Tag: Drugs

Side Project: My Forgotten Youth

D. Michl LoweLeave a comment

So I took a break from writing the fantasy book that I have been working on and wrote something different. I woke up last night at 3:00 a.m. and had a book idea ramming itself into my consciousness. The idea wouldn’t go away. I had to write down the general idea. Below, I have written out the rough introduction to the book. I don’t plan on stopping work on the fantasy book, but I just needed a break. In my mind, this will be a very short book, less than 200 pages for sure. A middle-grade book, I think. We will see. In my head, this book is dealing with some heavy issues kids are dealing with even today. My current working title is My Forgotten Youth. Enjoy.

Introduction: The Abnormal Life

You don’t really question the things that happened to you as a kid. To you, it was just how life was and that was normal. It’s not until years later that you start to understand that your childhood might not have been completely regular. Example: My mom once told me that my father was a famous magician. I asked her why I didn’t have a dad and she said that he was busy working in Vegas and that the entertainment company that employed him wouldn’t let him take time off.

It made sense to me at the time, that my dad was a magician; too important to come and visit me. I told all my friends at school, and when they got old enough to realize it was a lie, they let me know, harshly, over and over. It was 1990 and I was eight years old. My mom would often disappear for weeks at a time, that was normal. My grandma and I would always order pizza when she knew mom wasn’t coming home. I got to the place where I hated the very smell of the stuff. Mom continually traveled up to Detroit with her boyfriends; sometimes just for the weekend, and others, for a month at a time.

We lived with my Grandma Susan. She had a little trailer that my grandpa had left her when he died. That was years before I was even born though. We all lived in Sissonville, West Virginia and my mom and Grandma had their own rooms, but I had the hall closet. It was big enough that my twin mattress could fit, but that was about it. 

One morning, I woke up before I should have. Not sure why, but something seemed wrong. Sometimes you wake up because of a noise, but you think you just woke up naturally. It was one of those times when you feel like you slept for a long time. I was wide awake. There was the sound of clinking dishes in the kitchen and I walked in, the footed pajamas I wore had a hole for the big toe on each one, but they still made a soft shiff shiff as they slid across the linoleum floor. 

The sound of my feet caused my mother to drop her little plastic purse on the side of the sink. When she did, amber pill bottles came plopping out on the counter and the floor. She was startled.

“Hey darlin’, what are you doin up?” She asked, smoothing her blond hair back from her face and licking lips that were too dry. 

“I heard something, and woke up,” I said. 

She was fully dressed in a short skirt and some of those fishnet stockings that girls loved to wear in the 80s, but that she was obviously too old to be wearing. Mom was fashionable; MTV was always on when she was home. Her bangs were the poofiest bangs in the whole town. While I always thought mom was pretty, in a “my mom” sort of way, I hated poofy bangs. She quickly picked up the pill bottles and began stuffing them back into the hot pink purse. One of them had rolled across the floor and my bare big toe twiddled it. I reached down and picked it up. It had my grandma’s name on the label.

“Oh,” I said. “This one is grandmas.”

A slight panic flashed across her eyes. “Yes, well I am taking it to get it refilled,” she said.

“Are all of those grandmas?”

She backed away from me and I was confused. “No, these ones are mine,” she said glancing towards the door. “Why don’t you mind your own business, huh? You think you know what’s best do ya? You aren’t the parent here! I am!” She screamed the last part, but immediately hushed herself, glancing towards the hall that led to grandma’s room.

“Mom, are you okay,” I asked, brushing off the harshness of her words. I learned long ago, not to take her harshness with any sincerity.

“I’m fine,” she hastily said, zipping up the little purse. It looked stupid, hot pink and almost rubbery. I thought it was like something a little kid would have, not a grown woman. She brushed tears out of her eyes. When had she started crying? Coming over, she kissed the top of my head. She smelled; sour, like ammonia. Like when our cat’s litter box hadn’t been cleaned in several weeks. Her arms were too thin, I could see the bones in her wrists. She had bruises up and down both of her arms, little scabbed dots all over.

“You be good okay. Listen to your grandma. I’m gonna be gone for a couple weeks, alright. I have a job up in Detroit I have to do. Robert says we can get some real good work this time.”

Robert was the current guy she called her boyfriend.

“Okay,” I said.

What else could I say? She looked back once, then walked out the front door.

I never saw my mom again.

Unpopular Ideas in My Circle

D. Michl LoweLeave a comment

I am often an odd duck. Often describing myself as a conservative Libertarian, I hold some different views about several different issues. Some of those beliefs may not be set in stone. Some of them might be contentious or even seen as wrong. However, just because I might think something should be legal or should be put into place, does not mean that I wish to partake in said thing, or that I believe said thing is morally right or not harmful in some way. So take everything I am going to say with a grain of salt and know that I am very flexible on these thoughts and that I could be convinced otherwise if someone were to offer a compelling argument to the opposing side. So let’s start with a bang!

Cannabis Should be Legalized:

This one is interesting. There are several reasons why I think this should be done. First off, the reasoning behind it being put as a Schedule 1 drug in the first place seems sketchy at best. The campaign to demonize it seems almost laughable these days when you look at the politically motivated movie Reefer Madness in 1936 and the political cartoons of the time as well.

However, while I will never use this substance, I also don’t think it should be criminalized. When we look at the psychological and physical effects of using this substance, we can see that these effects are not as severe as the effects of using too much alcohol. It is nearly impossible to overdose on this drug and while it is not safe to drive a car while on it, the same can be said for alcohol use. We allow alcohol in our country and some laws govern its legal use. I believe that similar laws could be enacted to govern cannabis. Do I believe that use in children/teens will increase? Yes. However, the net good of freeing up our police forces from drug-related enforcement efforts and the decrease of those incarcerated for purely drug-related offenses would be a good thing overall. Should there be consequences if people are say driving while intoxicated? Of course! Should there be consequences if people are using this drug around children and there is secondhand exposure? Yep. Should there be consequences for children and teens who are found using this substance underage? Yes.

I just don’t feel like we should not be incarcerating people for this.

All Drugs Should Be Decriminalized:

Now I don’t think that we should be selling the harder drugs or making them more available, but I don’t think that we should be criminalizing the use of these substances. Do I think this would harm society? Maybe. However, I don’t believe that criminalizing the use of a substance is the right way to combat the issue. Am I in favor of criminalizing selling these substances? Maybe. But for those people who are addicted and struggling, should we be criminalizing them? No. I think we should be trying to help these people to overcome their addictions in any way possible. I believe if we took the funding that we have been using for punishing and going after the people using these substances and put it towards rehabilitation programs and making those either affordable or even free to those struggling, we might be able to help those people get into recovery.

I Hope Multiverse Theory is Correct:

This is another odd duck of an idea. Recently scientists have been talking about Multiverse Theory. Even in popular movies like Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness and Everything Everywhere All at Once and even in some more classic films like Donnie Darko we see this idea being played with and explored. Spiritually and honestly scientifically, I am okay with this idea. I like this idea quite a bit and I don’t think I am alone in liking it. C. S. Lewis in his classic The Chronicles of Narnia books explored this idea quite a bit. In The Magician’s Nephew the first book in the series chronologically we see Polly and Diggory heading into the Woods Between the Worlds and getting into a different dimension.

Now it should be noted that Polly and Diggory go into the other world known as Charn bringing about an age of terror in Narnia because they bring The White Witch to Narnia at its birth and therefore set up the evil that she does in that world, but still, I hope Multiverse Theory is correct. And let me tell you why I hope that.

I think that the idea that there are multiple worlds all ruled over by God is incredibly interesting to theorize about and play with. Writing Christian fantasy is bringing my mind into this world and helping me to believe that all things (even crazy world things) are possible with a God as infinite and imaginative as ours. I like to think that while we are of course the children of God, he would have no reason to tell us about the other worlds in which he has other children. So while our scriptures may be silent on the topic of other worlds (so far as I can tell), I like this idea and hope it’s true.

Universal Basic Income Might Help:

This is something that I might get some flak for. I think that a UBI might be a solution for the state of the Welfare System in our country (USA). Now let me do some explaining first. The US spends about 1.05 trillion dollars on the welfare system per year. That’s including state contributions. There are around 258.3 million adults in the US. If we take the total spending on welfare and then divide that by the number of adults, that gives each adult in the US a total amount of cash per year of $4,065.00 which doesn’t seem like much. If you divide that out over 12 months, it only accounts for $338.75 per month. It doesn’t seem like much does it?

That being said though if we eliminate all adults who make over $100,000 per year. That only leaves us with 37 million people. I think I would comfortably say that people who make over $100,000 per year do not need welfare. So if we take those 37 million people left who make under that amount we get a very different story. So if we take 1.05 trillion dollars and divide that among 37 million people that make under 100,000 dollars a year, then each adult gets $28,378.38 per year. That equals an extra $2,364.86 per month for all adults. If it’s you and your spouse? That’s an extra $4,729.73 per month or an extra $56,756.76 per year.

Now let’s look at this realistically, do people making $100,000 need that? No. If we were going to try to help with poverty, we could only look at those people making $50,000 or less. So that amount of cash would be even more if we looked at that. Now, these numbers are completely based on what we are currently spending on the entire welfare system in the US and Lord knows that I am not good at math. So my numbers could certainly be off. That being said, I am all for people being in charge of their own lives. I am all for people being responsible for their own well-being. I don’t believe the government knows best how to help my family; I think I do. I trust other people to know what’s best for their families as well.

I think that when people are given the freedom to help themselves in the way they see as best, they will overwhelmingly use those recourses much more effectively than the government can. Will some people misuse those resources? Of course, but that is happening now with our current system. So I would much rather encourage people to be more responsible than less responsible. In the long term, I think this type of policy would save the average taxpayer money. Cash in the pocket doesn’t need to increase its budget quite as often when special interest groups are vying for the money, but it’s just the American people. It would only need to increase when inflation increases (go figure that might be needed given the current state of things). Along with this, we could have a program where if we see that a person is unable to help themselves and we see a pervasive need for that person to have help in utilizing those funds, a directed agency would be able to help the person to direct those funds in a meaningful way, working towards allowing them full control in the future if possible.

All American Schools Should Have Firearm Training:

I believe that all American High Schools should teach senior men to shoot modern sporting riffles, how to clean them, maintain them, and properly shoot them. Along with that, they should all be taught proper safety and storage of them as well. Given what is happening in Ukraine with Russia invading there, men in the US should have a basic understanding of firearms, if the need should arise for them to help in the defense of their home and country. This leads me to my next point.

All Adults Should be Issued a Fully Automatic AR15:

I believe that all adult males who are of age and legal status should be issued a fully automatic AR15 along with ten 30-round magazines and a yearly allotment of 4,000 rounds of NATO ball ammunition. The right to bear arms is enshrined in our constitution and we should be supporting that right, both through free education for seniors in High School and also free training for the public at large.

According to factcheck.afp.com, “All Swiss men over the age of 18 undergo basic military training, after which they remain part of a national “militia” until they are around 30. They keep their unloaded service weapons at home during this time, and when their service has ended they have the choice of keeping their personal weapon, as long as they first acquire a permit. Women can also volunteer for national service.” Now, that is Switzerland of course, and not the US, but I think we can learn a thing or two from the Swiss. I think all US men over the age of 18 should be required to undergo military training. South Korea has a similar policy. I think it would also do a lot in helping some of our “man-child” issues. Might help some of these losers in their mother’s basement to grow up a bit.

Along with these types of training, we would of course be giving all these adult males psychological testing when they go to enter into military service. It would be at this point that we would be able to identify problematic psychological issues within the male population and be able to get those individuals the help they may need in dealing with those issues before they become violent or problematic within society as a whole.

Conclusion:

Are these ideas unpopular? Perhaps. Would I be willing to reconsider these ideas? Of course! However, for the moment, this is where I stand on these ideas. In the future, I think I could change my tune. Many of these ideas I think might be pipe dreams for the moment. However, I like to think about things like this. I believe that if we can’t talk about issues we will never grow. If we can’t throw out ideas to people who may not have thought of these ideas, then how can we ever make things better? I like talking about things that are off and odd. Please feel free to question, argue, or disparage any or all of these ideas in the comments below. I welcome the discourse. Thanks for reading.

D. Michl Lowe