PSYCHIATRY IS PSYCHOTIC: May 2014

THANKS FOR THE ZOMBIES!!!

A JOURNAL ABOUT DRUGS

By Justin Lindner

I dedicate this journal to a cousin who I never met who took his own life at a young age before I was born because nobody could help him. RIP Jason, I wish you were here but know you were hurting.

This started as just a blog rant about klonopin but it’s expanded, I’m putting all my thoughts on our flawed drug policy down on paper if to nothing else clear my head but hopefully it will wake some people up. Bear with me because this is kind if a stream of consciousness journal of a lot of drug related experiences and feelings as well as plenty of facts. I feel it is important so it will still be avaiolable for free as a blog post on http://psychiatryispsychotic.blogspot.com/

This may get added to another related work in progress about psych wards or It may serve as a prequel.

(NOTE: First thing is first this is a rant. I am not "manic" and am 100% clearheaded as I type all of this; if I was “manic” (I hate that word by the way) it would be unreadable gibberish if I was capable of typing at all. Some people like to use my diagnosis against me when they don't like points I'm making, it is condescending, abusive and honesty pretty spineless.)

Special Note to my family if they read it: This is pretty much tell all so brace yourselves or maybe just don’t read this although you are welcome to.

Forward:

There is a lot of anger written here but this was as much for me as anyone else to be honest. Getting thoughts out on paper can be great therapy. I wrote this whole document or whatever you want to call it in one sitting while struggling with my usual insomnia, it sucks but it’s my normal. There is a lot of profanity in here. There are mentions of drug use and I’ll tell you right now that I despise the DEA, many psychiatric care providers, and that I am extremely pro medicinal marijuana. If any of that sounds like it might offend you I look forward to any potential hate mail so I can post it on my totally insane blog. Here is my personal email address: J.M.Lindner87@gmail.com

Any feedback is welcome and I will gladly debate with anyone.

Let’s just call them by the street name because they are as hardcore as any illicit out there. Kpins. Fuck kpins. Fuck every doctor, lawyer, DEA scumbag agent, politician, parent or priest that says this shit is medicine and ok because a psychiatrist prescribed it and its medicine. It’s a fucking narcotic. They mine as well give me cocaine (or crack) because it's what it reminds me of, in that it is very seductive. When you do coke you do a little feel really good for a little while its fades, do more feel better and do more and more and more and its gone. Kpins are a little different in that the high lasts longer and you don't need too much the problem is you blackout, once you blackout your brain apparently thinks the remaining klonopin is candy. In cocaine's defense I have never come close to blacking out on it, blacking out is basically the most dangerous drug scenario possible in my opinion because you can do anything in that state. If you have an addictive personality plus a lot of stress and I have both and are prescribed klonopin YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO TAKE JUST ONE just like you can't do JUST ONE LINE OF COKE. This stupid fucking doctor who I refuse to see ever again has me livid. Personally I don't think this shit should be prescribed to anyone seeing how unlike other illicit drugs the withdrawal from the very likely addiction you can rapidly acquire can actually fucking kill you.

I asked a friend once what coke was like before I had ever tried it, he said he hated it. I said why? He said because he liked it. That's what these drugs do; they make you feel too good. They numb you from reality it’s basically like if you broke a bone and they just kept giving you morphine and called it treatment. That's not treatment of the problem it’s just making the patient more comfortable. So they aren't really fixing anything or even trying to they are just literally getting you so high that you don't care. Depression and anxiety which I have 24/7 in tandem in a word is LOW, the opposite of low is HIGH. This is why i hate the anti-drug crowd, clearly they have never really been low and to me it means they are naturally HIGH, I suppose you could call that "happy" whatever the fuck that means. So they have this negative opinion of people that use drugs. "They just want to get high..." they will say. FUCK YOU to that bullshit. It’s nonsense, a vast majority of people with mental illness severely abuse drugs, street drugs, alcohol, and our prescription drugs. We want to be numb because no one is curing us.

I feel like I'm beating a dead horse but again I have to advocate medicinal marijuana. SPECIFIC STRAINS. There aren't any of these seriously life threatening hazards associated with kpins or other benzos, I'm not even talking about the antis psychotics, antidepressants or tranquilizers- that's another topic.

Marijuana is DIFFERENT. I don't believe in miracles but with this drug and ITS JUST ANOTHER DRUG YOU ANTI FUCKS who HYPOCRITICALLY ENDORSE LETHAL PHARMACEUTICALS, Marijuana is a miracle treatment, the shit the doctors are PUSHING is poison, it kills, it rots, it destroys, creates more addicts and more symptoms. In some cases it may help and that's fine but it’s insane to assume everyone will respond well to chemicals that alter the mind and body in such away.

I can only speak for myself. Marijuana has the effects of an antidepressant, anti-psychotic, and anti-anxiety med all rolled in one and as a bonus it’s a sleep aid and boosts creativity. It does all that but is much gentler, you don't feel weighed down or dirty from it, you don't feel hangover the next day, and it’s just total tranquility.

The problem is there are 2 drug cartels in the world. There is the "bad cartel" such as the gangs in Mexico who push a lot of our street products and they are bad people, they kill mercilessly and use terrorism without hesitation but it’s all for money. So the stuff they push gets labeled BAD DRUGS and generations are told certain drugs are BAD and people that do them are BAD and should be JAILED and SHUNNED, despite it being a HEALTH ISSUE, NOT A CRIMINAL JUSTICE ISSUE. And the government employs law enforcement to keep on packing the prisons full of mostly nonviolent people who have at least some chance of rehabilitation if given the opportunity. Then at the same time the government uses its propaganda to say alcohol, tobacco, and pharmaceuticals including opiates (same class as heroin), benzodiazepines (an abomination with no street equivalent) and amphetamines among plenty of other lovely chemical concoctions and they call those medicine so they are OK. Big Tobacco, Big Pharma and Big Alcohol are the SECOND CARTEL and they have full government support and endorsement. The kicker is THEY KILL THE MOST PEOPLE!

But it’s all finally falling apart. In the last few years there have been some major I feel fatal blows to this facade which is all it is have occurred. For a while we were locking up drug dealer and users and it looked OK, it looked like the system was working. People were still consuming mass amounts of illegal and legal drugs and dying from them but the naive masses didn't see a problem, they thought things were mostly under control.

THEN A FUCKING ZOMBIE ATE A GUYS FACE DOWN IN MIAMI! OK, sounds crazy but no bullshit this is essentially what happened and what I see as a wakeup call to a lot of people who were vastly unaware of the new LEGAL SYNTHETIC DRUG TRADE. Let me back up for a while. This started kind of slow. People started talking about K2 Incense. What the fuck is that? Ignorant people still don’t know, they don’t want to know. The DEA did such a good job keeping real marijuana out that cartels concocted synthetic formulas of totally legal “research chemicals” which effect some of the same receptors in the brain as marijuana. But they did a lot more than that.

Personally I used the stuff a TON while it was big, it’s pretty much underground now but still seen every now and then but now it’s pretty much totally illegal across the planet. For years it was sold in every gas station and smoke shop to anyone 18 and up. Everyone tried it at first out of curiosity. At first, it was amazing, it was an incredible euphoric high that rivalled the best marijuana you could find, the high lasted a long time, and it didn’t take much or cost much. Then it started to get out of control. Soon ultra-potent formulas came out, and these were on par with opiates and strong hallucinogens in their effects, I am pretty sure a good number of kids died, ERs had lots of seizure’s come in from it. It was totally unregulated so people didn’t know what they were getting.

But then it starts to get not so fun, you start spending more, using more and getting less effect or worse effects. There are 2 reasons for this. One is simple, tolerance, people were getting seriously hooked on the stuff, looking back I realize I was a total fucking train wreck disaster, probably worse than my heavy drinking days which were years prior to this. Of course I was mixing the stuff with antipsychotics which pretty much amplify every other drug you take but that’s beside the point. With more tolerance drugs become less fun and you start “chasing the dragon” meaning searching for something that makes you feel as good as the early days WHICH ARE PURE HEAVEN ZERO PAIN. Real

Marijuana for me is unique in that it’s consistently good and has been for years, sure I have a higher tolerance than I did when I was younger but I still don’t crave something stronger- unless marijuana isn’t available. If I’m in a bad mood and can’t get weed, give me what you’ve got! As Ozzy Osborne said in an interview when asked his preference during his heavy drugging days “I was a fucking garbage can”. BUT, if quality marijuana is readily available AS IT IS in the RATIONAL STATES then I want nothing to do with the other stuff. I don’t love opiates or coke, I haven’t tried meth but I fear If pushed and in a bad mood and nothing else was around I might shoot up without hesitation. BUT I DON’T WANT TO.

So, back to the synthetic weed, Spice, K2, whatever was in your area there were tons of batches and nobody knew where they were coming from. Aside from the tolerance that users were developing the DEA started attempting to ban it. This was not as easy as banning cocaine or marijuana which is easily identified. This is a manufactured drug using various cocktails of chemicals with a wide range of combinations. So they ban a dozen or so chemicals. The stuff dries up, crisis over, right? Hell No! A month or so later people in smoke shops where they know they are being recorded were basically taunting the DEA about the new batches that came out. Sure enough new stuff came out and it was good, for a while, then the cycle started again. Soon enough, more ER trips, more bans until eventually the product quality really dived. At first it felt pretty clean and some actually smelled and tasted pretty good. Eventually the highs weren’t that great at all, it was a lot of hit and miss, and the stuff started to smell awful and taste sometimes awful- but if you’re hooked, you don’t stop. Marijuana doesn’t do that…

Fast forward to today, it’s almost extinct. Some people can get it but it’s rare and illegal which actually a good thing is. While I am very anti prohibition, this stuff was an abomination AND IT WAS THANKS TO PROHIBITION THAT IT EVER EXISTED!

They should have seen this coming. Manufactured drugs already existed but only appealed to the most desperate junkies. I’m talking about crystal meth which most people are pretty terrified of. You don’t see it much but it has a market. It got hit pretty hard now that they flag people who try to buy a shopping cart full of ephedrine- a big ingredient in the manufacture of crystal methamphetamine. So it’s not as easy for people to make big batches like I guess it was. And actually Hollywood did us a favor with this one. The award winning show on AMC “Breaking Bad” literally scared the shit out of teenagers. I only encountered meth once and the people on it were not pleasant, very hostile and edgy. The show didn’t glamorize the drug at all and made it very clear that was bad stuff pushed by bad people. Meth is known for making people “tweak” as they call it which apparently is some kind of several day wide awake semi hallucinatory delirium and they can be very unpredictable. But luckily you just don’t encounter it much, at least in my area of Brevard County, Florida. Though I hear it’s around still, I sure as hell don’t go looking for that crowd.

Opiates are huge; heroin is like a dinosaur thanks to all the prescription pain pills which affect many of the same receptors. I’ve never seen heroin, but I’ve met countless pill heads who have to have their opiates- very similar in nature to heroin addicts. They are totally mellow as long as they have their fix but if they are “fiending”, having withdrawals or coming down they are not fun to be around. But again thanks to the drug war I hear that the pain med prescriptions are getting more tightly restricted now and as a result heroin might come back big. It never went away; people just do what is most easily available within reason of their preference of drug type. It’s just a big cycle. I’m pretty sure meth a stimulant was rooted in a decrease in coke supply; well coke and crack are back again so thanks for fixing that meth problem.

Then you have your miscellaneous drugs like all the club drugs such as ecstasy and now molly is popular which is worse than ecstasy I hear though it’s supposed to be pure MDMA, the main active ingredient in ecstasy. Both can cook your brain inside its skull and be laced with potentially anything. Seeing a pattern yet? You have all the hallucinogens of course real LSD is rare unless you’re a chemist. You have shrooms and cacti and other plants that can cause hallucinations but they occur in nature. Any hallucinogen has its risks since the person might not know where they are and could wander into some hazard like traffic but hell I did that on Kpins and that’s ‘medicine”. Seriously the cops picked me up and drove me to a friend house to get me home. I guess I was dodging cars and someone called them. I wasn’t publically intoxicated- technically I was on doctor prescribed medicine. Had a car ran me over and killed me dead whose fault would that be? They can give bartenders manslaughter if they let a drunk out and it causes a deadly accident so by that principle I would blame the doctor.

Doctor’s orders: take one tablet at night at bed time, no more than one- ignoring what kpins do… DON”T SELL THEM, he told me that, the fucker knows it’s a fairly hot street drug. Don’t mix with alcohol, yea yea yea… A realistic doctor in the past gave me the same bottle and prescribed it logically: Take as needed. Its anti-anxiety med, anxiety is not on a fucking schedule and sometimes one pill doesn’t tap it; so take as needed is the only thing that remotely makes sense. It’s still dangerous as hell. The first time I had the script for it was years prior, during the early stages of my experiments with synthetic marijuana and some other stuff. I took one, felt good, real good so I decided why not have some fun and do it recreationally. 30 pills later I staggered into my job with what turned out to be a concussion and the remnants of a klonopin high-it will keep your going for a day or so if you take that much. My boss at the time thought I was drunk, I went to the ER and sure enough, concussion, but I could have been killed. I have zero memory of hitting my head but on that horrible drug I was so fucked up that I took enough trauma to my head to cause a concussion and didn’t even realize it. I imagine in that state you could take a bullet and be oblivious.

The real evil part about klonopin is that it is the ONLY legal drug that has any effect on my symptoms, it or another bezno like Xanax but practically the same thing, same result I am sure. So it would seem I am doomed to a life, likely a short one of benzo addiction leading to possible lethal withdrawal. That’s my fate if the republicans have their way. Then there was a glimmer of hope. I started when I found some psychiatrists WERE using marijuana to treat psychiatric issues, maybe there is a god… maybe, but were not there yet. For the moment its benzos and lots of them or nothing because I’m tired of being a human Guinea Pig for countless psych drugs that DO NOT WORK. The providers let their egos tell them they are helping, they aren’t fixing; they are just making people more tolerable to be around by sapping their energy. At best I look at benzos as something to buy me time. I am hoping for a medical marijuana legalization this year at which point I will be free, because IT WORKS FOR ME. But for now its still a naughty, evil, dirty, criminal act and I deserve a cage for touching it… I wish I was in Colorado or Washington, they just said fuck it, the only real solution…. But medical isn’t bad either; I’ll take baby steps over criminalization…

Then salvia came out. Salvia was popular for a while and is known to be one of the most potent hallucinogens on earth. I never got ahold of it because they banned it so fast it kind of vanished as it was building hype. People described it as just completely separating from perceived reality. In a span of a 5 minute trip it was said that the experience could feel like months or years, this is how DMT is described. People talk to entities and visit alien worlds. It might be all in their head that’s up to spiritual interpretations, Shamans would disagree but none the less their physical body remains here and exposed. So wherever your mind or spirit or soul might be you could still do something like run into traffic, so I guess it’s like klonopin! I think it’s still legal in some states but it’s rare and sure as hell has been banished from Florida, America’s dick…

People are very arrogantly and ignorantly backwards in politics in Florida yet they are naïve about it. A bunch of dick head medical providers and politicians controlling the drugs living on a giant dick full of old people who believe the evil reefer will make negroes rape white women blah blah blah, watch reefer madness its fucking insanse, but people bought it and vote based on what they learned from it and similar propaganda. Polls show things are changing, I think it’s because they are nationally and globally but I never trust polls. Florida is also a giant dick because it hangs below the “Bible BELT”, no shock that there are a lot of ignorant southerners here. There are also a lot gangs and guns and killings largely thanks to a drug war which is what creates crime, then we have people who either so drugged up or so senile they don’t know what is going on. Then there are some well off people in nice communities and some places with extreme wealth but I see a lot of drugs and hear a lot of sirens. And ZOMBIES! But not yet; I’ll explain that at the end.

As for voting here’s a novel idea I wish we would implement. I used to be a paramedic in Florida so I am really not making this up. To check someone’s general mental status when it’s questionable which is usually very clear we ask three questions, easy questions a first grader bar any handicap should be able to answer easily. Usually it is: Who is president, what year is it, and what state are they in? I can answer that people can generally answer that but many of these seniors get one or more of these questions wrong whether it’s the drugs or the dementia. BUT THEY CAN VOTE! AND FUCK IT, LET THEM DRIVE TOO! Yea we wait until after wrecks to tell them they are fucking dangerous. It’s not just mental either its physical declines too. I am terrified of my grandparents driving, everyone has seen recklessness and this is widespread. This isn’t ageism its reality, over time motor and sensory function deteriorate as does memory and other things. These people should still have dignity, with all the poisons the doctors give me I doubt I’ll live past 60 but if I do I would want to be respected too. But If I can’t tell you what state I am in or even know who is elected in politics DO NOT LET ME DRIVE AND DO NOT LET ME VOTE! That’s just common sense to me. At least start re testing people for driving licenses at SOME POINT! I witnessed a hit and run on a little girl, my guess based on demographics is an older disabled person thought they hit a speed bump, luckily this patient was just a little scraped up!...

I almost forgot about Kratom; then I’ll get to the ZOMBIES! Kratom popped up around the same time the synthetic weed hit the markets. It is an herb that stimulates the opiate receptors in the brain. I’ve mentioned receptors already but let me explain them the best way I can in my fairly brief understanding of them. In the brain there are essentially keyholes for different substances such as drugs. When a drug is ingested and broken down by the body it is carried in the blood stream and eventually it will reach these receptors or “keyholes” as I describe them. The “key” turns and unlocks your given effect for whatever drug. That’s the basic physiology of it as I understand it. So long story short kratom is like opium but legal and different. Kratom is still sold at local shops and hasn’t gotten much attention. Many people either haven’t noticed it or heard of it or just aren’t interested. Either way it hasn’t made nearly as many news headlines as the synthetic weed so I’m guessing it hasn’t put too many people in the hospital.

Now, I’ve tried opiates, I don’t love them, they often come with nausea and I find the high more or less over rated. I’ve even done them in the same sitting as smoking crack, not proud of that, won’t “speedball” again but I mention it because my experience with kratom was very brief, I have only tried it a few times but the first time it was the strangest high I have ever experienced. It is triggering something like cocaine, opium and a hallucinogen all at once. I was up all night, felt very good, very social, had some mild visual and audio distortions later on as I took more. And the come down the next day was slow and gentle and while I enjoyed it I had no desire to use it again any time soon. But it’s very inconsistent because I tried it a few other times and had different effects. Once I used it with strong synthetic marijuana and maybe some real too and almost got sick and was extremely lightheaded. Another time a low dose by itself made me feel ill. And that was the last time I touched kratom and don’t really have any interest in doing I again but it’s one more loophole in the drug laws that has a niche market.

I’ve never thrown up on opiates or kratom but have felt close. It’s not something I enjoy, for a while I had almost a phobia of it after some nightmarish drunk nights then I got mono and that killed a lot of fears. Mononucleosis feels like I imagine dying must. You almost want to be dead but I’m stubborn. Your body is not your friend, because a virus is trying to destroy it. You have zero energy, my liver was swollen, I had a high fever and I was yellow and my urine was orange which I thought was blood, turned out to be some kind of liver juice filtering out either way I was pretty scared. You also get very dehydrated and have very little appetite. Eventually I got sick from it, after smoking synthetic weed…with mono, stupid I know but they had prescribed OxyContin’s and I said fuck that and self-medicated for the most part. The oxy’s would have likely gotten me sick too so I was screwed either way. Pick your poison… The irony is I felt the nausea coming on in waves and finally called my mom to have another prescription for an anti-nausea medicine and like a fuck you from god I ended up vomiting AFTER taking the med that was supposed to prevent it, luckily it doubled as a sedative so I was pretty out of it and probably still high from the junk I was smoking….

Fairly recently I was on Haldol for a while, one of the chemical lobectomy drugs like Thorazine but much less pleasant. The closest thing I can describe Haldol to is having mono, If you have had mono you have basically taken Haldol so you know it sucks, I hear some people get results. I here drug pushers (doctors and nurses…) only say that, patients cringe at the word Haldol. They had me haldol plus some even worse shit at the psych ward that prescribed the haldol that made start to swell up- signs of an allergic reaction which can fucking kill you and by emergency order fixed that with something else (psych ward is another story…working on that but between haldol, thorazine, seoquel, Ativan and Benadryl and that’s all I can remember for sure, the memory was pretty blurry).

I went to a NAMI meeting after that, my first and last. It was the day after I chose to stop taking the haldol against orders and my parent’s wishes. I believe they do mean well but when it comes to drugs I am not patient, if the “cure” feels like mono which felt like death then fuck the cure, sorry. They believe the doctors that say you have to give it time. To a person who has abused many drugs “give it time” translates to “suck it up and wait for tolerance to kick in”. And fuck that. Oh fun fact: When you’re on mono, I mean haldol you have to take benztropine, the sole purpose of taking beztropine is so the haldol doesn’t FUCKING KILL YOU! Yea death is typically an unwanted side effect in medicine but psychiatrists makes me wonder. One of the two also makes it extremely difficult to urinate in case you were curious and the unlockable doors meaning lack of privacy at the psych ward didn’t exactly help that either…

So at the NAMI meeting I went there fairly cloudy. I felt better but there was still some haldol in me and I almost left. An odd side effect of haldol is you have almost no energy yet are antsy, this is known as a mind fuck and you kind of end up uncomfortably fidgeting. At first they weren’t even talking about psych stuff, just some old guy was I think trying to promote Obama Care or something but it was boring. Finally it ended and got to the part I was actually interested in: talking to other people with similar experiences. The group leader wasn’t a patient but her daughter had something schizoid-effecto I don’t know fuck the DSM. She was nice and all and so was the people but I’d have preferred someone who actually suffered from psychiatric symptoms lead, it just made more sense. She said NAMI members who suffer versus family who go to seek support go by the nickname “consumers”. This is actually hilarious because it’s a subtle fuck you to the pharmaceutical company; like saying “Yes, we know what we are to you”. Pharmaceutical corporation CEOs didn’t ask me how their medicines made me feel but they did watch their profits go up. Fuck them. They are drug dealers, nothing more they are just sneakier than the openly violent narco-terrorist variety, and have political backing, to do the same thing: make money pushing poisons. At least the street dealers are somewhat honest; they tell you what fucks you up, Big Pharma says it’s all good medicine. So I’m done being unquestioning loyal consumer.

So I ask the group leader a simple question that had been bothering me. “Is it better to be on bad medicines or no medicines?” She was a little stunned and some consumer chuckled. I chose the word medicine. Semantics is interesting, people hear the word drug and thing bad, and it’s a programmed response. The DARE officer told you bad when adults knew everything however doctors say medicine is good. I had that programming (literal psychological conditioning, fucking brainwashing kids) rewired early in paramedic training. The fact is street drugs are drugs and medicines are drugs. Good medicines, bad medicines, toxic medicines, they are all drugs. Wikipedia’s broad definition is: “a chemical substance that has known biological effects on humans or other animals”. Ok so glucose is a drug, water is a drug, oxygen is drug, yet they are all vital to life.

So she finally answered with not much confidence that it’s better to be some medicine; wrong answer, sorry. I haven’t gone back but don’t blame her for being tricked. Obviously it’s not better to be on something that literally does the opposite of its claim I refuse to believe or cooperate with anyone feels any drug is better than no drug. I really think the word medicine flipped a switch in her subconscious that says “GOOD”. It is psychological; we associate negative and positive emotions to single words without fully understanding what they might mean, like DRUG, not BAD, maybe BAD maybe GOOD. But medicine is thought of as curative by definition, it’s a sneaky game they are playing, it isn’t fair, they should reliable psych drugs per each patient as experiment number __, if we are being honest. If you have something like a heart dysrhythmia and a drug actually fixes it, you can call it medicine; otherwise, call it a fucking drug stop kidding yourself. With psychiatric drugs I believe 100% of the “evidence” is anecdotal and varies from patient to patient. Like marijuana which helps many people. With anecdotal evidence your options are think of your patients as liar, some might be, we know how to work the system, you taught us or you can take our word for it when we say we know what works. Call me a liar you have to prove it, compassionate doctors have to give us the benefit of the doubt, it’s the only moral option.

I’ll chances with that DANGEROUS REEFER! Why favorite argument against street weed which I’ll agree is somewhat riskier than dispensary stuff which is actually regulated is that “It could be laced!” or, “They could put anything in that!” Let me shoot a bunch of holes through this “theory”… No drug dealer wants their clients DEAD! They want them PAYING. So, maybe some will lace stuff occasionally in an attempt to get you to go back to them, who knows. Several problems there, one is that would be a foolish waste of product and contrary to some popular belief most dealers are not stupid, some have pharmacy, chemistry and medical degrees. But let’s say they do lace it with whatever, unless I meet the first serial killer to dish out poison weed I doubt it will be anything worse than anything else I’ve done and chances are it will just increase the high so fucking lace it I don’t care. 0 deaths and counting despite all this alleged laced stuff so I’m not too concerned about becoming a statistic.

Here’s a theory, maybe the DEA fucking laces the stuff they steal, or botch the test results; an information war within a drug war is not that farfetched. Its less believable than the poison weed which is less believable than Unicorns, I hear they are in North Korea! The point is that a government can tell people whatever they want them to believe and the sheep won’t think twice especially after generations of indoctrination propaganda. Government protects us. Government is good. I’m 5 years old can’t write my name but I can pledge allegiance to a country I know nothing about but love!...

The sickest part of the anti-drug propaganda is it was vastly fueled by racism in the early days. They lied about the horrors black people would commit against whites. Slavery was over but black people were still viewed as second rate citizens by many people in that day (early 1900s) and beyond so it worked. Obviously the tactics change, now I like to believe we are more racially tolerant than we were 100 or so years ago. But now, by coincidence I kind of have to put my foot in my mouth… In the ZOMBIE story I’ve mentioned occurred in Miami the alleged “Zombie” happened to be a black man. He also happened to be what the best guess is was “bath salts” but stories wildly vary. The fake weed was usually called “incense”, well synthetic cocaine or meth or whatever this stuff is supposed to be is labeled “bath salts”.

If the “incense” sounded bad you are in for a shock. This is the new stuff and what is does to people is best described as ZOMBIE! Keep in mind Miami has a large Haitian population and Zombies are part of their culture so this may have been the worst place outside if Haiti for this to happen. However what happened was not an isolated incident, it happens to people who take this drug regardless of ethnicity and has happened elsewhere this was just the first time it made major news, I believe National News. Wikipedia calls their article on the incident the “Miami cannibal attack” but I know the word Zombie was thrown around a lot and is a good metaphor for what I will now describe.

It happened on May 26, 2012 in Miami Florida between 1:55 and 2:13 PM. Rudy Eugene was fatally shot and Ronald Poppo was brutally attacked and seriously injured by Ronald who was to say the least crazed, and completely naked. Eugene attacked Ronald as he was resting under a railway downtown on MacArthur Causeway near the Miami Herald headquarters. A bypasser called 911 and police arrived to find Rudy biting and tearing flesh from Ronald’s face. The police officer warned him to stop but was growled at in response and the attack continued at which point the officer fired one shot which apparently didn’t faze Rudy and fired four more, fatally wounding him and ending the attack.

Ronald needed extensive reconstructive surgery after being stabilized. He lost 75–80% of his face including his gouged out left eyeball. He is now disfigured and blind in both eyes. This of course got people screaming Zombies so the CDC said this “CDC does not know of a virus or condition that would reanimate the dead (or one that would present zombie-like symptoms)." Let’s ask the DEA! I blame the DEA for this. They are the enforcers of prohibition and without it all these new terrible drugs wouldn’t exist. We never should have attempted drug prohibition it is purely wasteful and does no more good than alcohol prohibition did. Unidentified pills were found in Rudy’s stomach during autopsy. It is speculated that the substance was “bath salts”; I am told it is a big problem in South Florida but have yet to encounter it. I do know people who have tried it; one guy said the next day felt like he’d been run over by a train. Without getting specific not having permission I know a cop down there who has experienced other oddities such as people possessing super human strength while enraged or having total resistance to pain. Elsewhere people have taken multiple Taser shocks with effect.

To be fair and this is borderline comical the only substance they did find in the autopsy toxicology report was… marijuana. I know now people might try to quote this as a new anti-weed argument but I’ll give that crowd a sliver of faith and vouch they aren’t THAT ignorant. I’m pretty sure my dad thinks Satan himself made weed and he didn’t even believe that the devil’s lettuce was the cause of this neither do police and medical professionals. The reason the test on the pills wasn’t conclusive is because with these new synthetics we really don’t know what the fuck we are dealing with. We may never know, if they don’t know what they are looking for they really can’t look for it. Certainly the would have screened for things like PCP which has a history of causing violent behavior, or meth or crack, but none of that; just a little weed and some mystery pills. Quick note on mystery pills…I have tried some “herbal ecstasy” from somewhere during my experimentation binge phase, and it was not pleasant, a friend said it was nothing like the real thing. Some of these new drugs have effects some don’t do anything, and some are nightmares-worse than the worst horror stories the DARE officer or paramedic instructors could conjure up about what they knew about dangerous drugs.

The most common theory seems to be some form of “bath salts”. So what the fuck exactly is this new chemical abomination? I’ll get to it in a second but first some final thoughts on Zombies. It obviously wasn’t a walking corpse zombie but another question is “What is a zombie?” It’s an interesting debate. I think traditionally people would think Romero Night of the Living Dead style, literal walking corpses. But other people referred to the 28 Days later scenario as a Zombie story. I’m OCD about medical details and like to point out that in 28 Days later they were live humans infected with a virus or disease that made them act very much like Zombies so it’s up to semantics again. A form of Zombification I have witnessed and experienced is what is known as a chemical lobotomy. In the old days patients with psychiatric issues were “treated” with a spike through their skull effectively obliterating the prefrontal cortex of the frontal lobes of the brain. That was MEDICINE. Now we have drugs, same result.

They even called thorazine “the chemical lobotomy” when it was introduced, isn’t that sweet… Ok surgical lobotomy was done beginning in 1935 and continued for decades, who know how many people were victim to it worldwide. The originator achieved a Nobel Prize in Barbarism; I mean Physiology or Medicine in 1949. By ’51 almost 20,000 people had fallen victim to this horseshit in the USA alone and in the end it came to around 40,000 and that’s just us, 10s of thousands were done in other countries, 17,000 in the UK alone; so you may know someone who survived the procedure but it is pretty much lights out so it wouldn’t be much of a person, a Zombie maybe is a better word except they would have a pulse and not be rotting. Like 28 days later but mellow, still sad. So the 50s roll around and THEN people introduce anti psychotics for the sake of humanity. In terms of human history that was a blink ago and the replacement just doesn’t look so violent and doesn’t have to be permanent. Nonetheless in terms of psychiatry it is in its infancy. We are in the fucking dark ages and the earth is flat, that’s what we know about human psychology. So fuck the fancy chemicals the corporate dealers push, I’ll go with the proven ancient magic herb from the Witch Doctor. I don’t trust the corporations who have never sent a person to ask me how I am doing; I’ll go with a dealer who wants feedback on the current weed strain any day! But I’m a dirty criminal. It’s almost like burning “witches” at the stake. They really thought they were doing the right thing, and in psychiatry, that’s about the time frame we are in and that’s being generous. It’s clichéd now in regards to beer versus weed but works equally well against psychiatric drugs. Who do you trust, a creating god or humans? Well so far nature hasn’t provided us with anything similar to our Miami Zombie Attack but humans sure have. Humans have done a lot to fuck up nature, so I’ll trust the god or gods I don’t even necessarily believe in, I’ll trust Mother Nature because marijuana is beautiful and pills are ugly and unnatural. And sneaky when you know what they replace by design.

So, about those bath salts, they are really interesting. Get ready for a lot of crazy medical terminology. Basically they are another new class of designer drugs that fills drug law loop holes. In this case the main active chemicals are substituted cathinones. Cathinone is a benzoylethanamine which isn’t even a real word, it’s a bunch of words for chemical compounds I really can’t even understand or explain, I’m no chemist but here’s the interesting part, since I do know some history. Hagigat is another word for this stuff which is a monoamine alkaloid found in an herb called Khat, similar to amphetamines. Now if you’ve seen the movie or read the book “Black Hawk Down” or read about Operation Gothic Serpent and the bloody 1993 Battle of Mogodishu, Somalia the word Khat may ring a bell. The movie doesn’t really portray it too well but does illustrate the Somali’s voracity in battle when they used the drug Khat. The Rangers wanted to go in the city at night because then the militia would all be coming down off their Khat highs and the US has major tactical advantages at night. The Somali fighters were also indoctrinated die hard Muslims, I’m not attacking Islam as a whole but you know you have some crazy fuckers who claim Islam as their faith. Combine religious extremism and deep brain washing to hate the west with a crazy drug like bath salts and you get Black Hawk Down because for whatever reason they chose to go in during daytime and thought it would be no big deal.

During the battle elite American Special Forces including Rangers, Delta Force, SEALS, and some Pararescue guys there were reports of having to hit enemy combatants multiple times at point blank range with their rifles to bring them down. The Miami “Zombie” took multiple shots as well also at similar range; the variance in lethality of the weapons used is pretty much moot. The range fired was probably similar; both should be capable of killing humans efficiently in trained hands. But when you take something like bath salts (plus obvious adrenaline and blood lust) apparently the effect is that you fight until either your nervous system completely fails or you bleed out or you have major organ failure and the maybe you fight some more. On a side note in Vietnam we switched to a smaller less lethal caliber and I think that’s a mistake tactically. Some people agree and use cases like this as an argument so there is a push to bump up the caliber of our military’s standard assault rifles.

I’ve heard of similar cases in Afghanistan where the Taliban would smoke opium before fighting. I’ve seen footage of them being shot and hardly reacting (granted it wasn’t a central nervous system or heart shot) and they bleed a little, get patched up and keep fighting. I heard of one commander ordering shotguns, I have heard the Taliban do not fear the sound of American rifle fire.

In these cases you have religious extremism and hatred combined with very potent drugs that have serious psychological and physiological effects, they probably see it as a tactical advantage and I suppose if your goal is dying for Jihad anything could be a tactical advantage. Either way these cases came to mind as I was researching bath salts. It does make a lot of sense. As for the perpetrator in Miami I don’t know much about what kind of man he was. I know he was Haitian descent and went to a Soutern Baptist Church in the area. Now I have lived in Florida quite a while now and have met m any Haitians and they are generally some of the kindest people you will ever meet. That said Haiti does have some spiritual views that are considered out there, so do some Baptist Church’s but many Baptists are perfectly nice people as will. Still I can only guess that he may at some point could have been exposed to some extremism of some sort, combined with a drug maybe some hatred planted in his subconscious really put him over the edge. I also don’t know about his relationship with the victim aside from apparently they vaguely knew each other. Maybe they didn’t like each other and the drugs brought that out. The whole thing is tragic but medically fascinating. We might not ever know the whole truth but a drug like khat or synthetic khat seems a likely candidate to me. Real khat is most likely controlled but a synthetic could very well slip under the radar as others have.

And it all comes back to our drug policy. We try so hard to burn the candle at both ends. Some drugs are accepted, some are criminalized and some of the reasons for banning make sense on the surface. I agree we should protect the kids for example. But let’s look at reality. Alcohol is controlled; unless they steal it kids can’t get it. Street level drug dealers don’t card, maybe some do or doesn’t deal to kids but some certainly will. Doctors will deal to kids too. They give kids meth all the time for ADHD. Even though that is horrible it is bizarre and makes me wonder. ADHD is characterized by hyperactivity and their “cure” which I have seen in effect is stimulant maybe more potent than crack cocaine, only time released, but everyone knows you can break time releases and even as is giving kids any form of amphetamine is sketchy.

My answer is legalizing it all and regulations and taxes, at least state taxes to support the regulation. But I am a Libertarian Anarcho-Capitalist. Capitalism, at least the liking money part really might be what wins this fight. Politicians rarely care about Liberty and many are far from compassionate but all sure like money and Colorado is sure making other states look silly. I really do think it’s a slippery slope now. Nearly half the states and DC have OKd medical marijuana for patients recommended by a doctor. Colorado and Washington State have said OK to recreational. To me the only questions left are why keep fighting against it now? When will the federal government beat states to the punch? And which states will prove the most ignorant and least compassionate by fighting this MEDICINE to the end?

The light at the end of the tunnel for me just might be that I am diagnosed bipolar disorder. Major breakthroughs with medication resistant seizure disorders are being found with special strains of marijuana. This is significant, because seizure disorders are like bipolar disorders siblings. Physiologically they are similar, they both result from similar chemical and electrical imbalances in the brain; the effects are just different. It’s no coincidence that I and many other bipolar people can be prescribed anti-seizure medications and have success on them. Marijuana could be just another option. A CLEANER, HEALTHIER option exists and doesn’t even have to be smoked; edibles and vapors are virtually completely safe, as obviously inhaling any form of smoke isn’t good for your lungs.

The final argument that is just silly is that marijuana could cause or trigger as they like to say mood swings in bipolar people. I agree 100%, it certainly COULD in some individuals depending on strains; but so can ANY drug is the psychiatric arsenal. Bipolar disorder can be triggered by anything. The weather, the tides or even the moon’s position can affect mood, in everyone really bipolar it’s just more exaggerated. So the argument holds no weight and more importantly throws individuality out the window and that’s what makes us all different. If we were all the same this world would be pretty boring.

Thanks for reading, I hope it accomplished something or was informative. And please wherever you are support campaigns to legalize marijuana at a bare minimum as a medicine!