Fish Guts And Snickers Bars - Through The Eyes Of A Stoner

"Fish Guts and Snickers"

You know when you say something sometimes and as soon as the words leave your mouth you know that it would have just been better if you'd kept your big trap shut?

I experienced one of those moments the other day.

Thankfully it wasn't me, it was a coworker.

We're at the back of the bar, there's an alley. It's completely rank back there and I'm pretty sure it's used as a toilet by the homeless, but it's where we can get away for a minute, have a smoke and shoot the shit sorta thing. It's not pleasant, but it works.

I look over and see this fish carcass. Why there's even a whole fish carcass In a CBD alleyway, I don't know, but like I said, ya know about the homeless using it as a toilet? I'm sure stranger things have been left behind in this place.

I must have zoned out, staring at this dead fish, and been completely ignoring Gaylord, (I'm not even fucking with you, that's my coworkers name), 'cause next thing I know Gaylord is picking up the tail of the fish as gingerly as he can, between his thumb and index finger, and flinging it straight at me.

I'm ashamed to admit I squealed.

Not before I jump out of the way though, which proves to be a useless endeavor anyway. I feel a putrid, warm drop of fish gut land on my lip.

I dance wildly in a circle slapping at my face, trying to spit the taste away, "Hey you fucker, you're going to get me sick!" I laugh, trying to decide whether I think it's funny or whether I'm actually angry at the prospect of being sick.

"You're worried about getting sick from fish guts but I bet you'll go home and smoke lots of pot tonight!" He retorts.

I stop panic dancing, stupefied.

Gaylord, your name suits you.

"Are you actually comparing fish guts to weed man?"

He blank stares me. Gives me one of those confused blinks. I don't think he's aware of just how stupid a point he's tried to make.

" Yeah, I know lots of people who have smoked too much and gotten sick." He puffs his chest out a little bit. I can tell he thinks that he's made some incredible point.

But it's not really his fault is it. He's been groomed by misinformation about the dangers of weed and what it does to a person. The fact that a person is going to compare smoking heaps of herb and potentially greening out, to ingesting rotted fish and potentially catching some disease or end up spewing your ring out, speaks volumes to the level of brainwashing achieved by all the propaganda.

I mean hell, generally speaking, I would consider myself a big smoker... or maybe a regular smoker. Yes referring to myself as a regular smoker is probably more suiting, and I've never gotten sick from smoking. The only time smoking has ever made me sick is when I mixed it with a completely legal drug, alcohol. A lot of people, even a few others who smoke, (and I'm talking about the shameful smoker here... the smoker who has a puff on a scoob a coupl'a times at a party once in every decade and tells everyone they have a struggling drug problem), may consider my usage to be excessive. They're probably right too. All of 'em. I probably do smoke in excessive quantities but hey, I do a lot of shit to degrees that other people are not prepared to, whether it's writing, or competing in athletics or smoking pot...it's just that when I find something that I enjoy, I emerse myself in it. How boring would life be if we all put limits and restraints on passion? If someone told you to tone down something that you love to do because it makes them uncomfortable, especially when in all honest evaluation it carries quite a positive impact on your routine life, you'd probably tell that someone to go and fuck themselves.

And rightly so.

"Gaylord you ignorant bastard, what the fuck are you talking about? "

He mumbles something and stares at his feet, poking at the pavement with the toe of his shoe.

I feel like an asshole. Maybe I got a bit carried away.

Whoa, there's a breakthrough.

I can admit that I am soul that gets carried away by my passions, but I actually do have limits. I'm a huge believer in honesty and I try to be as honest with myself as possible. On the rare occasion I do know when to say, "Enough is enough." From a financial standpoint I just can't afford to be spending that kind too much money on bud every few days; no matter how much I enjoy it's use for the spectrum of pleasure that I receive from it. Sure I'd love to be able to smoke that much regularly but I'm in an average paying job with bills coming at me from everywhere with a family to support, so I have to be able to pull the plug when needed.

And I was just about to, really I was.

I owe it all to Gaylords misinformed opinions too, the sensitive fucker. I know it was never his intention to steer me down this path but lately I've been thinking about the amount of bud I smoke lately.

After having an inward evaluation, and realizing the amount of tree we'd been burning lately M and I decided to have a tolerance cleanse. If you're reading this and you don't know what a cleanse is, basically we need to stop smoking for a bit so our tolerance levels go back down so we don't have to get a personal loan to buy enough weed to get high. There we were, working on the crumbs of our stash, smoking all the keif, scraping the pipes of all the resin, picking the stems dry... ridding the house of all temptation as any good cleanser does and I get up to get a cup of water when what do I find there, quite cozy cuddling a stack of plates in the cupboard, but a gram of some shrub that we had set to the side after getting a new strain in!

Karma just gave me a blowjob.

I'd always wanted to be the sort of smoker that finds a random, forgotten about sack of weed lying around just at the moment my stash was about to run out and now here I was. Making my dreams come true. So I took that as a sign from whatever it is that you believe in that now was not the time for a cleanse and got another half ounce of some average herb, that did however give off bounties of keif. (There's nothing quite like the feeling of emptying your stash, only to open your catch tray and find a few grams of powdery goodness.)

But that brings a whole sleu of issues to the table doesn't it?

As someone who tries to honestly evaluate every part of my life I have to ask myself, am I actually an addict? I mean, I wanted to cleanse, but as soon as I found a meager portion of green I was just like, "Ya know what, fuck it. Let's get some more weed."

I understand addict lingo. I've been around addicts. Thousands of them. I've worked with them, served them, lived with them... I understand the stages of addiction and all the indicating clues that would point out an addict out. I've always sort of thought that you couldn't actually be addicted to weed. After the past week of being on a cleanse and being able to evaluate myself, without reserve, I'll tell you right now that I was wrong.

My name is James Munroe and I'm addicted to marijuana.

I wake up and toke. I get home and toke. I toke before bed. I toke before I head out to the store.I toke before a great many situations just because I enjoy the way my brain operates when I'm high, but that's not actually the problem is it?

The problem is the way mainstream society views addiction. The war on drugs, whilst having been a supreme waste of government funding and taxpayer dollars, majorly exposing the glorious corruption and greed of the powers that be than actually cauterizing the flow of drugs around the world, has seen its greatest success in tricking the masses and blindfolding them to the truth about marijuana.

To an extent, even I am still undergoing the indoctrination of the war on drugs campaign. I mean hell, say the word addict and the first thing I think of is a junky. I think of someone selling their things to get high, then stealing things to sell and get high because they've sold all their shit and when an addict doesn't have anything to sell, they probably even suck the odd dick here and there just to get a fix.

What do you think of? A homeless person? A beggar? A liar, a thief and generally a menace to society?

If you've got a good mental image in your head of what an addict is, what that means specifically to you, then let me ask you another question.

Do you know anyone who is overweight? Not someone who has a thyroid issue or some other legit medical reason to actually be overweight, but someone who is addicted to sugar and regularly stuffs their face with copious amounts of it, is causing a sleu of health problems, that if not checked will ultimately lead to their death?

Do you view a fat person in the same light as a weed addict? Sugar kills far more people than marijuana. (Actually, zero people in human history have overdosed on kush.) Sugar leads to a fucking smorgasbord of deadly ailments yet we don't make eating Snickers illegal do we? Why isn't sugar a scheduled drug? You can overdose on it, you can be addicted to it, it affects your moods and yes even your ability to operate a motor vehicle. Think about it, you're cruising down the road, tunes on the highest decibel, mongin' on this chocolate bar, next minute you get the endorphin rush from the sugar and your singing, slapping the wheel, bobbin' your head and generally having a good ol' time... and you're going to tell me that doesn't make you a danger to other drivers? But we're not going to demonize fat people are we? We're not going to brand them dangers to society and outlaw sugar consumption. We're certainly not going to lock them up for their addiction. No, we tell people that sugar in large amounts has certain risks to it so don't be a moron about consuming it and use some a bit of common sense.

Shit, now all I can think about is having a Snickers bar.

Moving on though- the problem isn't addiction, but the way society views addiction and treats addicts. There are a great number of things that can make a person an addict, from drugs, to work, to food, to sport. But I don't think the issue is so much what you're addicted to, I think the issue is what your addiction is doing to your life and what sort of problems that causes.

So have a heart people, just like weed addicts, sugar addicts are humans with feelings also. If you see one on the street corner begging for money and it's obvious the their life has become completely unraveled because of their ailment, point them to help but don't encourage them. Probably best to not even make eye contact, they could be quite agressive... addicts are quite unpredictable after all aren't they?

Anywho, it's been real folks but I gotta jet, I have a massive hankering for a candy bar.

Peace,

James