And when that heroin is in my blood I really don't care anymore

by anna at 07:43 PM on July 27, 2005

Fueled by government-funded pronouncements and overwrought (one of my fave words) portrayals of drug addiction in movies and media, most people have this image of murmuring addicts laying in fetid pools of vomit in alleys or jabbing needles in a search for a vein that has yet to collapse. To paraphrase that pol whose name escapes me, I've known lots of addicts and they are nothing like that.

In fact, they are more like you than you'd care to think. Let me introduce you to the alien concept of social crackheads. Meet a car mechanic, real estate title searcher and pizzaria owner who are married with children and mortgages and bills. See them going about their daily business, meeting obligations except for those occasional weekends when they convene in hotel rooms, tape tin foil to all the windows lest any light peek through, and smoke crack for an entire weekend.

Actually it isn't crack, it's freebase. White addicts including David Crosby in his book Long Time Gone go to great lengths to distinguish between the two. They claim that ghetto crack has additives and thus isn't pure cocaine like the freebase they so lovingly cook up in those hotel rooms. This is bullshit. When supplies run low, these guys can be found at open air drug markets where brothers holler, "Whatchou need?" with impunity.

You may be surprised to learn that freebase, as well as Ecstacy, have been around since the early 80s. I saw people freebasing in 1982, using volatile solvents that caught Richard Pryor on fire. He famously said, "When you runnin' down the street and you on fire, people gets out of you way." Nowadays all you need is water, a vial or spoon and baking soda and a lighter (actually a tiny torch works better.)

I have also read articles about folks who become heroin addicts in their youth, lack the wherewithal to quit and basically go through their lives as functional folks other than those telltale track marks up and down their arms and between their toes. That is why there are long sleeve shirts. And of course we've all known functioning alcoholics. They drink to excess but manage their lives pretty well, thank you very much.

Which brings me to my main point. I have made it clear that I don't think the government has any business trying to regulate personal behavior. Presently I am a very responsible, well-off suburban homeowner, Cub Scout leader and soccer coach. At other times I have gambled with bookies, visited prostitutes and taken every drug you could imagine. People go through phases and it is no business of the goddamn government what they do.

So I read that Afghanistan has a problem. Its cash crop has always been poppies, which are converted to opium and sold to heroin cartels. Now that moralistic America has installed its puppet government there, this is somehow a problem. And folks, I have the solution. There is a huge, legal market for raw opium. Just ask Pfizer and all the other pharmaceutical companies who are making a killing selling OxyContin, Percocet and Tylox to cure ycur imaginary aches and pains and in many cases, fueling a worse drug epedemic than street dealers coulld ever cause. All we need to do is let the Afghans grow their poppies but sell them only tho those reputable pharmo-conglomerates so that everyone becomes addicted to opiates. This would include those moralists who wring their hands about this supposed "issue" while gulping down handfuls of OxyContin during their breaks.

Do you hear me, Rush Limbaugh? Oh wait, I fogot. You're deaf. Never mind.