Drugs and new drivers... Is it really THAT bad?

Speaking of Class A, I finally got mine. Passed everything on Friday. After two long weeks of almost bootcamp-like driving instruction and grinding the hell out of gears and murdering cones, I'm ready for a trainer.

 

It’s really not that simple. I get what you’re saying, can’t argue with it. But addiction is classified by the AMA as disease for a scientific reason. It’s been proven, by science and peer reviewed research, that some people have chemical makeup’s that make them predisposed to addiction.

Now, before you say “that only takes place AFTER they try it, they should have known BEFOREHAND “. I get it. Really l, I do. But the addict finds triggers for it, in fact most addicts start with a legitimate script for pain. It snowballs from there.

I understand the whole drugs and trucking thing- I willingly took a hair test for my current job. But I also understand addiction , and the problem it really is. It’s not a simple issue.

 

That’s a scary thought. Lol.

 

In many cases, we have linked people predisposed to addiction with broken strands in our DNA. Not all cases, but many of them. There genetic tests you can take if your family has a history of abuse, and if found positive for broken DNA, you can cure it with prescribed medicine.

Edit: not cure it, but treat it.

 

I see a few problems with the weed situation as it stands now. If you're not smart enough to know that driving a truck is a federal job then you need to stand down now because you've just got to be the dumbest. Federal people are forbid PERIOD. You can not live in one state (that's legal's) and expect to be legal no matter where you go. If you drive a truck you can not smoke weed legally.

States that do have the law that allows medically or other do have some problems I feel they have have addressed so far. I may be a little behind on the research but as far as I know there are no such test to tell when a person has smoke or ingested weed to tell a court when that person is legally "high". To me the test will show the same the day before as it will the same day. So a driver could be totally sober and be charged with DWI or DUI because there is not test to prove his or her sobriety. (Personally) I believe no one should be behind a wheel if there is any doubt. But, until we can come up with some solid testing I think it's a major problem.

There's two major reasons we need this plant to pass and to be used just like booze. Taxes are in a bad way in parts of the country. Our government could go to work and apply rules and regulations to make it work. The second most important is the medically part of weed. I don't care what anyone say about long term use because when I see a short term stage 4 cancer, smoke some weed and be able to eat then I say go for it. I don't smoke nor do I drinks but I'd do just about anything to ease my wives pain during her cancer spills. It's been around for 1000's of years so why don't we get just a little smart.

 

Even if I told you my entire life story it would have no impact on yours or anybody else’s opinion. Right? So I will just say what I really think and you can then dismiss it.

I know it’s drug addicts who have it easy. It’s the other people they affect who have it hard. Carry on.

 

That’s obvious. Just like suicide for the mentally ill. The people they leave in their wake suffer just as bad- doesn’t mean we just give up on the mentally ill people. But no, addicts do NOT “have it easy”. Just like the mentally ill person that sees suicide as the only option doesn’t.

Either way, I’m not trying to change anyone’s mind, as I’m sure you’re not. So, as you say, carry on.

 

The word Addiction usually show a mind in a person or animal that absolutely must have whatever it is addicted to at any cost. And if at all possible that will happen even at the price of committing crimes against spouse, family, friends and anyone in range.

When I went to medical detox several months ago, it was not for addiction. But it was for physical dependance and tolerance problems which causes the body and mind to go into withdrawal that absolutely threatened a stroke large enough to be killed from or made a vegatable etc. In short it would have been a statistic of the failed pain management. The doctor I was with at that time stood to be a whole lot of trouble should that treatment go badly or something broke. (Blood pressure values were extreme, I was told that at my age I should not have the ability to carry those values as I did over such a long period of time)

I came out of there at the end of the week with the receptors balanced again in the body and there was NO more need to have a particular medicine or what have you. And the blood pressure values were probably as low as you could get it and still be considered stable (Something close to 90 over 55) it should be better at least 100/60 but they let it go because I was sharp and put together. A few coffees restored it in a hour to my normals.

The cost? 8500 dollars all done. 1300 is my part after insurance got through with it. I don't know about you but most people who are that far down will sink the last dollar into that hit big enough to get themselves high. They wont care a whit about treatment or detoxing etc. It is written that they dig a pit and then continue to dig until they fall into it.

I changed doctors and changed medicines as well as changed the doseage from constant to as needed. People can take a certain amount of pain medicine and not be addicted provided that the medicine is stopped within a short period of time. Once the body and mind readjusts the receptors, chemistry and other systems to the constant flow of illegal or legal drugs long enough it kinds of gets set into stone and that is where some of the dying comes in. I am actually found to be allergic to certain medicines such as Fentanyal which is the king of all medicine for owies and given out exceeding rarely primary for trauma IV or to Hospice who are not expected to survive 6 months. It's truly the last word in stopping pain short of total anesthesia.

Being on it for the briefest of time showed me that it is possible to be 18 again. No pain regardless of the actual bones and muscles etc that are physically damaged and so on and the resulting spike in activity creates a cycle where there is a break through and you need even more. People take drugs to get high and drop out to use a old 60's term, but I was taking it to function. Not just function but to become a superman and do everything and then take on big jobs and go after that too. It's a deep rooted part of my work ethic that when the whistle blows in the early morning, smell that Diesel and let's Go *&^% it, were late. The medical staff has learned just how grotesquely monstrous that has caused me to become with that very strong spirit of up and at em.

That should be good for something. But not trucking. Maybe something else. I don't know what that is just yet. I consider myself a survivor of this current scourge sweeping the Nation.

The People should do well to go back to the late 1800's after Cocaine, Heroin etc were invented in that time of our Human History and then dosed without any FDA oversight for everything wrong with people, usually from overwork, poverty and other problems. And boom, the USA was addicted in my grandparents time. World War one came along and it really took off when it was over and wounded came home. At about the same time the FDA was created among certain other truly important acts of Congress to establish medicine and other standards required to protect the People from losing it all as a Country.

Even going back to the early 1600s in Colonial Williamsburg which was a Crown holding before America existed, as a living history town it is today, there is a pharmacy in which Opium was actually sold. Now... that opium was not bought by the residents in that time period for the reasons we use illegal drugs today. It was there as a very limited use for problems not overcome by other remedies of that time. People were given amputations and other crude surgical procedures straight without any pain medicine. Just a bit of brandy and 4 strong people hold em down as the doctor cut as fast as possible. CHOP. And it's over. Here is a little opium, stop yelling if you havent passed out already.

It's all there and taught to all visitors who stop by to learn about colonial medicine. What little there is of it in them days.

Where we got from those days to here in which trying to be smart and use the natural sources of these medicines already there for us to have in the earth as plants etc is something I cannot resolve yet. It was not even the last 18 months in which my state has quietly in the state house made those things specifically illegal as more and more people sourced them online and shipped to houses to self use completely bypassing the entire medical and related institutions because suddenly they are well again within reason.

I am not a tree hugger, am not a naturalist and not anything of the sort in my own outlook on life. But I am beginning in some small way to understand that there is a very large possibility that we are trying to thrive in what has become a for want of a better word a steel prison coast to coast in anything we attempt for ourselves to get better and actually dare to thrive.

 

I have an old letter(copy actually) written by a 5 or 6 X Great Grand Father from back just before the civil war telling his wife to use some laudanum for tooth pain. Laudanum is morphine mixed in alcohol and has been around since the 16th century. Opium use goes back to close to 4,000 BC. This class drug has been around for a very long time. It is very addicting and one of the primary dangers of an overdose is it causes a human's respiratory system to shut down because the autonomic system that keeps you breathing gets shut down at the synapse level because opium blocks them. It is much like how neurotoxic snake venom kills. In fact this is why there is research today using snake venom as a painkiller.

 

A lot of them were kids. They might have had some vague idea that what they were doing was dangerous, but children who haven't seen death, don't get it.