Drugs: Just a side-note of the ride to the Watsonville elementary school

On Friday, April 23, I went with the TOUCCh crew down to the elementary school in Watsonville with all seats filled in Scott's van. We had some good conversations about decriminalizing marijuana and the effects of drugs in general. Obviously it wasn't a subject matter that we would carry over into our work with the children, but it was nonetheless good that we were talking about such things.

I saw Angela Davis, the prison abolitionist and professor at UCSC, on Wednesday at SJSU. She explained how prisons serve as depositories for all the things that we don't want to deal with and face up to. This is what I've come up with: We don't want to deal with poverty that causes people to steal, throw the poor in jail. We don't want to deal with the alienating effects of a culture of competition and hierarchy, throw the bank robbers in jail. We don't want to deal with public spaces and cultural centers disappearing, throw the addicts in jail. It seems we have reached a point in which the prison population, 2.3 million, is too much to ignore, and yet simple things such as drugs are still stigmatized.

I think it's essential that we talk more about our own experiences with drugs, hopefully with the end being that they become familiar enough that we don't devote whole conversations solely to defining what it's like to be on them. For the sake of starting this conversation, I'll have you know that I'm in support of plants and minimally processed substances. I smoke marijuana from time to time, drink alcohol from time to time, and, when it calls to me, I'll eat psilocybin mushrooms. I don't like cigarettes because they are owned, usually, by some fucked up corporations. I don't like cocaine, because it's a total waste of money and time and brain cells, but I do support indigenous people using the coca leaf, which is the unprocessed form. I think LSD should be done by people who are grounded in themselves, but I'm still forming my opinion on this substance. I don't like ecstasy because, to me, it represents our culture's excessive focus on the superficial sensations. Plus it usually comes with the territory of dumb people (at least temporarily), unsafe situations (STDs, nonconsensual groping, horrible decision-making in shady situations, etc.), and the unknown factor, as in you don't really ever know what's in that shit. Finally, I totally hate crystal meth, a.k.a. methamphetamine, because I've lost several high school friends to that and seen the long term effects in my friends' sister, who has two kids at 25, and a former renter of a room at their house.

All in all, if you all decide to do any drugs, I can give you my personal opinions and share my experiences with you. As I said before, and I'll say it again, I've found that the natural and minimally processed tend to be the best for me in certain instances. All substances have their correct places to do them and a desired effect, so it's best to know this if you're totally committed to doing a specific something. I would emphasize people to take a more spiritual approach to these substances, rather than just sheer bodily pleasure. Also, one thing to really consider in all of this is whether whatever it is is ethically and ecologically sourced. I stick to local/domestic weed, local/domestic alcohol, and domestic shrooms. For more info, talk to me or check out Erowid.

p.s. I'm trying to break with caffeine, another drug, but it's still providing too much of a daily purpose.