Elaboration on that Stoner Story (Updated!)
[ rakaur on Wed Apr 09 at 12:39 PM // category: drugs, health, life, pain // comments: 2 ]
When I posted this story, I didn’t really have time to elaborate and share my thoughts on it, so people asked my opinion in the comments. This is mostly a response to those.
I’m not sure what, if any, moral to the story there is. Sure the guy’s an entertaining writer and I guess it was kind of funny at points, but is there something else there? The world sucks and found his escapism; sucks for his wife. Next week on Jenny Jones: I messed up my marriage by fucking a horse!
Obviously the guy’s an idiot. He has a drug problem. I posted the article because of the relation to pain medicine. It’s interesting that he could do all of this over eBay, and it’s in sort of a legal grey area. It’s legal to grow and use opium somniferum for art. The grey area comes when defining what constitutes “art.” (Update: I was wrong. It’s legal to do anything with the seeds, but it’s illegal to grow the plants themselves. This seems odd, inducing a chicken-egg situation vis á vis seeds and flowers. This is technically manufacturing a class two narcotic, but it’s enforced in the same way as ripping the tag off your mattress is enforced.) It’s certainly art to grow them because they’re pretty flowers, but is it art to use the dried pods in floral crafts? That was the whole premise of them being available on eBay. It’s apparently innocuous in one light (pretty flowers in floral crafts), but obviously absurd in the other (“Fortunately, for crafting projects requiring so many poppy plants, financing was available for $17 per month. For all of us hard-core flower arrangers, of course”). How many people really know that “poppy” flowers are even what opium comes from? How many people get the whole “poppies put us to sleep” in the Wizard of Oz? How many people even know what “somniferous” even means, and how many people make the connection to the floral name?
Unfortunately, this blog entry was a little short to get your read on the situation: Is he a tragic hero, championing the cause of those who just want life to stop hurting? Is he a lame jackass who can’t seem to get over his addiction in order to live real life? Or is he just a good storyteller whose prose lets us know that while we’re suffering there’s someone out there who does as well and we’re all just coping the best we can?
As far as I can tell, his use of drugs had nothing to do with the treatment of pain. I found the article interesting because maybe, if in a desperate circumstance where I find myself unable to ever be relieved of pain, buying poppies on eBay is better than going to South county and scoring an eight ball. He’s an addict. He needs to be in rehab. He’s also a good storyteller.
All this is ignoring that, aside from the poppies, I don’t see how the two articles relate. Plus, the slideshow doesn’t seem to work in Firefox 3 Beta 5. Sucks.
That is how they relate. This old couple with the poppies in the backyard are going to be charged with manufacturing heroin and other stupid shit. Even if they were growing them for something other than the fact that they’re pretty flowers, then they were probably using them to make tea to help with their arthritis or something. Do we really think these people are flooding the streets with heroin?
-- rakaur // 2008.04.09 @ 12:39 PM
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2 Comments
Comment #30
[ w00t on Fri Apr 11 at 05:21 AM ]
This is probably going to come off as a bit of a tangent, but…
I guess appearances can be decieving, but I do think a lot of the “war on drugs” shit is just stupid. It’s a flawed policy (prohibition really worked the first time, right?) and does nothing except ruin the lives of people involved who were (for lack of a better term) “experimenting”.
Myself? I have no problem with people using drugs. At all. The only point I do have a problem with that is when their problem becomes my problem (e.g. stealing my shit to pay for their fix). That’s when people need help.
It’s the kind of thing that I think management would help with. Help people get their fix in a clean manner that won’t kill them or give them diseases, but also help control things when it becomes a problem.
-- w00t // 2008.04.11 @ 05:21 AM
Comment #31
[ rakaur on Fri Apr 11 at 09:15 AM ]
I totally agree. I believe that drug use is a public health issue, not a legislative issue. There’s a line between recreational drug use and addiction. Those who “abuse” drugs to feel good shouldn’t be frowned upon, but those who make their lives about the drugs should be helped.
-- rakaur // 2008.04.11 @ 09:15 AM
