It's Time For Stoners To Face The Truth ...by Bill Knell
It may or may not be a coincidence that celebrities recently connected to photos or video which appears to show them using Marijuana have been having a tough time of it. A good case in point is pop superstar Justin Bieber and his troubled time in England. First it was some sort of problem that erupted during his birthday bash; then he was said to have collapsed at a concert, needed to be taken to the hospital and later cursed at the paparazzi during some kind of emotional meltdown.
Some other big names connected to weed have had problems as well. They include Jennifer Lawrence who took a header on the way to the stage at the Academy Awards. She was later photographed celebrating her Oscar win with a reefer in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other. Miley Cyrus recently joked with a roomful of birthday party guests about being a ‘stoner’ and has been photographed using a bong, although it is not known what it actually contained. What is clear is that she has made what seem like some drastic changes in her life over the past few years which include underage drinking while outside the USA and sexually seductive behavior and dress in public.
It would be easy to go on and on, but this is not an article about celebrities who use weed and do crazy things. I am sure there are enough celebrities who do not use weed and still do crazy things. It is also not an indictment of anyone’s choices or behavior. It’s a written warning against allowing peer pressure or enthusiasm generated by the medical Marijuana craze to get you caught up with something you may regret having even tried.
You can spend hours online reading about all the wonderful things that Marijuana can do for people. You can also discover all the practical and gloried uses for hemp. What you cannot do is get past the media’s drug culture and discover the truth, so I will deliver it to you on a silver platter. I’m not a physician, clinician, medical researcher or mental health care worker. I am just a guy who grew up in the 1960s that wants to share with you his own first hand experiences with people who used Marijuana and other drugs.
Let me begin with this disclaimer: I have never used or even tried Marijuana or any other illegal drugs. I do not use alcohol or smoke anything. The only prescription drugs I take are the occasional antibiotics. In other words, I am not offering commentary or advice from first hand experience when it comes to drug use. However, I am offering these things from having been there when at least half of the kids I grew up with ended up dead before their eighteenth birthdays as a direct result of using Marijuana. You might also note that I grew up in a nice suburban neighborhood on Long Island.
By the time I was a young teenager I had attended more than my share of funerals and knew at least a dozen people who were friends or close relatives of friends that died drug related deaths. That number later doubled by the time I was in my early twenties. Most of those who died began their drug use and abuse with Marijuana. From my observation the problem was that the high they got from smoking pot became harder to get as time went on. I don’t know if their bodies adjusted to the drug, or if something else was involved. All I do know is that it was no longer enough to satisfy them and many graduated to alcohol and heroin. Others threw in some LSD to spice things up.
At least three of the kids I knew using LSD wanted to expand their minds. Two of them washed up on Jones Beach having drowned during one of those drug induced mental excursions. The other died of a broken neck after he jumped out of the upstairs window of his house trying to fly. I point this out to make the point that pot is not the only drug problem out there, but tends to be a starting point for many people who end up using other drugs.
People look at someone like Ozzy Osbourne and think that if he can survive decades of admitted drug and alcohol abuse, so can they. What they do not realize is that Ozzy can afford the best health care available and everyone reacts differently to drugs and alcohol. One person might get alcohol poisoning after just a few beers and a couple of cocktails. For another it might take days of binge drinking to end up in a hospital bed or on a metal autopsy table in the local morgue.
I did notice that many of the kids I knew while I was growing up that used pot tended to develop breathing problems. Some of those problems progressed on to severe respiratory issues like Asthma and Emphysema. That’s why I became concerned when I heard that Justin Bieber was having problems breathing during his stay in England. Those problems could have been caused by many different things. I just hope that Marijuana is not one of them. If it is, his family and agent should take heed for Bieber’s sake and the example he sets for his fans.
Please note that I am not on some crusade to clean up Hollywood or the world of naughty celebrities. People have a right to live the way they like and do what they want to do as long as it does not cause harm to others. However, I would like to remind those that use or abuse illegal or prescription drugs, alcohol and tobacco that there is a price to be paid for the use of these things. Just ask the fans of performers like Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin or Jimi Hendrix. I think that many people out there in the world would have wished that these performers would have been able to leave them with a few more albums or tours before they went out into eternity.
