Rant about the illegality of marijuana

Even though I know I couldn't smoke marijuana, even if it were legal, I think the United States' marijuana laws are fucking ridiculous. If it's not going to be legalized (which I think it should be), it should at least be decriminalized everywhere.

It just doesn't make sense for it to be illegal when alcohol and cigarettes, which are legal, kill WAY more people than all other drugs combined. Tobacco kills the most people (so I really need to quit smoking), but alcohol kills A LOT of people each year.

Alcohol is involved in about half of all drug overdoses. That doesn't mean that alcohol is directly responsible for those overdoses, but a good amount of people who overdose on drugs have alcohol in their system at the time. The interaction of alcohol with the other drug(s) makes overdose even more likely, and it oftentimes makes it worse than it would have been if alcohol wasn't in their system at the same time. Take cocaine for example...when alcohol and cocaine are combined, it metabolizes into Cocaethylene, which is extremely dangerous and is more likely to cause serious heart damage and it's really bad for your liver, which is where it is metabolized. That was the problem with one of my overdoses. I have overdosed on alcohol who knows how many times (but only had to go to the hospital a few times, although I probably should have gone a couple other times), had one heroin overdose, and two cocaine overdoses, one of which was really serious and caused me to go into cardiac arrest. Paddles and everything. Luckily I was unconscious by that point, because that would have sucked. I was drunk and high out of my mind on cocaine, so cocaethylene was most likely responsible for the severity of that overdose. Using alcohol and just about any drug (except marijuana) simultaneously is dangerous. The reason I mentioned my overdose is because it never would have happened if I had just been smoking marijuana and drinking. I might still have gotten alcohol poisoning, but I wouldn't have had such a serious reaction. Same with cocaine...I still could have overdosed, but the alcohol made it worse. Alcohol is extremely dangerous when combined with cocaine, but it's also really dangerous with heroin and other painkillers, and with sleeping pills and sedatives, including benzos. Combining drugs and alcohol is just never a good idea. But back to the marijuana thing.

Alcohol alone is directly responsible for 75,000 to 80,000 deaths per year. That's approximately 300+ percent more than all other illicit drugs combined. You also have to add in the delayed effects, like liver disease, heart problems, etc. Marijuana is directly responsible for ZERO deaths per year. Literally, zero deaths. People can argue that marijuana is responsible for a good number of car accidents, but those car accidents are typically caused by people who have alcohol in their system along with marijuana. Yeah, some people can't drive very well when they're high, but the majority of people I know drive just as well, if not better, when they're high on weed. So marijuana might indirectly result in some deaths, but it's not directly responsible for any. Either way, alcohol causes WAY more car accidents and other types of accidental injuries than any other drug...ESPECIALLY marijuana. All research to date shows that it's impossible to fatally overdose on marijuana. It just doesn't make sense for marijuana to be illegal when it has never been directly responsible for any deaths, ever, while alcohol is responsible for a huge amount of deaths each year, year after year, after year.

It's just fucking ridiculous. And don't even get me started on the War on Drugs.

/rant

#12: A Day in the Life

This is going to be really boring.

12. Describe a typical day in your current life.
I was going to make some type of crack about it being my “current” life as opposed to a past life, but I decided I’ll skip that and just stick to the point. Otherwise I’ll just go on one of my long rambles. This one would be some smart ass one about hypothetical bullshit. So here’s a typical day in my real life. I’ll go with a typical weekday.

6:30: Alarm goes off.

6:50ish: I actually get out of bed after hitting “snooze” a couple times. Then I immediately go have a cup of coffee.

6:55ish or so: Go shower and get ready and all that crap.

7:30: Wake Evan up for school. I also make sure B is up for school, but he usually is.

7:45: Eat cereal and have more coffee. Get Evan breakfast and help him get ready for school. Or feed Ella. Jenny and I switch off with those two things.

8:15: Take Evan to school. Jenny takes him sometimes, like when I’m running late, but I usually take him on my way to work. It’s easier that way. Then she doesn’t have to strap Ella in and all of that, and Evan’s school is like five minutes from our house, so it just makes sense for me to take him on my way to work.

8:30-8:40: Get to work. I won’t write out the details of my work day, because that’s just fucking boring.

12:00ish: Lunch

1:00ish: Go back to work. Sometimes I take a short lunch and go back a lot earlier than that, because then I can leave earlier.

4:30ish, give or take a little: Go home. If I'm working at the youth center that day, I leave work around 3:00 or so and get home around 6:00.

Right after work: Play with Evan, help out with Ella, help Evan with his homework if he needs it, although he hasn’t had much of that since school just started. Jenny helps him with his homework a lot of the time before I get home from work. But if he hasn’t done it before I get home I’ll help him with it. A lot of the time I just come here or waste time in some other way. If I didn’t get much sleep the night before, which is a common thing for me, I’ll sometimes take a short nap after work.

6:00: Dinner with the family

After dinner: It depends. I’ll hang out with Jenny, Evan, and B, and help take care of Ella (feeding, diapers, playing with her, etc.).

7:45ish: Jenny or I will read with Evan. Meaning he reads. Sometimes it will still be story time where I’ll read to him, but he usually reads to us because he’s supposed to practice reading. We did that even when he wasn’t in school though. He’s a really good reader and ahead of the majority of kids his age, and we want to keep it that way.

8:15ish: Make sure Evan gets a bath. Ella usually gets hers during the day while I’m at work. He likes the nights we let him skip that haha. But most nights he takes one. He never gets to go longer than every other day, although he'd love that.

8:45: Put Evan to bed

Rest of the night: Hang out with Jenny and/or B, and spend a lot of time on the computer. Especially once everyone else is asleep, so from about 11:30 on.

Anywhere from 2:00 to 4:00 (and sometimes even later, but rarely earlier): Go to sleep.

( Meme )

Teenage pregnancy

I'm watching some show about teen moms in a special high school. Jenny left the TV on on this station and I've just been too lazy to change it since she left the room. The remote is on the other side of the room, and yes, I am that lazy lol. I'll make myself get up in 40 minutes to change it to Friends though haha.

One of the girls is 17 and has three kids. Three fucking kids at 17! She got pregnant for the first time when she was 13. That's just fucking crazy. Another girl became a mom at 14, and another girl got pregnant when she was 14 and had the baby when she was 15. I guess that's better than the first girl I mentioned, but DAMN! That's just not cool. Kids should not be having kids. It's not good for them, and it's not good for the child. I know there are good teen mothers out there, but overall I really just don't think teenagers are mature enough or responsible enough to be parents. There are exceptions to every rule and I know that. I just mean in general.

Jenny got pregnant when she was 17 and had her daughter when she was 18. At least she was out of high school by then. She had her six months after she turned 18. She was a good mom, but she had a lot of help. If she hadn't had the help, support, and money from her parents, I don't know what she would have done. Her ex also has a lot of money. His family is rich, and now he's a really successful lawyer. But at the time it was mostly family money. So she didn't have to worry about anything like that. Most teenage parents don't have that luxury. Oftentimes a lot of the burden is put on the girl's parents...specifically the mother. I don't think it's fair for a parent to have to raise their child's kid(s) unless there are dire circumstances. But a person shouldn't have to raise their grandchildren simply because their daughter got knocked up as a teenager (or the guy's parents, but that's less common). The mothers of a lot of the girls were teenage mothers too, so given the statistics about teen moms raising kids who end up being parents as teenagers, that's not surprising. But I still don't think it's right. Those parents should be teaching their kids to make better decisions so that the cycle can be broken. I personally believe that part of it is that they should teach their kids better values, but that's just my value system. Take that with a grain of salt though, because I wasn't exactly making good decisions at that age either. At least I used protection as a teenager though. It's just stupid not to. I just can't believe how young some girls are when they have babies. I still think 17 or 18 is way too young to have a baby, but the girls who are even younger than that? That's just insane.

The United States has a teenage pregnancy rate that's WAY higher than other western nations. I don't remember the exact statistics, but our rate of teenage pregnancy is really high. I don't think all these shows about teenage pregnancy are a very good idea. There are three of them that I can think of, but there's probably more. I don't know. I think some of the shows glorify it, or at the very least, they make it seem like it's ok.

I'm not trying to be offensive. I mean...my fiancee was a teenage mom. But I think teenage pregnancy is a problem, and more needs to be done to prevent it, both by the kids' parents and by the education system.

There's my second rant for the day haha.