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David Mitchell
Wow, this is good stuff! Both the heavy and the light.
Mary Margaret,
I am awed by your gut wrenching testimony to the sad part of this issue. I had no idea your family had been through so much. I have been so lucky to have been spared many really close relations sufffering such difficulties - except for two near and dear ones from tobacco. Thank God.
I did see a couple of problem cases with "Mary Jane" in my unit in Vietnam, but fortunatley, they were dealth with. One troubling case was one of our pilots. Imagine him flying a helicopter on weed! It didn't last long - he was taken off flight status. Problem was (if I understand this right) his reactions were slowed. Not a very safe condition in a helicopter cockpit. And when we learned of it, we were so stressed about what he had been putting his observers through. Frightening!
The other was a case of alcohol. We had a fair amount of that, (including yours truly on two memorable nights out of my 18 months) but one extreme case, who actually flew my wing. There were days when I was not sure Paul was even back there behind me. And we were pretty sure his observers were flying him to and from the "AO" (Area of Operations) - after him taking off and then taking the stick during the mission (we taught them straight and level flying and a crude landing - in case of emergency). Ther was a morning when he was in the big truck - a "duece and a half" with about a four foot high floor above ground, that drove us all out to the flight line, and as the truck pulled up to each aircraft for us to jump down, Paul simply walked erectly to the back of the truck and kept walking over the edge, falling to his face on the hard gravel below. That's a distance from his head to the ground of about 10 feet! He groaned, got back up, and climbed into his ship and took off with the rest of the flight.
To this day, the three heavy drinkers that I still am in touch with are off of alcohol completely. All three met women who gave them the choice of the bottle or their marriage. It worked. They are lucky guys.
The interesting thing to me has always been the difference in perceptability each of these things have. There is some slight but noticeable difference in weed smokers, and usually a much more noticeable difference in alcohol users. But the insidous thing about tobacco is that it doesn't show any change in behavior or perception. So it just sneaks up on the person after 20+ years and makes their (premature) death as horrible a form of torture as we can imagine. My mother had a full life (81), but smoked like a chimney, and her last 5 days were pretty painful to watch. Then my first wife died of lung cancer (at 65, and still cute as a button, after having quit for 25 years!) while living in my oldest daughter's home. I flew out to be with her for the last week of her cheerful, loving life. What a nighmare to witness!
I do lean toward the move to legalize forms of MJ for medicinal purposes (including dogs), and oddly, we have a very conservtive Republican State Senator, leading the fight in Columbia for medical legalization in South Carolina. A very uphill battle in this state, especially in his own party.
My best argument for the "gateway" question is from my older cousin Jim Mitchell (Watterson '63) who ran a drug re-hab clinic just north of OSU campus for years, and he claimed they witnessed an alarmingly high rate of that problem.
I still believe there is some combination of physiological pre-condition, plus some sort of spiritual lack of self assurance that both prey on some of us, and not others. And I still believe Love, Acceptance, and Forgiveness can be very effective "medicine".
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