“
I smoke weed all day. I'm a very successful addict. And a smart one. And a very charismatic one
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Eddie Humbert
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I have learned the junk equation. Junk is not, like alcohol or weed, a means of increased enjoyment of life. Junk is not a kick. It is a way of life.
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William S. Burroughs
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I wasn’t always a debater, but if I hadn’t become one four years ago, no joke, I would probably be addicted to weed. Or erotic fan fiction. Or something like that. Let
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Lara Avery (The Memory Book)
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The only way to truly help most drug addicts and most alcoholics is to—instead of them—change reality.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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From the beginning of high school, all other substances were readily available and liberally consumed by my friends, who used weed and booze like an essential garnish for activities. Peer pressure was rampant with hallucinogens and cocaine. I experimented and hated the effects. Reality wasn’t the problem. I was.
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David Poses (The Weight of Air: A Story of the Lies about Addiction and the Truth about Recovery)
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Tony had an addictive personality and was without doubt a workaholic, choosing to travel over 250 days a year for as long as I’d known him. Whenever I used to suggest he take some time off, Tony would say, “Television is a cruel mistress. She does not let you cheat on her, even for a while.
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Tom Vitale (In the Weeds: Around the World and Behind the Scenes with Anthony Bourdain)
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Find What You love And Let it kill You.
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Mohammed Wazeem
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You wanna try booze, try it - you wanna try weed, try it – you wanna get laid, go get laid - just do it all and get it over with, so that you can pay attention to the real troubles of society.
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Abhijit Naskar (Hometown Human: To Live for Soil and Society)
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...one of the addictions--more fundamental than the addiction to fossil fuels--that we are going to have to give up is the addiction to fighting. Then we can examine the ground conditions that produce an endless supply of enemies to fight.
The addiction to fighting draws from a perception of the world as composed of enemies: indifferent forces of nature tending toward entropy, and hostile competitors seeking to further their reproductive or economic self-interest over our own. In a world of competitors, well-being comes through domination. In a world of random natural forces, well-being comes through control. War is the mentality of control in its most extreme form. Kill the enemy--the weeds, the pests, the terrorists, the germs--and the problem is solved once and for all.
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Charles Eisenstein (Climate: A New Story)
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On the American desert are horses which eat the locoweed and some are driven made by it; their vision is affected, they take enormous leaps to cross a tuft of grass or tumble blindly into rivers. The horses which have become thus addicted are shunned by the others and will never rejoin the herd. So it is with human beings: those who are conscious of another world, the world of the spirit, acquire an outlook which distorts the values of ordinary life; they are consumed by the weed of non-attachment. Curiosity is their one excess and therefore they are recognized not by what they do, but by what they refrain from doing, like those Araphants or disciples of Buddha who are pledged to the "Nine Incapabilities." Thus they do not take life, they do not compete, they do not boast, they do not join groups of more than six, they do not condemn others; they are "abandoners of revels, mute, contemplative" who are depressed by gossip, gaiety and equals, who wait to be telephoned to, who neither speak in public, nor keep up with their friends, nor take revenge upon their enemies. Self-knowledge has taught them to abandon hate and blame and envy in their lives, and they look sadder than they are. They seldom make positive assertions because they see, outlined against any statement, as a painter sees a complementary color, the image of its opposite. Most psychological questionnaires are designed to search out these moonlings and to secure their non-employment. They divine each other by a warm indifference for they know that they are not intended to forgather, but, like stumps of phosphorus in the world's wood, each to give forth his misleading radiance.
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Cyril Connelly
“
Anyone reading or rereading Infinite Jest will notice an interesting pertinence: throughout the book, Wallace’s flat, minor, one-note characters walk as tall as anyone, peacocks of diverse idiosyncrasy. Wallace doesn’t simply set a scene and novelize his characters into facile life; rather, he makes an almost metaphysical commitment to see reality through their eyes. A fine example of this occurs early in Infinite Jest, during its “Where was the woman who said she’d come” interlude. In it we encounter the paranoid weed addict Ken Erdedy, whose terror of being considered a too-eager drug buyer has engendered an unwelcome situation: he is unsure whether or not he actually managed to make an appointment with a woman able to access two hundred grams of “unusually good” marijuana, which he very much wants to spend the weekend smoking. For eleven pages, Erdedy does nothing but sweat and anticipate this woman’s increasingly conjectural arrival with his desired two hundred grams. I suspect no one who has struggled with substance addiction can read this passage without squirming, gasping, or weeping. I know of nothing else in the entirety of literature that so convincingly inhabits a drug-smashed consciousness while remaining a model of empathetic clarity. The literary craftsman’s term for what Wallace is doing within the Erdedy interlude is free indirect style, but while reading Wallace you get the feeling that bloodless matters of craftsmanship rather bored him. Instead, he had to somehow psychically become his characters, which is surely why he wrote so often, and so well, in a microscopically close third person. In this very specific sense, Wallace may be the closest thing to a method actor in American literature, which I cannot imagine was without its subtle traumas. And Erdedy is merely one of Infinite Jest’s hundreds of differently damaged walk-on characters! Sometimes I wonder: What did it cost Wallace to create him?
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David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest)
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So just take a look at the different prosecution rates and sentencing rules for ghetto drugs like crack and suburban drugs like cocaine, or for drunk drivers and drug users, or just between blacks and whites in general―the statistics are clear: this is a war on the poor and minorities. Or ask yourself a simple question: how come marijuana is illegal but tobacco legal? It can't be because of the health impact, because that's exactly the other way around―there has never been a fatality from marijuana use among million reported users in the United States, whereas tobacco kills hundreds of thousands of people every year. My strong suspicion, though I don't know how to prove it, is that the reason is that marijuana's a weed, you can grow it in your backyard, so there's nobody who would make any money off it if it were legal. Tobacco requires extensive capital inputs and technology, and it can be monopolized, so there are people who can make a ton of money off it. I don't really see any other difference between the two of them, frankly―except that tobacco's far more lethal and far more addictive.
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Noam Chomsky
“
Remember, babyhood is not a time of bliss; it’s one of terror. As babies we are trapped in a strange, alien world, unable to see properly, constantly surprised at our bodies, alarmed by hunger and wind and bowel movements, overwhelmed by our feelings. We are quite literally under attack. We need our mother to soothe our distress and make sense of our experience. As she does so, we slowly learn how to manage our physical and emotional states on our own. But our ability to contain ourselves directly depends on our mother’s ability to contain us—if she had never experienced containment by her own mother, how could she teach us what she did not know? Someone who has never learned to contain himself is plagued by anxious feelings for the rest of his life, feelings that Bion aptly titled nameless dread. Such a person endlessly seeks this unquenchable containment from external sources—he needs a drink or a joint to “take the edge off” this endless anxiety. Hence my addiction to marijuana. I talked a lot about marijuana in therapy. I wrestled with the idea of giving it up and wondered why the prospect scared me so much. Ruth said that enforcement and constraint never produced anything good, and that, rather than force myself to live without weed, a better starting place might be to acknowledge that I was now dependent on it, and unwilling or unable to abandon it.
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Alex Michaelides (The Silent Patient)
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Drugs are a trap and give no real advancement. You could liken drugs to driving to the store for groceries and then saying you just exercised.
Yes you felt renewed or even enlightened, but then you have to go home again.
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Jason Cain
“
Don't date just to escape the "Im Single" status.
Don't marry just to tick off a checklist. Life is NOT a grocery list. Find yourself first, then find someone who can accommodate the talents, the vision and the ambitions in your heart, someone who can be the enabler for you to emerge into your greatness. Find someone who believes in you, supports and encourages you even when the world laughs at your guts.
But first, find yourself because it is far more important to be the right person than it is to date/marry the right person. Become a person of value. Don't go looking for a good woman until you've become a good man. And ladies, don't go looking for a good man till you've become a good woman. If you want a loving, honest, faithful, supportive and rich partner; first become what you are looking for. You must meet the requirements of your own requirements!
Leaders, vision bearers and dream chasers look for character, commitment, vision, grit, faith, etc...but ordinary people look for coca-cola bottle shape kinder girl, a six pack kinder guy and a heavy bank balance...but dear men, it's her character that will raise your children not her beauty. It is character that makes a great wife. Dear ladies, It is character that makes a great Dad/husband not a car or a big wallet.
Take note good people, you don't need to die to go to hell...misalignment of core values/purpose In your relationship/marriage is the beginning of your own hell right here on earth. In my humble opinion, misalignment of core values is worst than cheating. Yes, both are evil but cheating is a lesser evil compared to misalignment of core values. Trust me, you don't want to test this theory, you may not come out alive.
So, leave the girl/boy down the road to a boy/girl down the road. Leave slay queens to slay kings. Leave party queens to party kings. Leave nyaope boys to nyaope girls, drug addicts to drug addicts, leave weed girls to weed boys, playboys to playgirls..,,AND legacy builders to legacy builders!
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Nicky Verd
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Marijuana, up to now, gives me little reason to adjust that opinion. Pot can be responsibly legalized. Instead, we are choosing the route we took with opioids: a now-legal, potent drug is being made widely available and marketed with claims about its risk-free nature. Big Pot is only a matter of time. Altria, which owns Marlboro, is moving into legal marijuana. The final absurdity is that as we face climate change’s existential threat, we make a weed that thrives under the sun legal to grow indoors, with a huge carbon footprint. Pot may well have medical benefits. Opioids certainly do. But supply matters. So does potency and marketing and distribution. The opioid-addiction crisis should have taught us that. I’m
”
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Sam Quinones (The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth)
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Marijuana, up to now, gives me little reason to adjust that opinion. Pot can be responsibly legalized. Instead, we are choosing the route we took with opioids: a now-legal, potent drug is being made widely available and marketed with claims about its risk-free nature. Big Pot is only a matter of time. Altria, which owns Marlboro, is moving into legal marijuana. The final absurdity is that as we face climate change’s existential threat, we make a weed that thrives under the sun legal to grow indoors, with a huge carbon footprint. Pot may well have medical benefits. Opioids certainly do. But supply matters. So does potency and marketing and distribution. The opioid-addiction crisis should have taught us that. I’m sympathetic to the idea of decriminalizing drugs, as well. Yet I believe it misunderstands the nature of addiction and ignores the unforgiving drug stream every addict must face today. One reason overdose deaths during the coronavirus pandemic skyrocketed is that police in many areas stopped arresting people for the minor crimes and outstanding warrants that are symptoms of their addictions. Left on the street, many use until they die. Certainly the story of that death toll is as complex as those of the people whose deaths are counted in it. But I suspect we’ll come to see the last ten months of 2020 and into 2021 at least in part as one long, unplanned experiment into what happens when the most devastating street drugs we’ve known are, in effect, decriminalized, and those addicted to them are allowed to remain on the street to use them.
”
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Sam Quinones (The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth)
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WHEN I GRADUATED from my New Jersey high school in 1979, I was an honor student and a junkie. I don’t mean I smoked a lot of weed or popped too many pills—I shot speed daily. Methamphetamine to the chemist, crank in my hometown, crystal in modern terminology.
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Mary Beth O'Connor (From Junkie to Judge: One Woman's Triumph Over Trauma and Addiction)
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Without knowing it, I had exchanged long term wellbeing for short term euphoria. When weed releases dopamine to the parts of the brain that deal with pleasure and awe, it temporarily makes the menial seem remarkable. Normal sights, sounds, tastes, and smells become less and less attractive in contrast to their weed-enhanced alternatives. Over time, weed becomes more essential for appreciating anything at all, and we lose the ability to appreciate normal “unenhanced” life.
”
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Michael J. Heil (Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose)
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As the delightful high of smoking weed became more central to our lives, the idea of stopping became unfathomable. Why stop when we could function so well on it and it made us feel so good?
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Michael J. Heil (Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose)
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I didn’t realize that there would always be something influencing my decisions and weighing in on my life. At this moment weed was calling the shots and the desire to win approval from others controlled most of what I did. These were my idols, the things I functionally relied on to carry me through the hardships of life. I loved my weed, its dark, robust smell, the resounding buzz I got after smoking it that made my heart flutter and my mind fuzz. I didn’t give a flip that it was ruling me. I didn’t give a flip about anything. YOLO… DGAF…
”
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Michael J Heil (Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose)
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After my sentencing from the judge, I started getting drug tested regularly. As a result, I had to stop smoking weed. In place of weed, I started doing other drugs that stayed in my system for shorter amounts of time and were harder to detect. It started with nontraceable substances like mushrooms, acid, and 2-CB (a derivative of mescaline), but it quickly turned into hard drugs. While weed was detectable on tests for up to a month, hard drugs were only traceable for a few days or a week at most. Ironically, the drug tests which were meant to discourage me from drug use, turned me on to hard drugs.
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Michael J Heil (Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose)
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It was my norm to go to events high. I passed my driver’s exam high on weed, and I had intentionally gone to detention shrooming, just to see if I could do it without getting caught. I was determined to convince the world that every form of drug use should be legalized, determined to overthrow the authorities by proving their fickle policies futile. I was an advocate of anarchy, dead set on self-satisfaction. As a result, I went through most of high school either high, drunk, or locked up, with some sort of crumbled prescription up my nose.
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Michael J Heil (Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose)
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I knew that drugs weren’t a long-term fix. I knew they were destroying me inside and out; I knew they weren’t the way to live life to its fullest, but by this point I was so addicted that logic couldn’t reach me. The harder it was for me to get high, the more I wanted it. I needed weed. I needed real drugs.
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Michael J Heil (Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose)
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The more I had to fight to smoke weed, the more obsessed I became with it. Over time, it became more of a necessity than a luxury.
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Michael J Heil (Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose)
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The power and intensity of that experience made me shake and tremble with fear. The reality and tangibility of God in that moment was so jarring that I threw the rest of the weed away and decided to just stick with the opiates. I knew that using drugs to get off drugs was stupid.
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Michael J Heil (Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose)
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I knew that classifying one drug as better or more tolerable than another was stupid as well. Weed was the reason I had become an addict in the first place. It had always been one of the main substances that kept me stuck, and one of the main excuses that kept me returning to this empty lifestyle. I just had so many years of bad habits that my very best and most genuine efforts to thwart addiction were not enough. I was the dog that returns to its vomit—the sinner who can’t help but return to his sin.
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Michael J Heil (Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose)
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It was easy for me to start good habits like taking advanced classes and doing more sports, but weeding out the bad habits was not as simple. I still went to class high sometimes, but at least I wasn’t doing it every day. Before, I could not function without drugs, could not live a single day. Now, very gradually, I was changing the purpose for which I lived. Before, I was a druggie. Now I was a super studious, highly advanced student who was only on drugs sometimes.
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Michael J Heil (Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose)
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Self-handicapping is one of the most common psychological drives behind addiction. If you have managed to be a “functional” stoner, imagine how well you could be doing if you took the obstacle of weed away: stop retarding your life by swimming against the current, operating at a fraction of what you are capable of.
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Matthew Clarke (Quitting Weed: The Complete Guide)
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Toxic shame is a powerful driver behind addiction. It leads to constantly needing to numb and distract yourself from the pain of feeling that you are somehow inferior. Addiction not only masks shame, but as the accumulated effects of addiction take hold, we feel even more additional shame.
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Matthew Clarke (Quitting Weed: The Complete Guide)
“
Passion weed was an addiction, and once gnomes had been exposed to it, they’d do anything to get more, even if there wasn’t any more to be had. They would drive themselves crazy trying to get it. Eventually, they’d go mad and start attacking each other. Leaving them alive was a prolonged, brutal death sentence.
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M.J. May (Perfectly Imperfect Pixie (Perfect Pixie #1))
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In my younger days, I craved for love more than I craved for weed. Then I realised that weed is easier to get than love.
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Shon Mehta (Lair Of The Monster)
“
the girls on the track team do their thang, when I spot ass. See, when ya boy spots ass, I be on it. I leave Dre and Twan, my teammates, and head over to see what the face looks like that's connected to this ass. Oh yea, I’m Rashard Peterson, number 06, quarterback for UMA. This is my last year and I’ll have my Bachelors in Business Management. I do my thang with Twan and Dre in these streets too. If you want some weed, I got you, but that's pretty much all I’ll touch. I never keep enough on me to get a charge. The most I’ll have on me is a blunt and shit, that's for recreational use. Ya boy ain’t dumb by a long shot. That's why I got this degree in the works, so I can open up different businesses. Anyway, if you want pills then holla at Twan; my boy got opioids, tabs, Xanax
”
”
Linette King (Addicted to Him)
“
Wayne got weird.8 He grew out his dreads and covered his body with goonish tattoos. He smoked weed like it was his job and developed an addiction to codeine-based cough syrup. His voice became screwed up and froggy. His production turned psychedelic. In 2003, he’d been a skinny, unexceptional adolescent delivering basic-sounding rhymes over basic-sounding beats. By 2005, he had transformed himself into The Illustrated Man, and his auto-tuned music sounded like garbled transmissions from outer space.
”
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Stephen Witt (How Music Got Free)
“
politically correct claptrap for ‘extremely messed up’. Most of the children in Jessie’s class were the product of appalling neglect, both mental and physical, and abuse, also both mental and physical. They were the children of alcoholics and drug-addicted parents, of parents who spent half their lives in jail, the rest of the time trying to spend their welfare on booze, weed and crystal meth. That was if they even had parents to speak of. Many of Jessie’s pupils were being reared by their grandparents; sad, tired, ill-equipped people whose hearts were in the right place, even if they did not have the wherewithal to help their grandchildren in ways other than to feed and house them. Jessie lifted a pop-up picture book from under a desk and slotted it into what they romantically called ‘the library’, though it was little more than two shelves of tattered books bought and
”
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Arlene Hunt (Last to Die)
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Why is alcohol sanctioned and smiled at, while the police crack down constantly on weed—when it seemed to him that the weed smokers cause a lot less trouble than the drinkers?
”
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Johann Hari (Chasing the Scream: The Search for the Truth About Addiction)
“
Finding out Chase was part owner of a shipping company was like him hitting the lottery. He was about to give Chase a proposition to ship cocaine, weed, pills, anything he needed all over the place. Once Chase took that—which he’d likely do because they always took the deals he offered—he’d be dirty.
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J. Peach (A Dangerous Love: Addicted To Him)
“
Dante, why exactly are you here? I know this isn’t normal protocol. You don’t go check on every member who has a rough night.” He sat back in an open stance and regarded me as if debating what to tell me. “I see all sorts of people walk through my doors at the Den. Many are curious about a kink or bored with their lives. A select few are addicts, and sex is their drug of choice. But you, dear Camilla, you are a rare flower where before there were only vines and weeds. I sensed from the moment I met you that you were worth nurturing. That your growth would be something to behold.
”
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Jill Ramsower (Absolute Silence (The Five Families, #5))
“
When people stop moving in life, they stop getting these internal hits of feel-good chemicals. They have to start relying on other ways to artificially stimulate them, like video games, alcohol, smoking weed, social media, or watching porn. We get addicted to these things in a desperate attempt to compensate for the fact that we’re not really living our lives.
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Kevin Hart (This Is How We Do It: A Pep Talk)
“
Honor He Wrote Sonnet 11
You wanna get laid?
Get laid, but with consent.
You wanna jump off a cliff?
Just jump, with an active brain.
You wanna try booze?
Try it, but with moderation.
You wanna smoke weed?
Do it, but with self-regulation.
Try out everything you wanna try,
Figure out right 'n wrong for yourself.
It is your life, test it to its limits, but,
Be sure not to harm others in the process.
Get it all over with, for plenty work remains.
Live to build a world, not to pamper shallow tenets.
”
”
Abhijit Naskar (Honor He Wrote: 100 Sonnets For Humans Not Vegetables)
“
Sitting in your favorite position and closing your eyes, you tiptoe over the threshold of experience and into the mystery. You drop into the heart of the universe. You’re there. The cascade of SONDANoBe floods your brain. You’re hooked, drawn up into the light. When you emerge from meditation, you’re more compassionate, emotionally balanced, mentally coherent, effective, kind, creative, healthy, and productive. The effects ripple through the whole community around you. At the center of that circle is a great-feeling you. The Gregs of this world go for heroin, weed, or alcohol to make themselves feel good. That’s simply because they don’t realize that a far better drug is available. SONDANoBe is what addicts are really craving. They want to feel good, but they’re looking for exogenous chemicals to meet their needs. They don’t understand that what they’re searching for is right inside their own brains. The only reason those drugs feel good to the Gregs of this world is that they’re facsimiles of the substances that their own brains produce. Bliss Brain is a formula, just like the World’s Best Cocktail. It’s the World’s Best High, and it’s just as addictive. The brain that experiences SONDANoBe once can never go back to its old state. By remodeling neural tissue, SONDANoBe consolidates learning and hardwires bliss. While street drugs shrink and damage vital brain regions, SONDANoBe does the opposite. It grows your brain. It expands the brain regions that regulate your emotions, synthesize great ideas, stimulate your creativity, acquire new skills, heal your body, extend your longevity, improve your memory, and boost your happiness. The next chapter shows how a brain bathed in the chemicals of ecstasy starts to change its fundamental structure, as the software of mind becomes the hardware of brain.
”
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Dawson Church (Bliss Brain: The Neuroscience of Remodeling Your Brain for Resilience, Creativity, and Joy)
“
Take care of your heart and your mind for they are like a garden.
And nothing good thrives in a garden full of weeds.
”
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Michael Bassey Johnson (The Book of Maxims, Poems and Anecdotes)
“
This good thing happened. For my brother. And when I found out, I was so fucking high... and I was happy, but it was a different kind of happy. A tinted happy. A happy with one of those fiberglass screen doors covering it. I’ll never hear his news for the first time again. I lost out on a full moment forever.
”
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Kristian Ventura (The Goodbye Song)
“
You wanna try booze, try it - you wanna try weed, try it – you wanna get laid, go get laid - just do it all and get it over with, so that you can pay attention to the real troubles of society. How dare you waste your life on nonsense! You may say, it is your life, and you can do whatever you want with it. To that I say, it is not your life, it is human life, and a human life that doesn't come to the aid of the society is anything but human.
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Abhijit Naskar (Hometown Human: To Live for Soil and Society)
“
Rachel released her grip on the handle of her suitcase (trolley-style, thank God, given the weight of the thing) and fished around her pockets for her cigarettes and a lighter. Lighting up, she inhaled deeply, and allowed the hit of the nicotine to calm her down. Four hours on crowded trains with no chance to smoke had left her frazzled. For a few moments she savoured the smoke, banishing the freezing cold to the back of her mind. This may very well be her last chance to have a cigarette for two days: Her mother had no idea that Rachel had become addicted to what she called the 'foul weed' during her years at university and, for both their sakes, Rachel intended to keep it that way. As a result, trips home to visit the folks quickly became fraught affairs, as withdrawal made Rachel snappy and edgy. She'd often considered the various ways she might be able to slip away for a crafty smoke, but in the end had never tried.
”
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K.R. Griffiths (Panic (Wildfire Chronicles #1))
“
It is to look at where we are now, what we are doing now, and to consider where some of our current behaviors and unattended problems might take us. I considered drugs and the effects of drugs on the children of drug addicts. I looked at the growing rich/poor gap, at throwaway labor, at our willingness to build and fill prisons, our reluctance to build and repair schools and libraries, and at our assault on the environment. In particular, I looked at global warming and the ways in which it’s likely to change things for us. There’s food-price driven inflation that’s likely because, as the climate changes, some of the foods we’re used to won’t grow as well in the places we’re used to growing them. Not only will temperatures be too high, not only will there not be enough water, but the increase in carbon dioxide won’t affect all plants in the same ways. Some will grow a little faster while their weeds grow a lot faster. Some will grow faster but not be as nutritious—forcing both their beasts and us to need more to be decently nourished. It’s a much more complex problem than a simple increase in temperature. I considered spreading hunger as a reason for increased vulnerability to disease. And there would be less money for inoculations or treatment. Also, thanks to rising temperatures, tropical diseases like malaria and dengue would move north. I considered loss of coastline as the level of the sea rises. I imagined the United States becoming, slowly, through the combined effects of lack of foresight and short-term unenlightened self-interest, a third world country.
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Octavia E. Butler (Parable of the Sower)
“
Tests of marijuana have shown that there is twice as much THC, the active ingredient, in the average joint or pipeful today than in the weed of a decade ago, which itself was stronger than in the 1960s and 70s.
”
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David Sheff (Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction)
“
We drove down the highway, past shabby farmsteads with flaking paintwork and rotting wood, past tumbling-down tobacco barns cut through with shards of sunlight. Past abandoned cars and rusting farm machinery, and black cattle standing in paddocks next to farmhouses. Past towns that seemed half-abandoned, with boarded-up shops and houses with Confederate flags in their windows and 'VOTE TRUMP' signs on the front lawn. Shutters were closed and leaves gathered on the porch; churches with billboards promised redemption for drug addicts. Flakes of snow fell but didn't settle.
Our friend drove us around the country in his white pick-up truch with his sheepdog in the back and hisred toolbox and wrenches in the footwell. He told us about his people, past and present, and introduced us to farmers who were holding on. They all told us the same thing: America had chosen industrial farming and abandoned its small family farms, and this was the result - a landscape and a community that was falling apart. They showed us fields of oilseed rape that were full of weeds because they were now resistant to the herbicides that had been overused. They spoke of mountains ripped open for minerals, and rivers polluted, the farming people leaving the land or holding on in hidden poverty. And the worse it got, the more people seemed to gravitate to charlatans with their grand promises and ready-made scapegoats to focus all their anger on.
”
”
James Rebanks (Pastoral Song: A Farmer’s Journey)