Addict

I, much like everyone else on earth, have been touched by addiction. In fact I’ve been horribly molested by addiction. I can show you, on the doll, precisely where I have been hurt by addiction.

The truth is that everyone has been similarly touched. At least I’d like to think so. And I seriously doubt that there is anyone on the planet that has not themselves picked up an addiction or two along the way.

If you zoom out, I could make the argument that we are all addicted to many things as part of the human condition. It’s right there in our contract. None of us do particularly well without air, water, or food. Does that count as addiction? Well, I mentioned earlier my own addiction to pondering. So let’s ponder it together with my handy google machine.

By the defintion, air, water, and food would count as addictions. These addictions are in fact even worse than the ones we impose on ourselves and each other. You literally die without these things. Even the worst of our self-imposed addictions will cause you to die figuratively rather than literally. Most of the time.

Yes, you might die of alcohol withdrawal and opioid withdrawal but I can guarantee you will die of oxygen withdrawal. Sure as shit you will die from water withdrawal. That’s not to discount the shittyness of addiction. I think I’m trying to say that addiction is more of a fact of life than an affliction. We even have to be weaned off of tit milk for Christ’s sake.

Now that I have deemed every one of us as addicts. Let’s ponder the addictions that we acquire rather than the ones we are born with. Addiction is very big business in the United States. So big that I just spent about a half hour with ChatGPT (an AI program) trying to get it to guess what percentage of U.S. GDP (Gross Domestic Product) has to do with addiction in one form or another. It wouldn’t tell me. But if forced to guess, I would say that addiction accounts for about a third of our GDP in one way or another. So tweak away, smoking meth is doing your share for the American economy.

Because I am lazy, I’m going to fall back on the example of our humble All-American corner convenience store. I would argue that close to 100% of convenience store sales are related to addiction in one form or another.

· alcohol

· tobacco

· gambling (lottery)

· sugar

· caffeine

· gasoline (in a larger context)

Ok, maybe not 100%, but definitely a hefty chunk of sales come from addictive substances. As we mentioned at the beginning of the show you might be forgiven for adding food and water sales to the total. But even without that it’s fair to say that convenience stores could be called “temporary addictive relief stores”. Which I admit is not “catchy” and lacks a certain shua de vive and Je ne sais quoi if you will.

Any way I guess the point is that addiction is everywhere, in and around everything. And as unpopular as it may be, addiction isn’t always a tragedy. I guess the cutoff is if it destroys you, your family, and everyone around you. Many people consider that bad.

I myself, am not an addict other than to

· sugar

· caffeine

· nicotine

· food

· water

· air

· Qat

“Qat”. I snuck that in there and I am not actually addicted to, or even seen “Qat”. And even though you probably never heard of it, Qat is the drug of choice for a billion or so people in East Africa and the Arab Peninsula. It is a leaf that is harvested, dried, and packed into bundles that are openly sold in most places its available. You simply chew the leaves to unlock its psychoactive properties. In most places it’s readily available, cheap, and legal. It might be fair to call it an even poorer man’s meth.

Best I can tell it’s a moderate stimulant and can be used pretty much as an all-day pick me up. It has some long-term negative effects, but it appears that harm caused by qat is pretty modest. Especially when compared to our own drugs of choice. I think I would like to try it sometime.

Although, being serious for a moment. I have been witness to some heavy shit. I found my former sister-in-law tits up in the bathtub. Dead of a combination of Benzos, opioids, and the ever-present massive amounts of alcohol. Even in death she was clutching an open bottle of Xanax and a pack of cigarettes, with a beer can perched on the toilet. Although she had dropped her lighter.

I found my friend, barely conscious, in a room covered in dog shit and ice cream (now available on the Golden Coral menu). He came around just long enough to refuse the paramedics requests to take him to the hospital. Even though, as it turns out, he had been exposed to fentanyl (either intentionally or not) and his blood pressure was dangerously low.

So what we’ve seen is that addiction is everywhere, part of everything, including each and every one of us in one form or another. A question worth asking is why we are so vulnerable in this way? It doesn’t seem like much of an evolutionary advantage to become addicted to any passing substance that makes us giggle and eat Cheetos.

But it’s also true that addiction and addictive substances are not necessarily bad in the abstract. Since it’s probably fair to say that all of us are addicted to something that addiction is a fundamental part of what makes us human. It might be in our best interest to view addiction itself through a neutral lens. Also while trying to manage the addictions that are particularly harmful. That, of course, is not as easy as it sounds. I’ve known people who’ve smoked the same amount of weed for 40 years with no apparent ill effects, although one did vote for Trump in 2016. I’ve also had friends that to whom this relatively benign substance that is weed has made them considerably less happy and productive as years have passed.

I’ve also seen addicts destroy their lives, steal from their families and jobs, and just generally become ridiculous cartoonish Douche bags. Although I believe we’ve already mentioned Trump. If that brothers not a coke head then I’ve never seen one.

It seems that as is often the case, the devil is in the details. While some addictions are harmless, others are incredibly harmful to individuals and to society as a whole. And as long as we are talking about the devil, let’s throw a couple of jabs at our religious friends yet again. God would seem particularly myopic on this subject. Why would there be a world full of chemical traps for God’s children littering their path through life. Many don’t require modern technology and cartels to find you. A qat high is as easy as chewing a few leaves. Alcohol use is thousands of years old. Leave enough vegetables around to rot you’ll stumble onto a buzz pretty quickly. We also know that opium has been in use for nearly a millennium.

I can already hear the religious apologists speak of Satan’s temptations and god’s hope that we may avoid them. Great, so if we are god’s children he cares for us by lining the streets with chemical landmines and says if you love me enough you will figure out how to avoid them. I think society might take a dimmer view of using those techniques to teach your real children. “Your honor, I left that bag of heroin in the crib so my daughter could learn not to use it.”

And also as noted before, the industry of addiction is giant business, with all the modern corruption that implies. One family, the absurdly douchey Sackler shitheels got a pretty good chunk of the country hooked on opioids by paying off the FDA into labeling it as non-addictive. Which would be unbelievably funny if it hadn’t cost us millions of lives and literally untold billions of dollars to at least try to right these darkest of wrongs. Not the least of these wrongs being that now that the pendulum has swung all the way back the other way, legitimate pain patients that suffer very serious deadly and debilitating illness and disability can’t get them. And are treated like criminals if they do.

What makes all of this all the more comical, horrible, and unbelievable is that we have known opioids are addictive for at least 800 years. Yet the Shitler family was able to pay off the FDA to label it non-addictive.

But you will be happy to know that there is a happy ending. Although the Shitler/Shackler cunts had to make a deal with the DOJ and some States. All of them are still incredibly and fabulously wealthy. Many of them are even richer than when they first started deliberately murdering humans. And not a single one of them ever spent a moment behind bars.

Not a single one of them had to endure even a moment of fear being worried that they might do time. They own the government. They own you. You must sit there and take it while you, like me, bury your children.

VOTE 4 FOR ALL…..motherfuckers.

KEEP YOUR NEEDS SIMPLE AND YOUR MASTERS FEW

Welcome to the afterparty. I hope you didn’t have to tip the bouncer too much. Todays bonus nonsense is so silly that I felt the need to bury it at the back of a post. But don’t get used to it. Someday there might be something not all that stupid back here.

So, has it ever occurred to you what the inside of your nose might smell like?

How about what the inside of your eyelids look like? That one is particularly dopey because there can’t be any light in there, you can’t see them. Please sign the following release form that protects me from liability should one of you choose to shove a flashlight in your eye…cheers.