"Just" Pot

I let a guy move in on Monday who said he'd be able to pay the $50 weekly fee - that we usually get up front - on Thursday.

Guess what happened Thursday?

Addiction, meet Dean's financial chin.

Yeah, he left and never came back. Not telling me upfront just meant that I wasted a few hours last night waiting up for him, and calling the hospitals and jail.

In bagging up his stuff this morning, I noted that he had took most of his stuff with him. Of the things he left behind was a bag of wet laundry - I have no clue why, the dryer does work - some random self-help books and a power drill worth a few hundred bucks because it has a special lithium battery.

Interestingly, it said "Warehouse Only" and I hadn't remembered that being his name!

I knew he had found some work, for a day, at Barney's, so I had a pretty good guess as to where the drill came from. The other guests told me that he had tried to pawn it, but pawn stores don't like buying stuff that clearly shows that it's stolen and has no charger to go with it!

That and he didn't even have his ID.

Wait...what?

Yeah, see, when a guest moves in, we get that $50 up front because we want to deter anyone just wanting to rob the place. It's not unheard of for an addict to move into a place just to rob it the first night.

At our sober living homes, we don't have anything there to steal that is worth $50. So getting that money up front means that we're deterring casual theft. And it's why we don't provide flat screens, but just the old fashioned TVs.

In this man's case, he not having the fee up front, I had told him that I'd have to hold his ID till he paid the first fee. He agreed. I had figured that no one would walk away from an ID that would take $20 to replace. Or steal while I was holding his ID.

I should know better.

So he blows off his ID just to get a free place for three days. And he blows off a good job just to steal a drill the first day, a drill that he can't use or pawn. And he blew off the temp agency, as when I returned the drill the foreman said he was going to call the guy's temp agency.

That foreman had been happy to see me this morning. I went before they opened and an employee let me in the docks. I said to the foreman, "Hi, I run a sober living home, and I believe you had a man working here named Xxxxx Xxxxxx?" He said, "Is this about the drill?" Bingo!

He related that he had been planning on reviewing the footage of the cameras later in the morning, because he knew it must have been him. First day, stuff walks off site. Not a difficult conclusion.

He also shared with me that while working that first and last day, the guy had asked others if they knew where to get pot. And I had heard from the other guests that he had asked them where to get pot.

Which brings me to the point of this tale.

Pot is not "just pot" and I get tired of hearing that it is. I get tired of hearing that pot is "no big deal" or "harmless".

Now, if all that is meant by that is that pot is not as bad as heroin, fine, I get that. And being shot isn't as bad as having you and your whole family shot. But one does not have to be the peak of badness to be bad.

Pot is bad. Like alcohol and other drugs, it habituates the young mind to rely upon the artificial for pleasure instead of good, clean pleasurable activities like walks in the park, charitable outreach, team activities, sports, reading and a thousand other good things.

Pot is a gateway drug - and yes, so are cigarettes and alcohol. By that I mean that it leads to ever stronger drugs, as those who have got used to getting pleasure artificially then want to move on to stronger stuff.

Always? No, not always. I know some who having smoked pot or drank beer do not move on to heroin. Obviously. Or meth or crack. Obviously.

But you want to know what else I "obviously" know? It's that EVERY SINGLE GUEST I've ever aided here, for heroin, meth, crack and such, has ALSO in their past smoked marijuana.

They all started with this supposed "little" stuff. Ciggs and booze and pot. And bizarrely - thanks, pot activists - some just start with pot, because they hear that cigarettes and alcohol are bad for you, but that pot is "good for you"!

Pot is NOT "good for you". It does NOT cure cancer, or there'd be no more cancer in Colorado now, would there? *smacks forehead* And no, you cannot build a car out of pot plastic and fuel it on hemp oil and have the exhaust cure grandma's lumbago! I've seen a lot of idiocy over forty plus years, but the Pot Religion - and yeah, it's a religion - is the stupidest. And most harmful.

This is where I'll get a lot of comments - which will be deleted and the posters banned - of this study or that study or this article from High Times or that link from I-Love-Toking.cm and none of it will actually matter.

Studies are for those who do not already know a thing. You will never find yourself looking up a study on "Does hitting your thumb with a hammer hurt?" as you have no doubt hit your thumb with a hammer, and you know that it does.

Likewise, in my case, I just saw a man who had no money and no place to go get to move into a nice, safe warm house without paying a dime up front. I saw him then get a temp job that would have lasted a month, easily, and possibly turned into full time employment.

Within literally two days of me taking him in, he had a place to stay, food and work. To keep that, he had only to pay $50 on Thursday, then $50 a week thereafter. He could have saved his money, got a car, got an apartment, led a happy and productive life.

He did not throw this away to shoot up heroin. He did not throw this away to drown his sorrows in demon rum. He did not throw this away to smoke crack. He did not throw this away to smoke or snort or shoot up meth.

He spent that time asking other guests, and other co-workers, where to get pot. And he stole in preparation to get money for pot. And getting one day under his belt, and thus "owed" $40 or so, he walked off the job, and then walked away from here, so he could spend that money on getting high.

"With a little help from his friends", as the song that lauds pot says. Except he has no friends. Just the usual casual "stoner" buddies that will hang with him while he's buying and he's treating.

Now, I'll be honest, what I've described is darn rare. Most people I will admit are not so into pot. He's a real outlier, no doubt. Most stoners would have kept the job, got a small bag, paid me partially, and then came home high thinking that no one could tell because they're so gosh darn cool about it.

Then they'd have lost the job in a few days, instead of a few hours, and been booted out next week instead of leaving on their own this week.

And if this is where you are just dying to write to me about how you or someone you know has smoked pot recreationally for twenty years and it's all good, spare me. I've known some who can casually drink all their lives, so what?

I'm dealing with addicts - and this horrid myth that pot is somehow safe and good and cool. It's not.

Oh, and as an aside, I had needed that promised money. I mean, yeah, that stacks up pretty small due to the far sadder issue of this 30 year old guy blowing his life on pot. Losing jobs, losing homes, stealing, lying. But still. It was a surprise uppercut to my financial jaw all the same.

But we'll live. I'm sorrier for him than us. I've literally, as I wrote this, already figured how to accommodate the deficit. So his damage to me is now done. But the damage this poor guy is doing to himself? To his life?

I do not think he has even begun to conceive of that. Nor have those pro-pot folks out there who are so ecstatic about this virtual legalization of this harmful substance.