Yeah, I met Mary back in the Nam days, she hasn't changed that much. A lot of it is hype from the anti-s saying we gotta outlaw it cuz its so strong now one puff will just melt your brain, and there's as much hype from the other side..."dude! ya gotta try this! it'll melt yer brain!!" Just takes less now to get where you want, and people tend to "appreciate" it more since it's a lot more expensive than it used to be. Nowadays there is a much wider variety, and there is diversity in the effects of different strains. Kinda like how microbrews are "stronger" than PBR or Bud Light.
Wrecked my XS650 in '83, guy pulled in front of me and slammed on his brakes, I hit him at about 35, launched over the top and woke up about 40ft down the road after being out for about 5 minutes(or so I was told), two hairline fractures of the distal tibia, ruined my ankle for life. Gotta throw out some props for Bell Helmets!!! I (about 240lbs at the time) landed on my Tour Star, shaved a 4in dia. flat spot and put three long gnarly cracks on it, sore neck but no headache. Literally walked away from that one. In '95, took a broadside from a guy in a Dodge Ram while I was driving my Toyota Starlet about 55, he blew the stopsign at about 55, got life flighted because it took them 45 minutes to cut me out of the car. Kinda messed up my neck and L shoulder, hurt my knees bad. But.. you shoulda seen the car... Then in '98, a girl that was stopped in the far left lane, saw BurgerKing and decided to turn right across 2 lanes and into mine, I was doing 30, t-boned her and slammed my neck and L shoulder into the door. December '07, I was sitting at a stoplight and got rearended by the guy behind me who was rearended at about 40 by a lady in an SUV. More neck pain and a nifty seatbelt bruise across my chest. My neck and shoulders sound pretty crunchy these days. In '02 my doctor put me on continuous opiate therapy, 5/500 Vicodin 3x daily and 5mg Morphine at night. The codones tend to keep me awake at night too. Took myself off last December because I just got tired of it. I'd much rather smoke pot than take morphine most of the time. Sometimes I really like morphine, it can be quite....sensual. But it makes it really hard to get out of bed in the morning, pot is much easier to recover from. Over the yrs, I've tried EVERYTHING to relieve the pain, Vicodin is the only thing that actually allows me freedom from pain. Nsaids? might as well eat sugar. Morphine, demerol, fentanyl..all that stuff puts space between me and the pain, but the pain is still there. But I felt like I'd been down so long, I'd rather feel the pain, and when I decided to cut it off, it was easy. No DTs, no anxiety,..actually an aversion to taking any pills for now. I'm sure I will again tho, the pain is always there. FWIW, pharmacology and anaesthesiology were big subjects in the Veterinary Technician program I went thru. I was a practicing Registered Vet Tech for about 10 yrs, passing National Boards and State boards in CA, OR, and WA to attain registration. My connection to the medical arts goes back to my childhood, my mom is a registered nurse(since '54) who got her master's in nursing education and eventually became the head of the nursing department at American River College in Sacramento before retiring. We've had lots of parent/child as well as peer to peer drug and mental health related discussions. I say legalize it.
