Why Drugs are Good

I miss my uncle. There was a wonderful man... Always had a funny story. Small town doctor. Entreprenuer. A bit of a show-off. Respected in his community. Loved by all. He was also addicted to pain killers.

I guess you'd call him a "functional addict" or something. He hid his addiction quite well from his family and friends, patients and co-workers, but there was a loneliness about him, which I always figured was the loneliness of a towering genius forced to put up with dolts. A divorcée with grown kids, he lived alone. That, along with a recent break-up of a multi-year romance, a crushing debt, and the responsibilities that go along with a start-up business venture, must have weighed heavily on him. This was certainly the lens through which we in his family interpreted his weariness.

To feed his addiction he was forced to forge prescriptions for fake patients. Obviously this leaves a paper trail. To cover his tracks, he would fill the prescriptions in different towns throughout the state. Unfortunately he wasn't careful enough, and ultimately a nosy, self-righteous pharmacist figured it out, called him up on a Friday afternoon, and informed him that the authorities would be notified on Monday.

It isn't hard to imagine the calculus that my uncle must have gone through that weekend. Doctoring was all he knew - was almost certainly how he defined himself. So, losing that would be tantamount to losing himself. "How is a 50-year-old man going to start over?" he must have thought. What's the answer? How would he pay back all the money he owed for starting a business - a business that he would now probably have to give up? Not to mention, how was he going to get his next fix? These problems, difficult as they are on their own, must have seemed completely insurmountable to a man also suffering from a broken heart. His solution was to kill himself on Sunday.

Now, the question you're probably asking is, "How can this have anything to do with drugs being good?" The answer is that it wasn't the pills that killed my uncle. What killed him was a system that encouraged his death. Why call it a "war" if there aren't supposed to be casualties? And innocents die in war all the time, right? That's just how it goes...

The war on drugs is a sick, sick thing. People die. Others rot for years in jail cells. Police are diverted from actual policing and are alienated from the communities they serve. And for what? What do we have to show for it? A bust every now and again pulls a few kilos off the street, so junkies have to shoot up baking soda until the re-supply? Where is the evidence that the war on drugs has done anything other than destroy lives?

But I digress... Drugs. Good. If I could choose between a dead uncle and a live uncle who's addicted to pills, guess which I'd choose. A non-addicted uncle would be great, but he is not among the choices. Prior to the pain killers, my uncle was an alcoholic for years, so some part of him needed those drugs to deal with life. What of it? They didn't turn him into a pedophilic serial-killer. Why should you or a pharmacist or a cop or a politician have any say over what is or is not "good" for my uncle or the street junkie or anyone else who makes the choice that, today, they're going to take drugs? How is that not an example of profound arrogance - particularly when you offer no alternative, except to destroy their lives if they continue making the "bad" choice?

So this is why drugs are good: because good people take drugs. Sometimes it's just for a fun time and why not? Sometimes, as in the case of my uncle, it's just a fucked up way to deal with the bad things in life, to get through the god-forsaken day any way you can, and if the alternative is death, then, believe me, the cost is too great. Choose drugs. Drugs are good.