Should marijuana be legalized?

The law in Colorado has given license for marijuana to be sold legally.  As someone who has tried to smoke marijuana for recreation, I unquestionably know I am not the same human normal when under the influence.  As I look at it from a much uniformed perspective, I think it is a hysterical travesty of the government to entertain the potential for unexpected casualties.   

We were around 13 and I was fitting in with my peers at High School.  The scholarship to transfer to a more prestigious school was not an enticement.  Luckily, my family, would have been too distressed financially to afford all the vestiges of the Convent life.  So the friendship bonds were more influential and engaging.    We agreed to tell our parents that we were going to a social occasion in a socially comfortable area.  But, what we really did, was go to the adult friend’s home, where weed was the cocktails, the entre and dessert.

After the first couple hits, as a novice, it’s the first time, and I have not acquired the necessary finesse to inhale with small breadths, so my pulls were with great relish and intensity, I was delirious.  There was a Curtis Mayfield song playing, I'm Your Pusherman  and whatever organic property there was,  it was extremely potent. I was only hearing the Bassline beat for the whole song.  And the thumping grew louder, and I was not feeling anything else.

Thanks for the friendships of caring, I was the first person that had to be taken home.  I must have been so badly out of shape that my more accustomed user friends, were pissed that they would have to explain this to my family, or that I ruined their party time.  They got me to my home.  I think I was shoved out of the car hastily and reprimanded to walk straight up the steps and go to bed.

My younger brother saw my distress state and since he was one of them *wink, wink* with a smirk of insider intelligence, he escorted me to my room.  I knew then and there, I did not have a tolerance for further out of body getting high experiences.

When my son hit his adolescence “alien invasion” getting high moments, it was chaotic, sometimes neurotic, psychotic and an emotional rollercoaster of long term issues into manhood.  I have actually taken pictures of the “high” moments.  One is of him slumped at the bedside, the cap covering his face, mouth open and drooling and looking totally dotish.   The other is a picture of him sitting on the roof of the house smoking to avoid being seen.

The next phase of my marijuana intake is as an adult with more adult sense and responsibility.  It’s a party and folks get high.  They happen to be the functional partiers.  I quickly knew that unlike my girl days, none of these people would be looking out for me if I go into a dope induced stupor.  So I was coherent enough to know my choice of substance, was still a mild rum and coke drink.  I later graduated to apple martinis.

Perhaps, I am one of the lucky ones.  I over analyze even if and while under the influence.  I had a couple martinis too many at a party and I got my dance on with such dexterity, that I was working the chairs to Alicia Keys…If I ain’t got you.    I got such rave reviews from my pole dancing, I was asked by a partier, to dance for her father’s 70th birthday.  I knew then that my professional calling was in question. 

With marijuana, I experienced euphoric pleasure.  My appetite for ravenous and insatiable pleasure became toxic.  To be in the zone,   I had to feed the high.  

Should Marijuana be legalized?  This is the trending topic on media.  In a Huffington Post article, This is Why Marijuana should be legalized, it states that over 58% of Americans are now in favor of legalized marijuana use.  The article presents all of the strongest arguments why this is a drug that is not harmful.  The words drug and not harmful are themselves in contradiction. 

I am in no position to defend or provide legal, social or moral judgment.  I have not been a cancer patient and need the soothing relief to quell my pains.  I have not been a schizophrenic that need to still the voices.  I have not been the case or circumstance, that requires some of the medicinal properties marijuana is said to possess.

From my non expert position, the effect that marijuana has on me is not the same as a cigarette or an aspirin.

Maybe the political side of legalizing marijuana is to encourage more levies of taxes.   Instead of the drug being sold on the streets, it is a legal product with revenue generating streams for the patrolling bodies.   Just like pharmaceutical companies have become the cornerstone for the chemicals that are traded around the world with billions of dollars in profit, maybe the marijuana industry has the potential of creating a global pharmaceutical market for the 1%. 

It is ironic that with the new laws in Colorado the demand has spiked the price for cannabis.  The user populations that have flocked to the area to purchase legal weed are paying premium dollar for their sought after drug commodity.   In the article High Demand: Price Of Legal Marijuana Soars In Colorado

Rachel Gillette, executive director of the Colorado chapter of NORML, a national nonprofit seeking to make marijuana use legal nationwide said she found retailers selling top-shelf marijuana to recreational users at prices close to $400 per ounce, not including taxes.

But again, my mind analyzes.  With marijuana becoming a legal substance, I envision the normalcy of being high as another health psychosis of the next millennium.

“Would you pass me that Blunt, it’s my marijuana” and now I am legally about to get high.

  

Abundance manifests

All of beauty in its natural splendor and bounteous harvest is fervent with abundance.
Not to keep, but share. In.generosity. Always. ...Grace

The very concept of abundance is a shift to a new thought paradigm. The mindset to attract abundance , after the experience of the absence of the respect for what it means to have abundance, is metamorphosis. A shift is occurring. An awareness is birthing. It is the awakening and the welcoming of the invisible unknown to become manifest with potent and vivid deliverance. As with the birthing of a desired expectancy it comes after labored and prolonged perplexities.

Abundance manifests.

With mindful thought and action, and in rythymn with the universe, the intention of the mind, heart, soul and spirit finds the path that leads to alignment with the gift, Abundance. My history as scrolled in the pages of my thoughts is scoured in perception of unmet expectations. The reality is, I have been in receipt of constant abundance amidst the prevailing distractions.

In childhood, I lost my father at age 9 and automatically developed the symptomatic orphan mentality. My sense of dreams, aspirations, ambitions were foiled in the actuality of poverty circumstance against the backdrop of limitation and disempowerment. The illusion of limitation seeped into my psyche and I was not aware.

Whitney Houston rendered these lyrics, "I didn't know my own strength "and from her voice to my heart, I sucked in the meaning of each word as it filtered through each pore of my being and my soul responded. As the process of catharsis unfolds, the discovery of innermost radiance and abundance ensues.

From birth to now, I have been always shrouded in the legacy of abundance.  Being  cared for, nurtured and richly nourished by a powerfully prescient mother figure, along with siblings who empowered and engendered stability, perseverance, endurance, fortitude, dignity, nobility, and ostensibly abundant grace were not occasional sharings of generosity but perpetual gifts of overflowing deliverance.

As a developing teen, my perception of self was fraught with inner turmoil and discomfort. Not uncommon to adolescent dispositions, the need to be likeable is the disease of youthful arrogance and insecurity. Unless, you discover your niche, it is a constant interplay of desire vs need. For some the desired self idealization is entertained in the glorification of  sportsmanship, beauty,  talents, wealth, and scholarship. For me, the subtlety of the desired was to embrace a need for belonging. The gravity of the emotional loss of a devoted and adoring parent left a dulling void. So in order to compensate and find comfort, it was folly appeal to be self effacing and self diminishing. Numbed were the gifts of self mastery and self abundance. Serial exploits in limitation become the norm.

At pivotal markers of adult years, the fleeting grasp of abundance was courted with momentary savor. The romance of abundance was short lived and left a  path of devastation in its wake. In awakening to the gift of discomfort one is kept aroused in mystery and aching for fulfillment. In the chasm of challenge, and seeking, there emerges the appeal of yearning for understanding. It is in this struggle to manifest, that the mystery of abundance is the discovery of majesty that does not equate with seeking possessions, wealth and luxury.

Abundance and wealth are not synonymous. Wealth and the value associated with quantity is the least of the harvest and the treasury of abundance.Poverty does not describe being. With generous and wholesome desire, money and the exchange of goods,  services, benefits are fixtures of economic measure. Simple exquisite abundance is to discover awakened clarity of generous abundance.

In order to validate abundance it is opportune to validate loss. Without abandonment, emotional security is an abstract.  Without the experience of brokenness, emptiness, barrenness the idea of manifesting abundance is an aimless ploy of self flagellation.

The riches of abundant grace are the mistakes,  mishaps and missteps that come in the illusion of disgrace.

The principles of  abundant stewardship are :-  to be humble in adversity, to be kind without measure, to trust with infinite conviction and to persevere against all odds.  These are not testimonials of worldly endowments, it is the unquenchable, insatiable, amazingly radiant, grace of abundance.

For me, and perhaps the many, our struggle, strife, barriers and roadblocks are the strengths and victories we overcome to welcome our destiny,our Abundance.