why I take drugs
intellectual honesty is pretty rare, there is always a motive, an agenda. when the topic is drugs the judgmental types always recoil and offer platitudes. good journalism on the topic isn’t hard to find, but it’s still often shunned and almost never reflected in public policy. harper drug policy.
an honest effort by Sam Harris titled, Drugs and the Meaning of Life, looks at drugs from the point of view of what he would want for his own kids. now, I grew up totally a straight edge kid. delivered newspapers after school, did my homework, all kinds of outdoor activities and hapkido too. drugs were bad — only bad people used them. so i started using drugs because of needs like muscle spasms, blood pressure spikes and pain. training for the climbs up the chief required boosting and drugs to increase heart rate. see below, even if you’re not a doctor you can see the big dips in heart rate while exercising. those spikes feel awful, dizziness and vomiting can result from post exercise hypotension too.
regaining sexual function required experimenting with several drugs too. I midodrine several times before getting this life affirming function back. I have to manage autonomic dysreflexia with sex and exercise sometimes and have a small pharmacy of drugs in my cabinet if I need them. (slow heart rate recovery from autonomic dysreflexia)
there are risks and choices every time, with every drug people take. what has me seriously vexed is canada’s right wing stance on drugs, especially on my medicine. I use all kinds of drugs but cannabis is the most important for pain and muscle spasms. people should never have their choices limited because of some government’s ideas about morality. my choices in drugs are not crimes.
