They're here today. On this site. Literally by the hundreds. Stories of self medication. It's not possible to focus on war without seeing at least some mention of the horrors of war.
They'll self medicate. And I put it that way because I don't happen to be a veteran. But you know that they will, because they commonly do it as needed, and we all know it. And we all do it as well, truth be told. If, as, when, where needed. If this is not a major component of "the human condition", then what is?
Stay out of my bedroom! Pretty elementary stuff, and certainly becoming more so.
Stay out of my head! Not so simple, apparently. And I don't know why.
There's a guy locally who's famous for the hundreds of thousands of dollars of tax payer money that have been spent sending medical rescue crews and equipment to pull him out of his own vomit in gutter, after gutter, after gutter. And when all else fails, he'll buy the biggest, cheapest bottle of mouthwash he can find and swill that. And, then, of course, the shit really hits the fan, because how dangerous is that, but, for his part, he only knows that he has managed to obtain another alcohol induced stupor, and there is nothing in life (or death) that matters more to this particular individual. But if he just had to have some pot, and somehow managed to still make things so blatant, and public, and urgent, well, "problem solved". Going down even a fraction of that number of times would have earned him enough drug convictions that the ambulance crews would never have to think about him ever again. We would long since have had him locked up for the rest of his life. (Oh, and then there's the part about the fact that if his particular demons did happen to become that much more mellow that much easier, drowning in a downtown gutter in his own vomit would never even have become an issue.)
I don't know what gets you off, and I don't need to, and I don't want to. And, yeah, I do mean that sexually. But I also mean that psychologically/psychoactively. If you need a sugar high, or a caffeine high, or even a chocolate high to maintain your mental balance, good on you. And if you need just a boatload of shit that nature makes available to all of us if we but search long and hard enough to find it all, then I don't know how I, personally, would begin to second guess your judgment.
But I do know this. You study the literature, you view life with open eyes and an open mind, you accept the fact that, rightly or wrongly, people are going to make decisions that you would not, but that at worst are harmful only of the decision maker, and you have got to understand that it is your responsibility as an individual to fight for the kind of society where just exactly those kinds of decisions can be made.
And then our veterans go out and fight just those kinds of battles in our names, and bring their demons home and try to heal in their own way.
And we lock them up. Because?
What the fuck is that?