Here’s an idea I have had for a while. I am presenting it as a thought experiment because if it was a real experiment people would lose their freaking minds.
And it goes like this : what if you set up a group of addicts with an unlimited supply of their drug of choice? What would happen?
From what I understand, most of what addicts do is go after their next fix. This often involves crime of some sort because only crime pays well enough to support their habit.
Cause drugs are expensives. y’all. Thanks, war on drugs! You keep drug dealers rich.
What I want to know is what happens if you take the need to work for your next fix out of the equation. Provide the addicts with all the lab-pure guaranteed uncut drugs they want in a doctor monitored environment. Free them from the need to commit crime.
What would they do with all their time and energy then? It is easy to imagine they would just stay stoned all the time, and maybe they would.
But even people who are wacked out on drugs need something to do. What would they do? Watch TV? Paint? Masturbate?
And think of how much soceity would benefit from keeping these people happy and off the streets. And out of the hospitals, or at least. way less time in them, because they won’t overdose accidentally any more and they won’t get fucked up by whatever the shitbag drug dealers cut their drugs with.
Come to think of it. it would deprive drug dealers of some of their clients too.
But of course, if you tried to make this a reality, people would (like I said) lose their collective shit over it.
Why? Because then we would be “wasting” taxpayer money on a “bunch of dirty drug addicts” and “giving them exactly what they want”.
So what’s so bad about that? If it works? If it benefits society?
See, the “problem” is that society has decided that drug addicts are “bad” people and therefore extremely low status, and people can’t stand the idea of “their” money going to people of far lower status than them.
It doesn’t matter that we long ago determined that addiction is an illness like cancer or the plague and therefore not something for which people are morally culpable.
Even doctors have a hard time remaining true to that knowledge in the face of the massive societal pressure to hate the addict.
We fat people have the same problem. But then again, we’re addicts too.
No, what’s important to the public mind is that drug addicts are “bad” and therefore should be punished for their addiction, not rewarded.
Oh, by the way, why do we have a war on drugs? Because drugs are bad.
Why are they bad? Because they hurt people and ruin their lives.
Which people are those? Um… drug addicts, I guess.
And that’s why we arrest drug addicts and throw them in jail? I suppose.
And does that, in fact, help them? Um…. no.
Doesn’t make a lot of sense then, does it? Unless the real agenda is to give people a group of people who can’t fight back against all of law enforcement and that therefore we can hold down and torture and punish all we want.
Oh, and the best part is they are poor people of color, so we get out racism and classism satisfied without having to own up to it at all!
What can I say…. the system works.
I am going through one of my periods where I am hungry all the time.
And god, do I hate it.
The reason why is obvious – I skipped a meal. Something that I should never, ever do, and for reasons that are potential a lot more serious than avoiding tummy grumbles.
And yet, I do it now and then anyhow. Apparently I can’t help myself.
It makes me wonder who is really in charge in my life. Because it is clearly not me. But it’s clearly not anyone else,. either.
Guess the position is and will remain vacant.
This last time, I skipped a meal for reasons that are entirely insane.
See, I ended up being too sick from IBS to go hang with Joe and Felicity at Felicity’s parents’ place last Tuesday. This left me home alone during the time when I would normally have my fourth meal of the day, my midnight snack.
I need to eat every six hours or things go Bad. It should really be every four hours but I have not been able to manage that.
Anyhow. See, normally, when I am home around midnight snack time, that is when I go out to the living room to make my popcorn and hang with Joe and Julian while we watch some Colbert and Daily Show.
But Joe wasn’t there. He was with Felicity.
So you see, I couldn’t do the normal thing, therefore I couldn’t eat at all.
Obviously, that is not literally or logically true. I could eat the same thing I would eat if Joe was home. I could eat something completely different. There are many ways in which I could still have eaten.
But in the world of my compulsions, only doing the usual thing feels possible. To do something different would be weird and hard to do and feel “wrong”.
So obviously, I couldn’t do it, and didn’t have a thing to eat until my next “normal” meal time at 6 am.
And that creates a food deficit that lasts a surprisingly long time. From past experience, I know that the only reliable way to restore the balance is to have an unusually large meal, which I will probably do Saturday night.
It’s almost absurd in its simplicity.
I will try to make my big meal high in protein and other nutrients rather than load up on carbs. Carbs are boring.
I want meat and vegetables, damn it!
Which means I will likely get sushi.
Further bulletins as events warrant.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.