Thanks for the article. I hope your mum is doing a lot better now that you're free.
I'd like to add that my mum doesn't talk at schools very often for the reason you stated: not wanting to relive it. She was accompanying me that day, and it was the teacher who asked her at the last minute to talk. She's only talked at 2 schools since my release over 4 years ago. My dad never attends the talks as he doesn't want to relive it.
Stoke Newington High recently emailed to ask for my mum's address because so many of the students there want to write her thank you notes.
Obviously such talks won't get through to everyone, but I do get a lot of positive feedback. I don't say drugs are bad, or tell people how to live their lives. I just say this is what happened to me. I hope you don't make the same mistakes I did.
If you click on the link to the webpage I've provided with this message and scroll down to the bottom, you'll see an email from a Stoke Newington parent.
What I think is that this culture accepts SOME drugs and wages war against others, as you know only too well! I can dig you feel that you using and being part of selling drugs got you that hell, but also there is a way of seeing it that the very war on drugs ITSELF is far worse hell. I have seen a very good BBC documentary about heroin a while ago. And I have worked voluntarily at a Needle Exchange. The documentary said that people who chose to use heroin could relatively live lives that weren't destructive but what many people don't know is that it's BECAUSE they are forced to get their drugs from the street that many end up with all kinds of problems, on the body, diseases, and early deaths, and of course all the degradation and crime that comes with trying to maintain a real habit. It is terrible what rubbish the dealers mix with heroin, and cocaine etc. Now we are hearing that even Amsterdam, the only place in Europe that had some freedom for people to use 'illegal' drugs if they wished. The Christian-based government there has already banned the sale of magic mushrooms, and now is toughening laws against smoking cannabis. So once again it will inevitably go onto the street. I do not smoke cannabis now but did for many years, and I went through periods of having to buy it off the street, and some of it was horrible crap which Jamaicans of that time termed "formula" So you would be inhaling god knows what toxic shit into your lungs and whole body system. So the main point is that when these drugs that some people DO desire, and this has been the case for a long tim, are not avialable to be regulated and are having to be bought of the street they mixed with all manner of impurities. This as you know happened to MDMA, and young people have died.
HOWEVER, in a therapeutic setting MDMA is an amazing drug for allowing blocks to deep feelings dissolve. I have seen videos of women who have suffered rape confess that no other therapy helped them in a deep way in the way MDMA has!
So I think it is not JUST about informing the youth that 'drugs are wrong' but really exposing the whole schebangle of what this culture is up to. Whether or not a school would allow this kind of info is another thing! The schools, which I see are like open-prisons more so push the materialistic couless paradigm of the culture which wages a very destructive and phony 'war on SOME drugs'.
I agree, Muz, the continued criminalisation is just a business model for vested interests including the private prisons, and the politicians pocketing contributions from them. Even Richard Branson is speaking out about it.
I added this comment:
ReplyDeleteThanks for the article. I hope your mum is doing a lot better now that you're free.
I'd like to add that my mum doesn't talk at schools very often for the reason you stated: not wanting to relive it. She was accompanying me that day, and it was the teacher who asked her at the last minute to talk. She's only talked at 2 schools since my release over 4 years ago. My dad never attends the talks as he doesn't want to relive it.
Stoke Newington High recently emailed to ask for my mum's address because so many of the students there want to write her thank you notes.
Obviously such talks won't get through to everyone, but I do get a lot of positive feedback. I don't say drugs are bad, or tell people how to live their lives. I just say this is what happened to me. I hope you don't make the same mistakes I did.
If you click on the link to the webpage I've provided with this message and scroll down to the bottom, you'll see an email from a Stoke Newington parent.
Hey Jon
ReplyDeleteWhat I think is that this culture accepts SOME drugs and wages war against others, as you know only too well! I can dig you feel that you using and being part of selling drugs got you that hell, but also there is a way of seeing it that the very war on drugs ITSELF is far worse hell.
I have seen a very good BBC documentary about heroin a while ago. And I have worked voluntarily at a Needle Exchange. The documentary said that people who chose to use heroin could relatively live lives that weren't destructive but what many people don't know is that it's BECAUSE they are forced to get their drugs from the street that many end up with all kinds of problems, on the body, diseases, and early deaths, and of course all the degradation and crime that comes with trying to maintain a real habit. It is terrible what rubbish the dealers mix with heroin, and cocaine etc.
Now we are hearing that even Amsterdam, the only place in Europe that had some freedom for people to use 'illegal' drugs if they wished. The Christian-based government there has already banned the sale of magic mushrooms, and now is toughening laws against smoking cannabis. So once again it will inevitably go onto the street.
I do not smoke cannabis now but did for many years, and I went through periods of having to buy it off the street, and some of it was horrible crap which Jamaicans of that time termed "formula" So you would be inhaling god knows what toxic shit into your lungs and whole body system.
So the main point is that when these drugs that some people DO desire, and this has been the case for a long tim, are not avialable to be regulated and are having to be bought of the street they mixed with all manner of impurities. This as you know happened to MDMA, and young people have died.
HOWEVER, in a therapeutic setting MDMA is an amazing drug for allowing blocks to deep feelings dissolve. I have seen videos of women who have suffered rape confess that no other therapy helped them in a deep way in the way MDMA has!
So I think it is not JUST about informing the youth that 'drugs are wrong' but really exposing the whole schebangle of what this culture is up to. Whether or not a school would allow this kind of info is another thing! The schools, which I see are like open-prisons more so push the materialistic couless paradigm of the culture which wages a very destructive and phony 'war on SOME drugs'.
I agree, Muz, the continued criminalisation is just a business model for vested interests including the private prisons, and the politicians pocketing contributions from them. Even Richard Branson is speaking out about it.
ReplyDelete