Blunt Force Trauma

Has anyone ever tried to reason with a marijuana addict about the destructive nature of marijuana? Wow it can be akin to something like watching the movie “Must Love Dogs”, long and frustrating.

Although denial exists to an extent in most addictions it seems to be somewhat of a religious right for the marijuana addict. You don’t really run into too many meth addicts that will defend meth. Most marijuana enthusiasts have spent a great deal of time convincing themselves of the many benefits of marijuana use. My personal favorite is that it is “all natural”, or that God made it and so he meant for us to use it. No joke I get that quite a bit and it always makes me laugh. The bird flue is also all natural and is of the most basic structures found in nature, yet few people are looking to contract it.

Another favorite marijuana rationalization is that they are not hurting anyone. If this all sounds familiar it is probably because all marijuana addicts attended the same seminar called, “Relieving Those Pesky Pangs of Conscience.”

One thing that any addict needs to understand is how their conscience works. Conscience is a good thing and we all, I mean, most of us have one. Let me ask a question. What is the most solved crime in the United States? Any guesses, if you said murder you would be correct. An interesting bit of trivia but more important is why murder is the most solved crime in the US. No it is not because the Police spare no expense or resource in solving a murder, although this is true in most cases. The reason murders are solved is because of conscience. Murder apparently can be very offensive to the human conscience and when a murder is involved people more readily confess any information pertaining to the murder. The hardened criminal may have a conscience immune to robbery, rape etc. but the taking of a life sometimes does not sit well.

Although your conscience may cause you some psychological torment, be glad you have it. If you didn’t have a conscience you would be in the same boat as the serial killer, the only thing keeping the serial killer from committing atrocities is fear of being punished.

An extreme example to be sure, but what do we do when we are faced with that uncomfortable feeling that tells us that what we are doing is wrong. Of course we immediately begin to rationalize what we have done, we make excuses for our behavior. The other thing people do, the psychologically healthy thing to do is to admit you made a mistake and decide to not repeat it.

Let me explain the danger of rationalizing away your guilt. All of us have a moral code of ethics that is indelibly etched on our consciousness, although the moral code may very from person to person we all have one and we on a daily basis compare moral choices we make to our own moral code. The trouble begins when we make choices that do not comply with our personal moral code. When we do this we are forced to ether re-write the code to exempt the previously offensive conduct or we have to feel bad and admit that our actions were bad according to our own measure.

If we choose to rationalize our actions and re-write the code then we have opened the door to question a myriad of our ethical standards. I have conversed with many methamphetamine addicts who tell me that meth is the Devils drug. They call it the Devil’s drug because they continually do things that are contrary to their moral code. Their code is in such a state of constant reformation they don’t really know what they are or are not capable of, and this is a scary place to live.

More often than not the code is not changed drastically overnight. For example, let me relate a story I was told by an associate. This individual growing up had some very strong moral values concerning illicit drugs. He was very much against using drugs of any kind. I am not sure of the circumstances but this individual was offered a puff of a marijuana joint. He was told that if he took one puff he could at least say that he had tried it and if did not ever smoke it again that was fine. Well he did take one puff however once he crossed that line each subsequent line became much easier to cross until in a relatively short period of time he had moved on to try cocaine and heroine.

When you tell yourself that you will just try it this once you are saying much more than that. You are also telling yourself, “I have no hard and fast rule where drugs are concerned I have changed my stance from never partaking of any drug too. I will take it on a case by case basis, or in other words maybe I will maybe I won’t.”

Now that we understand why we justify lets look at the effects that marijuana produces. There are some great studies out there about how marijuana tends to widen the gaps between the synapses in the brain and causes short term and long-term cognitive degeneration. But I am not going to discuss the physical damage caused by marijuana nor will I further belabor my point about it being a gateway vehicle to other drugs, because I believe there is something intimately more sinister about marijuana use.

Marijuana is a social and psychological retardant. When I was teaching general outpatient substance abuse classes I would inevitably have one of the marijuana addicts pipe up and inform the class that they did not belong in the class because they only smoked marijuana. I had this happen quit frequently so I usually followed the same procedure. I would ask the person how old they were. Then I would tell them I bet I can guess how old you were when you started smoking marijuana. Inevitably they would accept the challenge. I could always guess within a year. When they would ask me how I knew I would respond thusly. (Question) “Where do you live?” (Answer) “My parent’s house.” (Question) “How did you get here?” (Answer), “I rode my bike.” (Question) “What is your favorite pastime?” (Answer) “Playing x-box.” (Question) “How old are you again?” (Answer) “I am 35.” Then I would say no you are 15 the same age you were when you started smoking weed. .



The catastrophic symptoms of marijuana use in my opinion although severe are not the physical symptoms. The marijuana addict’s social and mental development grinds to a halt shortly after the addiction begins and although time passes this now 35 year old marijuana user instead of being concerned with adult issues is functioning on the level of a 15 year old. If you question this just find you a 35 to 45 year old pothead and ask him/her what their goals are, what they hope to accomplish and what they consider to be their greatest accomplishments.

The Bible Dictionary in the King James Version of the Bible defines damnation as a condition devoid of progress or an inability to move on. Marijuana is in more ways than one a gateway drug and in a very real sense it is the gateway to hell.

Shackled by Deeds in My Jail Made of Choices

I have personally spent a great deal of time working professionally with individuals who struggle with addictions, more specifically addictions to controlled substances. I have given presentations to many parent groups, school groups, government entities and addicts. I have taken occasion to pick their brain so to speak in an effort to understand how one arrives at complete slavery to a particular drug.
There is in every case a string of choices, decisions that have led to other decisions, which in turn led to other decisions, each choice locking them into a pattern of conduct difficult to break.

Let me be more specific and use the life of an actual person, who for our purposes we’ll call Jim. Jim grew up in a typical middle class Utah household and was raised by loving religious parents who, no doubt did their best to give Jim the tools he needed to make good decisions. Jim married a nice girl, and was able as a young father to start his own business, which became very successful. Eventually Jim was able to build a big house in a nice neighborhood. He stayed active in church, in his children’s lives, and was always attentive to his wife. Jim at a point in his life made the choice to use methamphetamine. No doubt that this decision was reached through another string of bad choices. The meth use at first seemed to help Jim cope with his busy schedule. Each time Jim made the decision to use he forged another iron bar for his personal prison cell. With each use Jim’s dependence on the drug grew making the next choice to use or not use many times more difficult. In a short period of time, his work began to suffer as his attentions turned toward his new taskmaster. Jim’s loving wife struggled as she watched her once loving and attentive husband become abusive to her and their children. She watched as he lost the business that they had worked so hard to build up, then the house. Finally when the ultimatum was given he chose the master that he was serving over his family.

Jim spent the next couple of years in and out of jail as he racked up several felony charges for possession of Meth and theft, having been reduced to steeling construction tools and pawning them to buy his next fix. Jim’s string of choices culminated in a jail cell. The reason I know so much detail about Jim’s life is because I read all of this in a suicide letter as I was investigating Jim’s death. Jim had hung himself in his jail cell just one week before his release date. The last sentence in the letter stated something like this “ I have no choice but to kill myself, when I get out I will use again”.

Let us take a close look at Jim’s level of personal freedom. Before his decision to use meth, his options were almost without limit. He could have decided to do a million different things with his life. Jim’s personal freedom left a myriad of doors open to him, including the most important, the opportunity to raise and have a positive impact on his children, not to mention the opportunity of a loving and lasting relationship with his wife.

Perhaps you can see where I am going with this story. Each time Jim made that conscious decision to use he also gave up some of his personal freedom literally enslaving himself. Like a sinister game of chess, the pieces of Jim’s life were given away the loss of each piece making it that much harder for him to win until Jim’s prison cell was complete and emotionally he was trapped in a cell forged of a million choices. Unfortunately Jim used the only bit of freedom he felt he had left to perpetuate all of the other bad choices, he chose to give up.

D-Nile Not Just a River in Egypt

If you are a parent or you have a significant other whom you think may have a substance abuse problem, or if you think there is no problem - take just a moment and read this self-help guide for enablers.

The first step is to determine if you have a problem with enabling a loved one who is careening down the road of addiction. The most tell-tell sign that you have a problem is that you will not want to read further. Please keep reading and do your best to answer honestly.

• Have you ever avoided talking about the problem because it makes your loved one mad?

• Have you ever found what you thought was drug paraphernalia in you house and just threw it away and pretended like you didn’t know what it was?

• Have you ever threatened the police with a lawsuit for arresting a loved one for drug or alcohol issues?

• Have you ever suspected that your loved one was high and been too afraid to confront them?

• Have you ever threatened a Doctor with a lawsuit because he refused to prescribe your loved one pain medication?

• Do you keep track of all of your loved ones court dates and fine payments for them?

• Do you lie for your loved one when they fail to comply with court orders and or treatment recommendations?

• Do you lie for your loved one when they have a dirty drug test?

• When people notice peculiar behavior about your loved one do you make excuses?

• Do you cave into manipulation because it is easier to believe the lie?

• Do you buy varieties of alcohol so your loved one will drink at home?

• Have you ever told your loved one that it was not their fault?

• Have you ever blamed legal problems on over zealous police?

• Have you ever smelt marijuana smoke on your teen and believed them when they said that they were just with some one who smoked it?

• Have you ever called your loved ones work and lied because they were too hung over to come in?

• Have you ever justified your loved ones actions saying, “Everyone experiments when they are young.”

• Do you ever watch programs with drug related content and feel worm and fuzzy inside when they minimize and joke about drug use?

• Do you ever drive your loved one to their heroine dealer because they are sick?

• Do you hide excessive alcohol containers from friends and family?

• Do you apologize to your loved one when they suffer consequences from their addiction?

• Have you ever read an obituary of a youth and the parents wrote that they died of sleep apnea, but you know better because the deceased is a friend of your loved ones and you know they died of an overdose? If so read it carefully chances are you will be writing the next one.

Fine and Punishment

If you have ever been on the receiving or the giving end of the criminal justice reform machine and you are honest with yourself you have probably, “although under your breath” ask the question, “are we really trying to make them productive members of society?”

I have ten years as a Police Officer under my belt and I served most of my time working narcotics. If I would have read this article 5 years ago I would undoubtedly have said, “What a bleeding hart”. However I have also for the last several years been involved in treating substance abuse offenders. I discovered something significant. Your attitude can quickly change when a loved one gets caught in the criminal justice rinse cycle.

Before I go on let me clarify my views. In my opinion there are a group of people running around out there that need to be in jail and that the only rehabilitation suitable is to keep them away from society. However many of these offenders end up in court ordered treatment, probation, Drug Court, work diversion, and whatever else there is out there. I also believe that there are a great number of offenders that are reform able addicts. In fact I know many of them and can assure you there are many addicts that want to reform, try to reform, and indeed do reform. I have scene both sides of the coin and what I tell you is the truth.

Let me paint a familiar portrait. John Doe 26 years old works as a framer for a construction company. John started smoking marijuana when he was 15 when he became depressed due to a parental divorce. He quickly became addicted and has used marijuana ever sins whenever he needed to cope. Marijuana opened the door for some new drug experiences involving methamphetamine which he now uses approximately once a week.

The drug use makes John somewhat unreliable at his job so he finds himself bouncing from place to place and never moving up or getting pay increases. Then John gets pulled over leaving the bar one night, the astute officer quickly recognizes marijuana paraphernalia in the vehicle and later finds a meth pipe with meth residue on it. Now John is thrown head first into the criminal justice system. The officer rightly charges john with possession of meth a felony, possession of marijuana and possession of paraphernalia a misdemeanor, and of course DUI. Well John had it Cumming and at this point there is a great potential for reformation.

John undoubtedly has a drug problem and the public defender is going to use that defense as a means of getting the weighty felony reduced to a misdemeanor. This happens and John is ordered to get an assessment and follow recommended treatment as well as have an interlock device installed on his vehicle. He is also placed on probation, loses his drivers license, and has to do 10 days in the county jail. Now all of this seems reasonable after all he committed a felony and he was driving impaired.

Now before we as a society pat ourselves on our backs and congratulate each other for such masterful handling of the situation, let’s see how all of this plays out for John. First Johns’ car was State impounded due to the DUI statute, his already precarious financial situation makes the possibility of getting his vehicle out of impound very difficult. John has lost his license and is not supposed to drive he now has to put an interlock devise on his vehicle that will cost approximately $2400.00 depending on the location. John has lost his job because he was replaced while he was serving his jail sentence; a new job will not come easy because most blue collar work requires a valid driver’s license and a vehicle to drive to the job site. John was living pay check to pay check anyway and now his other bills are backing up. John decides if he is going to survive he will have to drive regardless of the suspended license.

John finally gets a job but he is now hopelessly behind on his court fines and he has racked up several other fines for driving on the suspended license. John scraped the money together for the assessment but now has a warrant for non compliance because he is late on his fine payments and he has not been able to pay the money to attend treatment. Before long John is picked up for driving on suspension and arrested on the warrant, the judge wants him to know that he was serious about the order for treatment and the fine payment so He lets john sit in jail for a few days. John has lost his job again and now he is behind on payment for several courts he still needs to come up with the money for treatment and to get his vehicle out of impound so he can try and get a new job.

Faced with the abundant financial stress and hopelessness brought on by this impossible cycle John moves even deeper into the drug use. Throwing up his hands John embraces the drug culture and he will repeat this cycle for years.

We would all like to breathe a sigh of relief and say boy am I glad that I am not a low functioning druggy. We all have choices and obviously john has made some very bad decisions, but even if John is low functioning don’t we still want him to succeed and to overcome his problems, isn’t that what the system was trying to accomplish.

Maybe you are thinking that John made his bed and now he can lay in it, but if John was your son, brother or dad would you be as willing to write him off as deserving the outcome of his choices. Let me assure you John was someone’s Son, brother and dad. And so now the cycle did not end with John but is perpetuated as I see John’s kids entering the deadly cycle.

The Treatment Chasm

In the world of substance abuse treatment today there exists a great chasm separating profitable in-patient programs and struggling outpatient programs. The problem however is more than just a profitability problem, it is a social problem that leaves a huge void in the front lines of the war against substance abuse.

Personally I am very much an advocate of our free market system, although probably everyone would agree there are some significant problems related to heath care. Although the topic is somewhat less popular, at the leading edge of the healthcare issue resides substance abuse treatment. There are some tell-tell attitudes about substance abuse that are less than healthy. I have had occasion to speak with many parents that say something to effect that they had sought professional help for their addicted child only after they had tried all other options. I spoke with one father who told me that he did not live far from the treatment facility where I worked and that before he found out that his son was addicted to heroine he had passed a petition around his neighborhood in an attempt to shut us down. There has been some improvements in the community, most of which unfortunately have been forced due to substance abuse symptoms experienced.

The way the system is set up is not necessarily a bad idea, the problem is that we are unable and unwilling to stick to the plan. An addict should first of all be recognized early on in the addiction and receive the appropriate treatment, but they don’t. The addict should receive an assessment from a real therapist, but they don’t. The addict should be admitted into an in-patient facility regardless of bed availability or affluence, but they are not. The addict should receive General Out-patient treatment when needed and not when they have the ability to pay or six months down the road when the County finally has an opening.

Let me paint a familiar scenario for you. We will start with a well known Methamphetamine addict who has racked up a bunch of felony possession and theft charges. This guy has been in and out of jail for years and has charges out of multiple courts. Now usually what happens is that he gets put in jail, the Public Defender relates to the Judge that this individual has a crippling addiction and they work out some kind of plea agreement and the defendant is ordered to get an assessment and follow the recommended treatment. The addict gets the assessment which recommends in-patient followed by intensive out-patient and then general out-patient. This guy has been an addict for a while and there is no way he is coming up with $ 30,000.00 plus to attend a private in-patient facility, so he gets on the waiting list behind hundreds just like him for the county, or state ran in-patient facility. In the meantime he is still an addict and amazingly he was not instantly cured when he entered the criminal justice system, so in the six months or so it takes to get into the county treatment system he of course continues using and steeling etc. Inevitably the addict ends up getting arrested several more times and never makes his appointment for the in-patient treatment he needs.

Some Judges have caught on to futility of this disturbing trend and in an attempt to brake this criminal justice system cycle will order people who need in-patient treatment to a private General out-patient facility. The general outpatient treatment provider will generally do as the judge orders and provide the treatment as best they can. I do not want to lay the blame on our Judges, they are just reacting the best they can to a problem that is largely out of their control. The private GOP facility is obliged if not obligated to follow the Judge’s order, if they don’t there is another ready and willing to pleas the court and get all those referrals. Most GOP facilities that are not subsidized by the State are just scraping by and they can’t afford to turn down a single referral even if they belong in an in-patient facility.

The obvious solution to this problem is for more people to offer in-patient treatment. Well that all sounds great but in-patient is expensive to run and although most in-patient programs are not struggling financially they are still expensive programs to run and you can’t get away with bringing the price low enough for the average addict to benefit from it. The only people who make it into a private in-patient facility have some kind of wealthy benefactor, unfortunately this exclude our long time meth addict who has lost everything and burned every bridge.

The short and long term solution to the problem is to show people the truth about substance abuse. As soon as enough of our kids die from heroine overdoses, soon as the epidemic effects enough of the decision making population then I expect we will do as we have done in the past with all catastrophic problems, that is throw a bunch of federal money at the problem and wonder why things got so out of control. It would be nice if we could show the public what the future holds if we continue on the currant track, and get the help for the people who really need it but cannot afford it. Eventually society ends up paying the price for the un-helped addict. We pay for them in prison, we pay for their children’s care, we pay when our kids die. So lets pay now and pay less and maybe even save a lives in the process.

Perpetuating Gift

During this incredible time of year I am compelled by my every encounter to do good to all those I come in contact with. This year as in years passed I ask myself, what is it that has unhardened my hart? And not just me, but seemingly all of mankind is brought to consider that which is holy. I have seen mercy extended by the merciless, kindness from the hard man, charity from the miser and peace from the war monger. Radio stations usually dedicated to propitious propaganda and vile content play Christmas music, siblings take on extra jobs and spend hard earned money not on themselves but delight in the joy their gifts may bring to another. Long and festering grudges seem to melt away in the warmth of forgiving kindness. Black sheep are welcomed back into the fold with loving arms. We are led to consider those less fortunate and joy in giving as we see not the dross of society but our brothers and sisters.

What a profound influence that babe in Bethlehem born over 2000 years ago has had on the world and yet continues to have. Surly Christians and non-Christians can appreciate the goodness and peace perpetuated as we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. Perhaps the goodness demonstrated during the Christmas season is a reminder to all of us of how we ought to act. Perhaps we are once more the recipients of yet another gift of Jesus of Nazareth, perhaps our souls are lifted up at this glorious time as a reminder of our divine potential.

May God look upon us and see that spark of the divine reflected in our souls as we turn our faces toward our beloved Redeemer and may we carry the Christmas spirit in our harts forever. God bless you and yours and may we all magnify the spirit of the season by giving of ourselves.

Pornography and Addiction

• Effects on the brain and psyche.

1. Many people believe that images that we view are harmless, or that the only harm it inflicts is moral in nature.
2. Our brain is like a supper sophisticated computer, any image we take in stays with us and is forever recorded and becomes a part of our psyche. We may not want to remember certain things we have scene, but it will always be there, and you may not always be able to control when it will surface.


Example: I was a Police Officer for ten years and a Detective for most of that. I also served several years on the Metro S.W.A.T. team. I have observed more than my fair share of gruesome sights. I have investigated more deaths and attended more autopsies than I care to remember. At one point I was called out for SWAT on an individual that wanted to commit suicide and was barricaded in is house. I will not go into detail but while dealing with the particular circumstance I was exposed to the most horrific scene. As the other Officers I dealt with the incident and did my job, and later that night I did not think much about it. Several days later however I started to experience nightmares, irritability and an inability to keep from replaying in my mind every dead body I had ever investigated. I sought help and found out that I along with the other officers at the scene had been experiencing Post traumatic stress disorder. I was able to work through the problem and resume my duties, unfortunately some of my colleagues were not able to work through the incident and ended up leaving the profession.

If you think that images can not hurt you think again.

3. when one views pornography several things begin to happen. Blood vessels dilate the heart rate speeds up and chemicals are released into the brain. These chemicals are called endorphins and endorphins are custom made in the body to produce the feeling of pleasure and euphoria. Each individual produces endorphins that are designed specifically to work the best for that person. These chemicals when appropriated in the body in the prescribed amounts and through normal means, they work perfectly. Pornography like any other external stimulus acts on the amount and frequency that these chemicals are released

Pornography actually causes a chemical bath in the brain, when this happens the endorphins released are 5 to 7 times more addictive than cocaine. The addiction begins and at that point the addict can receive a chemical bath just by thinking about previously viewed pornography, or by rehashing fantasies that were concocted while viewing pornography. I have known individuals who would receive an endorphin release just by hearing the sound the computer makes as it logs onto the internet.

Prolonged use of pornography will actually alter the chemistry of the brain. People in this condition need constant stimulation and endorphin release just to feel some what normal. If the stimulus stops usually a deep depression or anxiety takes them over.

Like any other addiction the mild images that you begin with will soon lose their effect in the release of endorphins, and to obtain the same level of excitement more and more vulgar scenes will be sought out until you are far from the person you were when you started.

As a Police Officer I investigated a young man who started by viewing swim suit models on the internet, in a matter of months he had reached the depths of depravity. He had devised a plan to kid nap, torture and then kill a young girl to gratify his now warped lusts.

If you indulge in pornography you will become desensitized to that which is wholesome, good and natural and be left to pursue that which is filthy, vulgar and unnatural.