So. 

There is so much I don’t understand, things that are well beyond my scope and give me a headache to even ponder.
Some philosophical, much practical and sadly, more obvious.
No doubt I spend entirely too much time trying to grasp concepts that I can neither alter nor have much real affect on my life or those I care about, usually with very limited results.
When against a wall of confusion, reeling from an assault of my own failings…I am not too proud to ask for help.
Please…
Why am I paying so much more than you in taxes?? Why am I more responsible to provide new roads, indigent health care, and Drug and alcohol  rehab centers? Why must I support, with my taxes, bailing out banks that would, and have, shown me the door in the past?
~waving raised hand frantically~ ” Oooh ooooh pick me!! pick me!!”
Because I smoke.
Because you don’t.
It doesn’t matter that you make other questionable life choices that I don’t, myself, engage in. Or that I have private health insurance that would see to my short lived hospice care. That, I at least have the courtesy to decline rapidly and expire without need of extended or repeated in-patient care.
If gracious enough to offer explanation, let me please just interrupt for a moment more, to stem the inevitable tide of qualifying liberal, condescending bullshit that you would offer.
It wasn’t second hand smoke that killed my Aunt…it was a drunk driver. It wasn’t second hand smoke that killed my best Friend Jeremy either…it was his habit of injecting whatever heroin laced cocktail du jour into his veins. It sure wasn’t second hand smoke that had a wonderful Man in Patrick, wither away to nothing, leaving us all behind, wondering how…it was his addiction to the unprotected embrace of others.
Before you even begin your sanctimonious rant…fuck you.

Say please.

Miss me with the notion that my choice to smoke somehow infringes on your own need to breath. I love your paneled banners of “Second hand smoke kills!!” plastered to side of busses, spewing more carbon monoxide in five miles than I could in my very long career of smoking.
I don’t smoke around you. I would never think to light up in your car or house. I cringe at the sight of the drifting cigarette smoke of others into anyones path and would never allow it myself.
If you think I reek, my clothing, my breath, my hair…I’ll say the same of your own choice of drenching in Patchouli. The difference, of course, I’ll not burden you with tariffs for the privilege of my having to endure it.

I swore, “fat fucking chance” , that I would EVER pay so much as 75 cents for a pack of cigarettes. I recently paid $11.
Fine. My choice. I could try to quit, I suppose. That’s what you’re driving at right? A campaign to have me quit by fiscal impracticality? Because…you care??
Fuck you.
I should quit. I should quit just to expose you for the fraud you really are.
Consider if I did. Who would pave your roads, who would see your children rehabilitated? Who would provide Emergency Room care for your landscaper when he loses a toe in a weeding accident (Those weeders are gnarly!!) Hmmm? Would you turn to whatever other life choice is out of fashion?
You don’t want me to quit. At least have the balls to look me in the eye as you bend me over.
I have to wonder…when you’re done with me, will you light up afterwards?
Might as well.

So.

"me me me me me me meeeee"

So,

We're making voters in in case they try and pass a helmet law

I ask you, Why…am I having to flush three times if the icebergs are melting?
If…I need stay in the shower twice as long just to rinse off the soap, where is the savings? Were I to use three times the see-through toilet paper to get the job done, how many trees need be felled?
I’m no economist and struggle with the simplest of calculations but this hardly seems like work for a mathematician.
I’ll not argue the realities or myth of global warming with you, or if without the intrusive embrace of conservationists and their dictates, we are doomed. I will only relay that a little more than one hundred years ago, there were just over a billion souls on the planet. Today, we fast approach seven. That…is exponential. Bordering parasitical and as do parasites, we stand to exhaust our host. This notion that we might ration the inevitable, a finite resource, while still, with expediency, grow in number, is ludicrous.
Consequence. I’d rather you quit breeding than I have to pay $200 dollars a day for a shower that rivals the penitentiary.
That’s not to suggest we need be wasteful. Awareness can only help, simple acts of habitual reserve might help stem the tide but will not, cannot, do more than postpone.
In the increasing climate of superfluous mandate, if this be our lot, why pause at flow restricters in shower heads? Why not consider and enforce crowd control?
I absolutely detest the idea but am a realist.
If I must convince you I’ve the capacity to cut and style hair, frame a home, or drive a car. If I need license to trade stocks, teach children or produce food…why on earth wouldn’t I need to show cause and benefit to produce offspring?
I hear you, an abominable scenario, yet… We are there.
I no more care for the notion of a bureaucrat determining my worth or promise as a parent than you but that I allow them as much influence in every other facet of my life, suggests it’s a small step to take at this point and possibly one with the greatest of results.
“Mrs Smith, your application to procreate has been denied. Feel free to appeal. That you, yourself, don’t work or pay taxes, nor your spouse or any of your dozen children, should leave you at ease to pursue our lengthy appeals process…Next!!!”

So,

I'm here all week. Tip your waitresses.

I have leisure, I have the means to enjoy it. I’ve purpose and direction without need of pressing.
I am blessed. I have gifts richly bestowed, not the least of which is curiosity. I am in much better health than my behavior would dictate or I deserve.
I enjoy the attentions of a very beautiful and intelligent Woman without relying on them.
I command all the conveniences of technology and design that my circumstances allow and look forward to future developments with relish.
The few Friends I have are very dear and ask pitifully little of me.
I do not, though, I noticed recently with some concern…sing aloud anymore.
There was a time, not too distant I recall, but cannot pinpoint, mine was the only voice I heard. Either in accompaniment or spontaneity. While driving, in company or alone, showering (certainly alone), cleaning or in general putz, recital was my constant companion.
Those days, when I sang, the tune was one of singular introspection.
No concern for you or yours, was my chorus and “Someone’s comin up short cuz I’m getting mine”, the refrain. One of many Melody’s, if I even bothered asking, perhaps her name.

Whether related or no, was the noticeable absence of conscience.

Those were days of reckless abandon. Of uncertainty and sans souci. I had little notion of my next meal but even less of who’s feet I might trample to get it. I sang aloud with my mouth full.
As goes the adage of blissful ignorance, one might also associate that of concern. It was that time of song that I was most at ease, hardly burdened with any troubles of my own, much less those of others.
I’ve no particular voice to speak of, none that would draw any crowd. Perhaps that, the key. That I only sang for myself and without the critique of others, could not know I was flat.
I seem to still know all the words but keep them to a barely audible humm.

So,
If you have a moment, I’d offer my thoughts on addicts and addiction.

I’ll endeavour not to seem sanctimonious or patronizing but chances are…

I’ll begin with Jeremy. His tale is short, tragically.
I’ll begin with Jeremy because I imagine all of us have or do know him.
Jeremy was possibly the smartest, funniest, most compassionate and loyal friend I’ve ever known. Jeremy was my friend, heroin was his and Jeremy is dead.
When I was told of his predictable end I don’t believe I even blinked. Heroin had defined his life and it seemed fitting that it had also defined his death. It was a relief. Not so much for me as I had abandoned worry for him after the fifth time he had OD’d or possibly the third time he violated his parole, having pissed dirty or actually committing crime to fix. I think why I never abandoned him otherwise is because Jeremy NEVER made excuses for himself.
Once, when he had robbed a Subway shop on Castro, with the cab he was driving idling out front and then dropping his cabbie badge in his haste to get away, leading to his arrest, I went to put money on his books at the jail. As he sat across from me, he told me something that has always stayed with me and in large part defined my future perspective on addicts and addiction.
“I wasn’t high…when I got high”.
Period.
Jeremy made no excuses for his abhorrent behavior. He never whined about his addiction and how he was a victim of his circumstance or the circumstances beyond his control. He, when not high, decided to get high. Anything from that point on, the robberies committed or getting turned out by a trio of transvestites in the Tenderloin because he was too high to resist, or his ultimate demise, was borne of conscience, lucid decision.
I don’t drink. I don’t or have ever, because I know, fortunately, that if I did, I would never stop.
Period.
I know this because of other behaviors of compulsion I struggle with. Because it runs in my Family. Because it would be easy and I’ve learned, at great cost, that there is no free lunch. Everything has a price.
The cost of addiction, unfortunately, is often carried by those who care or love the addicted. That is the crime, that is the inexcusable burden that addicts expect or are too self-absorbed to even consider, the rest of us to assume.
That they may continue their selfish pattern of behavior as if they are the only one affected, as if they are the victims.
The human cost is incalculable. The broken homes, the crime, the violence, collateral death by drunk drivers, the billions spent on fruitless attempts at rehab only to be repeated again and again.
Costs, incalculable, but derived of calculation. The calculated decision to use.

I’ve another friend. Many years ago he woke to find himself a drunk and, while lucid, decided to not drink again.
Period.
I know the theme, the mantra, “Once a drunk…” but I also know this… he doesn’t drink. I know he could. He knows he may, but he hasn’t, by calculation.
I hope for his sake but more for the sake of the rest of us, that he never does.