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AA is Invading My Kinkfest!

February 12th, 2009

Oi vey. I’ve never seen so many Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous members in one place. Course, having lived in a small town at the time, the meetings I attended when I got out of rehab were small.

AA works for a number of my family and friends. NA hasn’t worked for anyone I’ve known personally to date but I have a friend who has a friend who has a cousin… You know how that goes.

I don’t necessarily think the meetings are a “bad” thing. I try really, really hard not to discredit things that work for other people just because they don’t work for me. I guess it’s best to say that it just didn’t work for me. I had to get out of my own way before I could recover. And the meetings slammed me right back in my way.

I used to go to my meetings high as a kite, listen to everyone talk about how much fun they had when they were high and run to cop as soon as I walked out the door. I didn’t even stop for the customary cigarette and cup o’ joe. When I got to my spot, there were always at least five other people from the meeting looking guiltily around at the rest of us and giving small self-conscious nods and halfhearted smiles while they waited their turn.

I take issue with a lot of their philosophies. Part of that is because I take issue with the idea that occasional drinking and/or drug use is a “bad” thing. Occasional meaning “once in a while” – knowing your limits and not exceeding them.

It’s my personal opinion that street drugs should be legal and regulated. The price, with tax, shouldn’t go up and the government should find some way to compensate the dealers, if only by giving them licenses to sell. But they should definitely be taxed. Our economy is in the toilet. With the amount of drug users in large cities, I bet legalizing drugs would jump start it.

It would be safer because they could be sure there were no harmful additives and people wouldn’t have to go to knock spots in bad neighborhoods to cop. Hell, I bet we’d find a way to make “Light Cocaine” and “Medium Heroine” and “Full Flavor Crack”. *grin*

Keep the rehabs open. Run your meetings. I’m sure there will still be abusers. I mean, alcohol is abused, isn’t it? Cigarettes are probably technically abused, too, we just don’t really view them as a “drug” outside of AA and NA. And those “drugs” are legal.

But Prohibition proved that the temptation to break the law only fuels the fire when it comes to using something that makes us “feel good”. And alcohol abuse rates went down when the government lifted the ban.

We’re a rebellious bunch, we Americans. Our history started that way. It will probably end that way.  Question authority, I say.  Yes, I realize how ironic that is coming from a slave.  I consented to that authority.  I was born into the rest. 

But, all that aside, keeping drug use illegal is a little hypocritical from where I sit.

The general consensus, when asking pro-choicers, is that abortion should remain legal based solely on the fact that a woman should have the right to choose what happens to her body, regardless the life that may or may not have started at the point of conception inside her. My thought is, if a girl over the age of fifteen (in most states) has the right and ability to decide to end the life growing inside her uterus because it’s her body, then why don’t adults have the right to decide what substances to use?

It’s their body, right?

Now, before any panties get twisted, I’m not entirely sure how I feel about others having abortions. I have friends who have, for various reasons. The result was different in each of them. Some wish they hadn’t. Some wonder what it would have grown up to be. Some just plain don’t care.  I don’t look down on any of them or care for them any less because of their decision. I can’t say what I would have done in their situations because I’ve never been in their shoes.

What’s that they say? Before judging someone, walk a mile in their shoes. Then, at least, you’re a mile away and you’ve got their shoes.

I do believe that life begins at conception. I’m not sure I believe it’s cognitive life. However, society generally believes plants aren’t cognitive life, either, but life just the same. And no one’s trying to save them.

My opinion is that abortions should be legal. When they weren’t, women were dying. They were going to get it done one way or another. Even if it meant going to a hack. And they were dying.

It can be done safely. So allow it to be done safely. At least then society doesn’t have the guilt of two (or three or eight, depending on the number of fetuses) deaths per illegal abortion on its head.

That’s my take on it, anyway.

I’m rambling. In any case, I’m glad AA and NA work for some people. I hope they keep working for them.

Keep going back. They say it works if you work it. I, obviously, wasn’t.

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