The Global Conversation

Tag: drugs

  • It’s the economy, stupid

    Bill Clinton said that, and he was right.  So why do I bring this up now, almost 21 years later?  America has a new cash crop, hemp, also known as marijuana. Legal to farm for the first time since 1906, hemp farming is off and running.  Hemp is slightly different than marijuana, the difference being that hemp is bred to not include Tetrahydrocannabinol, THC.  Cannabis, otherwise known as pot, is also being harvested for the first time in the US.

    pot

    With the evolution of the medical marijuana laws now moving towards legalization for recreational use, we now have a new form of income that was previously only available on street corners and back alleys.  In theory, this should help to eliminate some of the drug-related violence as it pertains to marijuana sales.

    So this begs the bigger question for our society: Why not legalize all drugs?  Why would we limit the huge profits being made to criminals only?  Could our bureaucracies come up with a system of regulation that would be acceptable in a civilized society?  It is my opinion that the way some municipalities, like Venice, California, for example, regulate the sale of pot is not acceptable.

    The glamorization of drugs is dangerous to children.  This has been proven to be the case by the results of lawsuits against big tobacco.  Any advertising or “in your face” sale of drugs is not responsible for a society that calls itself civilized.

    Commonsense spirituality would tell us any behavior that negatively impacts others is not coming from who we really are.  The economy can benefit from our allowing our fellow man to choose freely what he or she puts into their body.  The economy should not be the primary reason for legalization; our inalienable right to choose should be.  Ultimately, allowing for free choice in society will increase the speed in which we evolve into our next grandest form and vision.

    Having a flourishing economy will also expedite human evolution.  As it stands, the wealth being created by the sale and distribution of illegal drugs is being hoarded by the ruthless, dark side of mankind.  Once mainstreamed, the profits and tax money will help our governments provide more services to more of the world’s people in need.

    The financial impact from this alone could create the space for the majority of our population to experience financial security or at the very least giving us the upper hand in eliminating poverty and malnutrition.

    Some will say that we are not responsible enough to manage this without it becoming the downfall of society and having everyone strung out on drugs.  May I point out that alcohol is legal and nobody seems to have a problem with that?

    I trust that by giving the people freedom to choose and experience the results of their choice we tend to find our own power.  When we remember that we are the source of our choices and the resulting consequences, we begin to see the world in a new way.

    Money is the method we have chosen to be our energy exchange for goods and services.  It is not the root of all evil, as some would say.  It is merely the means for us to experience some of the opportunities life has to offer.

    Bill Clinton had it right, it is the economy. When the people experience abundance our happiness, the group is lifted.  When we are happy and abundant, we tend to be more giving of our abundance to others.  We have been in this period of greed and hoarding known as recession for far too long.  It is time to experience the truth – we have enough for everyone.

    (Kevin McCormack, C.A.d ,is a certified addictions professional and auriculotherapist.  He is a recovering addict with 26 years of sobriety. Kevin is a practicing auriculotherapist, life coach, and interventionist specalizing in individual and family recovery and also co-facilitates spiritual recovery retreats for the CWG foundation.  You can visit his website here for more information. To connect with Kevin, please email him at Kevin@TheGlobalConversation.com)

  • The war on drugs

    (This week’s Addiction & Recovery column is hosting a guest article written and contributed by Mary Warner.)

    If only the symptoms of a disease are treated, the victim may feel better for a while, but the symptoms will eventually return because the disease was not cured.
    One cannot cure the dis-ease of illegal drug use by trying to eliminate drugs. The cause must be found and eliminated. “The real question is why are millions of people so unhappy, so bored, so unfulfilled that they are willing to drink, snort, inject, or inhale any substance that might blot out reality and give them a bit of temporary relief?” (Ann Landers, syndicated columnist)

    The cause can be discovered by talking respectfully and nonjudgmentally to drug users and listening to how they feel (perceiving the feelings behind the words) and to what they believe.

    The cause and cure can be discovered by caring and by putting ourself in another’s place, imagining what we would do if we had the same experiences, the same educational background, and the same beliefs as the illegal drug user and then treating others as we would want to be treated if we were in someone else’ shoes.

    Drug abuse by young people could be eliminated by respecting our children, paying attention to them, treating them the way we want them to treat us, and educating them about using drugs – telling them what to expect, letting them know the consequences of their actions (aside from being punished) and trusting them to make the right decision, and by setting the example that we want them to follow.

    Children learn the right way to live by watching the behavior of the older people whom they respect and look up to and following the example that is set for them. If they see these people using cold medicine, painkillers, tranquilizers, sleeping pills, diet pills, alcohol, and tobacco, they learn that using drugs is the right thing to do.

    If children are not trusted to think for themselves, after having been told what to expect, the consequences of their actions, and after observing the right example set for them by their respected elders, they feel powerless. They may deliberately use something that they know will harm them. They might think that if they do, then at least they will feel powerful and accepted for a moment, or they won’t care, or they will hope that someone will understand how they feel and make their life all right for them.

    A feeling of powerlessness often leads people to rebel and deliberately choose the very thing they have been told to not choose (at best) or it leads to violence. It has been said that over half of the murders committed in this country are committed by people between the ages of 14 and 21.

    The cause of the dis-ease of selling drugs is the mistaken belief that money and material things will bring power, happiness, and satisfaction. This belief is the result of an education that is lacking in spiritual values, such as the kind of education that is forced upon children in public schools. The belief is further fed by advertisements and TV commercials.

    Making it illegal to sell drugs is not a cure, obviously. It makes the problem worse, just as it did with alcohol prohibition, by creating the opportunity for criminal hangs to make huge profits. Then gangsters kill each other (and many innocent bystanders) to protect their territories/markets and pay police and judges to not prosecute them. They adulterate their drugs in order to make more money, consequently causing injury and death to the users who will not protect themselves or get help because they know they are breaking the law and are afraid of punishment.

    Putting people in prison for using drugs is not a cure, obviously. According to an inmate at the Federal Correctional Institution in El Reno, Oklahoma, drugs are readily available in prisons.

    Punishing people for trying to make it in life the best way they know how – trying to pursue happiness – is against the Declaration of Independence and is inhumane. “If even a small fraction of the money we now spend on trying to enforce drug prohibition were devoted to treatment and drug rehabilitation, in an atmosphere of compassion, not punishment, the reduction in drug usage and in the harm done to users would be dramatic.” (Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize Winner, Economics)  Today’s illegal drugs were legal before 1914. Cocaine was in the original recipe for Coca-Cola. Drugs were not a problem. Addiction was treated as a health issue and not a crime.

    (Mary Warner is an aging (or perhaps “aged”) flower child/”hippie.” She lives with her husband in a 420-square-foot cabin in the woods with a black and white fur-ball and a black lab where she is creating a garden paradise.)

  • Is your life driven by fear or love?

    Fear or Love, that is always the choice before us as we walk in duality. Yet those two polarities will determine very different choices, behaviors, and even outcomes.

    Fear separates us from our eternal Source, locking us into miserable patterns of low self-esteem and victimization and, ultimately, it keeps us separate from each other. Love, on the other hand, unifies us into wholeness and brings us to trust in the magic and mystery of life again.

    So many of our institutions are still rooted in fear, however, and so many of us are programmed to follow the voice of an external “authority” even when that advice may be detrimental to our physical, mental or emotional well-being.

    Too often we blindly give our power away to medical “facts” or “statistics” that have no basis in reality.  We buy into the illusion of fear – fear of “loss” of some kind – and there is no greater fear than death.

    A couple of weeks into 2013, a dramatic headline in the UK papers caught my eye: “Drug That Prevents Breast Cancer for 20 Years.”

    It seems that Big Pharma now want thousands of healthy women to be given breast cancer drugs, such as tamoxifen or raloxifene, to cut their chances of contracting the disease, despite possible nasty side effects that include hot flushes, nausea, indigestion, weight gain leg cramps, depression, tiredness, headaches, blood clots, vision problems, voice changes and, even though rare, womb cancer!

    These drugs have not been designed to be used as preventative medicine by the way. Yet they are being put forward, based on a change in policy.

    We need to ask, how will they – the faceless, stern voice of “authority” –  determine which women to give it to? Who will be labelled as ‘high risk’? What about the side effects?

    The wide ranging side effects of today’s medical drugs are tolerated by those who are ill, but now we are asking otherwise healthy women to tolerate unnecessary side effects just because they will be labelled as being ‘at risk’ by ‘those in charge.’

    SPIRIT says we do not inherit disease, only the potential for disease.  The new science is now saying the same thing, but the old dogma refuses to die.

    Aside from the fact that Big Pharma is, most likely, rubbing its greedy little hands together, this is a nonsensical approach driven by fear, reinforcing the victim mindset that says we are are the mercy of our genes, and which blatantly ignores the latest discoveries in science – epigenetics – which demonstrate that our environment is the key to determining our health, or lack of it.

    Perhaps we should all cut off our limbs before they get gangrene?

    Jaime Tanna

    (Jaime Tanna is the founder of Energy Therapy and an active Reiki Master and Spiritual Mentor, Healer and Teacher. Together with his wife Jennifer, their unifying vision is to empower others through spiritual education and energy-based healing treatments, to help them become aware of their true natures, and to live more joyfully and consciously. You can visit their website at www.energytherapy.biz).

  • Your Children Have to Live Their Own Lives

    Dear Editor…My son is falling into a group that uses drugs on a regular basis. This is not just youthful “experimentation,” this is serious drug abuse, as far as I am concerned. I have talked with him about it, but he keeps telling me not to worry, that he can take care of himself, and has no intention of becoming “addicted” to drugs. What can I do here? Are there any “spiritual truths” that might help me in this situation — or help him? I suppose I should tell you, he is 22 years old…but that doesn’t make him feel any less my worry or my concern.

    — Priscilla

    Dear Priscilla,

    The greatest gift a parent can give their children, and the hardest one for the parent to give, is letting them live their own lives. Especially when it is going in a direction that, to us, is clearly not the journey that we would want them to take. At 22, he is certainly on his own journey.

    There are no wrong paths, Priscilla, and I would like to suggest to you that your son is taking this path for two reasons. First, because this is the way he is experiencing what he chose, on a soul level, to experience. Secondly, so that you, and others, could choose your own experience through what he is doing right now.

    I am not saying that, Priscilla, from a flippant space. I have someone very special to me who is a recovering addict. For him, it took many years and many hard roads, including prison. We had a talk about his path recently, and he said that there was nothing I could have done that would have stopped him…until he was ready to stop. What he did say, that was most interesting to me, was that every word of advice that my husband and I gave him was heard! He said that he couldn’t truly hear them until he was sober, but then they became powerful.

    You haven’t indicated that your son is an addict, and I don’t want to suggest that he is, but the advice I would give you is the same. Talk to him. Don’t talk to him from your judgment, talk to him from your love. It is okay to tell him you are worried about him, it is not okay to tell him you think he is bad. Tell him you love him.

    If he knew who he really was, he wouldn’t be doing what he is doing. To help him know this, you might give him a copy of “Conversations With God” Book 1, but just give it to him gently and let him know it is okay if he doesn’t read it until he is ready to. Priscilla, you may also wish to have personal support, and if you feel so drawn, you might consider going to www.ChangingChange.net where you can share your journey and get practical and spiritual suggestions. The site is based on the book, “When Everything Changes, Change Everything”, and it is available, in total, to read on the site. There are, of course, many other resources available to both of you.

    Then let him have his own journey. It may never be one you understand, but, Pricilla, it will never be a “wrong” journey. This life is not the end of the experience as individuations of Divinity. Your task is to have your own journey, that, hopefully, includes finding a way to communicate to your son that his journey is the more difficult one, and that there is a way that works better. My journey included telling my special someone that I would no longer witness his self destruction. I told him that I understood that no one would consciously choose this road, and that I loved him, but staying on the road with him was not helping him, and was harming me, and others that I loved.

    Priscilla, communicate your fears, but don’t let judgment enter the conversation. Suggest, but don’t dictate. Let your son know your love. Then, no matter how long or short the journey through drugs he must take, be there when he comes out the other side. Then tell him you will always be his mother. I know that the seeds of love that I sowed took 15 years, but they grew into a magnificent man!

    Therese

     (If you would like a question considered for publication, please submit your request to Advice@TheGlobalConversation.com, where our team is waiting to hear from you.)

    (Therese Wilson is the administrator of the global website at www.ChangingChange.net, which offers spiritual assistance from a team of Spiritual Helpers responding to every post from readers within 24 hours or less, and offers insight, suggestions, and companionship during moments of unbidden, unexpected, unwelcome change on the journey of life. She may be contacted at Therese@TheGlobalConversation.com.)

     

  • I have AIDS: a journey of awakening and crusading

    I was 11 years old when I contracted HIV, I was diagnosed with AIDS at 16.  The news was a relief, actually, after a couple of years of waiting around to find out and adjusting to adolescence while nursing bleeding ulcers, when my doctors had already known for a year and were just getting their legal ducks in a row before springing the big news. My high school years consisted of nasty infections, a nagging fear that my terrible, shameful secret would be revealed, and a drug regimen toxic enough to bring down an elephant, not to mention my own personal regimen of vodka, acid, and whatever else I could get my hands on to ease the monotony while I waited around to die.

    But when I look back on this specific time in my life, some thirty odd years later, I feel nothing but gratitude. I am healthy, stronger than I have ever been, in body, mind, and spirit. Facing the idea of death early on woke me up, showed me the necessity of being fully awake in every moment, to truly be thankful for every breath of life. I am wiser, and more acutely aware of the ugly vices of greed, exploitation and corruption that some in positions of power seem to be able to engage in while not losing even a single night of sleep. I have learned more than I ever wanted to know about human nature, as I hope to explain as I detail the bizarre events that fell into place and allowed for over 10,000 people to be murdered by pharmaceutical companies during the height of the AIDS epidemic.

    I was born with hemophilia, a hereditary blood disorder that inhibits the blood’s ability to clot. The current treatment is a product made from thousands of donors which replaces the specific clotting factor that my blood is missing.

    In the late 1970s through 1985, four pharmaceutical companies knowingly exposed 20,000 Americans with hemophilia to tainted blood clotting products, rather than warn, recall, or quarantine the clotting factor that they knew was contaminated. For at least fifteen years this darkest corner of the pharmaceutical-industrial-complex pumped a myriad of viruses into the veins of anyone who needed a blood transfusion while they amassed vast fortunes that would far outweigh the cost of future lawsuits.

    The CDC began to warn the National Hemophilia Foundation, a highly trusted and, in fact, beloved advocacy group for hemophiliacs, of the risks from infected blood products in the early ’80s, but since it receives most of its money from drug companies, the NHF continued to recommend that hemophiliacs remain on the highly concentrated clotting factor regimens, even though much less risky options were available. My doctor, as well as most across the country, echoed their sentiments. Similar conflicts of interest seemed to apply, most of them were paid consultants for the drug industry at the time.

    When the U.S. Government finally put a stop to these shenanigans, after years of screaming by the hemophilia community as well as the CDC, these companies shipped the contaminated product to China and various Latin American countries rather than throw billions in profit down the drain with a mass recall.

    Drug companies have basically been allowed to regulate themselves in the United States, with a staggering amount of influence in the workings of government through the system of bribery known as lobbying and campaign contributions.  The pharmaceutical industry is the thing that tells the 800-pound gorilla where to sleep.

    In the late ‘90s the lawsuits finally came, no thanks to the NHF, but to the hard work and due diligence of the patients themselves, working with their attorneys, pouring over internal corporate memos until the whole truth had been pieced together. Most hemophiliacs had aged beyond the statute of limitations requirements for a direct lawsuit, so the whole ugly incident was resolved with a $640 million settlement paid by Bayer AG, Baxter Healthacre Corp., Armour Pharmaceutical, and Alpha Therapeutics Corp. This amounted to $100,000 per person and I was one of the lucky recipients of this fabulous cash prize. I had more money than I’d ever seen in my life and these revered and trusted companies, these “angels of mercy,” were required to admit no guilt or criminal wrongdoing whatsoever. Everyone was a winner.

    Sure, most of my friends who had embarked with me on this grueling legal crusade were dead or dying, not to mention the wives and children they unknowingly infected, but surely we got something out of it. The blood supply is a little safer, although the CDC is warning of parvovirus and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease contamination, emerging pathogens, the scrappy up-and-comers to watch out for this season. An outbreak of fungal meningitis has been linked to steroid shots for back pain and has killed hundreds all over the country. Throughout every city and town, fretful Americans are standing in lines for flu shots containing God knows what because their doctors pressure them like a seasoned pusher, hoping for a sweet cash bonus for high patient compliance paid by the altruistic manufacturer of the drug.

    Rather than view these few examples as gross negligence, ominous pandemics, or even sinister conspiracies, just try to see it from the drug company’s point of view, imagine the treatment opportunities!  And we all know, in a culture of greed, exploitation and corruption, “treatment” is just another word for “profit.”

     (Mike Gibson is an artist, musician and writer, whose work has appeared in a wide variety of print and online publications. He currently resides in Palm Springs, California.)

    (If you have a Guest Column that you would like to submit, send it to Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.  Not all material submitted is accepted for publication, but we appreciate each submission.)