I smoke two joints in the morning
No, actually, I don’t, but i do get a huge kick out of the song
I like most the “I smoke two joints before I smoke two joints, and then I smoke two more”
When I was taking my apprenticeship at Inland in the stone age, part of the deal was to spend x number of days with every qualified mechanic. And while a few were actually “qualified”, I spent some time with some real winners.
One such guy had made a career out of a: finding temperate hiding spaces, and b: using them to their full advantage, and C: using his inordinately large Union income to buy heroin, which I would watch him shoot.
At the time of my apprenticeship, the mill had gone through a massive de-asbestosing campaign, and most of the asbestos insulation had been replaced by a substance called Ceramic Wool. it looked like fiberglass but without the itchy prickly effect. Anyway, the guy, who we’ll call russel, would take a roll of compacted ceramic wool wiht him, we’d go off in search of one of his hiding places, and he’d roll out the wool. He’d take off his shirt, roll up a sleeve, tie off, and shoot up. he’d lay there for about six hours, sometimes never bothering to take the needle out of his arm.
I would usually bring a book or a magazine to read, or do a crossword. You learn to be patient around heroin addicts, who have no sense of time until the junk runs out.
I also worked with a lot of alcoholics, and the mill promoted this behavior by using food grade alcohol to freeze-proof water lines, and there were 55 gallon drums of everclear all over the damned place. You couldn’t denature it because it was mixed with drinking water sometimes, to keep lines exposed to the murderous lakefront cold from freezing.These guys had figured out how to flavor the crap with the oils used to make hard candy- they made some damned interesting concoctions.
The dopers were the most amusing- and the most likely to receive minor injury on the job. Minor because they were never motivated to do much, and the injuries they received were mostly due to poor judgement.
Very few of them actually rolled joints. Most were good about conserving their stash, and a dugout and bat combo was the preferred method
In fact, I made dozens of dugouts and bats for guys, even once designing and making a “puzzle box” dugout so complex that a cop could hold it in his hands (and often did) and never be able to get in to discover the stash. One of the advantages to having a machine shop at your disposal.
me, I never touched the stuff. I saw the guys who did, and for the most part, they were dumbasses. Now, in retrospect, they were dumbasses before they started smoking, but i also had no interest in scrapes with the law. And at that age, I was… prone to encounters with the law.
Anyway, I never judged anyone for anything they wanted to do- hell, I.. sort of enabled the behavior, I guess. But I never liked not being in control. And these days, I am glad I stayed clean. I might still be in that mill.
Og, that’s exactly the reason I never dabbled in drugs or drank to excess either. Even when I tied one on, it was more the Dean Martin “half drunk, the other half acting drunk” routine – I never drank so much I didn’t remember things or had to have people carry me home. I refuse to surrender self control.
When I was young, I had a very laissez faire attitude toward the stuff. Leave me out of it, but knock yourself out, buddy. The older I get, the less tolerant I get of this, since I see more and more how recreational drug using (notice I didn’t say illegal, I meant using drugs for entertainment rather than treatment regardless of their legality) as well as alcoholism has caused nearly all of the ruin in this country.
All of the gang activity, nearly all of the killings, and practically all of the robberies are for one reason – drugs. I’ll almost never praise what a communist does, but their countries had little violent crime due to the fact that they brooked no nonsense with drugs. Mao stopped an opium trade that went on for a long time by simpling killing off those involved, thereby discouraging anyone else’s interest in the trade.
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“And these days, I am glad I stayed clean. I might still be in that mill.”
Far too many of the people I knew who didn’t stay clean are now in the ground. A lucky few are still in the mill, so to speak.
Drug abuse tends to be self-correcting;
you see a lot more old drunks than old junkies.
Here’s a thought – if they weren’t at the bottom end of the IQ scale before they started doing dope, they’re at the bottom end of it now.
What’s that say about the crap they’re doing?
As for me, I spent enough time watching drug addicts do what they do to know that I’d rather drag my dick through a mile of broken glass before I’d shoot up anything.
I hate needles. Thank heavens I can drink rum or there would be a real concern here. If you had to inject vodka to make the perfect martini, or shoot up rum for that out of this world pina colada I guess beer would be the only beverage for me.
I hear you, Og.
I’ve never lost control when drinking – when I *used* to drink. And I’ve never done drugs either.
I like it that way, for me.
Just looking at that dugout picture, and thinking that – if current trends continue – people may actually start using them for smoking tobacco.