MARTHA. Truth and illusion, George; you don’t know the difference.
GEORGE. No; but we must carry on as though we did.
- Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee 1962 (Act 3)
Recently on social ‘media’ someone posted an item regarding the dangers of alcohol and opined that it was perhaps the most dangerous drug in existence. A Facebook friend of mine submitted his view that marijuana was far safer to indulge in or something to that effect. I tried to indicate in a comment that pot was not without its own drawbacks and that people often “cough themselves purple” using it, for which I was quickly and tersely upbraided with the reply “More people will die from alcohol this weekend than have ever died from smoking pot.” I think that’s verbatim, but while I may have slightly - and accidentally - misquoted him here that was the ‘substance’ of the statement.
As far as accidents, injuries and deaths go, they happen all the time, in all manner of ways, even to people who use marijuana or to people who drive or to those who do both at the same time. In such catastrophes one generally hears a news statement from police stating that ‘drugs may have been a factor’ and that’s all that’s said because a lot of drugs are still too difficult and/or expensive to test for in each instance. Some may suppose that they refer (not reefer) to ‘drugs’ other than weed, but to imply or argue that because there are few statistics on the subject it doesn’t happen is borderline sophistry or self-delusion at best. M.A.D.D. includes ‘drugs’ along with alcohol in their television ads now.
Little more needs to be said. I might have been ‘inspired somehow’ and made this small rebuttal a couple of weeks sooner, but I’ve been recuperating after surgery for multiple hernias during the time since those postings appeared. Believe me, you don’t want to do a lot of coughing in those circumstances.
And I’m not just talking through my hat about the ganja either because I’ve smoked pot for about the last 44 years and my friend - let’s call him ‘Paul’ - knows it because some of the first marijuana either of us ever smoked in our lives was passed back and forth between us then and I haven't been idle since! Still, one wonders why some remain so defensive and insecure about the subject after all this time. Could it be some loss of memory or the paranoia that’s to blame?
‘But why say blame? Why, if it was an illusion, not praise the catastrophe, whatever it was, that destroyed the illusion and put truth in its place? For truth . . . those dots mark the spot where, in search of truth, I missed the turning up to Fernham. Yes indeed, which was truth and which was illusion? I asked myself.’
- A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf 1929 (on WW1, pg. 12 in my copy)
GEORGE. No; but we must carry on as though we did.
- Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee 1962 (Act 3)
Recently on social ‘media’ someone posted an item regarding the dangers of alcohol and opined that it was perhaps the most dangerous drug in existence. A Facebook friend of mine submitted his view that marijuana was far safer to indulge in or something to that effect. I tried to indicate in a comment that pot was not without its own drawbacks and that people often “cough themselves purple” using it, for which I was quickly and tersely upbraided with the reply “More people will die from alcohol this weekend than have ever died from smoking pot.” I think that’s verbatim, but while I may have slightly - and accidentally - misquoted him here that was the ‘substance’ of the statement.
As far as accidents, injuries and deaths go, they happen all the time, in all manner of ways, even to people who use marijuana or to people who drive or to those who do both at the same time. In such catastrophes one generally hears a news statement from police stating that ‘drugs may have been a factor’ and that’s all that’s said because a lot of drugs are still too difficult and/or expensive to test for in each instance. Some may suppose that they refer (not reefer) to ‘drugs’ other than weed, but to imply or argue that because there are few statistics on the subject it doesn’t happen is borderline sophistry or self-delusion at best. M.A.D.D. includes ‘drugs’ along with alcohol in their television ads now.
Little more needs to be said. I might have been ‘inspired somehow’ and made this small rebuttal a couple of weeks sooner, but I’ve been recuperating after surgery for multiple hernias during the time since those postings appeared. Believe me, you don’t want to do a lot of coughing in those circumstances.
And I’m not just talking through my hat about the ganja either because I’ve smoked pot for about the last 44 years and my friend - let’s call him ‘Paul’ - knows it because some of the first marijuana either of us ever smoked in our lives was passed back and forth between us then and I haven't been idle since! Still, one wonders why some remain so defensive and insecure about the subject after all this time. Could it be some loss of memory or the paranoia that’s to blame?
‘But why say blame? Why, if it was an illusion, not praise the catastrophe, whatever it was, that destroyed the illusion and put truth in its place? For truth . . . those dots mark the spot where, in search of truth, I missed the turning up to Fernham. Yes indeed, which was truth and which was illusion? I asked myself.’
- A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf 1929 (on WW1, pg. 12 in my copy)
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