A short break from the heavy subject of addiction to share some homestead updates lately as well as highlights and misfortunes from the last year.
Naughty, naughty!
Starting with the good news, we have two new happy thriving lambs!
They are the first of the year with two more mamas looking full and ready to follow with some of their own any day now. Or more likely, since today it is beautiful and sunny, it will be the next time it’s pouring rain and freezing cold.
Their first day roaming the land with the herd.Last winter’s model looking great
Almost there, so close, but not close enough
That was the weather once again for this rough start. Unfortunately, our permanent corral space is not yet finished.
I had to cancel a holiday trip at the very last minute and I spent a lot of time stressed and worrying. I couldn’t handle a repeat of last year, which is such a tragic story for me I haven’t yet been able to tell it publicly.
It was nearly a repeat. Hubby was at work again, and to keep it short and simple, I found one of our not-so-well-trained LGD (Livestock Guard Dog) had jumped the fence, grabbed one just after birth, jumped the fence back and was ‘guarding’ it until I found it barely breathing and injured.
Luckily there was a completely unplanned, last minute visit that cheered me up after my canceled trip.
Pappa Chop getting friendly!It’s hard to think of anything sweeter than kids and animals!
And it’s hard to think of anything worse in the garden than poison ivy and wasps!
Poison ivy in the same spot 3 times, many weeks of torture.And wasp stings 3 different times, miserable.
And my bee colonies didn’t even last the summer. This is an enormous disappointment. But I don’t give up easily and have next spring’s bees on order, locally sourced this time.
Last spring’s packages brought home from Arkansas
Additional misfortunes include the duck that was mysteriously fried by our electric pole in the front yard. And another incident that shot an electric impulse through my hand, up my arm, and landed in now nearly 2 months of stabbing shoulder pain. Then there’s the ram that’s butted me 3 times and therefore will meet his demise prematurely ASAP.
I don’t think Hubby shares this sentiment, but in my case, I’ve definitely had better years.
Here’s to better fortune in the coming year, for me, and for all y’all!
(Part 2.1) Misunderstanding and Misdiagnosing Addiction
Addiction is addiction, I hope to make that very clear. I can sometimes be a stickler for the meaning of words and there are plenty of words in the English language-culture that are over-used to the point of having lost any sense of a concise and universal meaning.
“Love” is such a word I’ve written about before, and “addiction” falls into this same category.
I’d bet every single person reading this has behaviors or substances they over-use, excessively rely on, desire too often, or maybe even indulge in with a near-religious fervor.
I’m willing to bet this because otherwise why would you be reading the ramblings of a flawed, opinionated, unemployable middle-aged woman who has her own set of proverbial crutches and there are certainly those who would consider their routine use as addictions.
Habitual use of a substance or regularly indulging in preferred behaviors is not the equivalent of addiction. Coffee, sugar, shopping, working, gambling, sex, media, drama—all these are potentially addictive, yet most of us consume them on a regular basis a good part of our lives without becoming addicts.
Because we throw around words like workaholic, shopaholic, chocoholic as well as confuse ‘the habitual user’ with ‘the addict’ we minimize what it really means to be an addict.
When we consider these tendencies to be on some kind of continuum with “teetotaler” on one side and “addict” on the other and “habitual user” somewhere in the middle, this may be descriptive and convenient for the modern mind, but it’s doing a real disservice to truly understanding addicts.
We end up putting that continuum in a hierarchical position, with ‘teetotaler’ at the top of some faulty ladder of excellence and morality. It is a dangerously flawed perception.
I’ve known teetotalers who put their kind at the top of this morality pyramid and to them I say, “Congratulations! You can count yourself among some of the most virulent hypocrites, criminals and blood-thirsty tyrants of all time! Just ask Donald Trump, maker of Trump Vodka. Or Hitler, or Guevara, or John D. Rockefeller . . .
“It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted
to a profoundly sick society.”
I believe the key to addressing this tragic social situation is simply corrected.
First, stop playing stupid with serious words. True addiction is a matter of life and death.
Second, stop portraying characters in active addiction and those enabling the active addiction of others as heroes of entertainment and sport. Stop voting for them and stop working for them. You know who they are! They are the ones who want MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE! Stop admiring this quality, stop giving it center stage.
Infamous drug-runner in the Iran-Contra conspiracy, Barry Seal,
glamorized by Tom Cruise in American Made.
Barry (TOM CRUISE) and Lucy Seal (SARAH WRIGHT OLSEN) in Universal Pictures’ “American Made.” Cruise . . . in this international escapade based on the outrageous (and real) exploits of a hustler and pilot unexpectedly recruited by the CIA to run one of the biggest covert operations in U.S. history.
“Bad-ass” Steve Murphy from the popular Netflix series Narcos: “Back then, we were just finding out about the effects of cocaine on the human brain. We didn’t know much, but we knew it was some pretty powerful shit. Cocaine hijacks the pleasure centers in the brain. A rat will choose cocaine over food and water. It would choose cocaine over sleep, over sex… over life itself. The human brain isn’t quite the same as a rodent’s… unless we’re talking about cocaine.”
Especially crucial:
When someone tells you, or shows you, they are an addict, believe them.
I find this post so necessary to write because I have been guilty of all of this myself on multiple occasions. It was arrogant and dismissive and naive on my part and I wish I’d known better; I wish I’d listened better. I wish I’d known what to do, how to really help. I might have even saved a precious life.
It’s Rick that got me to see the fine, but very distinct line in the sand.
I’d often heard the line “addicts can’t stop.” I heard it, but I didn’t understand it.
I know I’m not alone in this because that line is being blurred by influences penetrating the culture, from psychology to media to pharmacy to the self-help, naval-gazing industry keeping folks clueless.
Just because you crave coffee every morning at 7 and a cocktail at 4 does not mean you ‘can’t stop.’
Can’t stop means you drink that first sip of coffee and keep drinking until the moment you find it sounds like a marvelous idea to try a back flip from your balcony. And then that routine sounds like a good idea, day after day, until the moment you go for it.
Rick: “My addiction progressed to the point that getting more was all that mattered. I’d go at any hours, to any sort of location to get ‘served’ – that’s what they call it. It was more important than food. In fact, they call them ‘chefs,’ the guys who are good at cooking powder cocaine into crack.
Redd was one of my dealers, a chef, who later taught me to cook. He died a few years ago. He was blind in one eye and couldn’t see out the other, literally.
I would only eat actual food when I got so weak I needed the energy so I could use more. One time when I ran out again that night and called to see if they had more, Redd said his friend had just had a stroke and died after smoking that crack.
My response was something like, ‘Wow, sorry to hear that man. Do you have any more?’
It was to the point that getting more was the only thing I cared about, to the point I moved Redd in with me. That was the beginning of the end—the accelerated downward spiral. The quality of the crack suddenly became much more potent, to the point I would sometimes pass out after taking a hit.”
When I really listen to Rick I hear something I should have understood ages ago.
When we blur the addiction line that should be obvious by minimizing, mis-categorizing, misdiagnosing, dismissing, enabling, aggrandizing and in general remaining ignorant of the addicts’ plights, are we not conveniently and covertly excusing our own bad habits which pale in comparison?
Are we buying into the teetotaler’s faulty morality ladder? Are we actually using the addicts as scapegoats?
And it’s not like that’s not bad enough.
Because it seems very clear that Hollywood wants it this way.
Why would that be?
“Reality is just a crutch for people who can’t handle drugs.”
Robin Williams, dead of drug overdose.
Part 2.1 Misunderstanding and Misdiagnosing Addiction Part 2.2 The War on Drugs vs The War for Drugs
Intro:
My friend Rick is an addict who is helping me understand addiction to a degree I’d missed before, despite concerted effort on my part. I’ve known many addicts and addiction has had a profound effect in my own family, something which I’m sad to say most reading this can surely relate.
Most of us in the US know an addict in our intimate circles. In my family we lost an addicted cousin far too young to drunk driving. There were several from my university circles who were in and out of rehab, a few also succumbing to relapses that led to their premature deaths.
Because there are others from different parts of the globe who will not fully understand without some background context, let me give the 2-minute elevator pitch to precede what we are about to present, Rick and I.
Imagine you live in what is referred to in the US as ‘the Bible belt‘.
You go to church every Sunday. Your familial social life revolves around church and your festivities around the church’s calendar. Every motel you have ever visited, probably from your traveling sport team or summer camp or girl’s or boy’s scouts, or other state-sponsored extra-curricular activity, until age 12, minimum, has a Bible in the nightstand drawer.
You are surrounded with billboards and slogans of “Jesus loves you” in various verbiage. You say the pledge of allegiance in your public school, which is of course a place you are required by law to attend.
And, most importantly, you live in a ‘dry county’ and all the counties around you for a good distance are also dry. Dry, as in alcohol is illegal.
Alcohol.Allow that to absorb a moment please for those of y’all who aren’t familiar with this reality. Not just marijuana is illegal–Not just heroine or barbiturates or Heaven’s-to-Betsy ecstasy-like designer drugs–You can’t even legally buy WINE!
Tartuffery–look it up!
Ok, just let that sink in a spell, because we still have some here in the south up until this present day, though the bulk of them lost social credit in only the last 5-10 years!
As of those ‘previous’ days, from the 1980s, “Dry” counties started hauling drugs through them suddenly so thick it was like stink on a possum.
Do possums do math?!
And still, your parents drink. Right? You live in a dry county, but your parents drink.
Yet, they can’t comprehend how illegal drugs infiltrated their Sunday-service-oriented Bible-pumping counties.
How their children and children’s children succumb to addiction in such astonishing numbers is as strange and as believable the man on the moon.
Right?
Meanwhile the music goes from Tiptoe through the Tulips to MORE MORE MORE MORE!!!
To now, cultural death by a thousand paper cuts.
How does this happen?
Cultural conditioning? Social engineering? Brainwashing? Epigenetics?
“I come from a good family. They did the best they could. They had no idea they’d given birth to a bouncing baby addict,” says Rick.
Of course not, how would they?
One becomes an expert at walking the line, or a hero in crossing it.
And the prisons get filled and the poems get writ.
And some do it solely for the money.
Sarah Silverman’s finest hour
“I’d sell my soul for you, babe. I give you all and have nothing. MORE MORE MORE!
A rebel yell?
She want more. Oh yay the little angel, she want more . . .
“According to the report, over the past decade, the number of Kentuckians who have died from drug overdoses has steadily climbed to more than 1,500 a year.”
“Countering prevailing notions of addiction as either a genetic disease or an individual moral failure, Dr. Gabor Maté presents an eloquent case that addiction – all addiction – is in fact a case of human development gone askew.”
Rick, in his own words.
Let me say that I come from a good family, my mother was a school teacher who later became a high school guidance counselor and is well educated with a masters degree, my father was a farmer in the beginning but later worked for the Commonwealth of KY.
I believe as do many addicts that I was born with the disease and it laid dormant until I took that first one, which happened around 10 – 12 yrs of age. My father not realizing the magnitude of his actions gave me a drink of this beer which changed my life for ever because this started the chase, it was the end of my innocence, It was like I had opened a window that I could never close.
From that point on I would sneak and take drinks from his beer every chance I got and the fact that I was sneaking tells me I knew it was wrong. I started sneaking and acting out in other ways as well, like smoking cigarettes, if it was wrong I was drawn to it It was also around the time in elementary school that I changed and my grades started to go from straight A’s to B’s, C’s and D’s and I was always into mischief.
I drank heavily in high school every chance I got but swore I’d never use drugs, that lasted until my freshman year in college when I met a girl who introduced me to marijuana and just like the beer I liked it right away. And just to be clear, my brain doesn’t know the difference between alcohol and drugs all it knows is that when I use any mood changing or mind altering substance it’s pedal to the medal and I don’t know how to stop. Looking back I would say addiction happened pretty quickly although I denied it vehemently, I was no addict. A drug abuser? Sure but not an addict, and that was my stance for close to 25 years and by the time I realized I was addicted it was too late.
I was in and had no idea how to get out.”
Real folks’ stories, perhaps it’s time we start really listening?
Here’s another good one, for starters. Proud2BProfane with Ross Cessna
It’s like comparing bathtub gin to champagne, and it’s embarrassing to me as an American that this craft-less, clue-less, style-less dance is what we are currently trying to pass off as art.
If the entire world is laughing, that is the best reaction to it I can imagine, I am laughing with y’all!
Might we start with some standards, at least?
and right, white man can’t dance. One of the biggest lies they ever tried to sell in this country.
Since I last wrote about the bipartisan shrieking, hysterical reaction to Trump’s planned military withdrawal from Syria the other day, it hasn’t gotten better, it’s gotten worse. I’m having a hard time even picking out individual bits of the collective freakout from the political/media class to point at, because doing so would diminish the frenetic…
Wisconsin Senator Herb Kohl – The U.S Military Will Use … The post Senate Hearing US Military Will Use Weather as a Weapon on AMERICAN Citizens appeared first on Aircrap.org Monitoring the Planned Poisoning of Humanity.
I’ll be going down a deep rabbit hole for the next 4 posts into a topic I’ve done considerable research, have some periphery personal experience, and have become convinced over the years is a conspiracy of the most despicable order, and part of a plot to not only bring down American society, but as a key piece of a depopulation agenda.
I am pleased to have some additional support in this dive with a friend who agrees with me, usually, and as a recovering addict has an important added dimension to offer to the conversation.
It’s not just about the money, not by a long shot, which is where a lot of the discussion gets centered, and then stopped. That is not to say the economics of the issue is insignificant.
‘Legalization’ has led to a ‘marketing’ of natural products, like cannabis, and a bizarre ‘anti-marketing’ of manufactured products, like Fentanyl, which I believe get flooded all over the mainstream and social media in order to normalize, and even slyly promote, these highly-addictive and indeed dangerous drugs.
From ‘reefer madness’ to cannabis as the cure-allfor all woes and illnesses under the sun. And I smell another rat!
All this can’t help but make one question, what the hell happened to the War on Drugs?
Who won? Who lost? Is it over yet?
Did someone call a truce while I was sleeping?
For those as confused on the topic as I once was, there’s some essential learning needed to get y’all up to speed.
Lucky for us, a few very clever and creative folks have done all the hard work for us! These are both excellent works puzzling the many pieces together.
Essential learning:
The Real History of the War on Drugs by Richard Grove
This is a tome of damning evidence, explicitly-referenced, that I cannot recommend highly enough. I’ve listened to it twice and with another three times I still could not absorb all there is to know within this 18 hours of information.
He covers the well-known aspects of the early ‘war on drugs’ years, like Iran-Contra, the Bushes and Clintons, the CIA, and ties them in with the more obscure angles of the conspiracy, like the Mena connection and numerous cover-up attempts.
This more-approachable film-length content unpacks the agenda behind some of the reasons for the drug-pushing, which is mind control and social control. It goes well beyond the now common knowledge of isolated MK ULTRA tests into a very dark look at psychiatric and medical involvement and endorsement.
It covers the brainwashing, indoctrination, re-education on a level that will be staggering to even those who think they already know and how these connect to the realities of cybernetics, AI, the neural net, and far beyond.
In case you’re wondering why folks can’t wake up to the realities all around them, I hope you’ll explore with me for the next few posts, because I think it’ll become crystal clear.
We just wanted to share a few updates from the wee homestead, on the winter garden and other news.
Dreary weather whiplash here, hard to say if our holidays will be white, green, gray or brown, but thankfully we still eat fresh, easily, every day.
Growin’ on now are: broccoli, lots of lettuces, carrots, cabbage, brussel sprouts, beets, kohlrabi, garlic, onions, kale, our favorite herbs–dill, chervil, cilantro–loads of collards for us and the critters, planted thick as green manure and spring bee food, too, like hairy vetch.
It’s high maintenance, we cover and uncover the boxes as weather requires, and it’s slow growing with shorter days and an abundance of overcast days.
But, the limited harvest results are DELICIOUS!
Triumph for the season:
I was interviewed about natural living on Crow777, a site I’ve mentioned here many times as a cutting edge, paradigm shifting, life affirming podcast I highly recommend.
They follow my nervous-nelly ramblings patiently and pleasantly and thankfully follow me up this week with a professional, a doctor saying exactly what I’m wanting and needing to hear!
Balneotherapy, crounotherapy, the drinking cure, taking the waters–whatever you want to call it–chalybeate pools, hot springs and mineral spas have a very long tradition behind them. And before I get accused of ‘appealing to tradition’ once again in order to assert the value of these traditions, there’s beaucoup science behind them, too.
“From the frontier years of the Republic to the postwar years of the twentieth century, people flocked to the state’s mineral waters primarily for one reason–health. In that sense, Texas springs were resorts in the truest sense, despite their relative anonymity to the rest of the nation.” (Valenza)
From the Journal of the American Medical Association, 1943: “Much of the discussion to follow on the historical background of resort therapy will be concerned with the forces which at different periods have raised this therapy to the central feature of medical care, have reduced it to the status of superstition, have diverted its main features into voluptuous cultural practices, have opposed its use on the puritanical background that its measures coddled the flesh that needed scourging from the sins of disease, have degraded it to a social fad, have allowed it to pass into the hands of the charlatan and enthusiast as a panacea, have obstructed it with the lack of economic provision for care and have brushed it aside with a disinterest that has come from attention fixed on only the novel in medicine.”
(Howard Haggard, MD) sited from “Taking the Waters in Texas: Springs, Spas and Fountains of Youth by Janet Mace Valenza
“The use of mineral springs for therapeutic purposes declined for several reasons. Many hotels burned or were washed away by floods, and rebuilding them seemed inappropriate because medicine had begun to change. With the rise of “germ theory” and the discovery of sulfa drugs and antibiotics, the belief in the usefulness of mineral water diminished. Many doctors supported water cures, but some began to eschew balneology, the science of bathing, because of some resorts’ extravagant claims. In Marlin the tradition lasted into the 1960s, primarily because the medical profession appropriated the practice and transformed it into a tool for physical therapy. Other factors, such as war and depression, also hurt resorts. The railroad guaranteed the success and demise of some resort.”
Gentlemen taking the waters in Marlin
“Texas spas were unique among Texas towns and also different from resorts in the East. Daily life at these resort towns revolved around the waters. Architecture reflected the tradition. Pavilions and drinking fountains became gathering places for local citizens, depots attracted bands and drummers to meet trains, bathhouses set the scene for private ablutions, and large hotels employed big bands for entertainment. Other diversions included domino games, burro rides, picnics, and dances. Bathers overcame the fears attendant upon the theory of miasma-that harmful vapors association with swampy waters cause disease-to seek the sanative pleasures of the springs and wells. Osmotic exchanges with the water were supposed to benefit the body. Rheumatism, arthritis, and skin diseases were reportedly relieved more often than any other condition. (Valenza) https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/sbm11
Sounds to me like getting cured was a lot more fun back then!
As for the science
It was Europeans like Ernest Kapp, an early geographer who opened the Hydropathic Institute, that brought these practices from their own countries and ancestors to ours. “Dr. Ernest Kapp’s Water-Cure Treatment included not only hydropathy, but also gymnastic exercises.” https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fka01
Viktor Schauberger was another early researcher studying the properties of water.
For the deep dive into where the science stands now, including references to the numerous studies and on-going research, I’m definitely over my head with this newish publication, Pure Water: The Science of Water, Waves, Water Pollution, Water Treatment, Water Therapy and Water Ecology.
But it’s fascinating nonetheless and certainly convinces me our ancestors knew more than we often give them credit for.
Some not-so-random quotes and links, interspersed with happy homestead snaps for better digestion.
Cleaning up the acorns on the deck, so helpful!
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.”
Frederick Douglass, former slave (1818-1895)
Despite a vast body of scientific knowledge, the issue of deliberate climatic manipulations for military use has never been explicitly part of the UN agenda on climate change. Neither the official delegations nor the environmental action groups participating in the Hague Conference on Climate Change (CO6) (November 2000) have raised the broad issue of “weather warfare” or “environmental modification techniques (ENMOD)” as relevant to an understanding of climate change.
The clash between official negotiators, environmentalists and American business lobbies has centered on Washington’s outright refusal to abide by commitments on carbon dioxide reduction targets under the 1997 Kyoto protocol.(1) The impacts of military technologies on the World’s climate are not an object of discussion or concern. Narrowly confined to greenhouse gases, the ongoing debate on climate change serves Washington’s strategic and defense objectives.https://archives.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO201A.html
