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Wednesday 18 January 2012
Sunday 15 January 2012
The Unseen effects of casual drug use.
There are undoubtedly tens if not hundreds of thousands of people who take drugs on a weekend. Millions if you count binging on booze. However going back to the "weekend user" or "recreational user", I think its safe to say that the majority see themselves as well removed from the addict who uses day in day out. First up the daily user was a casual at first. You simply don't go from no drugs to drugs every day in one fell swoop. I think that fact is given and probably appears in a few official leaflets. You also see adverts about dogs being used as "mules" (carrying large amounts of class As internally) You would be blind not to notice the connection between criminal gangs and coke and anti western extremism and heroin, but what you might not know is in some cases (not all) the same gangs and/or terrorists fund child porn, female slavery/enforced prostitution and of course terrorism.
This next bit will really do your head in if you think that by smoking/growing home grown weed your contributing to the downfall of the cartels,gangs or terrorists....
OK Lets go back to the 20th century. For most of that century if you wanted to get stoned you smoked hashish or occasionally oil, thai sticks or columbian grass. You could buy, here in the UK, hash imported from Morocco (Rocky) Lebanon (Red Leb, Gold Leb) Turkey (Glimmus or Mirror Bar), Menali Charris (the champagne of hashish) Afghan Black and Pakistani Black (Red Seal, Gold Seal) Algerian hash with the crossed gold swords, Nepalese temple ball a real heavy black 'ash, Slate/Pollen from north Africa usually Morroco. It came in 2 strengths and thicknesses 7/11 and 11/11 the first being thicker and uniform strength. Slate bars were initially used to line the smugglers boats hulls. No smell till ignited and still saleable unlike rockwool etc. Thats why some slates were realy sticky and full of THC and others were very week. The 11/11 had no paper/film/hessian between the bars, so the movement of the boat would push any hash oil to the outer bars, like centrifugal force.
Back then you could become an hashish connoisseur much like a wine lover. Then came skunk.
Soon the demand for all these middle eastern and asian farmers produce dwindled as half the UK got loft conversions for skunk growth. That meant that farmers in Morocco, Lebanon etc needed a new cash crop quickly. Enter the Dragon - poppies - heroin. The once fairly peaceful (stoned?) farmers suddenly had a crop worth ten times more money. They bought weapons to protect themselves (usually from the west) and rather than kill each other as the politicians had hoped they turned on their perceived enemy.... the West.
Therefore its perfectly feasible that the boom in weed home growing directly contributed to anti western extremism. Wotta bummer of a bad trip.
This next bit will really do your head in if you think that by smoking/growing home grown weed your contributing to the downfall of the cartels,gangs or terrorists....
OK Lets go back to the 20th century. For most of that century if you wanted to get stoned you smoked hashish or occasionally oil, thai sticks or columbian grass. You could buy, here in the UK, hash imported from Morocco (Rocky) Lebanon (Red Leb, Gold Leb) Turkey (Glimmus or Mirror Bar), Menali Charris (the champagne of hashish) Afghan Black and Pakistani Black (Red Seal, Gold Seal) Algerian hash with the crossed gold swords, Nepalese temple ball a real heavy black 'ash, Slate/Pollen from north Africa usually Morroco. It came in 2 strengths and thicknesses 7/11 and 11/11 the first being thicker and uniform strength. Slate bars were initially used to line the smugglers boats hulls. No smell till ignited and still saleable unlike rockwool etc. Thats why some slates were realy sticky and full of THC and others were very week. The 11/11 had no paper/film/hessian between the bars, so the movement of the boat would push any hash oil to the outer bars, like centrifugal force.
Back then you could become an hashish connoisseur much like a wine lover. Then came skunk.
Soon the demand for all these middle eastern and asian farmers produce dwindled as half the UK got loft conversions for skunk growth. That meant that farmers in Morocco, Lebanon etc needed a new cash crop quickly. Enter the Dragon - poppies - heroin. The once fairly peaceful (stoned?) farmers suddenly had a crop worth ten times more money. They bought weapons to protect themselves (usually from the west) and rather than kill each other as the politicians had hoped they turned on their perceived enemy.... the West.
Therefore its perfectly feasible that the boom in weed home growing directly contributed to anti western extremism. Wotta bummer of a bad trip.
Teaching myself about life without drugs!
I first encountered illegal drugs aged 12 in 1980. My dad had died in early 79. After flirting with punk as a young un I got into 2 Tone and the mod revival. At xmas 79 I got the book "Mods" by Richard Barnes. In it there are several mentions of purple hearts, black bombers and amphetamines in general. I had no father figure and my mum had gone to pieces so no-one would stop me when I found out how to get some. Living near Cleethorpes at that time meant that Northern Soul was never far away. A mate of mine knew older kids who went to the allnighters at the Winter Gardens (previously at Cleethorpes Pier) so aged 14 I went to my first allnighter. By that time several of the heavy metal kids at my school had introduced me to smoking joints. At the nighter I bottled out of buying speed and fell asleep at around 3am in my little boating blazer and "Jam Shoes". The following month I was back, this time with a soul bag, spare T shirt, borrowed spencers soul bags and a pair of Clarks Polyveldts I had been given by someone from my class. I bought several speed capsules and one hour later I was a fully fledged souly and not a skool boy anymore!
The little town I lived in was a northern port and an entry point for a shitload of the UKs illegal drugs.
Hence there were more heads, junky's and speed freaks per square mile than many of the citys I have lived in or visited. It didnt take long for me to get into glue, magic mushrooms, barbiturates,even more speed, daily joint smoking and lots of booze.
AND so it went on with me chasing highs in between getting married, starting my own business, working etc.
It didnt help that when I left school the UK was going through a "recession". Every job I got seemed to finish off with the business going under due to strikes or lack of business.
By 97 I was a rave casualty, after discovering acid house in 88 and smack had gone from being a come down drug to a habit. In 98 I cleaned up and got married. By 2000 I was a DJ on the New Breed RnB circuit. An offshoot of Northern Soul that had gone back to the roots of soul. Along with that came the speed, but only ever at a weekend and I took as little as I could get away with. The odd line of mdma and coke came along too. I stopped smoking weed around this time too.
By 05 I had become a student/club DJ and coke at the weekends became quite regular. In 09 I finally stopped smoking cigarettes... All the drugs took a toll on my health and if I'm honest I didnt enjoy them all the time and the times I had fun I was inadvertently funding some pretty messed up crime or futhering the causes of terrorists (more on that later)
For New Year 2012 I planned to give up meat but as it happened I gave up meat, milk and alcohol. Weird as it might sound I feel ten years younger after just 2 weeks.
If I'm honest I took the mickey out of straight edgers in the past. I laughed at their attitudes to smoking weed and hash. Now it makes perfect sense to me, its just a shame that I had to let drugs fuck me up to learn that.
I aint trying to convert anybody, its just that I need to get these things written down so that they make more sense to me, also I'm in the unenviable position that I dont do drugs, but I know a hell of a lot about most drugs and my crimal record (which is all due to drugs) prevents me from getting work as a councillor helping people get off drugs.
Still I can always write a blog!
The little town I lived in was a northern port and an entry point for a shitload of the UKs illegal drugs.
Hence there were more heads, junky's and speed freaks per square mile than many of the citys I have lived in or visited. It didnt take long for me to get into glue, magic mushrooms, barbiturates,even more speed, daily joint smoking and lots of booze.
AND so it went on with me chasing highs in between getting married, starting my own business, working etc.
It didnt help that when I left school the UK was going through a "recession". Every job I got seemed to finish off with the business going under due to strikes or lack of business.
By 97 I was a rave casualty, after discovering acid house in 88 and smack had gone from being a come down drug to a habit. In 98 I cleaned up and got married. By 2000 I was a DJ on the New Breed RnB circuit. An offshoot of Northern Soul that had gone back to the roots of soul. Along with that came the speed, but only ever at a weekend and I took as little as I could get away with. The odd line of mdma and coke came along too. I stopped smoking weed around this time too.
By 05 I had become a student/club DJ and coke at the weekends became quite regular. In 09 I finally stopped smoking cigarettes... All the drugs took a toll on my health and if I'm honest I didnt enjoy them all the time and the times I had fun I was inadvertently funding some pretty messed up crime or futhering the causes of terrorists (more on that later)
For New Year 2012 I planned to give up meat but as it happened I gave up meat, milk and alcohol. Weird as it might sound I feel ten years younger after just 2 weeks.
If I'm honest I took the mickey out of straight edgers in the past. I laughed at their attitudes to smoking weed and hash. Now it makes perfect sense to me, its just a shame that I had to let drugs fuck me up to learn that.
I aint trying to convert anybody, its just that I need to get these things written down so that they make more sense to me, also I'm in the unenviable position that I dont do drugs, but I know a hell of a lot about most drugs and my crimal record (which is all due to drugs) prevents me from getting work as a councillor helping people get off drugs.
Still I can always write a blog!
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