Today (Nov 20, 2007) AP reported Barack Obama telling high school students that as a high school student he "experimented" with drugs and alcohol.
In the movie "Traffic", the new Drug Czar played by Michael Douglas, and his wife were discussing their daughter's drug use. In the discussion, they argued over the use of the word "Experimented", with one of them declaring that they should call it just what it was. They USED drugs.
My question to Mr. Obama is this: When you say you "experimented" does this mean you tried it once or twice? Does it mean you used it regularly? Does this mean it was a way of life during that period of time?
I, too, "experimented" with illegal drugs in my lifetime. When I was 17 I tried my first joint. I coughed so hard I threw up all over the table and my friend's bag. Not a pretty sight. That dissuaded my use...
... for a time. On my high school graduation day I went to a party of one of my classmates. On the way home, I picked up a couple hitchhikers (it was 1978). The two guys were hippies and they invited me to smoke some weed with them. I agreed and for the first time I got high. I enjoyed it immensely.
That week I enlisted in the US Air Force. I also got high a few more times before I went for basic training in September of 1978. I lied about using marijuana when I joined, but came clean when they asked me again during intake processing.
While I was in the Air Force, from advanced training until discharge I smoked marijuana and hashish regularly.
Once discharged, I continued smoking marijuana. I smoked several years - often up to 1/4 ounce or more per day. Yet through it all I was only "experimenting".
I stopped for several years after 1982, then "experimented" again in the late 80's for a few months one summer. I again stopped until around 2001 when I moved to Los Angeles.
At that time I used it under the guise of medical necessity. I experienced chronic migraines and the prescriptions never really worked. So I found a physician who unofficially authorized me to use marijuana. I used it daily through the first half of 2004, most of the time "waking and baking". But it was only "experimental" use, testing the efficacy of marijuana on migraine prevention and relief. I still had frequent migraines.
Why don't you just come clean, Mr. Obama? Call it what it really was. You were a user. You were a pothead. Just as I was a user, a pothead. There is no valid "experimental" use of illegal drugs. You wanted to get high, so you did. I wanted to get high, so I did.
Mr. Obama, as a Christian Conservative, I will never support you as a candidate for the Presidency of the United States, but I will gain a great deal more respect for you if you call a spade a spade, or in this case, a pothead a pothead. I wish all candidates would stop dancing with words and just speak with plain truth and honesty.
People who used to be potheads can become productive members of society. I am a classic example. I lost my engineering job because of my pot use in 2002. I survived by the Grace of God for two years of unemployment and continued pot use after losing my job. I now have another engineering job making nearly what I made when I lost the previous one, and doing something much more exciting and rewarding.
I can claim to have just been experimenting, but the truth is that it was simply a way of life for me.
Once a pothead, always a pothead? Not at all. Some of us do get a kick of responsibility shoved into our rear ends and then we are able to take that kick and run with it, becoming productive members of society. I guess what sets me apart from politicians is that I can own up to what I really was. Maybe that is why I will never run for office...
...I don't stand a chance to win.
