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Lit_Match

Keeping Your Head Straight
Asked to comment on the state Assembly's approval of a grow-your-own medical marijuana bill, Republican Assemblywoman Annie Rabbitt of Greenwood Lake told The Times Herald-Record last week "I'm against it because I think it is a mind-altering substance."
06-18-07|The Times Herald-Record|Jeremiah Horrigan

I was having my morning cup of decaf, trying to figure out how best to get through another day without altering my mind.

Don't get me wrong. It's not that I don't like to change my mind. I love to do that. But altering my mind is something completely different. That's what happens when a foreign substance is introduced into the body and makes it do things it wouldn't ordinarily do.

Which explains why I'd just emptied the sugar bowl.

I know all the arguments about sugar. It's natural. It's sweet. Even organic sometimes.

And it's mind-altering.

It had to go. It made me feel ... good. I could feel it, its warm, early morning fingers working their way up my sleep-weakened spinal column, squeezing into my pleasure centers, making me crave — what else? Jelly donuts! Bacon! Eggs!

Do they still make Alpha-Bits?

Which explains the dry toast. And, I suppose, the crashing headache my anti-altering regime appears to have brought me.

The headache I take as a sign of progress. I'm detoxing. Keeping my aching mind clear of invasive poisons that might alter me in bad and unpredictable ways.

I grabbed my lunch — unseasoned soy-paste-on-rye and dehydrated water — and headed for work.

I arrived there in my usual resentful state. My co-workers were freely indulging in their usual antics: knocking back Red Bulls and Mountain Dews and fruit-at-the-bottom yogurts and even going so far as to smoke cigarettes out on the sidewalk.

And, I sometimes suspect, it's not just the government-approved brands they're doing.

All of this was, as usual, getting to me. Besides my daily headache, my knee had begun jerking reflexively. I was just about to give up hope when I looked at the morning paper. I saw what my assemblywoman had to say about medical marijuana.

I started to cry.

At last, someone had told it like it was, someone had stood up for people like me, people who know only too well the dangers of mind-altering substances. In just a few, deftly chosen words, someone acknowledged how difficult it is to keep an open but unalterable mind about things like medical marijuana.

Other, far-less-knowing Assembly people were saying they agreed that people with painful medical conditions should be allowed to grow their own marijuana and to use it for pain relief. Mind-altering pain relief, of course. As if there were any other kind.

I was aghast. If the state were to allow people to grow their own mind-altering substances, what was next? Grow your own sugar cane? Brew your own Red Bull? Extrude your own Alpha-Bits?

It was beyond belief. My head was throbbing and my knee was black-and-blue from banging against the underside of my desk. I was hurting, but hurting for a good cause. Hurting for an unalterable good cause.

Jeremiah Horrigan, who is no stranger to mind-altering substances, can be reached at jhorrigan@th-record.com.

 

Buzzby

A great ironic article, worthy of The Daily Show or The Colbert Report! We should all email this guy and give him our compliments.

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