She Divorced Me Because I Left Dishes by the Sink

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-fray/she-divorced-me-i-left-dishes-by-the-sink_b_9055288.html

Beating a Dead Horse: The War on Drugs

The war on drugs has always been a hot button issue in the United States. The problem is, one cannot fight a war on inanimate objects. One can only fight a war on people. The war on drugs isn't about drugs, it's a war on the addicts rather than the real issue, the manufactures and the dealers. William F. Buckley wrote a paper declaring the war on drugs dead, this paper will discuss his logic and options that might be viable if the war on drugs is indeed dead.

            In the 1970s, President Nixon declared a war on drugs. This wasn't a violent war in the traditional sense of the word, but a criminal war. He made federal drug control agencies larger and have more power in order to squash the rising drug using population (drugpolicy.org, 2015).  A year later, the very commission Nixon put in place recommended weed was made legal for personal use (drugpolicy.org, 2015). Nixon of course ignored this recommendation and chose to push forward banning all of what is now considered illegal drugs (drugpolicy.org, 2015). The view on personal use weed went back and forth like a pendulum until the 1980s (drugpolicy.org, 2015). By the 1980s and 1990s incarceration for drug charges went from 50,000 to over 400 thousand by 1997 (drugpolicy.org, 2015). This number is the equivalent of a small city’s worth of people serving time for some kind of nonviolent drug charge ranging from possession for personal use to manufacturing of the drugs themselves.

            William F. Buckley wrote a paper in the 1990 declaring the war on drugs dead. This author whole-heartedly agrees with him. Per Buckley’s paper, the US has wasted over 100 billion dollars a year in tax payer money to punish those who have the mental illness that is addiction and those who seek to use that illness against them.  Buckley cites money as a reason to legalize drugs, that if the state were to control the drugs and charge for them, it would put the US into the black as opposed to wasting so much money (Buckley). Buckley goes on further to talk about how crime rates have gone up over 400 percent since the grand war on drugs has started. The article further speaks of legalizing the sale of drugs, which this author disagrees with, citing that the country could make far more money that what it costs to prosecute and lock up those who are caught with only enough drugs to get themselves high (Buckley).

            Instead of keeping the possession of personal use levels illegal, the US should take a page from other first world countries and legalize possession for personal use amounts legal and instead offer options to treat the addiction which is the root of the problem. This would of course require other safety nets to be in place for those fresh from recovery. They would need jobs, housing, food, medical care, and of course steady mental and social support. Those who receive this support would be expected to pay the government back by participating in drug prevention programs and by paying their share of taxes based upon their tax brackets. The Portugal made possession of personal amounts of drugs legal in 2001 and instead started to treat the root of the problem, the addiction itself (Kain, 2011). For such a small country that equated roughly 100 thousand people nationwide (Kain, 2011). If the US were to do that same thing and get the same results that would mean an estimated 200 thousand people would become clean and sober over the course of ten years.

            The US has been fighting a losing war since 1971 thanks to the knee jerk reaction of the political sphere to people experimenting with drugs of various types. This has cost taxpayers more than t it would to treat the problem as a mental illness instead of a criminal one. While drug manufactures, distributors, and sellers should still face the fullest extent of the law, it does no one anyone good, but those who own for profit prisons, to keep those who are addicted to drugs going through the revolving door that is the current penal system. We should instead legalize possession of personal use amounts and offer to treat each person for their addiction and offer to help them get back onto their feet so that they might become productive members of society and pay back into the very system that helped to save their lives.

References

A Brief History of the Drug War. (n.d.). Retrieved May 22, 2015, from http://www.drugpolicy.org/new-solutions-drug-policy/brief-history-drug-war

Buckley, W. (n.d.). The War on Drugs is Lost. Retrieved May 22, 2015, from http://web.archive.org/web/20121116132827id_/http://old.nationalreview.com/12feb96/drug.html

Kain, E. (2011, July 5). Ten Years After Decriminalization, Drug Abuse Down by Half in Portugal. Retrieved May 22, 2015, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/07/05/ten-years-after-decriminalization-drug-abuse-down-by-half-in-portugal/

A confession

So I have a confession to make. It's something that has been bothering me for a while now. Actually, my whole life. Consider it an OCD if you will. And it's one I wish people wouldn't take so lightly. This also counts as a phobia.

I have a fear/phobia/ocd about running out of money. When I consider my bills and the money I have in hand, if it doesn't add up to something in my pocket as emergency money, I panic. I don't just mean a few seconds of "Well, crap! Now what do I do?" I mean HOURS to DAYS of my mind spiraling down into the depths of my own personal hell of what could happen if I were to spend this money in my hand. AND IT NEVER EVER GOES AWAY.

I wake up freaked about the money I have and how to make it last and I fall asleep wondering how long I can make the money stretch. The worst part is, I am paid weekly and yet I can bring myself to spend every dime I have. I count my money, look at what I need to spend and promptly curl into a ball and cry about how close I am to being broke.

I've seen therapists and they have never been able to help me...EVER. Each tries a different tactic, from budget help to making me spend money thinking it will alleviate the fear. It only makes it worse.

People don't understand what this does to the mind. I can never relax about money, and I don't mean greed. I am not a greedy person, I don't want more money then I need to live comfortably and make sure all my bills are paid while still being able to have fun and go out occasionally. I mean the fear, the fear that spending money will mean I won't have it in the event of an emergency. I FEAR not being able to know I can cover an emergency like my car breaking down, or a get hurt, or I need something from the store for some reason.

People try to help, but saying that things will be ok, not to stress, that I'll get paid again, that money isn't everything, that I shouldn't worry about emergencies, this doesn't help. It only makes it worse. It reminds me I'm not normal, that people don't understand what I'm going through. People say they are there for me, that I won't go through things alone, but I am. No one can be there for me when they don't know what living in this personal hell is like. No one CAN EVER understand or be there for me unless they can actually BE in my head.

Earning more money doesn't help at all, it only makes it worse, because then I have to figure out how much needs to be saved and how much I can spend. Having someone else handle my finances only makes the melt downs more frequent as I suddenly have no idea what the hell is going on with my own money. Letting someone take care of me makes it worse because then I am no better then a leech on someone else's life.

NOTHING CAN EVER MAKE THIS BETTER! I WISH PEOPLE COULD UNDERSTAND THAT AND STOP TRYING TO SOLVE THE ISSUE!

I am so tired of always going with out, of always being in fear, of always feeling like I am being the responsible one, of always standing back while everyone else goes out and has fun. I am tired of being trapped alone in this hell that is my head. I am tired of everyone not getting it. I am tired of everyone acting like it's not a big deal. I am tired of being invisible. I am just tired of it all.

Wow...

This semester at school has been crazy, between the mentoring program blowing up and me not getting enough hours to get a grade I think I should have gotten and the class that I thought would be the easiest turning out to be the hardest, I can't believe I survived.

These are my grades as of now and while I am proud, I wish my last class would drop...I know I passed, but I would feel ten times better if I knew what the grade was. I can't relax until I do.

My car was broken into and a bunch of my gaming stuff was stolen. My dice bag was gone and so was my atari belt buckle that I was suppose to take that day and get made into a nice belt. They also took my prescription sunglass which made me mad, but the dice bag being stolen made me cry for quite a bit.

My poor car. I ended up having to get the window replaced as well and that bugged me because you can only get UV treated glass from the dealership and they wanted way more then I was willing to pay for it. I know a glass place that was able to get me a regular window and it works fine. I called the eye glasses place where I get my eye exam every other year and they were nice enough to give me a new pair for the same price I got my old pair. They aren't nearly as nice, but they will work until next year when I am due for a check up and replacement of my lenses anyway.

When I realized my dice bag was gone I had to go out and buy new dice. I've spent a lot of cash on dice in the last few weeks and it doesn't even match what I  had yet. I also wound up knitting my new dice bag, but I won't be posting that photo here. Those photos will be going on my blog that is about my knitting as this one is about my life and things I feel shouldn't be linked to my Facebook account.

I'm getting ready for the LSATs this october and it's kinda got me scared. I want to score well and I need to. The law school I want to go to has told me that the higher my LSAT score is, the less they will look at my GPA. However, I am confident I can get a decent enough score.