Bravo darryn for your well spoken words. They ring absolutely true. Bravo to the traveller for all his work.
When I was 10 years old I had been caught huffing gasoline so many times .... it was terrible.. i was fn hooked ... my old man tried everything... i even sppent 30 days in a mental lockup over it... on my 11th birthday me and dad left on our way to go bury my great grandmother who also had the same birthday... as we were leaving the driveway my old man pulled out a bag of dope , parked the car and rolled a joint. He lit it and reached it to me .... i was afraid to take it... afraid he would beat my ass if i grabbed it but i was wrong.. i took it and hit it.
He told me , he said ; "son... if you dont stop huffing that gas you are gonna die or wind up a vegetable.. I know this is wrong but its the lesser of two evils. If you must be high, then get high with me, and i will smoke this with you whenever you want, just dont huff that shit anymore , ok? " and i said ok. I never huffed gas again (except 1 time when i was 17, it was retarded . The point here is .. I think my old man struggled with that decision a long time, but came to the conclusion that maybe a show of good faith on my part , and something new (and tastier) would dissuade me from killing myself with gasoline. He was correct.
That was the good old days back when here where I live people sat on their front prch and smoked dope.. anywhere you went someone always said roll us one. People said hello and helped eachother. Family met for dinners and neighbors helped eachother and were freindly. Now things are diffrent, and the wave of diffrence bit me and my old man in the ass. Back then all he did was take the occasional valium or lortab. He was a coal miner , he worked what was called a bolt machine.. the hardest and most dangerous job in the mines, by choice. He needed the occasional opiate to make it through sometimes. I remember so many times he was seriously hurt by rock falls or being crushed by machines.. but i respect him to this day because he worked hard for us, so me and my mother could have a decent life.
Then came a bad person... the worst most rotten person i ever met.. he would stel from his children.. or rob money from the offering plate at church.. somehow we (me and dad met this guy I thiink it was at a cock fighting event) several thousand dollar bets were flying everywhere and we all went outside to smoke a joint... this dude whips out a needle an a bag of coke. We both snorted some but that was it. Over the next few months we were spending everything we had on it... then one day I caught my old man in the bathroom shooting up... and i followed.
I will not here make judgements against my father except to say what he did was wrong , even though i loved him dearly. The pot was ok.. it saved my life... but the needle destroyed it. We started banging coke daily and then my mother was almost killed (she really got mangled in a car accident) and they prescribed her Dilaudid and ms contin (morphine sulphate). We started banging those and it took everything we had. He was a good man before all this.. he would have given a stranger anything he needed and he didn't even have to ask. He was a good man... but I watched him change. He got into an auto accident .. and winded up getting a five year prison sentence because he was intoxicated when he wrecked. He did over three and was released... only to turn straight back to the needle.
He lived exactly one year after his release, one day short of a year... he nodded out at the wheel of his car and hit a 18 wheeler after banging a couple 60 mg. morphine pills. 1/4 a mile from our home, on his way home from scoring...
My mother had never used any drugs in her life up until her accident when she got wrote those hardcore opiates. She never drank or used profanity. She was a good woman. Mine and my fathers behavior.... torturing her for her medicine,always trying to find and steal it put her in a bad state of mind. That coupled with her pain an the fact that she did have huge doses of opiates running through her put her in a bad state of mind. Living with us put her in the mind of a junkie and she soon followed. (tho she didn't use them through a needle) she became horribly strung out. Her life was destroyed by this... she eventually cleaned it up and moved on. She is ok now but I am not.
I have ever since been an IV drug addict .. addicted to insane doses of opiates that would kill the average individual instantly. These days people no longer say hello, or roll us one. Neighbors no longer offer assistance , instead they hope and pray you dont call or come over when they see you with a flat tire . Times have changed , parents have changed. Now I'm a father ... I do suboxone now to maintain and it keeps me relatively normal. But now that Im a father and look back at what happened. I was 11 and in a crisis and my old man smoked dope with me... that I can reason with . I can accept, and could even under the most extreme of circumstances possibly see myself doing ... but only if it were a last resort. But I look back at my age of 11, a small child and remember the first time my old man fixed me a shot.... i remember i was so nervous i was afraid i would die and i was shaking so badly... I cannot fathom doing that to my children. Under no circumstances would I ever pass on the pain I have endured. I think that my old man didn't know the pain.. he couldn't have ... he too had just begun his downward spiral. Regardless, I love him.. yes my life has been devastated due to my horrible addiction which started forming almost 20 years ago. Ive tried repeatedly to stop .. ive been to many rehabs .. tried everything and ive come to the conclusion that i cannot function or live without some form of opiate in me. I can live with that.
My point, though ive went way off topic for a while doesn't lie in what my dad did to me but rather what I did to my mother. A little background wa required first so that the circumstances could be understood. Once we (me and dad) were hooked we started stealing her medicine and when we couldn't find it we would just aggrevate her till she could not stand it anymore and she'd give it up. After he died I did the same thing for years until I moved out and made my own family. I tortured that poor woman and i can never take that shit back. If I could I most certainly would. She bore me and raised me exceptionally well. She had me reading third grade level by the age of two. She was a fantastic mother and never exerted any negative drug influence toward me (she was unaware of all that crazy shit going on the first few years, till i was older and uncontrollable). The point is...
Respect your parents while they are still around to respect. I told mine tough shit if they didn't like what i did... they couldn't stop me .. and they really couldn't have. It may not seem like a big deal to get caught reading something about drugs or whatever FROM YOUR PERSPECTIVE... but step back a minute and think about their perspective. YOu have to tke into consideration their experiences and or knowledge of drugs. How will they feel. Do they know a little something about it? or are they totally drug naive and will they be HEARTBROKEN to discover their kid is "on drugs"? It really does make a diffrence. Its only a little while until you are out of there house ... look at it like that.
Obviously you were concerned that she would discover it so obviously they are concerned about you... being uneducated on a topic doesn't make them "stupid" just uneducated. Educate them gently "if appropriate", if not ... wait till you get out from there roof and spare them the heartache. Being a parent now I know .. my kids are small and not to that age yet but i still know the pain you feel .. the utter terror and awe you feel when you think of your ids being harmed in any way. All i'm saying is be concious and respectful of her feelings. If she is the type of person who would "freak out" if she understood what she read that just means she is the type of person who loves you, and thats something you dont take for granted. Take it from me , I know. Respect your parents while they are there and realize that most of that bitching is out of love... if you have a good quality parent who cares then count your blessings and be thankful, and show them that by not giving them heart attacks about strangely named "drugs" like DMT and other scary shit (to them) . This is not a lecture my friend .. only words of wisdom which were learned the very hard way. Godspeed!
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