There is a line made by a comedian that sticks in my head and I remember every now and then as it relates to a current situation. I paraphrase it because I don’t remember the exact line but I believe it was referring to cigarette smoking and when people say that it’ll take years off your life He responds with yes but it’s the crappy years at the end anyway. Of course he’s referring to old age as something that sucks for many people.
I suspect it sucks more for people who have smoked cigarettes their whole life because they might have cancer or horrible skin or a bad cough or other things that you might consider undesirable ignoring the fact that being alive is generally speaking better than being dead at least in theory.
It always amazed me that religion talks about this great afterlife but committing suicide is still a crime. Seems like smart people would commit suicide all the time if the afterlife was true if you did it at 13 you probably haven’t made too many mistakes in life that would be a risk for where you go.
Anyway that wasn’t the purpose of this blog. I’m 61 now and old people still consider that young but young people consider that old and when you’re living in the moment of 61 I feel like it’s still pretty young and that’s a little concerning because when I was young I didn’t expect to live to 61. An awful lot of people die in their 40s and ’50s and my diet and exercise and drug use and just general body maintenance would have made me a prime candidate I would have thought.
However against odds, I appear to be quite healthy not having really had any physical problems that other people have. Part of this I attribute to my one and only daily pill which keeps me being happy. And not obsessive. Since I started taking paxil when I was 50, I haven’t really been sick once. Let me restate I haven’t been really sick twice. I did get COVID for a week and a half but a relatively mild version comparatively and that was only because I was working in an office with people who had COVID and knew it.
So if I consider that I’m reasonably healthy and that there’s still a good chance that I have 30 or 40 years ahead of me, it’s quite conceivable that at some point I’m going to get sick. Although I never smoked cigarettes even once and only drank alcohol for a 2-year period in my late 20s before giving it up completely, and I never really smoked a lot of weed like comparison to people who do, I might not have years cut off the end of my life as I was promised.
I do smoke methamphetamine daily at quantities that newcomers would be surprised by and I don’t know how that affects my lungs but I know it’s not as bad as cigarettes because it’s never mentioned in the bad effects of the drug. It’s more of a white reasonably clean smoke by comparison. It doesn’t coat the walls and the smell doesn’t stick around for long so I have the perception that it is more healthy.
All of the effects I could find were mental effects. Things that they warn me are irreversible in a very vague way. It’s actually difficult to find information on why meth is as bad as they say it is and a small portion of me believes my own conspiracy theory that it’s actually not that bad for you but that it is bad for the country because of the effects that are positive might outweigh the effects that are negative for most people but not all people. It could in fact be a wonder drug that the pharmaceutical industry doesn’t control or profit from. If everyone in the world was using meth daily it would be an interesting change.
From the perspective of a meth user that doesn’t want to give it up, it’s easy to say it’s all propaganda and refer to the days when the movie reefer madness tried to convince everyone that weed would make you crazy and jump off buildings. Bad drugs always made you jump off buildings.
Black met a lot of meth users and not once have I met anyone that went crazy or believed things that would have allowed them to be dangerous. There are stories but like so many legends. Nobody actually knows anybody involved in those stories.
The only negative story I’ve heard it’s so different from all my experiences that I’m able to believe there was more involved than just meth however I have seen the consequences of not having meth when you have come to rely on it. Not so much an addiction or a craving as other drugs but the drop in the quality of life is frustrating to the point where people who are not opposed to crime might take to it as a solution.
People like myself that have lived a life without crime, I feel are less likely to commit it even if I don’t have my drugs. Luckily I haven’t had to figure that out on my own which is an indication that it might be worse than I can imagine. I always find a way without having to rob anyone or beat them up for whatever I still think that most of the negativity associated with meth is actually being confused with crack which is a completely different personality change
The title of this blog refers to that comedians joke and it has relevance to my current situation. It is conceivable that my mental acuity is reduced. This would not be a huge problem if I planned on being dead within the next few years but it appears that’s not going to be the case so I have to ask myself how much do I care if this drug is making me dumber. The fascinating thing is I’m benefiting from being dumber more than you might expect. Ever since I was young I had problems with my memory not working the same as other people’s memory at least in my mind so I have prepared myself intellectually to get ready for the time when my memory starts to fade and to not let it anger me like it did for other people in my life when they lost theirs.
I know it’s difficult for people to consider how much more difficult suicide is than they think it is when they start thinking about that as an alternative however I’ve always thought about the moments when I start fading into dementia and I haven’t really worried about it. Recently I’ve started to notice struggle for certain words and the stereotypical delay trying to come up with the name of that actor in that movie.
The thing is I can’t tell whether or not it is the drug or the natural aging of the human brain that starts to not remember as much as they used to.
The most fascinating point of all this is that I don’t care because one of the problems in my life has actually been that I am too smart. Not knowledge smart but understanding smart. I believe my IQ is high perhaps abnormally high and that belief plays out in the way that I react to other people who aren’t on the same level. What that means is I understand things that other people don’t or don’t want to and this has been an issue my whole life. Being dumb seems like a good idea these days.
And that’s how I answer people when they say You know that stuff will kill you.
I hope something does because being sick is really going to suck but being dead… Not so much.