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[Lyric]

Ahhh but my Trolling is NOT pointless, malicious and just down right ignorant!
I'm a nice troll..lol


"take the red pill.... take the blue pill... take the red pill... take the blue pill...  let me show you how far the rabbit hole goes"

[Kadee]

I enjoyed the link so much Dr Sketch, thanks again.  I even went out and rented One Flew Over... for my veiwing pleasure this evening.  
They were quite an interesting bunch of folks.
And I agree with you totally on how normal they all  were as they aged.  But yet they all still looked so happy and were still successful, not like the washed up druggies I would have expected.  Very enlightening for me.
Thanks again for another great topic Lyric

[Lyric]

You guys are very welcome.
I try to come up with interesting things, that can point back to H/MH/MR.  Just because there are soo many things that can affect a persons MH, that doesn't involve having to have a disorder.

[Kadee]

On a slightly different path, but pertaining to drugs and mental health, I think I will share this story.
My son has been very interested in the Sex Pistols ( which is fine he loves 70's Punk) but lately he has been really idolizing Sid Viscious ( frightening)
So I thought I would give him a glimps at what the poor guy was really like.  SSSOOO I rented and watched Sid and Nancy with him this afternoon.  It has been many years since I saw this movie, I actually think I saw it in the theatre but I knew it really showed what a druggie he became,  and it did the trick with its graphic portrayal of his out right Heroin addiction.  My poor son was disgusted and sad at what a mess his life was and how far down Nancy brought him because of the drugs.  I like to let the kids look and judge for themselves what is good and bad in people.   He said he can't think of him the same way again, yeah I knew it would open his eyes to the fact that the guy was not "cool"
 
But anyway I guess my point is after watching that this afternoon and reading about the  Acid Tests of the 60's this morning their little experiments  were mild  compared  to the introduction of Heroin , which is down right frightening. :shock:

[Lyric]

Another good Dope Flick.... Trainspotting

You will never look at it the same after that.
NOT recommened for your kids, til after YOU see it.

[Sian]

Trainspotting is unbelieveable! It actually made me so uncomfortable watching it that it took me a while to watch it a second time. Very graphic.

[Ectoplasmic Terrier]

"Trainspotting" is a great movie, but I think even it may accidentally glamorize heroin addiction.  One movie featuring H that I think is more realistic (ie. depressing) is Gary Oldman's film "Nil by Mouth."  NBM is not primarily about dope, but I found it a hard look at domestic violence in working class UK.  It also portrayed H addiction as full of tedium, boredom, desperation, and a lot of waiting around.  Speaking of Gary Oldman...

I'm the same age as Kadee.  I loved Sid & Nancy when it came out.  In spite of sporting certain "punk" fashions at the time, I was never a punk.  I was doing more of a New Romantic/surrealist angst thing.  The reality is Sid Vicious was  a kid coming out of an abusive childhood with some serious mental health problems.  He couldn't really play bass guitar.  His amp was usually unplugged.  Sid was exploited by promoter Malcolm McLaren as a punk "icon."  He didn't have to do anything except be Sid.  It worked.  Sid Vicious was in the limelight for under three years before his suicide.  Teens such as Kadee's son find him fascinating to this day!  We have a kitsch store here in Northampton called "Sid Vintage." Arf arf arf!  There was never any proof he murdered Nancy Spungen.  You've got two kids wasted on heroin holed up in a hotel room for weeks visited only by drug dealers, and a lot of bad sh*t can go down.  

Sid & Nancy is not a story I would discourage kids from seeing.  I would, as Kadee did, explain unequivically that Mr. Cox's movie did not do justice to the absolute wretchedness of being hooked on junk.

Anyway, back to LSD---
The great revelation and life-changing experience on the acid trip is a myth.  I cannot deny the power of the chemical to evoke possible spiritual breakthroughs, but that aspect is oversold.
I am also skeptical of the number of people who got "fried" on LSD.  Acid can precipitate a temporary psychosis.  Friends of mine testified to this.  A few spent a bit of time on psych wards after "flipping out" on acid.  They're fine now.
In the cases of people such as the late Syd Barrett, LSD may act as a catalyst for the manifestation of latent schizophrenia.  From what I know about Mr. Barrett, the length and severity of his psychiatric problems indicate an imminant manifestation of schizophrenic symptoms even without LSD.
A lot of the folks you see wandering about in hippie garb and reciting beat poetry on the street corner are not that way becasue "they did too much LSD."  I just don't buy that.  A lot of these guys DID take plenty of acid, but the frequency of acid-tripping is more likely a symptom of mental illness than frequency of acid-tripping being a cause of lifelong mental illness.  MORE IMPORTANTLY---
I am reluctant to label people as "mentally ill" merely because they don't  "conform."
"Sanity is not statistical."
--George Orwell
Like Kadee, I was born in 1969.  I was born to "hippie" parents.  My folks were closer to the Kesey's age than the "flower child" age.  My dad was in grad school when TEKAAT was published.  Kesey and the Merry Pranksters had a great deal of influence on my parents' "hippie" values for better--but I'm sorry to say--more for worse.
Dazed hippies, blaring Led Zeppelin, and Day-Glo painted trees are images from my own early childhood.  A lot of children of "hippies" were exposed to sh*t kids should not be exposed to.  I could go on for pages about it.  Funny thing is, a lot of "hippie" kids became "hippies" themselves.  I rebelled against it.  My "punk" phase (for lack of better term) was anti-hippie.  It was not my orange mohawk that really got to my mom.  It was when I started wearing a buzz cut!  She hated it!  She said it reminded her of---gasp--the fifties!  
My friend Paul, who grew up in a strict Catholic household and was forced on threat of violence to keep his hair buzzed, thought it was a total riot when I quoted my mother saying, "When are you gong to grow your hair out?  That short hair is just awful!"
 :lol:

[Kadee]

I have seen Trainspotting  but have  no intention of letting the kids see that one :shock: .  They have witnessed the mess of this addiction first hand but thankfully don't remember alot of it.    My older two kids dad -my EX- is a full blown Heroin addict.  Unfortunately for me I was married to his  "problem" for some time, and have witnessed the desperation and agony first hand, and so have the kids.  That is why AJ's idolization for Sid Viscious was making me a little nervous, I did not want him to see this addiction as something that made Sid cool, as he knows first hand that it is not, it ruins lives, and he needed a little reminder of that.  They do not have any contact with their  "father" and have not since they were small, but I have made no secret of the reason why they do not see him, his addiction is dangerous to them.   Luckily for me they are very mature about this and handle it very well.

But to get back to the thread, ET you brought up a great point with linking underlying mental health with drug addiction.  And I believe you stated that yourself Lyric in another thread.  To use my life as an example again, I have known my Ex husband since we were in Jr HS.  His addiction came on very slowly from the time we were in 8th grade until I walked out of our marriage 10 years or so later.  But he was always a little "off" mentally.  He is a very very intelligent person and when he was UP he was way Up, but when he is down look out.  This is something we found out years later  while I was married to him to be Bypolar.  But he had been experiencing it since he was younger.  It was the typical down slide to the Heroin addiction for him, drinking, weed, prescription drugs, and eventually Heroin.    But would it have been so bad for him without the mental problems I wonder?  He has had a million oppurtunities to change and get help and get clean, but he will not stop.  
Many people try drugs use them for a few years, and grow up and move on normally , as the Acid tests proved.  But what is the link that holds a person to addiction- I know Heroin is a hard one to kick, and I was told by many a Dr and rehab clinic that most Heroin addicts end up dead not clean, to me the link that holds them to this  has to be the mental state of the addict, which scares me to death becauses my kids share the same blood as their dad, is it in their future?  They are approaching the same age as he was when I met him, and I watch their mental well being very very closly.
But  what draws an addict in in the first place, is it all just dependancy for the substance or is it something deeper that pulls them in to the need for the drug to mask reality and eventually wraps them up so bad in the detatchment  of life they get from the drugs they can't escape their own mind anymore.  
 As someone who does not have an addcitive type of personality ( if you don't count this site-lol) I have such a hard time understnading it.

[Big Ed]

Some people have addictive personalities.  They will get addicted to what ever is thier mood altering substance of choice.  Eric Clapton is a prime example,  He's been addicted to heroin, kicked it.  He got addicted to the drug they gave him  help the kick.  He's been in alcohol rehab, he's been an addicted smoker.  

Heroin will hook you even if you don't have the addictive personality. Heroin depending on the cut has a real fast physical addiction component to it.  Your body needs heroin to exist.  It's a hard kick so you put it off until  you can't do it anymore or are forced to do it (the latter being most prevalent).  I watch people everyday line up at the methadone clinic for thier dose.  It's pathetic to watch.  Other than the Hospital we have 5 seperate substance abuse programs on campus.  So I've absorbed a bit of knowledge from listening in and dealings with some of the clientele.  That and my past has been chemically active, but not addictive.

[Kadee]

 That and my past has been chemically active, but not addictive.

See thats what I mean.  You say you were chemically active, but not addicted.  Many people have a past like this but it does not control them or their life and they move on and grow up so to speak.   I do understand the physical need to have the drug  in your system to survive while on Heroin, but what I don't grasp is what brings someone to such a low place in the end.  How does someone go from casually drinking or doing social amounts of drugs to being totaly dependant on it for the sake of their physical well being.  The downward spiral  to this point is what I mean in reference to the connection to mental health.  
What brings a person to try the Heroin in the first place.  Is it that it is cheap and readily available?  Or is it that it will bring them further into this un real world that they are trying to hide in?

[Dr Sketch]

I think it is part personality, part environment, and part substance.  I'm going to use myself as an example.

I'm a smoker.  I've been smoking since I was 13.  My father was a smoker (environment), I don't really want to quit (personality) and I really like the stuff (substance).

I also drink, sometimes heavily, sometimes I'll go months.  Why am I hooked on one and not the other?

Before I quit drugs, I smoked a lot of pot.  It was a take it or leave it kind of thing for me, like drinking; great if I did, great if I didn't.  A friend introduced me to coke, and I was hooked for months.  The only reason I was able to quit was that I KNEW I was hooked, and don't like anything (besides tobacco of course) to control me like that.  How was I able to resist one and not the other?  In this case, I imagine it was substance: coke has something in it that hooks you that pot doesn't...

[Kadee]

You know whats funny, I am a smoker too, and I do not look at the substance part of it as an addiction.  But it is, I don't know why I don't see it the same way as a drug addiction, maybe because it is legal to buy them, I don't know.  Could I quit today, absolutely not, I like smoking and have no desire to quit :roll:  I just don't see cigaretts as a drug but they are aren't they, and I have heard that quitting for some can be just a bad as giving up a Heroin addiction.  I guess I do have a little addictive personality in me :oops:

[Big Ed]

Heroin is cheap powerful makes ya feel real good.  I can only extrapolate from having IV morphine after surgery for a day.  It's good.  It' deadens the pain and dulls the senses.  It fogs the mind so you're distracted from whatever it was that was bothering you.  It's dangerous in somecases a little can kill you depending on cut, so theres a little thrill to it.    The body grows to crave it. the mind wants it to escape.

[Sian]

I am also a smoker and wouldn't want to give up. I see it as my luxury, albeit a death inducing one! As for pot, I have smoked it on occassion, most of my family are regular users, my nan included, yet I have never been able to get addicted to it.

Big Ed you mentioned Morphine. That stuff is dangerous for me, as are painkillers. When I had surgery last year to remove my gallbladder I found myself almost craving the rush that morphine gave me, that initial buzz as the pain dissipated. I was prescribed unbelievably strong pain killers too and found myself taking them even when I didn't need to, usually before bed or in the evenings, because they did send me a bit cuckoo. Obviously for my own saftey and that of my children I stopped. I still have the bottle on my bedside table though.

The same when I quit smoking when I was pregnant with my first child, I carried 20 fags and a lighter everywhere with e, I didn't go anywhere without them but I didn't touch them. The were still wrapped when my son was born and I took great pleasure in sitting at home in the garden and having a ciggie!


I know a few coke users. Most of them are (excuse my french) fucked up individuals whose lives revolve around their next toot. Absolute losers. But then there are the odd few who appear to function normally on the stuff! Cocaine definitely carries that little something. My 17 year old cousin was hooked on crack before she was institutionalised for her mental problems. She has just been released but I wonder how long it will take her too find it again....

Drugs were seen as the cause for her loss of control. She did some bizzare things and made up some shocking stories about her childhood. I seriously don't think she will ever be well again.

[Tony C.]

I am also a smoker and wouldn't want to give up. I see it as my luxury, albeit a death inducing one! As for pot, I have smoked it on occassion, most of my family are regular users, my nan included, yet I have never been able to get addicted to it.


The same when I quit smoking when I was pregnant with my first child, I carried 20 fags and a lighter everywhere with e, I didn't go anywhere without them but I didn't touch them. The were still wrapped when my son was born and I took great pleasure in sitting at home in the garden and having a ciggie!

I know a few coke users. Most of them are (excuse my french) fucked up individuals whose lives revolve around their next toot. Absolute losers. But then there are the odd few who appear to function normally on the stuff! Cocaine definitely carries that little something.

*************************************************************
I recently quit smoking after more than 20 years. I used the patch, TWICE...Let me tell you all. It was harder to stop smoking cig's than either pot or coke. I cannot tell you all HOW much harder.

I used to smoke a lot of pot. I never got addicted either. I  believe that there is no physical addiction to pot. I might be wrong, but there is nothing in it like nicotine. I believe the addiction is totally mental. I quit it and smoked it for YEARS, and lots of it. I had absolutely no withdrawls.

Coke....well...I did too much of that too. I stopped years ago. As a matter of fact, a friend of mine jacked me up into the wall once trying to get me to quit. I didn't quit then, but I did, some time later. Again, no withdrawls, and no rehab needed. I might have been just at the edge of addiction, though, and never quite went over. I could always wait for more. It was harder just before I quit, though. Guess I did just in time.  :wink:  

**Edit...Everyone is different. Some people might not be able to handle quitting without help, others might not be able to handle drugs at all, yet they still take them. Hope I didn't offend anyone....