lord and savior, Jesus Christ, would think about “Provider’s Introduction to Substance Abuse Treatment for Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay and Transgender Individuals.” Your lord and savior wandered around healing the sick, he never asked anyone if they were gay, lesbian, or transgendered. It just didn’t matter to him. People who cared for the sick like he did, he said, would be favored in God’s sight because they cared. Care. That’s what it really gets down to, who cares and who does not? Who hides behind a carapace of bigoted ignorance and who really cares? For these people in this meeting, all of them who didn’t stand up, who didn’t stomp their foot on the ground and argue against this – all of them – how can you face your self-professed lord and savior who you see every Sunday, nailed to a crucifix? Yes, he died to absolve you on sin, but when he was alive, when he was teaching – what was that part? Did you all miss that part? In your haste to be absolved of your sins, perhaps you missed everything up until the climax and after it was all over, you just rolled over and fell asleep?

These are valid questions that I would love answers to. I would dearly enjoy facing these people after we all march through the stations of the cross together. Jesus healing the lepers, Jesus bringing Lazarus back to life, Jesus and the children. Then turn to me, turn to a younger me, turn to any gay man, lesbian, or transgendered person and spit out that vitriol about the “Gay Agenda”.

Ma’am, yes, we do have a Gay Agenda. You caught us red-handed. Our agenda is simple. We are in pursuit of ending suffering of the people who are like us. The kids who grow up bullied and turn to drugs and alcohol to numb the pain of being mocked for being different. Not the color of our skin, not anything patently obvious like that, but mocked for who we love. You mock us over love. How can you face Jesus Christ when you mock people for loving? Wasn’t Jesus all about Love? Isn’t that what he preached? Love each other, be good to each other, and for the love of god, stop killing each other! So, where’s the love? That’s what the agenda is. We want to save ourselves and people like us. We want to reduce the suffering, we want to catch the sad and hold them tight and tell them that they are not alone. We want to rescue people who are so alone and unhappy that all they want to do is hang, shoot themselves, or drink or take drugs until they die.

So, is this document that the Mental Health Services Administration is providing a good thing or a bad thing? What are your feelings on dead children? How about young men and women dying at their own hands? What about that? How does that stand up to your fear of some undefined pink menace coming for you and yours?

Jesus Christ My Ass.

 

The War on Drugs

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A few years ago, at work, someone incinerated a surprisingly large amount of cannabis sativa behind our building. It was early summer and we had the window to the office open. At first I didn’t know what the hell the stench was, but it wasn’t strong enough for me close the window because my office was stuffy and I really wanted some fresh air, even if it had a little nasty garbage smell laced in it. I didn’t give it any thought, really, until all of a sudden I had older coworkers visiting me and just standing in the doorway. It wasn’t too long that I put the awful smell together with these people just standing there, huffing away. Then as more management types came filtering in it struck me – I am the successful result of the war on drugs. I had no idea what was going on, but the older folk, the ones that lived through the 60’s and 70’s, hah, they were there in force. They were just standing in a tight little group, in my doorway to my office, blocking my path to get my work done, huffing away.

I’ve never really been all that keen on changing my consciousness with drugs. Never really sought out anything beyond perhaps a wee addiction to caffeine and when I got older, an affection for alcohol. Even going through college, where drugs were in abundant supply, I simply wasn’t interested. Life was complicated enough. However this event at work did get me to thinking about what I missed out on. Was there something worth my curiosity?

I know there isn’t anything there. I can answer my own curiosity with what I know already. Nothing is free in life, if you are given something for free, then you are the product. This works for online bits (like Facebook and Twitter) as well as for the more seemly bits, like drug use. The first hit of whatever it is is free, that’s to get you used to it and to enjoy it, and eventually to crave it and become addicted to it. That’s my problem, I’ve got a good idea about what drugs would do to my brain if I let them. Whatever it is, it doesn’t really matter, eventually blows out one homeostatic chemical balance system or another, leaving you with bad skin, rotten teeth, a burnt-out libido, and at the end of everything, a shorter life. The candle that burns twice as bright lasts half as long.

But this is just my part of it, what about these others? It’s truly an awkward situation when people who are supposed to be upstanding folk turn out to not be. Some people are quite cavalier about their past drug use, as if none of it was a crime. You hear them mumbling on about using cannabis, or cocaine, or heroin – whatever it is – and everyone laughs and smiles and secretly accepts it as perfectly fine. It’s truly an American thing, this duality between wanting to be seen as puritanical versus privately being just as grubby, if not more so, than everyone else in the world. I don’t get on people for what they do to their bodies as long as they keep it to themselves. As a child of the war on drugs, and I do understand about statutes of limitations, but a crime is a crime. It’s one thing to confess that you committed a crime and quite something else when you do so for applause. That gets me really bent out of shape. If abusing drugs is a criminal offense then let it be that. If someone who abused drugs uses their past as a joke to get a laugh, then the people laughing have to take a long hard look at the reasons why they are laughing. Perhaps if you clap and laugh and perhaps, just dwell in a certain doorway and huff along remembering your criminal past, perhaps it is time to decriminalize drug abuse.

This is what the war on drugs has taught me. That we really want it to be over, we all secretly want drugs to be not-illegal, and we don’t really care when someone abuses drugs. We just need to get over this whole wanting to appear pure thing that we, as a country, have this complex over. This particular thing, wanting to appear one way but secretly being something vastly (if not diametrically opposite of) to others. We want to be chaste, we want to be monogamous, we want to be drug free. What do we do? We screw around, cheat, steal, lie, and drop whatever we like whenever we like it.

I would be fine if it was one way or the other, but not both. The American mirror as one too many faces.