Heeeeyyy, maaaaannnn!
What’s with those rose-colored glasses? Why did you being a yellow-eyed freaky person mean that you needed to enter through the side door? What kind of leaf tastes sweet?
OOOOOOH. GOT IT!
Tasteless lacing and repeated dosing of drugs with other drugs has lead to the craziest epidemic (something I definitely never thought I would see in my own town) and it is rampant to say the least. I’ve had friends and acquaintance’s be struck down (not by being uneducated) by Fentanyl. It is the mass populous “crack” of this past year or so, taking lives left, right, and center, but with said uprising in insecurity has risen the polar opposite as well. Dispensaries are EVERYWHERE now, to the point where our PM who plans on repealing the drug status on marijuana and making it a controlled substance like tobacco, has demanded that police “enforce the law” against the same business’s.
WHY?
If your end goal is to DO SOMETHING why would you put commands in place to hinder progress, because that’s all it really is. The current statute maintains a mandate that prevents even some extremely suffering medical patients, people who have CRIPPLING CANCERS from receiving a naturally grown medicine. A pain-reliever that if really properly studied could help insanely with deforestation, air quality, brain disease, and just GENERAL GOD-DAMN POVERTY. Needless to say, I am certainly on one side of the fence. Personally, I suffered with an eating disorder/decimating depression for a period of time, and without ‘ole MJ, I may not be here talking to you now. There were times where I would go without food or sleep for 3-4 days, and then one day I finally “caved” to peer pressure. I took one drag off what I thought was cigarette handed to me, when suddenly I needed chips like it was nobody’s business. From that day forth I knew that there was really only one course of action, and the rest is history.
So let’s get right down to it. Marijuana is absolutely a “habit-forming” drug. The ability to stop without withdrawals does not make something un-addictive. If you repeat the same task err’day when you get up in the morning, or it is the first thing you do when you get home after work, that is a habit by definition. Needing an altered state to function or face the world is closer to being psychological issue than it is a drug issue, in my opinion. Using drugs recreationally is not something everyone thinks about in a day. Matter of a fact, most people can barely think to use their turn signals, but let’s shove that under the rug for a moment and have a little philosophical debate.
Drink coffee? Smoke cigarettes? Do you have a specific soda you prefer?
Well guess what, Betsy!?
Those are drugs. Not only are they habit forming, some are more addictive than some synthesized chemicals used for things like pain relief! Let alone the people who become addicted to substances like Methadone, Morphine, or Ketamine. I bet you’ve seen some raver out chugging Grey Goose (on his parents dime, no doubt) when suddenly he pulls a pill out of his pocket and downs it faster than a plastered girl on “$2 shots” night. The thing about that is that no one does their homework, and even if you do, most of the time, it is NOT enough. Need an example? Good, I just gave you one. That raver will likely be face down in 15 minutes, because Ketamine and alcohol are NOT friends, but did you think about that when I mentioned it? Did you even know?
That’s my point today, I suppose. This is a beautifully impotent age of understanding, where people only want to know what things feel like and not how they affect us. From WebMD mom’s to Yahoo answers “culd i got progregnant iff first tiem?”, NOBODY WANTS TO READ A GOD DAMN BOOK! We are FAILING as a society in the way we approach addiction, education, and even social constructs at this juncture. I’m not saying Europe is doing “better” in almost every single way, but just go look at their education standards, or basic literacy rates!
And in most of said country, you know what won’t get you sentence to 15 years for having a couple grams of it on you?
Weed.
It’s no longer as taboo to talk about as it was even 15 years ago, which an immense step forwards, but we aren’t outta the woods just yet. As I said up top, street-lacing of an initially completely harmless plant, is now killing people. People I know. People you know too, I bet. Though now more commonly being found in “party drugs” like cocaine, ecstasy, and MDMA due to it’s easy concealability, it is that same inability to differentiate between laced and unlaced product that is filling all these coffins with too young of bones. Everyone’s dealer does their own supply, that doesn’t mean jack when all it takes to pass through is something the size of grains of sand, and then they just seem to doze off, and no one wakes the sleeping person at a party. That’s when the respiratory system begins to shut down. That’s when you stop breathing. That’s when it ends. No bang, no whimper.
Just,
Stop doing blow. Please. All it does is make people stay up, be shit at work the next day, and turn 99% of even the coolest people into a wide-eyed, Jersey Shore Chet’s for 45 minutes. If you’re still gonna throw money at something that is one cooking step from become crack, get a Naxolone kit. It’ll take you half an hour and it could save you or someone you know.
Don’t brush this off.
The end all be all is simply this; If you can get your stuff through a dispensary, do so, and if not, be damn sure you know where it’s from.
THAT BEING SAID!
At least one of you is here to expand your musical repertoire, so listen and learn, kiddo.
One very relevant tune for today comes from the Fistula side of the two song split with Coffinworm from 2012 entitled “Drugs and Deception”.
Hailing from sweet Ohio, Fistula has brewed up several pulverizing albums, and many inbetweener’s like this one which were heavily slept on. In the vein of bands like Brainoil, Cough, and Grief, combining aspects of doom, grind, and cathartic sludge, Fistula makes no illusion to what kind of band they are. Guitar tones akin to getting a pavement facial, and riffs thicker than the how Paula Dean makes a gravy. I also highly recommend the 2010 5-song EP “GOAT” which I haven’t taken out of my ears in weeks. The antithesis of gentle.
Let’s flip the record to the B-side now, but keep up the sloooooow.
Currently ruling the music boards is a little band called Rival Sons which I’m sure you know, but I actually don’t wanna talk about them at all. I want to talk about their tour manager, Peter Stahl. Aside from managing for Rival Sons and Coheed and Cambria, he managed to continue working on his own project “Goatsnake”.
Somewhere within the band is captured the essence of all the other bands that members had been in previously, such as Saint Vitus, The Obsessed, and even powerhouse Sunn O))). Goatsnake’s band member roster speaks for itself. Combining elements of early doom, stoner rock, and classic rock and roll, gettin’ big bends and bigger grooves, GS is all about gettin’ down, so get down.
Last up today comes from my own little hole in the wall, local pavement shakers, Hemptress.
Rockers with an affinity for Thunderbird guitars and “goin’ fer a rip der, bud!”, Along with the understanding that sometimes the most important thing is just to play a door-dropping riffs and not worry for a little while. Complete with a cover from absolutely art madman Jasper Ellis, Hemptress began as a revival of vocalist/drummer J.Taylor’s young highschool riff-ery, but has quickly evolved in to a rumbling crowd pleaser. Hemptress (aside from having easily the best name for a band ever) are a bunch of lads who absolutely deserve their name in lights on a marquee, and I very much expect them to have that one day. Each time I see them they blow my expectations out of the water, repeatedly. I know everyone and their uncle says that this one band in their town is the best, and apparently I am no exception to the rule. Blending the licks of Kyuss with the domination of early rock and roll will leave you jangling your jangly bits all over town.
Light one up for these tracks, and for the fact that we’ve got one more Monday until Yule.
I know, right?
Jeez.
Happy holidays, crew. See you just before present day!
-BEAR