They say that if you aren't liberal when you are young, you have no heart, and if you aren't conservative when you are old, you have no brain. I think that's because so many liberal leaning people did too many narcotics when they were young. You are changed by everything with which you come in contact, by every person you meet, and by things you don't know you encounter. You hear the warnings for drugs but somehow you think that the warnings about narcotics don't apply where those from pharmaceuticals do. I love when nursing students vilify evil pharmaceutical companies but totally trust their dealer down on the corner. At least in part, our nation is spinning out of control because of too easy access to, too open acceptance of, and too universal reliance on drugs, pharmaceutical and narcotic, and we don't know that they are killing us softly.
Many narcotics alter the cell instructions. Simple and legal narcotics like nicotine and caffeine act in ways that prevent cells from reacting to stimuli and resetting processes naturally initiated. Eventually, the nucleus stops sending instructions that are ignored, and the cells become dependent on these stimulants in order to initiate those processes. For this reason, many people you know can't function at all until they have one or two or ten cups of coffee each morning. Alkaloids share structural similarities with nucleic acids and hormones, and so they impact the cell's ability to control itself. We know they are called controlled substances, but they are also controlling substances, chemicals that alter the cellular chemistry. Since transcription, translation, metabolism, transport, and virtually every other cellular function is actually chemical at least partly, these narcotics interfere with the search for cellular equilibrium. As LeChatelier teaches us, when you tip the scale one way or the other, it gives us a reaction in the chemical reaction, which is not something the cell did on purpose.
Doing too many narcotics hampers emotional development. Perhaps this is why liberals all too often hold to naive notions and utopian ideals. One of my students confessed Wednesday night that it wasn't until after she got sober two years ago (she's 48) that she finally really started to grow up. I think about some of the volunteers on the mountain and how much they annoyed me, and I know that other employees commented that those volunteers were only interested in the next party, the next fix. So many of these young people I teach and their elder compatriots go back to school because they mucked up their first chance by getting into partying instead of paying attention to their studies. Almost all of these liberal politicians, including the President, proudly confess themselves adroit as members of choom gangs but shy away from touting their academic accomplishments. I think too many people are actually teenagers stuck in adult bodies, and at least emotionally their development was directly retarded in part by the narcotics. Smoking dope makes you one.
Narcotics can directly damage neurological networks. Like pharmaceuticals, narcotics also have side effects, and that's because these are chemicals. Chemicals cause reactions. Chemicals transfer energy, move ions, and break bonds. We know that there are drugs that interfere with neurological networks; we call them anti-depressents, but in reality all they do is alter the balance of serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine, which affect your mood. Most young people take them because they are depressed or bored, to make their lives more exciting, and to feel like they mean something. The saying claims that alcohol is for those who can afford to lose brain cells, but all too often the people consuming it don't have enough now. All of these drugs cause potential for damage ot the cell, the organ, and the organism. You are affected by everything you take in, willingly or not, wittingly or not, and one thing I learned teaching chemistry is that chemistry does not discriminate. It breaks bonds, and it can and will break you.
I laugh a little when I think that Bill Clinton gave Hillary Clinton "blades of grass" as a gift, because I don't think it was the book of same name. I am coming to believe that all the nincompoops who want to save the snails, the whales, and the planet do so because they used narcotics when they were young. Far too many of them admittedly did so. In a misguided and vain attempt to seize control of their lives, young people surrender control of it to narcotics, ultimately altering their cells, damaging their cells, and changing the rate or outcome of their own development. If smoking and drinking during pregnancy affects an unborn child, it can and will affect as yet undifferentiated cells in an adult. We are so vain and arrogant to think that we can't be hurt by things we allow in. My paternal grandfather John used to quote a poem that I share with my classes: "All the water in the world no matter how it tried could never sink the smallest ship unless it got inside." You want to be different, to be in control, and to be better? Drugs don't give you an edge, an advantage, or answers; they take them from you, maybe not all at once and not instantly to be sure, but you will suffer and fade away, whether you get them from a street pharmacist or from a legal one. For EVERY action there is an equal, and opposite, REACTION.
No comments:
Post a Comment