Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

Speed Kills
for release 08-01-05
Washington D.C.

The first time I took speed I was seventeen years old. I threw a paper route that required me to get up at four AM. One night I was partying with some friends and when I said that I had to go home at midnight so that I could throw my route, a friend said to me, "Here, try this." and he handed me a capsule. It was a methamphetamine diet pill.

It usually took me two hours to throw my paper route. That morning I did it in forty-five minutes and wrote two songs along the way. Plus I felt like I was ten feet tall and wearing a bulletproof vest. I thought I could do anything. This fit quite well with my native adolescent megalomania.

I stayed awake for five days. What can I say? I was young and stupid and had no idea that taking speed was much like borrowing money at a high interest rate. You pay dearly on the back side for the front-end benefits. There is nothing quite as miserable as a speed crash. You feel even more wretched and weak on the downside than you felt euphoric and invincible on the upside. It's the classic Devil's Bargain. You get what you want right now, energy, enthusiasm, confidence, stamina; but the payback is Hell.

Now we are told that there is anew epidemic of meth abuse. Where have these people been for the last sixty years? We passed it out to our service men and defense plant workers during the second World War. It was available over the counter until 1959 and legal by prescription until the early '70's. When diet pills were banned in the US, I knew that there would be a healthy black market for the substance. Truck drivers liked it and factory workers and titty dancers and college students who were cramming for exams. So, I began investigating ways to synthesize this product. I knew it would be in great demand.

In those days anybody with a first year college chemistry background could manufacture meth. The chemicals were available and the process was simple. In two days you could cook enough meth to make fifty to a hundred thousand dollars. Now it's even simpler. Even a home economics major can score a few boxes of cold pills containing psuedoephedrine and cook up a batch of meth almost as easily as they could make a batch of chocolate chip cookies. You can find the recipe on the on the internet.

If we were talking about politics instead of meth abuse, we would call it a grassroots movement. Thousands of meth labs are springing up all across the heartland to satisfy the demand for the substance. The people want their stimulants just like they want their marijuana. Where there is a demand, there will be a supply. It's simple economics.

The problem that arises here is similar to the situation of illegal abortion. When abortion was illegal, those wanting an abortion had to be subjected to risky, unsanitary and medically unsafe conditions. The coat hanger stories come to mind. People who want meth have to deal with unsavory characters, late nights and back alleys to obtain a product that was produced by an amateur chemist and contains god knows what residues and by-products. When whisky was illegal people went blind from drinking moonshine that had been distilled in car radiators with lead solder in the tubes.
When you make an industry illegal, you also relinquish the possibility of regulating it for purposes of safety and quality control.

The Poet's Eye sees the simple solution. Make drugs of all sorts legal and readily available to all who want them. If you are stupid enough to destroy yourself with cocaine or speed or heroin, that should be your choice. It's a matter of Body Sovereignty. If your teeth fall out or if you kill yourself with an overdose, good riddance. But to spend millions of dollars to finance a drug militia that does nothing but aggravate the problem and in the process violates the rights and freedoms of our citizens makes absolutely no sense.



I told her crystal clear
"I don't mind you getting high
But there's one thing you should fear"
"Your mind might think its flying, baby
On those little pills
But you ought to know it's dying, 'cause
Speed kills"
--Amphetamine Annie, Canned Heat c.1967

Well, the culture post was certainly streamofconsciousness.

I changed a guy's med from dilaudid to morphine, he was cool, had refused his prescribed methadone, did not like the effect, and the dilaudid made him nauseaus, nauseous, but he wanted demerol, and he wanted to go outside for a smoke, had refused his nicoderm patch, made him itch, did not know about Imus chewing Nicoderm gum, so,since he had a history of seizures, and had forgotten to mention it, I got him back on his dilantin first, and held the notion of demerol as it potentiates seizures, and gave him a little dose of 2 mg of morphine, which was exactly what the doctor ordered and he was peaceful at last. And he had only a leg to stand on, being diabetic and was bitten by a browb not-so-reclusive spider whilst in his orange grove.

There would be a lot of drug abuse if they were all legalized, because people do not understand what they are doing.
But I would at least decriminalize them and have clinics, like in Berlin, wasn't there a junky park somewhere in Switzerland where they all congregated to do their stuff?

The Jabberwocky
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought--
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arm, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe
(Carroll The Annotated Alice 191-97).


"It seems very pretty," [Alice] said when she had finished it, "but it's rather hard to understand! ... Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas--only I don't exactly know what they are!" (Carroll The Annotated Alice 197)

http://www.silverberch.com/matthewsatmhtp.jpg

http://www.digitart.freeserve.co.uk/cat ... dkills.jpg

What did the mad hatter say?

I know history is a waste of time but I like to time travel.

Heard guy in a toga say, "the more decadent a society is, the more laws are passed."
So we pass laws to protect us from ourselves

decriminalize at least, yes.

It has been twenty years since I powdered my nose the one and only time, on a frieght dock around dallas, just drove straight through from Tuscon. Had to load 900 fifty pound cased. A guy on the dock was trying to be helpful, or maybe he just wanted me to hurry up so he could turn out the lights and go home. He gave me a taste on the end of a screwdriver.

there is another matter here jimbo, the use of limited medical resources. Tobacco is my most dangerous drug. No insurance.

what if all the critters suddenly became intelligent by design

A rose is a rose
and creationism is bad science
what ever dictionary you want to use

did you read the post by mike on open mic about crawford got a link