Dope(amine) and The War on Drugs

Pupils dilate to betray the minds attempts to hide from the world what we feel.

I wrap the black plastic coated assistant around my bicep and watch the vein begin to swell in my forearm. The pale skin around the chord tells me that I am ready. My syringe is full and I can feel the rush before the poison even enters my veins...

I rattle the bottle to assure there are pills inside of it before opening it and checking again, perhaps the noise was in my head and there weren't actually any left. I know I don't need these anymore. The pain is gone but The Pain is raging inside still. The Pain of life and failure. These little white pills block out the world, even if just for a little while, and give me hope for tomorrow. I tip the bottle into my hand and watch the circular poison land on my palm...

Whats a little line? Its not like I'm hurting anyone! Its not like im stealing anyones money. It's my money. Its my life. I can stop anytime I want to. Sugar is just as addictive and obesity is just as deadly! Why should I have to stop but they can continue to eat their lives away!? I break the rocks up to make sure the powder is as smooth as a freshly laid snowfall. The cold exchanged for heat and the chills replaced with a hug that covers my body in a blanket of euphoric bliss...

Dopamine [dō′pə-mēn] (Noun): A neurotransmitter associated with movement, attention, learning, and the brain’s pleasure and reward system.

The pleasure system that we stimulate continuously throughout or day, or at least we hope that we do. When's the first time you felt dopamine flood your body? Was it your first piece of candy? The first time you held the hand of a crush? What about the first time you kissed someone? The first time you Orgasmed? Not the fake one you pretend for the dude you kind of like but he doesn't know how to suck or fuck. The real orgasm. The one that your muscles tighten and your body convulses with each throbbing release...that one.

Now imagine that feeling but whenever you want it. The highest of rewards I would say!

What if I could give you that? For free? Absolutely not. For a price of course.

What are you willing to pay to experience that feeling whenever your heart desired?

I don't remember the first time I felt that rush of pure ecstasy. No pun intended. I have thought about this for a long time through out my life. Trying to remember when was the first time I felt on top of the highest mountain and breathed out sadness just to inhale bliss. I can tell you times of happiness. I can tell you times of excitement. I can even tell you about the first time I had sex in the living room of my friends house while he was outside on his front porch mere 30 feet away.

But what about the first time? I can't tell you. What if I told you more honestly I can't remember a time of absolute euphoric blindness? Would that make me a monster? Would that make me less human? I have loved. I have felt anxious and nervousness. I have been scared. I have felt surprise and I have felt happy. I also felt numb. I have felt extreme hatred and blinding anger so bad that I smashed my head against the wall only to need to feel more...more...anything more! So I collided my hand against the hard surface to see which is stronger. Does that make me a monster?

I can tell you moments for each of these that I have felt in my lifetime. Yet, hard as I might, I can't tell you a time where euphoria has eclipsed my body and dopamine has rushed through my veins to deliver a feeling unlike any other felt before.

Don't get me wrong though reader, Im not saying that I haven't felt a love so strong that I would die for that person. Of course! Im not saying that I haven't been really happy to accomplish something, of course I have. But if that's what "Bliss" or "Unrelenting happiness" means...then im getting screwed over. What if I told you there is a way though...a way to feel that feeling that makes you feel like you are on top of cloud 9 and not only there but never coming back down. Would you do it? What would you do to feel that?

People say weed is a gateway drug. Thats always been silly to me. Thats like saying frosted flakes was a gateway drug to ice cream. More sugar content in ice cream so its an escalation of ingested poison so is it not a gateway drug? If weed is a gateway drug then when does that change happen? According to the CDC, 48.1 Million people or 18% have smoked weed in 2019 alone. But, Smoking crack, only 4.1% in a lifetime. Don't ask me how they get these statistics. I don't honestly care how they get them, because in reality, CDC can suck a big one. They lost all rights to suggest and recommend things as of...well we all know what happened....

We won't get into that here.

Why am I even talking about this at all? How does orgasms, weed, happiness, anger and anything else have to do with each other. Well, as I have asked before, What would you give In order to feel like you are never going to feel pain or stress or worry ever again? What about 20$ a day? Thats pretty cheap is it not? 20$ a day to feel complete and total bliss? Wow!

What about 140$ a week? still pretty cheap if you ask me for happiness.

What about your friendships? I mean, unless your friends don't want you happy, are they even your friends?

What about your car? Why do you need to stress about that? You're floating on a cloud baby!

Your family? Your Home?

What if you didn't have that anyway? You're single, you live in an apartment so what does it matter.

What about your teeth and skin...What happens when your mind is eating itself because the poison is blocking receptors in your body since Dopamine is surging through your body so rapidly and consistently that it short circuits and spasms start to happen so uncontrollably and you are starting to look like you have Parkinson's. The once all powerful sought after Dopamine has now become the enemy in your story...Dope...

Isnt that crazy?

Im not Detective dog over here. I don't want you thinking im a snitch. You are smoking weed? Cool dude. Do your thing. You want to bake some brownies and bake yourself into a vegetable watching Harry Potter Marathon on the weekends? Sick dude, tell me who wins the Quidditch match!

Now I must warn you....This is when the story takes a twist.

If you are snorting cocaine and you feel like you are happy...More...Power...To...You.

Who am I to say don't do that. I'm not your mom dad brother or grandpa. I didn't raise you. You are not my blood. So why should I tell you not to do something like that if you are happy.

If shoving a needle in your vein and injecting a liquid that courses through your body and releases your mind into a state of absolute beauty...Why should I judge you?

Im not your creator. Im not going to curse you to hell or glide you to heaven. Hell, you're already up there with how high you are.(..see what I did there?)

This is where I start to wander and wonder. Who's the bad guy? Now that we have accessed that I am NOT your judge jury or executioner...But I am a realist.

We all know that heroine, meth, ice, crack, crank, Molly, MDMA, and many many other drugs out there, CAN and most likely WILL kill you if you aren't smart...I say smart in a loose way here.

I know a few people that dabble in smoking weed, snort a few lines and one day...Im sure the latter will perish in an overdose. Just statistically speaking. I've expressed my concern to them as a friend but im not going to damn him for wanting to feel something so powerful that he can't feel it without a small line of fresh powder. I also know a few people that have died from overdose. Did I cry when it happened? Honestly, no. Does that make me a monster? They made their choice. They chose a drug that if taken incorrectly, could kill them. They chose a treatment to an issue they had that in time, could kill them. Happiness was hard to come by perhaps. Pain was too unbearable. Fitting in was too important. Maybe the drug they chose was laced with something stronger. Who knows the reason.

What I do know is that...This was THEIR choice. Not mine. Not yours. Theirs, the user.

Yet, the first thing people do is blame the dealers. Dealers are the worst scum on this earth ONLY second to the distributors...Well I guess Third to the mules...well fourth because the make producer...shit I mean fifth because the farmer!!! Disgusting trash! How could they make a product that people use and get addicted to and then DIE! Fucking disgusting....sorry...did I say Farmer, Producer, Mule, Distributor, Dealer?

I meant, Drug company, Lab worker, FedEx, Doctor, Pharmacist....User.

Why is it the dealers fault for carrying a product in their pocket that can kill you but not the doctors fault for carrying a piece of paper that can be distributed electronically and the product it produces...can kill you.

Am I saying drug dealers are Great upstanding citizens? Well no not saying that at all. But im not judging them either because I don't know them. Maybe they are murders. Maybe they are family oriented and want nothing but to support their family and the only thing they know how to do is sell products that people desire and they make a profit off of it. I don't know. Am I saying that Dealers are the root of all evil in this country? absolutely not.

The War on Drugs was established to hunt, capture, and stop the production of drugs so they wouldn't get in the hands, veins, noses, mouths, of innocent people...Innocent...people. My mind is not understanding that word. To stop...Innocent...people from doing drugs.

The war on drugs is to stop illegal drug use so that innocent people don't do illegal drugs.And when one innocent person dies of these illegal drugs its the dealers fault because he sold it to the person....

Blue cross and blue shield/Medicaid/Medicare/ Tricare/ Doctor....Pharmacist....Drug company...

All examples of legal drug dealers that have been time and time again, accused and proven guilty of creating a opioid epidemic so big that it crippled small towns across the country and it continues to impact people daily as they become addicted to Pain killers that are prescribed to fix a pain in their leg but now is creating an addiction that is so strong only to be told, no more than 30 pills a month AND after two months, no more at all or you're going to jail for buying more. So...where do they turn to? The dealer on the street who is going to not care about what insurance they have as long as they have 20$ for a dime bag.

Yet, We sit here on our high horses and say that Dealers are the source of all evil in this country's drug epidemic. Sugar is a poison that is causing obesity in over half of the population and we still buy from fast food, ice cream shops and mars candy company. Yet when someone dies of diabetes...we never curse the company that gave them their OVERDOSE of sugar. Not the same?

How about I take a chord and wrap it around your bicep and inject heroine into your body and see how you feel afterwards...oh wait...Dealers don't inject forcibly into the arms of their customers? Oh people willingly go out and buy it? Shit....Like any store out here that sells sugary drinks and nice little creamy treats we feed our families because they get a little reward for learning how to potty in the toilet. Heres a little dose of sugar for you Timmy. So happy you could pee in the toilet today.

To blame a Store owner for the decisions of a customer who decides to buy a product is as silly to me as blaming a guy on a street corner who uses 6th ave and Main Street as their store front and a customer willingly goes to this store to buy a dose of euphoria.

Who's worse, Doctors prescribing Oxy to his patient for pain, A dealer selling crack to a person for their emotional/mental problem, the pharmacy company for manufacturing the drug into little white compressed poison pills that get distributed by the pharmacist on the daily Or the farmer who gets paid 14$ a kilo of leaves that will be pressed down with their feet using acid and water until it becomes a hardened substance that will be mixed with gasoline and made into a paste to be cooked into a little crystal of cocaine and then sent out into the world? They all sound pretty bad right?

or...Is the one really at fault...the user?